Legends & Lore: The Sorcerer class

[Rydac]

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20140224

Discuss!

 

[Savage Wombat]

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20140224

Discuss!

Wild Mages! Mrs. Wombat will be thrilled!

 

[Ichneumon]

But are they gonna be called Wild Mages, Chaos Sorcerers, or something else?

This could lead to lots of readying an action for when the sorcerer starts casting.

 

[Blackwarder]

I'm sad to see that we won't be returning to the sorcerer we had in the playtest, that guy was awsome and interesting, having a sorcerer with sorcery points seems kinda meh, just make it a wizard subclass, why bother making it a class by it own?

Warder

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

The base concept works for me. Wizards have a larger variety of spells, Sorcerers get innate meta-magic and spell-like abilities. Both have the same number of spells per day, which makes multi-classing easier.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

I'm sad to see that we won't be returning to the sorcerer we had in the playtest, that guy was awsome and interesting, having a sorcerer with sorcery points seems kinda meh, just make it a wizard subclass, why bother making it a class by it own?

Warder

Playtest feedback probably revealed that people want the Wizard, Sorcerer, and Warlock to be separate classes. As he said, the playtest Sorcerer was popular, but didn't feel like the sorcerer as we knew him. I suspect that those mechanics will rise again elsewhere. In the meantime, we get a Sorcerer that is an evolution of the third edition version. More distinct, but of the same tradition.

 

[Ichneumon]

I'm sad to see that we won't be returning to the sorcerer we had in the playtest, that guy was awsome and interesting, having a sorcerer with sorcery points seems kinda meh, just make it a wizard subclass, why bother making it a class by it own?

Warder

In the end, we preserved the concept of a warrior-mage within the fighter class

This hints that the old 'sorcerer', or something like it, will reappear in a fighter subclass - the swordmage, perhaps.

 

[Argyle King]

I'm sad to see that we won't be returning to the sorcerer we had in the playtest, that guy was awsome and interesting, having a sorcerer with sorcery points seems kinda meh, just make it a wizard subclass, why bother making it a class by it own?

Warder

I completely agree with this. I vastly preferred the unique 5E vision for the sorcerer which we had in earlier packets.


"For the sorcerer, we went back to the class's first appearance and started from scratch." This makes me unhappy.

It sounds as though the sorcerer might become what is basically a wizard (with less spells,) but with something akin to fighter style expertise dice with which to add effects to spells. While that might turn out cool, right now it sounds far less interesting than the earlier concept.

 

[Li Shenron]

"When the class was created for 3rd Edition D&D, it was in many ways a mechanical conceit—a wrapper for a new approach to spellcasting." -> been sayin' this for years: the concept/flavor of the sorcerer was originally an afterthought.

Sounds all good enough to me... maybe only slightly worried at how short the sorcerer's spell list might be, because if they take a too conservative design approach, it might be really few, and that could mean not enough variety within the class.

 

[Falling Icicle]

Interesting. I like that the sorcerer gets the same number of spells per day the wizard does. Since they are using the same spells per day table, I believe this also means sorcerers won't be a level behind wizards in learning new spells anymore, which is great. That was always the worst part of playing a sorcerer in 3rd edition.

I really, really hope sorcerers don't use the exact same spell list as wizards again. They say they want to bring the sorcerer out of the wizard's shadow. There's no better way to do that than to give them their own spell list. Obviously, it's fine for them to share some spells with wizards, just as clerics and druids do. But there should be some spells that only they have on their list. If even paladins and rangers can get some of their own unique spells, sorcerers should too!

I'm glad that the bloodline abilities are activated with a special pool of points, rather than being inflicted on a sorcerer automatically as they cast spells (as was the case when we saw them briefly in 2012). I hope that metamagics won't be sorcerer only, though. Wizards, and other casters, should be able to get metamagics by taking feats.

The talk about having to take cover if your party has a wild magic sorcerer troubles me. Wild magic can be fun and all, but the way they did it in 2e, you're just as likely to blow up yourself or your friends as your enemies. It made playing one an exercise in sado-masochism, and made everyone else at the table want to throw hard objects at you for playing such an obnoxious and disruptive character.