Is the Sorcerer Story Too Narrow for a Base Class?

[avin]

There must be room for different bloodlines for Sorcerers. I would rule that "ancient blood" is calling, not a second soul... it's their heritage transforming them.

Wotc should also offer suggestions for more subtle transformations.

But I can deal or refluff Second Soul if needed. No big deal.

I like what they are doing with Sorcerer and Warlock.

 

[Li Shenron]

The Sorcerer's 2nd Soul and the Warlock's favor-resetting rites are fully refluffable concepts.

The problem that [MENTION=6670763]Yora[/MENTION] points out is very real instead. You can't have a Wizard that uses the Sorcerer's mechanics for spellcasting, because that is balanced toghether with the other Sorcerer stuff, so you have to take the whole package and that doesn't match with the concept of Wizard anymore.

If the Sorcerer and the Wizard were all about spellcasting (like in 3.0 for instance, bonus feats don't really make any difference) and possibly even other classes, then their spellcasting mechanics would be interchangeable. This would mean that we would have achieved modularity in the spellcasting mechanics, because each gaming group could decide to use only the one spellcasting version they find acceptable, or more than one, or all of them, without giving up anything in terms of character concepts in their settings.

But OTOH I can fully understand that if you use different classes to introduce different mechanics, then people actually want different concepts spliced onto each class.

And now I quit ranting because I'm low on willpower against my D&D-isms heritage (did I really write "refluffable"??)

 

[jrowland]

Precisely. I think we need to be careful about making judgments based on one blood-line. I wouldn't be surprised if there was a Wild Magic bloodline that was quite like the one you described.

One question I have that hasn't been raised much - how much difference is there between a Fae-bloodline sorcerer and a Fae Pact warlock, or a daemonic-bloodline sorcerer and a Daemonic Pact warlock?

or Fae-tradition wizard, or a Daemonic-tradition wizard, or...

Yeah...need moar info

 

[The Shadow]

or Fae-tradition wizard, or a Daemonic-tradition wizard, or...

I think the wizard traditions are going to sway closer to things like 'Illusionist'. Though there might be a Demonology tradition, I suppose.

I just hope the wizard traditions are as meaty and exciting as a cleric Domain, a sorcerer Origin, or a warlock Pact. If they're just boring 2e/3e specialists, I may scream.

 

[mlund]

The only real core component of the sorcerer is that your innate magical power threatens to overwhelm your mundane being - your physical form and your conscious mind. When you let in run wild and exhaust your will-power some sort of mystical Id or Superego is going to start busting out. Draconic or Fey ancestry? Sure. A past life that you've been reincarnated from? Sounds great. Maybe you have some sort of lineage from the Far Realms like a Lovecraft story. Maybe magic was an integral part of your conception. Perhaps a goddess or fiend invested something into your birth. Are you a Fey changeling? The possibilities are endless.

What matter is you have power inside you to tap, a power that is not natural for the race you grew supposing you were and it threatens to overwhelm and transmute your very being.

- Marty Lund

 

[Yora]

The problem that [MENTION=6670763]Yora[/MENTION] points out is very real instead. You can't have a Wizard that uses the Sorcerer's mechanics for spellcasting, because that is balanced toghether with the other Sorcerer stuff, so you have to take the whole package and that doesn't match with the concept of Wizard anymore.

I actually already made my first homebrew class:

Witch
- Basics from Wizard.
- Spellcasting from Sorcerer.
- Spells known and Max Spell level from 3.5e Psion.
- Wizard spell list.
- Ritual Magic from Warlock.

And done. It's actually quite an interesting class that should be a lot of fun to play.

Where does this talk about wizard traditions come from?

 

[KidSnide]

The only real core component of the sorcerer is that your innate magical power threatens to overwhelm your mundane being - your physical form and your conscious mind.

I agree that this is the core component of the sorcerer. The problem is that the character concepts in that involve a threat to overwhelm the character's mundane being are just a narrow subset of the concepts that used to be represented by the sorcerer class.

I don't want to harsh on this concept too much. It's very clever, and I really like the mechanical aspect of the sorcerer getting these new "at-will" abilities as the character expends his daily pool of willpower. I think I would enjoy these mechanics and they create a neat strategic decision for the player.

But it's too clever. It takes a neat mechanical idea ("at-will" powers that become available as the character expends daily resources) and shoehorns it into a class that doesn't need it. If WotC was designing a class for Diablo IV, I would say "bravo." But the D&D PH1 classes shouldn't be narrow specific classes designed to play in specific narrow ways. Instead, the base classes should - to the extent possible - cover a broad range of character concepts.

I applaud clever mechanical ideas. But at this stage, D&DN shouldn't be writing mechanics that demand narrow character concepts. This mechanic would look fantastic as an alternate set of "hard to control" sorcerer bloodlines in a "Complete Arcane" splatbook. But it's just not right for the PH1.

-KS

 

[erf_beto]

Am I the only one seeing Dragon Age abominations in this "new" Sorcerer class?

 

[Yora]

Abominations are awesome, but I don't see anything about them here.

There's no problem when a sorcerer becomes more monstrous and the effect disappears after a rest. In fact, I wonder why they even would want to supress the manifestations with their willpower? Why not just have all the benefits while still keeping reserves of magic power?

 

[TerraDave]

In general, the "non-core four" should be narrower, both mechanically and flavor wise. A paladin should feel more specialized then a fighter, a druid more so then a cleric, etc.

And this is pretty much how it has worked going back...

Now, the class could just be off. It doesn't feel quite there in the same way the warlock does, but I don't think "narrowness" is the problem.