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D&D (2024) 4/26 Playtest: The Sorceror

Nadan

Explorer
What I don't like, is the subclass feature that are : draconic exhalation and dragon wings
The exhalation is 15 ft cone, which is really short and small, like base on DMG a 15 ft cone is expected to hit 2 creature and they are in melee range. And wings... why permanent fly at Lv.14 be deem as "overpower" is beyond my imagination. You already can get fly speed from various bird species at first level. At this level able to fly is nothing more than a niche. If the feature is have permanent normal wings and it do extra thing when you cast sorcery Incarnate, cool and I can live with it. But when it only appear when you cast that specific spell, which reqire fifth level slot and concentration and overall is a meh spell, just...WHY?
 

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WanderingMystic

Adventurer
What I don't like, is the subclass feature that are : draconic exhalation and dragon wings
The exhalation is 15 ft cone, which is really short and small, like base on DMG a 15 ft cone is expected to hit 2 creature and they are in melee range.
This is a utility added to your cantrips. As a draconic sorcerer you are more of an up close and personal sorcerer anyway with the extra ac and the extra hp so yeah hitting 2 or possibly three people with a cantrips is great.
 

Nadan

Explorer
This is a utility added to your cantrips. As a draconic sorcerer you are more of an up close and personal sorcerer anyway with the extra ac and the extra hp so yeah hitting 2 or possibly three people with a cantrips is great.
Yeah draconic sorcerer can close and personal but, what is the motivation? It still not a gish subclass.
 

It occurred to me that you can use Empowered Spell metamagic on the exploding dice of Sorcerous Burst, because each explosion die is a new damage die rolled. Since you should always be able to reroll more damage dice than the base cantrip provides (eg: 5 from Cha even at the max 4d6 at level 17), you will always have a chance to reroll at least some of the exploding dice, even if you also rerolled all of the original dice.

So I went back and rewrote the anydice code to try to account for that. (It's also an improvement over the original code, and should be more accurate in general.)

Link to the new code: AnyDice

And the code itself if you want to look at it here:
Code:
EXTRA: 0
YES: 1
NO: 0

function: explode ROLLEDVALUE:n LIMIT:n ISREROLL {
 if LIMIT < 0 { result: 0 }
 if ROLLEDVALUE = 6 {
   result: 6 + [explode d6 LIMIT-1 NO]
 }
 if ROLLEDVALUE < 4 & EXTRA > 0 & !ISREROLL {
   EXTRA: EXTRA - 1
   result: [explode d6 LIMIT YES]
 }
 result: ROLLEDVALUE
}

function: burst ROLL:s cha CHA empowered EMPOWERED {
  if EMPOWERED {
    USED: [count {1,2,3} in ROLL]
    EXTRA: CHA - USED
  }
  else {
    EXTRA: 0
  }
 
  TOTAL: 0
  loop N over {1..#ROLL} {
    if N@ROLL = 6 {
      TOTAL: TOTAL + [explode 6 CHA NO]
    }
    else {
      if N@ROLL < 4 & EMPOWERED {
        TOTAL: TOTAL + [explode 1d6 CHA NO]
      }
      else {
        TOTAL: TOTAL + N@ROLL
      }
    }
  }

  result: TOTAL
}

output [burst 1d6 cha 3 empowered NO] named "Level 1"
output [burst 2d6 cha 4 empowered NO] named "Level 5"
output [burst 3d6 cha 5 empowered NO] named "Level 11"
output [burst 4d6 cha 5 empowered NO] named "Level 17"

output [burst 1d6 cha 3 empowered YES] named "Level 1 empowered"
output [burst 2d6 cha 4 empowered YES] named "Level 5 empowered"
output [burst 3d6 cha 5 empowered YES] named "Level 11 empowered"
output [burst 4d6 cha 5 empowered YES] named "Level 17 empowered"

And here you can see the averages, which show an empowered burst d6 actually beats an empowered d8.
LevelCharismad6 Burstd6 Emp-Burstd6Emp d6d8Emp d8d10Emp d10
1164.205.943.504.254.505.505.506.75
5188.4012.037.008.509.0011.0011.0013.50
112012.6018.2010.5012.7513.5016.5016.5020.25
172016.8023.9814.0017.0018.0022.0022.0027.00

And while that's the average, I also want to look at the top 10% results. Here's a table showing where you have a ~10% chance of getting at least some result X:

LevelCharismad6 Burstd6 Emp-Burstd6Emp d6d8Emp d8d10Emp d10
1169 (11%)11 (12%)6 (17%)6 (25%)8 (12.5%)8 (19%)10 (10%)10 (15%)
51815 (10%)20 (10%)10 (17%)11 (19%)14 (9%)15 (11%)17 (10%)18 (14%)
112020 (11%)27 (11%)15 (9%)16 (16%)19 (11%)21 (13%)23 (12%)26 (12%)
172026 (10%)35 (10%)19 (10%)21 (13%)24 (12%)27 (14%)30 (10%)34 (10%)

So the top 10% results of an empowered burst cantrip will even outdo an empowered d10 cantrip.

And obviously the maximum results far outstrip the other options. An empowered d10 cantrip at level 17 maxes out at 40 damage, with a 1 in 2000 chance of reaching that. The empowered burst cantrip has a 4% chance (1 in 25) of getting at least 40 damage at level 17. The 1-in-2000 result would be at least 60 damage.

With this consideration, I quite like the spell. It's only a little below the d8 on the average results for non-Empowered usage, is ahead when Empowered, and has a good chance of getting quite high results. It really works well with Empowered Spell. I think it fits with the general feel of the sorcerer quite well.
 
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Vael

Legend
Yes, but I resent having to have any blasting unless I explicitly choose to blast. I find it in general just not fun, if I wanted to play a blaster, I'd play a videogame -and get bored in like ten minutes tops-.

Fair, but no one is forcing you to cast them. I am tempted to try a few Sorcerer builds where these default spells are the only blast spells I take. Now that Heighten got a lot stronger, a lot of Control spells seem more viable. Now that Twin Spell isn't an auto-include metamagic, a lot of other spells that I tend to ignore became more interesting.
 

Draconic Sorcery subclass:

Draconic Resilience: A strict improvement over the original, other than not getting it until level 3. Should generally give an extra +1 AC at level 4, and +2 at level 8, assuming you use those ASIs to improve Cha to 18 and 20 at those levels.

Elemental Affinity: The original had you choose an element at level 1, and then did nothing with it until level 6. Kinda pointless. This changes it so that you choose at level 6 when you get the resistance and damage bonus. You also don't have to spend a sorcery point to get the resistance bonus; it's permanent. Overall, strict upgrade, if minor.

Draconic Exhalation: This is gained at 10th level, where the original sorcerer did not get subclass abilities at 10th. It changes a single-target cantrip to a 15' cone, essentially making it a 1st level spell similar to Burning Hands. At level 11 (just 1 level after this is gained), Sorcerous Burst is 3d6 damage like Burning Hands, using exploding dice rather than half damage to make it overall similar.

While it may seem a little late to be getting a 1st level spell equivalent, it's using a cantrip, which means no spell slots are used. It doesn't have the range, but since it's a cantrip, you can use this while using Quickened Spell to cast another leveled spell. You won't use it all the time, but it should be a viable option fairly often. A decent enough feature.

Dragon Wings: While Sorcery Incarnate is active (1 minute of concentration, or 2 minutes if Extended), you can fly at your walking speed, and at the end of your turn do your Cha mod in damage to creatures within 15' of you.

This is decidedly mediocre. The original version allowed permanent flight at the same level. This version depends on a concentration spell that only lasts one minute, while the damage bonus only applies to creatures within 15' of you, and only at the end of your turn, when you can't move away afterwards.

This combines with the question of whether Sorcery Incarnate is worth casting in the first place. It requires concentration, so all other concentration spells are automatically excluded. Being able to use two metamagics at once is nice, but it's hard to imagine many cases where that would really benefit non-concentration spells.

As for advantage on spell attacks, that turns out to be incredibly limited. I can only find two spells higher than 1st level that make attack rolls — Scorching Ray (lvl 2) and Crown of Stars (lvl 7). There are several 1st level spells — Chaos Bolt, Chromatic Orb, Ice Knife, and Ray of Sickness — and of course various cantrips. Honestly, the cantrip Sorcerous Burst is probably the best spell to use to take advantage of that benefit.

In total, the best use of Sorcery Incarnate is probably to Quicken a leveled spell while using a second metamagic on it, and then using Empowered Sorcerous Burst as your action to gain the benefit of advantage on attack rolls. If you hover at 15' up, the cone effect of Draconic Exhalation and the wing flaps will both cover a 15'x15' square of ground directly below you.

Gaining flight to make use of that nova attempt while staying out of melee range is not a bad deal, even if the extra wing flap damage is questionable, but it depends on how much you buy into this approach.

Sorcery Incarnate being a spell that's intended to be combined with a subclass rider in order to really "manifest" your sorcerer's type (in this case, dragons) certainly makes sense thematically, but the implementation here feels weak. Perhaps if Dragon Wings made it so that casting Sorcery Incarnate gave you the flight speed and wing flap effects for 1 hour, rather than only being up for however long you could maintain concentration on the spell, it would be reasonable.
 
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Hmmm...
Couldn't you still do it? And then Sorcerery Incarnate would end?
... OK, I'm actually not sure.

Casting a spell that uses concentration causes you to lose concentration on any spell you're currently concentrating on. But it's not clear whether that means when you start casting the new spell, or when you finish casting the new spell.

A search brings up a Jeremy Crawford tweet:
Jeremy Crawford said:
The instant you start casting a concentration spell, you lose your concentration on another concentration spell.
There's still a little uncertainty in whether the metamagics could apply as part of the "before casting" modification, and thus still work, but I'd find that hard to accept.
 


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