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

[Minigiant]

The problem is how do you turn that into a balanced game construct.

I don't think raw magic would be that hard to do. I just think that the design teams from 3e through 5e didn't do it for one reason or another.

I am always a sucker for Nature vs Nurture and Talent vs Skill in my character classes and am constantly upset that the "nature" classes in D&D get hosed. It's almost to a point that one can think it is on purpose and a twinge of community bias.

 

[MoonSong]

I don't think raw magic would be that hard to do. I just think that the design teams from 3e through 5e didn't do it for one reason or another.

I am always a sucker for Nature vs Nurture and Talent vs Skill in my character classes and am constantly upset that the "nature" classes in D&D get hosed. It's almost to a point that one can think it is on purpose and a twinge of community bias.

It could be done with flexible spells, I hate that just because my magic is natural, it has to be dangerous, destructive and unable to have a lasting effect in the world.

 

[FrogReaver]

You literally quoted me repeating my earlier posts laying out wide swaths of overlap on both classes and then ask this nonsense like you couldn't figure it out? did you not read it? You might be trying to make an argument, I'll give you that, but you forgot to actually make it & seem to be expecting me to make it for you.

Until you understand that overlap is not the same as a theme then I'm afraid any argument I lay out based on that premise will fall on deaf ears.

 

[Minigiant]

It could be done with flexible spells, I hate that just because my magic is natural, it has to be dangerous, destructive and unable to have a lasting effect in the world.

flexible spells
nonarcane spells
Nonspell class features
temporary ability and personal buffs

Playing a sorcerer should be more like playing a magical being. And not all magical beings lob fireballs.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

It's not just a question of spells. If Sorcerers could somehow conjure raw magical energy and go freestyle with it, they would have something distinctive that Wizards don't have.

That's sort of how sorcerers were implementated in Dragonlance SAGA. You came up with the spell of the fly and had complete control over duration, range, damage and all other variables, at the cost of it expending more sorcery points. So you could blow all your power in one day, of course, or cast lots and lots of weaker spells.

 

[Todd Roybark]

The Weaver class in the Invisible Sun RPG is very similar to Saga Sorc, but better.

(It is however the result of a house rule, not RAW or a reasonable interpretation of rules that lends itself to be reproduced)

It was pure RAW, nothing in the rules state that different magical traditions have the exact same verbal or somatic components, so in the particular character’s case they had different sounds and hand movements than the ‘norm’, but still had them.

Besides, never let minor rules get in the way of a cool character concept.

That said, to ask a question, receive an answer and give a ‘not RAW’ response hints of moving the goal posts ex post facto, or you were trying to ask a question that could only be answered ‘correctly’ one way, aka a gotcha question.

My 3E-Fu, is waning, but even a ‘low’ Cha Sorcerer still needed enough Cha to cover the adjusted spell slot level after applying the original type metamagic feats, ( not the Sudden metamagic feats introduced later), so a 13 CHA Sorc, throwing 5th level slot metamagic adjusted spells, is if my memory is correct, not RAW.

What are exactly these options and themes you speak of? I'm sorry if I haven't understood you, but I haven't read any of them explicitly told.

I’m going to use the XGE tables “ I became a Wizard because” or “I became a Sorcerer because” tables as an example of what I was expressing poorly.

The Sorc tables has entries like: “on the night I was born all the milk in the house soured, and the windows frosted over”

and the Wizard has entries like: “ you got lost in the woods and found a hermit to teach you magic”.

Prior to the Sorc being a separate class, either type of background from the tables would and could be used by Magic User/ Wizard characters. Now the system is arguably trying to silo off backgrounds to either Wiz or Sorc, that would have been shared in the past.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

I really wish I could find the relevant L&L columns.

Yeah, all that stuff from the Beyond playtest seems to have evaporated. It's frustrated me a few times too. Let's table the discussion of what happened back then; it doesn't really matter anyway. We've got the sorcerer class we've got.

 

[TheCosmicKid]

Other games have managed to do it. You simply limit the efficiency of what can be accomplished, depending on the level (a damage cap, for example), and introduce a punishing mechanism that makes the whole "toying with raw magical energy" dangerous and explosive.

In my experience, the games that do it have approaches that are (a) more comfortable with "DM may I?" resolutions to PC abilities, (b) slower paced such that calculating whether a particular effect is possible and how much it costs isn't a jarring break in the action, and possibly (c) lower magic such that PCs are only casting spells like this once or twice a session rather than every round. For D&D, you really want to be able to say "I cast stinking cloud there, it does this effect to those creatures, saving throw saving throw okay, next turn."

I think it's best to think of the D&D sorcerer not as a very bad depiction of somebody who can shape raw magic freeform, but rather as a decent depiction of somebody like a superhero with clearly defined "powers".

 

[Aldarc]

The Weaver class in the Invisible Sun RPG is very similar to Saga Sorc, but better.

Agreed.

Prior to the Sorc being a separate class, either type of background from the tables would and could be used by Magic User/ Wizard characters. Now the system is arguably trying to silo off backgrounds to either Wiz or Sorc, that would have been shared in the past.

Sure, much in the same manner that the Barbarian and Ranger might have had similar backgrounds as the Fighter when they were specializations of the Fighter in earlier editions. Or druids and clerics likewise sharing similar backgrounds when they were one class. But when new classes emerge, differentiation of flavor, fluff, and aesthetic between these classes also emerges. So here I would ask to your point: “So what?”

 

[The Mirrorball Man]

In my experience, the games that do it have approaches that are (a) more comfortable with "DM may I?" resolutions to PC abilities, (b) slower paced such that calculating whether a particular effect is possible and how much it costs isn't a jarring break in the action, and possibly (c) lower magic such that PCs are only casting spells like this once or twice a session rather than every round. For D&D, you really want to be able to say "I cast stinking cloud there, it does this effect to those creatures, saving throw saving throw okay, next turn."

You’re right, although I think it would be possible to build a relatively simple system based on the old "Dungeon Master" video game. The Sorcerer just picks a shape, an energy, a purpose and a metamagic effect and assembles it into an improvised spell. He could conjure for example a cone-shaped, metallic detection spell on an enlarged area, and poooooof, he gets a gold detector spell. It would not be too complicated for D&D in my opinion, although it would probably stretch the limits of the genre.