Sorcerer - Class or Theme?

[TwinBahamut]

I think people have been going far too crazy with the idea of turning classes into themes. Something like the Sorcerer works great as a class. Sure it has started mostly as an alternative Wizard, but that doesn't mean you can replace it with a Wizard with a Sorcerer theme. People play Sorcerers in part because they want an alternative to playing a Wizard, which means different mechanics and class features.

Another important thing is that the Sorcerer is something of a class that needs access to its own themes more than the Wizard does. The Wizard class tends to imply something of a background and occupation (a wizard who was formerly the apprentice to some other wizard), but the Sorcerer is a character whose magic is innate, so different backgrounds (expressed as themes like Farmer, Knight, etc) are more important to the identity of the character than they might be for the Wizard.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Make sorcerer a simple-ER, non-vancian, blow-stuff-up class with cool bloodlines for different "builds"

and put the "studious" into Wizards with spellbooks, vancian casting, learned schools, and that sort of thing

That should make them feel very different, even if they both have access to "fireball".

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I think it will have to be distinct enough to require different class mechanics to make it work, unless there are multiple casting mechanisms baked into the core "magic-user" class.

Themes could cover what have been done as specialist wizards, elemental and wild mages, "bloodline" sorcerers, and the like.

 

[marleykat]

Wait, what? I've never seen this house rule before, and it's entirely possible I'm missing something, but how is that supposed to work?

You appear to be saying that a Wizard 1/Fighter 16 should be capable of casting 9th level spells, but that can't be right. Do you instead mean that he would have all the same 1st level spells as before, but cast them as a 17th level wizard? Perhaps even that he would get as many per day as a 17th level wizard?

Yes and no. Say if our magic user of whatever class is multiclass 5/5 they cast at 10th level for DC's and whatnot while having the spells and slots of a 5th level magic user. 1/2 per level outside a spellcasting class works also, if you're worried that magic user's that multiclass will dominate.

FantasyCraft does this as a core rule with soft class capstones to limit multiclassing , Pathfinder does it by hard class capstones, and archetypes.
and custom classes ie. Magus

 

[Mattachine]

Wait, what? I've never seen this house rule before, and it's entirely possible I'm missing something, but how is that supposed to work?

You appear to be saying that a Wizard 1/Fighter 16 should be capable of casting 9th level spells, but that can't be right. Do you instead mean that he would have all the same 1st level spells as before, but cast them as a 17th level wizard? Perhaps even that he would get as many per day as a 17th level wizard?

It works as this: slots and spells prepared as your class level, but caster level equals your total level. That way, your spell durations, damage, and chance to beat SR are appropriate for the challenges you face.

 

[Tony Vargas]

While I like the sorcerer class, there has been little to differentiate it from the wizard.

Well, in 3e, a sorcerer had a small set of known spells that expanded but didn't change much over his career. If those spells were chosen around a theme, you ended up with something akin to a super-hero power suite. It could make the character very distinctive. The wizard, OTOH, could always learn new spells and could change spells to suit the expected situation, which made any well-played wizard a rather pragmatic sort who, given enough time, would bring about the same (nearly perfect) solution to any given problem.

Sorcerers were potentially fun, distinctive, and underpowered, and wizards were potentially, bland, pragmatic, and game-breaking.

Two /very/ different classes, IMHO.

I like the 4e approach a lot better, but I'm not sure the 4e sorcerer is as strong of an archetype as the wizard or warlock.

In 4e, while they're both arcanist and not overy given to wearing armor they have different spell lists, different roles, and some sorcerers are bizarrely strong (physically). :shrug: Still pretty different.

The archetype of Sorcerer, BTW, is nothing to do with the inborn-talent sorcerer dreamed up for 3e - nor with a 9th level magic-user, for those who remember level titles. A sorcerer is someone who deals with spirits for purposes of divination or gaining suprenatural aid or power. In other words, pretty much a D&D warlock or witch.

It occurs to me that the sorcerer might function well as a subclass of the wizard, like what we see with the witch in 4e. However, I'm not sure that subclasses will remain.

Sub-classses are a 2e thing. Mearls loves 2e. He already brought sub-classes back in Essentials. He has a clear mandate to include the 'best of all editions.'

I think there'll be sub-classes.

So what about themes? While I believe that themes can be broad (i.e. the noble), I also think they can be restricted by race or class. So what if the sorcerer was a theme for the wizard, where we show what type of wizard it is? So, for example, it may be an elemental/wild mage, or a bloodline mage, but in the end, still a wizard.

The way themes work now wouldn't give you nearly as much differentiation between wizard and sorcerer as you had in 3e. Of course, themes might be quite different.

Some sort of heirarchy would make the game better-organized and allow the designers to leverage some material (such as common spell or exploit lists). Whether that's Wizard on top with Sorcerer, Mage, and whatnot below it, or Arcanist on top, with Wizard, Sorcerer, etc below it, doesn't really matter.

 

[BobTheNob]

Im hoping that 5e classes get back to the idea of the 4 "core" class (Fighter,Mage,Theif,Cleric) and from that point the other more specific classes become optional variants on this. So, for instance, Im all for sorceror being a mage variant rather than a theme or a class unto itself.

 

[Ratinyourwalls]

I think the Warlock and Warlord should definitely be themes. They both have prominent features (leadership, oaths/pacts with supernatural critters) that grow over time and are better served as additional dressing rather than the whol e salad.

 

[LordArchaon]

I wrote extensively about my ideas for the Sorcerer in 5e in this thread...

Basically, I'd like them to have a completely different spell-casting system, focused on "free-form spellcasting" (aka making spells on the fly through simple and few components, mainly element and form).
I'd like to have the bloodlines thing be mostly fluff, used to justify creatively what I consider the true soul of the class: that you have either elemental magic or "chaos magic" literally *inside you*. Elementalists would use Constitution and/or other physical stats (with Cha being present or not), while the "chaos magic users" (maybe called simply Sorcerers, with Elementalists being a sub-class), would be more traditional, with Cha as primary and probably Wis as secondary since their theme would be "perceiving the magic all around us, with supernatural senses that only they have". Just avoid Int as death, because nothing about the Sorcerer has to do anything with rational thought, memory, knowledge, or learning.
I also see "Chaos/Wild Sorcerers" as being probably able to cast multiple small spells in a turn, or having more reactive magic and being good at countering other magical attacks. In general, all types of Sorcerers should have at-will magic, very flexible in form, but with very low variability. Encounter-wise, they could also "overcharge"/"surge"/whatever, to make more powerful effects once in a while, maybe with simple recharge method like the Bo9S classes had for recovering maneuvers.

If any of the three arcane spellcasters should be forced to become a theme, I'd say Warlock, albeit reluctantly. In fact, I also have ideas to differentiate the Warlock, maybe I'll save them for another thread.

 

[Ichneumon]

Sorcerers should be their own class, with particular affinity in Creo Ignem and Perdo Corpus, plus the ability to mix and match.