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One thing I hate about the Sorcerer
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<blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 9316999" data-attributes="member: 6877472"><p>The Kineticist was simply a new take on the original 3.5 Warlock, a class with all day at will magic balanced against spell slot users. I actually liked the 3.5 Warlock, it was a fun and flavorful class (with a few sticking points that were fixed with the later Dragonfire Adept, like terrible skill points).</p><p></p><p>People cried foul when the Warlock could use Eldritch Blast all day, every day, but in actual play, being able to chuck a couple d6's turn after turn really wasn't all that impactful in combat. Even the stronger Eldritch Invocations, which combined multiple spell effects, didn't outshine what a full caster could do.</p><p></p><p>The tipping point (much like the current Warlock) only came about in a situation where the full casters ran out of gas- but in such a scenario, even the so-called "resourceless" classes (Fighter, Rogue) were perfectly happy to find a place to nap because they are fully reliant on magic for the most important resource- hit points. A problem the 5e Fighter sort of solves, but not so much the other classes.</p><p></p><p>That's really a problem 5e has; there's nothing wrong with an "all day" class, but unless all the classes share that paradigm, it's somewhat meaningless unless the DM goes out of their way to enforce encounter-rich adventuring days, something the system itself fights against, forcing you to houserule and ban quite a few things out of existence to make work. Or just make every adventure a race against time, I suppose, which kind of gets exhausting (for me at least).</p><p></p><p>This ties into another issue, D&D's perennial downtime problem. The game isn't really built to encourage long spans of time where adventures aren't, well, adventuring. A decent level caster can dig deep and find a whole bunch of interesting things to do with their magic (my current group considered taking a week off for some side project and my DM shuddered when I joked about casting 14 Legend Lore spells to get more information about the stranger goings on in the adventure).</p><p></p><p>What do non-casters do with downtime? Learn languages or get tool proficiencies? Spend months to make a suit of armor? Go looking for barfights? Basically try to get side adventures because they're effectively twiddling their thumbs?</p><p></p><p>Anyways, I'm off in the weeds here, since this doesn't really have anything to do with the Sorcerer. I played a Sorcerer to about level 8 though, and I can share my issues with the class:</p><p></p><p>*Limited spell selection: ok, this has always been problematic, but it's made worse by giving the Sorcerer a stripped-down spell list that enforces a theme of Sorcerers being more concerned with blowing things up than other things. A Wizard can choose to be a blaster and can actually be built to be just as good as a Sorcerer (if not better), but still have all the crowd control and utility!</p><p></p><p>*Over-reliance on Sorcery points: this is the big stickler. Most of the cool things the class does rely on Sorcery points. This spills over into subclass mechanics in some cases: I played a Wild Sorcerer, so my subclass abilities relied on random chance, DM permission ("Um, Mr. DM, do you think I could get my Tides of Luck back?") and Bend Luck, a fairly weak ability when compared to similar effects, costing 2 Sorcery points, which I needed to use Metamagic!</p><p></p><p>*Very conservative Metamagic design: Wow, I can Quicken a Fireball! And then...what? Use a Cantrip? Dodge? Most of the time, Metamagic isn't even that impressive. Twin Spell can be great, but it can only be used with a few spells you're going to know. Most of the time, the best use for my Sorcery points was a poor man's Arcane Recovery!</p><p></p><p>Some of these things were addressed in later books- bonus spells from subclass, yes, thank you. More passive abilities that don't use Sorcery Points, thanks. More Metamagic options? Eh, ok I guess, lol.</p><p></p><p>Maybe we do need to kill the Wizard, but I think what really needs to happen is for the Sorcerer to get out of the Wizard's shadow.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="James Gasik, post: 9316999, member: 6877472"] The Kineticist was simply a new take on the original 3.5 Warlock, a class with all day at will magic balanced against spell slot users. I actually liked the 3.5 Warlock, it was a fun and flavorful class (with a few sticking points that were fixed with the later Dragonfire Adept, like terrible skill points). People cried foul when the Warlock could use Eldritch Blast all day, every day, but in actual play, being able to chuck a couple d6's turn after turn really wasn't all that impactful in combat. Even the stronger Eldritch Invocations, which combined multiple spell effects, didn't outshine what a full caster could do. The tipping point (much like the current Warlock) only came about in a situation where the full casters ran out of gas- but in such a scenario, even the so-called "resourceless" classes (Fighter, Rogue) were perfectly happy to find a place to nap because they are fully reliant on magic for the most important resource- hit points. A problem the 5e Fighter sort of solves, but not so much the other classes. That's really a problem 5e has; there's nothing wrong with an "all day" class, but unless all the classes share that paradigm, it's somewhat meaningless unless the DM goes out of their way to enforce encounter-rich adventuring days, something the system itself fights against, forcing you to houserule and ban quite a few things out of existence to make work. Or just make every adventure a race against time, I suppose, which kind of gets exhausting (for me at least). This ties into another issue, D&D's perennial downtime problem. The game isn't really built to encourage long spans of time where adventures aren't, well, adventuring. A decent level caster can dig deep and find a whole bunch of interesting things to do with their magic (my current group considered taking a week off for some side project and my DM shuddered when I joked about casting 14 Legend Lore spells to get more information about the stranger goings on in the adventure). What do non-casters do with downtime? Learn languages or get tool proficiencies? Spend months to make a suit of armor? Go looking for barfights? Basically try to get side adventures because they're effectively twiddling their thumbs? Anyways, I'm off in the weeds here, since this doesn't really have anything to do with the Sorcerer. I played a Sorcerer to about level 8 though, and I can share my issues with the class: *Limited spell selection: ok, this has always been problematic, but it's made worse by giving the Sorcerer a stripped-down spell list that enforces a theme of Sorcerers being more concerned with blowing things up than other things. A Wizard can choose to be a blaster and can actually be built to be just as good as a Sorcerer (if not better), but still have all the crowd control and utility! *Over-reliance on Sorcery points: this is the big stickler. Most of the cool things the class does rely on Sorcery points. This spills over into subclass mechanics in some cases: I played a Wild Sorcerer, so my subclass abilities relied on random chance, DM permission ("Um, Mr. DM, do you think I could get my Tides of Luck back?") and Bend Luck, a fairly weak ability when compared to similar effects, costing 2 Sorcery points, which I needed to use Metamagic! *Very conservative Metamagic design: Wow, I can Quicken a Fireball! And then...what? Use a Cantrip? Dodge? Most of the time, Metamagic isn't even that impressive. Twin Spell can be great, but it can only be used with a few spells you're going to know. Most of the time, the best use for my Sorcery points was a poor man's Arcane Recovery! Some of these things were addressed in later books- bonus spells from subclass, yes, thank you. More passive abilities that don't use Sorcery Points, thanks. More Metamagic options? Eh, ok I guess, lol. Maybe we do need to kill the Wizard, but I think what really needs to happen is for the Sorcerer to get out of the Wizard's shadow. [/QUOTE]
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