D&D 5E Designer apathy and sunk costs, The reason the sorcerer is doomed to uncanny valley one-trick-ponieness.

Ok, I lost track of my original intention. Sorry will try to be less hysteric another time.

The original intention was. The designers refused to do anything that would invalidate the PHB archetypes, thus turning the chance of the storm sorcerer being a turning point for the class into yet another reason the class won't change. Any further attempt to improve it will have to worry about invalidating three subclasses instead of just two.

The sorcerer really has very little going for it at low levels, a first level sorcerer -that isn't a favored soul- has nothing to show it isn't just a poor wizard. And at higher levels metamagic is too limited, just two options are too little. Spell selection is also a problem, it is too limited, the storm sorcerer used to have a lot of flavor, power and versatility on those extra known spells, half of them weren't standard sorcerer spells and are forever out of reach. Overall sorcerers make better multiclasses than single classers, and warlock/sorcerers are kind of infamous for being OP.

I don't like the class as it is, I don't doubt it has a lot of power as a blaster, the problem is I would prefer to not being forced to blast. It isn't a matter of just power, but just opting out of blasting doesn't let you do all of these wonderful things you could do with magic in previous editions (bye bye familiars, rope tricks, summoned critters, greases, all sorcerer staples form the past.). That is the big gap in the sorcerer, but the designers are so invested on not invalidating the books that we will never see meaningful change. And this is frustrating because the sorcerer was completely left out of the open playtest, with no changes to help shape it like we helped with basically all other classes.

[sblock= The original post]I'm deeply disappointed with the designers handling of the sorcerer. And I have completely lost faith on being able to convert previous edition PCs, let alone have a sorcerer that doesn't make your party wish you had brought a wizard instead.

There are many reasons because of it. Everything started so well in the playtest, the sorcerer in there was a sorcerer's fan wet dream, hard to do conversions with, but very very cool and showing all of the strengths sorcerers traditionally had. The designers answer to this conversion bit? Jettison the sorcerer! get rid of it by wrapping it under wizard! Then it came all the negative feedback to it, but by then it was too late to include the sorcerer in the open playtest. But instead of just asking lots of questions about the soul of the sorcerer in the two last polls, they just decided to keep the sorcerer under wraps and avoid all mention to it, so it was one of the few classes that was designed with zero input from fans.

The end result pleased many, but disappointed a lot more. We had some underwhelming core subclasses -on a weak chassis- but they received so good feedback on the official polls that the designers refuse to admit there's anything wrong with them. Yes lets ignore that the dragon sorcerer was actually nerfed by the errata. The changes to Elemental Affinity before and after errata result on a net nerf, that feedback was given on a stronger version of the dragon sorcerer.

As for the wild magic sorcerer, we didn't have longterm play experience with it to know that it just kind of never triggers a surge, and surges are the main source of flavor and power in the wild magic sorcerer.

Not to mention that seeing the favored soul and the first Storm sorcerer were an eye opener for people, not for me I always held they were weak from day one but the strong elemental affinity kept everybody blind to it, but no, the missinformed feedback of one year ago is law, or at least a pretext to not do anything meaningful with sorcerers, because allegations of avoiding power creep go down the drain when in the same book we have a wizard subclass that is outright overpowered. Or is it a double standard?

The favored soul was a nice thing, it just isn't truly official, and I fear what they will do to it when the time comes to make it official. I think I prefer to them to leave it untouched, the idea of the Storm sorcerer being official was exciting, but the end result was very thematically weak. The removal of the bonus spells from it wasn't just some reduction in power, it took away the ability to fill the niche, half these spells were non-standard spells that are now out of reach to storm sorcerers, now the storm sorcerer is just yet another lightning blaster, just with a different rider and delayed flight. The sad thing is that we still have no reason to go full sorcerer on AL games, and the only reason to play one on house games is still in the air. Sorcerer used to be a second among equals with the wizard, now it is outright inferior to even bards. I really miss the familiars and other long term magic effects, and don't tell me familiars are a wizard thing, the original sorcerer had familiars as a class feature.[/sblock]

MoonSong(Kaiilurker) said:

I'm deeply disappointed with the designers handling of the sorcerer. And I have completely lost faith on being able to convert previous edition PCs, let alone have a sorcerer that doesn't make your party wish you had brought a wizard instead.

There are many reasons because of it. Everything started so well in the playtest, the sorcerer in there was a sorcerer's fan wet dream, hard to do conversions with, but very very cool and showing all of the strengths sorcerers traditionally had. The designers answer to this conversion bit? Jettison the sorcerer! get rid of it by wrapping it under wizard! Then it came all the negative feedback to it, but by then it was too late to include the sorcerer in the open playtest. But instead of just asking lots of questions about the soul of the sorcerer in the two last polls, they just decided to keep the sorcerer under wraps and avoid all mention to it, so it was one of the few classes that was designed with zero input from fans.

The end result pleased many, but disappointed a lot more. We had some underwhelming core subclasses -on a weak chassis- but they received so good feedback on the official polls that the designers refuse to admit there's anything wrong with them. Yes lets ignore that the dragon sorcerer was actually nerfed by the errata. The changes to Elemental Affinity before and after errata result on a net nerf, that feedback was given on a stronger version of the dragon sorcerer.

As for the wild magic sorcerer, we didn't have longterm play experience with it to know that it just kind of never triggers a surge, and surges are the main source of flavor and power in the wild magic sorcerer.

Not to mention that seeing the favored soul and the first Storm sorcerer were an eye opener for people, not for me I always held they were weak from day one but the strong elemental affinity kept everybody blind to it, but no, the missinformed feedback of one year ago is law, or at least a pretext to not do anything meaningful with sorcerers, because allegations of avoiding power creep go down the drain when in the same book we have a wizard subclass that is outright overpowered. Or is it a double standard?

The favored soul was a nice thing, it just isn't truly official, and I fear what they will do to it when the time comes to make it official. I think I prefer to them to leave it untouched, the idea of the Storm sorcerer being official was exciting, but the end result was very thematically weak. The removal of the bonus spells from it wasn't just some reduction in power, it took away the ability to fill the niche, half these spells were non-standard spells that are now out of reach to storm sorcerers, now the storm sorcerer is just yet another lightning blaster, just with a different rider and delayed flight. The sad thing is that we still have no reason to go full sorcerer on AL games, and the only reason to play one on house games is still in the air. Sorcerer used to be a second among equals with the wizard, now it is outright inferior to even bards. I really miss the familiars and other long term magic effects, and don't tell me familiars are a wizard thing, the original sorcerer had familiars as a class feature.

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The wild sorc can cause a surge on every spell casting should the DM allow it. The DM is left almost entirely in charge of how often the Wild Surge will happen. They tell you whether or not to roll the surge die as part of casting the spell. In addition they are in charge of handing back your ability to grant yourself advantage by having you wild surge. In my game that I played a wild mage in the rule was I rolled the surge die on every spellcasting and of odd used my advantage I surged automatically. This resulted in double wild surges a few times, but resulted in at least a single surge every turn. My character (a halfling with the lucky feat) used misty step to jump into the middle of enemies (initiating a surge) then cast a cantrip (immediately spending my advantage). I surged almost every round, and would hand out d4s to my allies it was actually pretty awesome.

MoonSong(Kaiilurker) said:

I'm deeply disappointed with the designers handling of the sorcerer. And I have completely lost faith on being able to convert previous edition PCs, let alone have a sorcerer that doesn't make your party wish you had brought a wizard instead...The end result pleased many, but disappointed a lot more.

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The feedback they received, which is from a much broader sample than what you get on message boards, is that a clear large majority liked the sorcerer. The only class that's gotten larger negative feedback (and even that one was more positive than negative overall) has been the Ranger. So I disagree that the Sorcerer disappointed a lot more than it pleased.

It sounds to me like you and your DM need to sit down together and homebrew a sorcerer you can both be happy with.

EDIT: Then post the resulting class here so that others can use it if they are also unhappy with the published options!

Mistwell said:

The feedback they received, which is from a much broader sample than what you get on message boards, is that a clear large majority liked the sorcerer. The only class that's gotten larger negative feedback (and even that one was more positive than negative overall) has been the Ranger. So I disagree that the Sorcerer disappointed a lot more than it pleased.

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Precisely; as a Sorcerer player, the OP does not reflect my experience or the reported experience of most feedback, apparently. If there is nothing wrong with the Sorcerer as is, why should the developers "admit" otherwise?

The feedback also showed, which I said when I filled it out, that there was a lot of unexplored apace for subclasses. I can easily think of nearly a dozen subclasses, but I can be patient with them taking their time. Not doing a generic "I'm just magic" was an oversight, I think...

MoonSong(Kaiilurker) said:

I'm deeply disappointed with the designers handling of the sorcerer. And I have completely lost faith on being able to convert previous edition PCs, let alone have a sorcerer that doesn't make your party wish you had brought a wizard instead.

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Yep. We know. You've brought this up many times before. But right now the question is What are you going to do about it?

I mean, if you just want to keep bemoaning the sorcerer for bemoaning's sake, that's fine. Go right ahead. You're free to do so as often as you want. But I do wonder if perhaps there might be a more constructive use of your time? I mean... have you reworked the sorcerer class to your liking? Have you looked at all the other sorcerer reworkings here on the boards? Have you talked with your DM about using the rules in the DMG to change or modify the class (which the game specifically says you *can* do) to create the kind of class you want to play? Because you can do it for your home game. You're allowed.

Granted, if your ONLY chance to play D&D is the Adventurer's League... then yeah, you have to play the Sorcerer as presented. Or you have to suck it up and play your "hated Wizard" (that you've gone into many times in many different threads about how you'd rather chew ground glass than play) in order to get the stuff you want to use for this very specific spellcaster concept that you seem unwilling to deviate from. Or, you have to just accept this situation as a fait accompli and *not* play Adventurer's League and play Pathfinder Society instead (so you can play a Sorcerer more to your liking.)

But you're not getting what you want from WotC ever. They made their design choice. They aren't going to "fix" things in the very specific, narrow concept of sorcerer design that you seem incapable of moving on from. Sorry. It ain't happening.

And thus... feel free to continue to make posts on this subject here on the boards as often as you'd like... and feel free to be prepared for the myriad of responses such as this one telling you that your hopes and dreams are not happening. Cause they're not. You're not going to get what you want from WotC. No matter how many times you post wishing it wasn't so.

MoonSong(Kaiilurker) said:

The end result pleased many, but disappointed a lot more. .

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Curious to see your data for this.

Personally, I've only seen one in play: a wild magic sorcerer. The player seems to like him very much, especially the empowering bit.

I havn't seen any issues with the sorcerer. Metamagic is very powerful. As is tides of chaos and bend luck for the wild sorcerer.

If your looking for having less power but more flexibility, that's what wizard is for.

If you want a "sorcerer" with flexibility, then simply replace a wizard's spell casting modifier with Cha and call it a sorcerer.

Wait a second....Is the OP the same one who a few days ago said he/she wanted the sorcerer to pretty much do everything the wizard does, but refused to play a wizard because they wanted INT as a dump stat? Or am I thinking of someone else?

mellored said:

I havn't seen any issues with the sorcerer. Metamagic is very powerful. As is tides of chaos and bend luck for the wild sorcerer.

If your looking for having less power but more flexibility, that's what wizard is for.

If you want a "sorcerer" with flexibility, then simply replace a wizard's spell casting modifier with Cha and call it a sorcerer.

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I don't have the issues with the sorcerer that the OP has (at least, I'm not sure, because there's some vague up in there), but I do have the issue that if you want to go with a theme, the spell list choices are very narrow and exclude some spell that would be very thematic but, for some reason, aren't on the list. It's very difficult, for instance, to be a thematic blaster with any element other than fire -- or, more to the point, you would have dramatically fewer options to represent your theme than the fire blaster has. While a large part of that is the overall spell selections being limited (there just aren't any 2nd level lightening spells), there are a number of notable exceptions where a thematic element spell is on the wizard list but not the sorcerer list. Given that one of the major archetypes of sorcerer is the thematic blaster under the dragon heritage bloodline, that's annoying. Not gamebreaking, but very annoying.