D&D 5E On whether sorcerers and wizards should be merged or not, (they shouldn't)

[HarbingerX]

Interestingly I've never run across a sorcerer in our games. I've played a wizard, and in 4e we had a Tiefling Warlock, but I've yet to see anyone want to play a sorcerer. Now my exposure is pretty limited, but the vast potential power of the wizard

I don't think it needs to be point buy, but I would prefer just three classes : martial, arcane, & divine and every concept branches from those.

OD&D. Fighting-man, Magic-User, Cleric.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Oh. So you mean instead of 4e's Source Role, classes would be Source Method.

Cool, another grid-filling opportunity:

	Arcane	Divine	Primal	Martial	Psionic
Learned	Wizard	Cleric	Druid	Battlemaster	Psion
Innate	Sorcerer	Divine Soul	Ranger	Champion Berserker	Wild Talent
Pact	Warlock	Paladin	Totem Ancestors	PDK Mastermind	Ardent

 

[tetrasodium]

Overlap doesn't imply that it's able to support it. The wizard has many features that make no sense for a sorcerer. The subclasses make little sense for one either.

Could there exist an Arcane Caster class that supported both sorcerer and wizard concepts. I think everyone agreees that's possible.

my point is more frustration over relying so heavily on 3e spell lists when the two classes were mechanically very different despite both pulling from the arcane list. The result of so much overlap is that the two classes have a very heavy feeling of sameness at the table.

I;m not saying they should be merged, I'm saying they should feel viscerally different

 

[Minigiant]

People are debating is sorcerer can fit under wizard. TBH there is so much overlap in spell lists that it basically can

Here is the overlap

• Cantrip 100% overlap: every single cantrip in the phb on wizard is also on sorcerer list
• 1st level spells: every spell overlaps except wizard has alarm, grease, Identify, Illusory Script, Longstrider, PfG&E,
• 2nd level spells: Most spell overlaps except wizard also has access to these while sorc does not... Arcane Lock, Continual Flame, Flaming Sphere, Gentle Repose, Locate Object, Magic Mouth, Magic Weapon, Melfs acid arrow, Nystul's Magic Aura, Ray of enfeeblement, Rope Trick,
• 2nd level sorcerer has these spells wizard does not: Enhance ability.
• 3rd Level: Wizard has these spells not on sorcerer list... Animate dead, Bestow Curse, Feign Death, Glyph of Warding, Tiny Hut, Magic Circle, Nondetection, Remove Curse, Sending, Vampyric Touch
• 3rd Level: Sorcerer has daylight , while wizard does not
• 4th Level: Wizards also have Arcane Eye, Conjure Minor Elementals, Control Water, Black Tentacles, secret chest, Locate Creature, Faithful Hound, Private Sanctum, Resilient Sphere, Phantasmal Killer,
• 4th Level: Sorcerer has dominate beast
• 5th: Wizard has Bigsby's Hand, Conjure Elemental, Contact Other Plane, Dream, Gaes, Legend Lore, Mislead, Modify Memory, Passwall, Planar Binding, Telepathic Bond, Scrying, Wall of Force
• 5th: Sorcerer has insect plague

So on & so forth but 6th level spells on on is well into the point where campaigns have ended or are ending & wotc's own numbers from ddb support that. No doubt there are a handful of useful spells n wizard list but nt sorc list... problem being is that almost every single one of the "right spells" as people have been labeling them are on both lists & the spells unique to wizard are not enough to build any kind of theme or niche around.... If paladin, ranger, EK, & AT had this kind of overlap in so much of their class features people would wonder why

The issue isn't overlay in spell list, it's overlap in theme and archetype we the community gave them.
There isn't anymore. The overlap in image and fluff is practiclly gone outside of multiclassed characters.

Wizards are library bookworms, students of Animalnoun's schools of magic, members of the Color tower, or apprentices of a greyhair master arcanist.
Sorcerers are decedents of magic creatures, born or died at a fateful time, or tapped into a pure magical power source.

It's like Army and Navy at this point.

 

[MoonSong]

"the wizard was generic enough to cover for it"
Was
The Warlock and Sorcerer could have been part of the Wizard. Back in 2e.

But the AD&D and 3rd edition designers and community where too afraid, conservative, traditional, or apprehensive to alter wizards to be anything but magic bookworms that had nothing but high Int, a spelbook, and a bunch of spell slots.

Now Warlocks and Sorcerer diverted too much from wizards. They have their own flavors. Wizard's flavor was solidified. And now we have things like artificers, psions, binders, shamans, and truenamers.

The wizard only could have been generic, but it is just so iconic there's no way that was going to ever happen. It wasn't fear and lack of courage in 3e, the DnD Wizard/Mage/MU is very much iconic and a DnD idiosyncrasy. Change the wizard and you are not DnD anymore. Only heartbreakers and clones can afford to make the wizard generic. -And ironically, all attempts to make it generic fall back into just erasing sorcerer and claim their wizard is generic now without changing a comma of the flavor, out of all clones and DnD derivatives only the microlite mage is actually generic, and I'd argue largely by accident.-

Well, on the other hand the warlock Was a wizard in 2e. From theme to somehow mechanics -see the witch kit-.

 

[Minigiant]

The wizard only could have been generic, but it is just so iconic there's no way that was going to ever happen. It wasn't fear and lack of courage in 3e, the DnD Wizard/Mage/MU is very much iconic and a DnD idiosyncrasy. Change the wizard and you are not DnD anymore. Only heartbreakers and clones can afford to make the wizard generic. -And ironically, all attempts to make it generic fall back into just erasing sorcerer and claim their wizard is generic now without changing a comma of the flavor, out of all clones and DnD derivatives only the microlite mage is actually generic, and I'd argue largely by accident.-

Well, on the other hand the warlock Was a wizard in 2e. From theme to somehow mechanics -see the witch kit-.

Exactly.

The community wanted the wizard to both be a generic slate and have an iconic archetype. Which is impossible. So almost all attempts to broaden the wizard failed because no one wanted to take both feet out the door officially. Even the witch kit was rather tame. So 3e ended up with the sorcerer.

Once the cat was out of the bag. More nonwizard casters came.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

I would like to see you try something like that, within the confines of 2e design that is. No kit ever modified a base class on such a fundamental level -at most the minstrel that opened the bard class to all elves -

I don't know how you quantify whether a modification is "fundamental" or not. IIRC, there were fighter kits that didn't use armor (kensei) and thief kits without backstab (swashbuckler). So why not a wizard without a spellbook? It could have been done in about three sentences and a table:

Instead of memorizing spells from a spellbook, a sorcerous wizard always knows a number of spells determined by Table X. He or she can cast any spell he knows at any time with a spell slot of that spell's level or higher. He or she uses Charisma for all purposes in spellcasting where another wizard would use Intelligence.

(I'm not saying it necessarily would have been done in three sentences, of course. 2E hadn't quite exorcised the game of Gygax's arbitrary verbosity yet.)

Every time a "we don't need a sorcerer" comes up, "the wizard is generic enough to cover for it" is implied...

Okay. I'm sorry, I thought you were speaking more of the state of affairs as presented in the books, not in the online community. On that note though, it's worth observing that the people who actually write the game are clearly on your side on this one.

On another note -- I don't want to speak for everyone you've quoted, of course, but to me, "making the sorcerer a wizard subclass" implies a modification like above. You seem to believe that such a modification is too "fundamental", whereas an advocate for it presumably doesn't. I'm not sure how to resolve that disagreement because I'm not sure there's a real disagreement there to resolve.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Exactly.
The community wanted the wizard to both be a generic slate and have an iconic archetype. ...So 3e ended up with the sorcerer.

My impression was that the Sorcerer was added just as a vehicle for spontaneous casting - that any community opinion that drove that was just the long-standing dissatisfaction with Vancian - and the "blood of dragons" thing was just window dressing...

...that is, it was mechanics-first - that it eventually led to 5e casting(npi) about for designs, concept first is perhaps slightly ironic.

 

[Minigiant]

...

My impression was that the Sorcerer was added just as a vehicle for spontaneous casting - that any community opinion that drove that as long-standing dissatisfaction with Vancian - and the "blood of dragons" thong was just window dressing...

...that is, it was mechanics-first - that it eventually led to 5e casting(npi) about for designs, concept first is perhaps slightly ironic.

The spontaneous casting was part of the image or idea that wizards couldn't have. Wizards had spellbooks, copied scrolls to books, prepared spells to mental slots over night. Spontaneous casters did not of this.

Now an option for it could have been made for wizards. But for one reason or another, no one wanted to do it until after the sorcerer was made and started getting flavor. And by then it was too late.

 

[Kurotowa]

Thematically there's a niche for Sorcerers. They form a trinity with Wizard and Warlock of learned power, borrowed power, and inborn power. The big question is if there's a mechanical niche for Sorcerer that's both distinct from the other two and still robust enough to support an entire class. Evidence for that is scarcer and more conjectural.

I have no objection to the Sorcerer existing. In fact, I rather like the concept of its flavor. But there's very little history of D&D being able to deliver a Sorcerer that's not living in the shadow of the Wizard, and it doesn't have a strong enough legacy to justify keeping it around for that alone. So maybe you kill some sacred cows and reinvent the Sorcerer. Maybe you merge it with the Warlock and include a toggle option between inborn and patron power sources. Or maybe you just cut it. I don't exactly have a horse in that race, besides the mild annoyance of occasionally trying to play a Sorcerer and being disappointed.