New Sorcerer Archetype: Instinctual

[Tony Vargas]

the problem is the reliance in schools. I would say that with sorcerers anything to do with schools is a big no-no

Yep, I get that. Same issue with another of Hemlock's ideas, above. Schools are just how spells are grouped. They could be grouped a lot of other ways, but they aren't.

My thought is that a DM could adapt any Sorcerer mechanic that used 'school' to work with a narrower player-DM negotiated 'theme' instead.

 

[MoonSong]

Yep, I get that. Same issue with another of Hemlock's ideas, above. Schools are just how spells are grouped. They could be grouped a lot of other ways, but they aren't.

My thought is that a DM could adapt any Sorcerer mechanic that used 'school' to work with a narrower player-DM negotiated 'theme' instead.

Well, I gave my proposal already a couple of pages back, basically group spells by "personality" or "approach", do you make things, control things, mess with things, handle more incorporeal things or specialize on a single thing?

 

[Cognomen's Cassowary]

I don't know the demon-summoning spells. In what way do you foresee componentless Clairvoyance/Circle of Death/Teleportation Circle/Plane Shift/Gate causing issues? With the sole exception of Teleportation Circle, none of those spells have consumable components anyway. If componentless Gate would break a game, then your game is only 5000 gp away from breaking, as soon as someone gets their hands on the components for regular Gate.

I see three potential problems. First, you remove a knob that DMs can turn to control access to certain abilities in the story. If you don't want the PCs peeking in on the villains with clairvoyance, say that there's no prosthetics market where they can buy a glass eye in town. If you don't want them escaping the Abyss back to the material plane, say that they have nowhere to get the metal rod for plane shift. In other words, the gameplay might not be 5k GP away from breaking, but the narrative might be.

Second, I think that several of the high-cost spells are ones which the player is not intended to grab as soon as they are available, but instead when the cost is practical. Chromatic orb, for example, is prohibitive at 1st level. A PC at 3rd level, however, might have 50 GP and not much to spend it on. Chromatic orb, being a good, high-damage spell out of a first-level slot, serves in effect as an upgrade to the cheaper first-level spells. Similarly, a PC at 17th might find 5k GP restrictive, but one at 20th, having raided a few more hoards, could spend the money for gate to aid with travel or rescue Fred the Bard from banishment.

Third, you're creating a financial incentive to play one certain subclass. If the wild-magic sorcerer has to choose between the material component for chromatic orb and an explorer's pack, the intuitive gets them both. If the storm sorcerer has to make a choice between a horse or clairvoyance, the intuitive gets them both.

Edit: Oh, and the demon summons. (The UA is called That Old Black Magic - fun stuff, check it out.) Several of them call for a vial of blood harvested from an intelligent creature that died in the last twenty-four hours, and a couple consume items of at least X GP value, where the more valuable the item, the longer you control the demon. They're decidedly not meant to be cast whenever the player feels like it.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

I don't know the demon-summoning spells. In what way do you foresee componentless Clairvoyance/Circle of Death/Teleportation Circle/Plane Shift/Gate causing issues? With the sole exception of Teleportation Circle, none of those spells have consumable components anyway. If componentless Gate would break a game, then your game is only 5000 gp away from breaking, as soon as someone gets their hands on the components for regular Gate.

I think "better safe than sorry" is a good credo here. You never know what future spells you may want to write or include. If the instinctual sorcerer exists, that puts considerable pressure on what sorcerer spells be allowed to do and inadvertently affects all other sorcerers.

I'm with you that non-consumable components aren't a major concern, but consumable components very much are. If anything, I think the most thematic thing to do here would be to allow non-consumable component spells, but say outright that the instinctual sorcerer can't cast spells with consumable components -- their magic just doesn't work that way.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Edit: Oh, and the demon summons. (The UA is called That Old Black Magic - fun stuff, check it out.) Several of them call for a vial of blood harvested from an intelligent creature that died in the last twenty-four hours, and a couple consume items of at least X GP value, where the more valuable the item, the longer you control the demon. They're decidedly not meant to be cast whenever the player feels like it.

[quick Google search later] And they're even sorcerer spells. Yes, I agree that this would break the archetype. In a game that was planning to use these, it would be better to say that Instinctive Casting simply removes V and S componenets while having no effect on M. Spellcasters who want to be fully X-Men can just ignore M spells; those who are attracted to demon-summoning and whatnot can view the M components as "ammunition" of a sort.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Several of them call for a vial of blood harvested from an intelligent creature that died in the last twenty-four hours, and a couple consume items of at least X GP value, where the more valuable the item, the longer you control the demon. They're decidedly not meant to be cast whenever the player feels like it.

It seems like there's more than one kind of M component.

There's foci vs consumed, of course.

There's costly - a somewhat workable limiting factor when there's a wealth/level expectation or other unavoidable demands on wealth (not so much in 5e).

There's rare.

There's ... inconvenient. Blood of a recently slain human, yeah, there could be complications.

And there's integral to what the spell does, without the material the spell doesn't have anything to do. Usually such are targets rather than components, but there might be a few.


A "I'm made o' magic" sorcerer could likely do without foci. He is his own focus. 'K.

How much of a difference cost makes is really dependent on the campaign and it's erm, financing. (npi)

But integral, inconvenient, or rare - would make sense if it were still needed. It's part of what the magic is doing it, not just in evoking the magic.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I quite like this and I think that grouping it by school is a good approach since, to me, this shows the sorcerer twisting the magic he knows to get a different effect. It makes sense that a sorcerer who masters enchantments would twist that magic to create a different enchantment effect instead of some big blasty evocation effect.

Nod. It's one of very few available approaches given how spells are organized. It could just be 'a sorcerer spell' or it could be by something like the kind of damage a spell does (Burning Hands > Fireball).

Ideally the spell you're improvising with should have a cool connection, at least to the level of magical thinking, to the one you're improvising to and fit the concept of the individual sorcerer.

I tend to get verbose writing things up and was resisting the urge. But, another thing I think would be cool would be to suggest that the DM could require you to actually take a spell you've improvised repeatedly as your next spell known, since you have been practicing it...

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Metamagic

Improvised Spell
When you cast a Sorcerer spell, expend a slot and spend a number of sorcery points equal to the level of another spell of the same school that you do not know to bring about the effect of that other spell, instead. The casting time is the greater of the original spell or the improvised spell, the component requirements of both spells must be met. Once the spell is cast, it behaves in all ways as the improvised spell you have chosen.

It needs to specify "another sorcerer spell" to match the earlier suggestion. Otherwise you wind up with sorcerers "improvising" Fireball into Aura of Vitality.

 

[Tony Vargas]

It needs to specify "another sorcerer spell" to match the earlier suggestion. Otherwise you wind up with sorcerers "improvising" Fireball into Aura of Vitality.

Yeah, schools are a little weird that way, but as I already explained, they're at least concrete.

 

[transtemporal]

[Magic Eater] Starting at fourteenth level, you can absorb hostile magic and turn it to your own ends. When a spell is cast that targets only you, you can use your reaction to absorb the spell, nullifying its effects and giving you as many sorcery points as the spell's level. If this would take you above your sorcery point maximum, lose the extra points and suffer the effects of a Feeblemind spell, DC 5 + (level of the absorbed spell), except that you may repeat the saving throw to end the effect every 7 days instead of every 30.

Nah. A class that can negate enemy spells is bad enough. A class that can negate enemy spells, then use their spells to power your metamagic... yikes.

Put it this way - if the DM rolled out monster that did that it would be novel the first time the creature used it. After that it would feel like the DM was trolling you!