D&D 5E We need more spells known

[FormerlyHemlock]

I can get behind wizards having access to more spells in their spell books. That makes sense. But for a wizard to be able to prepare more spells than a sorcerer can know seems backwards. Sorcerers should be able to know at least as many as a wizard can prepare.

That does seem logical.

 

[dco]

The problem I see with the sorcerers having so few spells known is that it quickly becomes a matter of making the right choice. You have no room to make sub-optimal choices that might be more in theme with your sorcerer. This forces system mastery, which is supposed to be one of the things 5e was made to address.

My problem with sorcerers is the lack of metamagic points and some awful metamagic options.

 

[Tony Vargas]

The problem I see with the sorcerers having so few spells known is that it quickly becomes a matter of making the right choice. You have no room to make sub-optimal choices that might be more in theme with your sorcerer.

It can look that way, but OTOH, if you /can/ resist that temptation at chargen and level-up, you're good. From then on, you make the optimal choice of which spell known to cast each round of each encounter of each day until you level again (then you maybe succumb to temptation and retrain one flavorful spell for one optimal one).

The wizard is much tastier system-mastery bait, and every day it comes back and whispers "memorize -er prepare an optimal slate of spells!" and whenever an opportunity to learn a new spell materializes, there it is again "go ahead, learn the spell, it's a good one, who cares what your 'concept' is? You're a wizard!"

OTOH, it's less pronounced than it was in 3.x, when spontaneous casting was the Sorcerer's thing, not also the wizards, and you got more slots/day to play with.

This forces system mastery, which is supposed to be one of the things 5e was made to address.

It does, though, as I said, maybe less than it seems to, and system mastery is always going to be a thing, and 5e does address it with BA and by the simple expedient of having far fewer player-facing choices than 3e (not just in the obvious ways, by not having tons of feats, or PrCs or whatever, but by eschewing wealth/level, putting magic items very much back in the DM's bailiwick, and generally putting all resolution in the DM's hands).

Another potentially interesting way to think about this is:

Sorcerers are like the X-Men. Each Sorcerer (X-Man) has his own unique shtick, different from other Sorcerers (X-Men). The Sorcerer spell list is not the spell list of a single specific sorcerer, but rather an entire menu of what is possible to accomplish using sorcery.

That was so true in 3.x - I mean, literally true: there were Sorcerer builds of the X-men floating around gleemax. IMHO, precisely for the reasons I mentioned to Hawk, above.

It's less true in 5e because of the loss of extra slots and everyone being spontaneous - and because of sub-classes hitting the vague-3.5-suggestion of draconic heritage and the 4e chaos-sorcerer 'build' (really just a reprise of the 2e Wild Mage) so hard - if justifiably so in the name of concept-first flavorful design.

Wizards, on the other hand, are... well, wizards. Like Mazirian the Magician

Heh, just like him, and unlike any other 'wizard' outside of Vance & D&D fic, yeah. (Well, not just like Mizirian - among the great magicians of his age and only able to memorize half a dozen spells - like Gandalf, he must have been around 5th level! "Did I say Prismatic Spray? I must've meant Chromatic...")

(OK, now I have to play a Wizard named Wizirian, because: alliteration.
Yeah, who only preps his half-dozen highest-level spells & never uses cantrips, because that's all just beneath his dignity.)

they strive to "collect them all". The Wizard spell list could theoretically be the spell list of a single specific archmage (like Mordenkainen or Phaandaal), even though a given wizard will usually only be a small fraction of the way along that path. In this sense, wizards are kind of interchangeable and undifferentiated from each other: a 20th level wizard is much more similar to another 20th level wizard than a 20th level Sorcerer is to another 20th level Sorcerer.

Yes, very true. And, by the same token, the Wizard is a stronger case (than the Sorcerer) of 'forcing system mastery,' because the opportunity to optimize is there every time you prepare spells and every time you have an opportunity to learn a new one.

(1) The Sorcerer spell list is overly constrained, and pretty uninteresting compared to the wizard list.

Nod. In 3.x it was a sub-set of the Wizard list, but only by 2 spells that would be meaningless if you didn't prep. Like the Bard, it'd make sense for Sorcerers to be able to poach spells from other classes - if they fit their Heritage.

The PHB is very generous with wizard spells. You automatically learn two spells each time you go up a level, so in practice 5E wizards don't have to behave like Mazirian and covet/swap/trade/steal spells from other wizards, since they already have their most-coveted spells of each level automatically.

OK, sure. Especially compared to the olden days when you started out with Read Magic, three random 1st level spells, and that was it, you had to find anything above that (maybe you got one new spell when you gained a new spell level?) or engage in insanely expensive and time-consuming 'spell research' (which, if you ever did, you might as well try for a completely unique spell!).

You could target either or both of these pain points if you want to more fully realize the differentiation between them.

I think the 3e differentiation worked: Make the Wizard prep into his slots instead of cast spontaneously. Give the Sorcerer a few more slots.

For Sorcerers, I have no particular problem with just letting a given sorcerer pick any effect which could be researched fairly easily by a wizard, and make that his sorcerer spell.

Assuming the new spell fits his heritage, sure. Nice idea.

 

[Gradine]

Sorcerers should probably have a few more spells known than they currently do; certainly more than a Wizard can memorize (otherwise, with 5e's changes to Vancian casting Wizards become Sorcerers who can change their spells known daily).

But the far larger constraining factor on PHB Sorcs is spell list they get to pick from. They lose out on WAY too many spell effects compared to the Wizard for no clearly discernible reason. You'd think Monte Cook himself had his hand in it. I'd be all for the current setup of spells known (15 max) IF it meant that Sorcerers had more options to choose from than Wizards. If we buy the theory that Sorcerers are meant to be focused and thematic in the equivalent of X-Men Mutants (and I do, for what it's worth), then why limit it to even just what Wizards get (let alone the paltry options already provided them?).

I'd frankly give 'em the whole spell list to choose from. All of it. Favored Soul (and to a far lesser extent, Stone Sorc) already open up the spell list. Crack it open all the way. Build your own theme. You want a "generic" sorcerer archetype, that's the way to do it.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

...Especially compared to the olden days when you started out with Read Magic, three random 1st level spells, and that was it, you had to find anything above that (maybe you got one new spell when you gained a new spell level?)...

In 2nd edition, I believe that only specialists gained a free spell upon level-up, and it had to be from their school of specialization. Mages on the other hand gained nothing free at all.

But spell research was a huge part of the game, so it's not like you were stuck without spells. You just had to find them or research them.

Assuming the new spell fits his heritage, sure. Nice idea.

As a DM, I don't even care about restricting spells by heritage. Spell list is orthogonal to subclass. If you want to be a Colossus sorcerer who turns yourself into steel, then take Ironskin (custom spell per above). If you happen to also be a Wild Sorcerer, then sometimes that will set off a wild surge; if you're an Instinctual, then sometimes you also get to eat magic; if you're a Dragon Sorcerer, then when you transform you also look like a vaguely-reptilian steel sorcerer, and you get advantage on social checks against dragons--but I'd have no reason to forbid the dragon dude from choosing Ironskin any more than I'd forbid him from picking any other sorcerer spell like Enhance Ability.

I did previously allow each subclass to get bonus domain spells (dragon sorcs got spells related to empire-building, communication, fear, charm, etc. while wild sorcs got randomly-rolled spells) but when the revised Storm Sorcerer came out I perceived that future Sorcerers weren't going to go in that direction, so there wasn't any need to retroactively fix the dragon/wild sorcs, and I reluctantly dropped that house rule for parsimony's sake.

 

[jgsugden]

These limits are meant to be limiting. If they do not feel limiting, there is no point having them.

If they feel too limiting to you, go back to AD&D and make a PC. Yes, high level casters had more spells, but the reduced flexibility and locked in specific prepared spells was more limiting for most of a spellcaster's career.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

These limits are meant to be limiting. If they do not feel limiting, there is no point having them.

If they feel too limiting to you, go back to AD&D and make a PC. Yes, high level casters had more spells, but the reduced flexibility and locked in specific prepared spells was more limiting for most of a spellcaster's career.

AD&D also had a billion and one spell point systems. I used Tachyon Magic for my games, from the Net Wizard's Handbook.

 

[bganon]

I think Sorcerers know too many spells.

No really, I'm serious. I'd rather see metamagic expanded considerably to make it more useful. Make it good enough and the sorcerer should barely need more than one spell per spell level.

Fixing sorcerers by giving them more known spells just turns them back into alt-wizards. Meh.

 

[Tony Vargas]

AD&D also had a billion and one spell point systems.

Nah, that'd be like 900 spell-point ('mana') systems per player, there weren't more than 10 per...

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I think the Lore wizard we've seen in UA was a test for new metamagics and we'll see them in a future rulebook. Elemental change, Save change and pierce resistance as metamagic will go a long way to avoid the feeling of obligatory spells. In the new spells UA we also saw a first attempt at a sorcerer specific spell, so maybe sorcerers will one day have more ''origin-related'' spells.

For now, I allow the PC to choose from their spells from Kobold Press Deep Magic, depending on their origin. For now I only saw a Chaos sorcerer with KP's Chaos Magic, but once they release Dragon Magic, Elemental Magic added to the Angelic Seals and Shadow Magic, I'll be able to cover Dragon origin, Storm, Favored Soul and Shadow origin.