D&D (2024) Can we have the sorcerer fixed now? (Plz, I beg you n_n°)

[Gorck]

So can situational awareness (Wisdom) or just having a good head on your shoulders (Int).

having situational awareness or a good head on your shoulders still doesn't make you physically able to move faster.

It reminds me of a show I used to watch back in the day called No Ordinary Family. The whole family had superpowers, and the son's power was the ability to do complex mathematical computations in his head. He wound up becoming the star quarterback on his high school football team because, in the middle of a play, he could calculate exactly where the ball needed to be thrown to complete the pass. But, I objected to myself, just because he could determine where the ball needed to be thrown doesn't mean he had the arm strength and accuracy to get it there.

But, I seem to have hijacked this thread away from Sorcerers.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Or muscular strength, for that matter.

It might be hard to justify for some abilities. But perhaps it should just be Prof+ with a flat bonus to it and possibility of increasing with feat choice…

DEX as is is an outlier that is overly useful.

Maybe Prof + Class bonus (Rogues +5, Ranger/Monk +3, Fighter/Barbarian +2) ?

 

[MechaTarrasque]

On the contrary, I think even some of these make sense. Divination and Illusion wizards would use INT... but if you are an Enchanter and deal with charms? A CHA wizard makes all the sense in the world. Necromancy deals with life and death, so you could certainly go in the WIS wizard direction. On the flip side... while Life, Grave and Nature Clerics could obviously stick with WIS... your Arcana and Knowledge Clerics could easily be INT-based and Trickery domain could go CHA.

Would it be a bit of a change? Sure. Does it make a bit of sense? I believe so. Would I be upset if they didn't change it? Nope. This is one of those things that they could keep it either way and I'd be fine with it. Because if I really felt I needed to have it the other way that they choose, I could just make the change for myself in my own home game.

If you had good charisma, why would you need or even want to use skeezy magic to get people to do what you want? What motivation could there be to do so? I really good at talking people into doing what I want, but I am not going to do that, because?

I know I have just totally invalidated the bard, but... doesn't it make more sense to use magic to do something you aren't good at without magic? I can totally see the CHA evocation wizard: you turned me down, well, I got a little something for you that I call fireball....

 

[Stalker0]

If you had good charisma, why would you need or even want to use skeezy magic to get people to do what you want? What motivation could there be to do so?

Power....absolute power.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

Power....absolute power.

I work under the assumption that D&D assumes a training-based model--you get more STR, INT, CON, DEX, CHA, or WIS because you work at it, and hopefully you get a little bit of joy in the work. Casting a spell to do what you enjoy instead of doing it seems like a bad deal ("I'm going to cast a spell that will eat that chocolate cake that I really want instead of me eating it") unless there is an emergency. I can totally buy a CHA wizard casting spells that don't involve CHA skills, like hitting people or being more observant or sneaky. Likewise, I can see an INT wizard or a WIS wizard (say that 3 times fast) wanting to have the Rock's "smoldering gaze" from Jumanji ("who's cool now?") and using magic to get it.

And for the 1,000's....er, 100's....er, couple of bard players panicking about this, your PC is clearly using magic to up his/her lung power so everyone can hear you sing or give him/her an indestructible finger so he/she can hit the power cords on his/her lute for 5 minutes straight without bleeding all over the place (strings can be sharp). so that is a totally different thing from the wizard.

 

[Haplo781]

Maybe Prof + Class bonus (Rogues +5, Ranger/Monk +3, Fighter/Barbarian +2) ?

Class bonus to initiative would make a lot more sense in a role-based system like 4e where you don't always necessarily want to go first

Power....absolute power.

 

[DEFCON 1]

If you had good charisma, why would you need or even want to use skeezy magic to get people to do what you want? What motivation could there be to do so? I really good at talking people into doing what I want, but I am not going to do that, because?

I know I have just totally invalidated the bard, but... doesn't it make more sense to use magic to do something you aren't good at without magic? I can totally see the CHA evocation wizard: you turned me down, well, I got a little something for you that I call fireball....

I understand what you mean and agree to a certain extent... but I also think that most people and characters tend to lean into their strengths. A person's nature is such that (and D&D mechanics tend to highlight this) if you are good at something, you tend to focus on it to be even better. Rogues take Expertise in their best skills so that they can be the best of the best. A warrior who focuses on a specific weapon tends to go all-in on boosting their abilities they get when using that weapon. (Until specific racial mods got removed in recent books) characters that were of a certain race oftentimes took classes for whom the racial modifier bonus boosted the score they were going to be using for that class. And even just normal characters more often that not will take proficiency in skills that match their primary ability score so their total bonus can be higher.

So even just thinking about this narratively... if you are really smart but uncharismatic, will you spend all your time studying a magic to which you are unused to being or unsuited for? I agree that it does make sense from a certain point of view to use magic to compensate for your lack of ability... but we're talking wizards that are spending countless months and years trying to learn magic and more importantly specifically focus on a certain type of magic... and for it to be one where you have no natural inclination or skill seems to be an uphill battle that most wizards I don't know would undertake.

After all... if you were the most popular and charismatic kid in magic school, what is more likely? Playing into it and getting even more popular... or going off to the basement with all the goth kids to study necromancy? I'm sure there would be some kids that would in fact do that... but I don't think that would be the norm.

And at the end of the day it doesn't really matter either way, cause I don't think WotC would ever make this change regardless, LOL.

 

[CreamCloud0]

Would it be too powerful if sorcerers could just use their chosen metamagics on their cantrips for free? This probably wouldn’t be a good idea to combine this with the ‘sorcerers have all their metamagics’ idea at the same time though

 

[Vael]

My main concern about granting sorcerers unlimited access to all their metamagic is that it makes adding new metamagics a little problematic. And I do think this is the space to make sorcerers more unique and interesting. All the current ones just augment spells (except for Transmute), their duration, damage, distance, effectiveness, etc.

And what I'd like to see is metamagics that might also rider effects to spells, like Explosive spell makes an area effect spell push creatures caught in the blast around. Or Warding spell that simply gives the caster a defensive bonus to AC or some temp hp.

 

[RealAlHazred]

For years I've been using the Tweaked Sorcerer by /u/SwordMeow. Highly recommended homebrew!