At low levels, plenty of spellcasters are making those decisions. Like the warlock or paladin or ranger. I mean, even when you run out of spell slots, a sorcerer has the most amount of cantrips of any spellcaster. They can choose light, firebolt, minor illusion, and maybe ray of frost and chill touch. This gives versatility in-and-out of combat at-will.
Tomelock the same number of cantrips, but not the point.
Yes, cantrips are great and sorcerers have more of them. But, anyone could have minor illusion, firebolt and chill touch. That isn't unique to the sorcerer, they are actually the only full caster who does not have a unique cantrip. I suppose you could argue the wizard doesn't either, except they have a cantrip that the Sorcerer does not (Toll of the Dead stolen from cleric)
But, what is the effective difference between casting Firebolt or Chill touch against an orc? Just that firebolt is stronger. There is very little that cantrips can do for sorcerers that they don't leave for anyone else.
It's completely untrue that a sorcerer can only affect a battle once. Even a warlock can affect a battle twice. And even if you go full Nova turn one, you still have enough to full Nova the second or even third turn since it's impossible to dump every single one of your resources on the first turn.
It was late, and I was typing while doing something else. They can only do their unique thing once. At level 3 you can either use a single metamagic like quicken or you can make a single first or second slot. That is it. Even most of their subclasses are completely passive by this level.
Compare to a wizard who can use any number of rituals, and recover at least a first level slot, and can use their subclass ability to affect combat.
Sorcerers are (or) wizards are (and)
And wizards at low level are roughly the same. At 2nd level, they're actually just as prone to bad decision-making. When they hit 3rd-level, they get 2 chances of using good 2nd-level spells and they might waste it casting ray of enfeeblement because they don't really know how good or bad their options are in the moment. A sorcerer gets 4 of those same types of mistakes and understand that while it might "use" metamagic, if you want to compare yourself to the wizard, he didn't have metamagic to use in the first place. He didn't have the choice to convert spell slots.
So are you saying too many choices are bad? Because that would also make the wizard quite an awful pick. They have a plethora of options, remembering spellcasting is practically all they have to their name, that can be used up and inappropriately burnt. They only benefit from 1 short rest. The whole thing about "wizards being good" is that they have a bunch of choices but when the sorcerer gets choices, suddenly it's dangerous and might cause them to be weaker throughout the day?
It is about the type of choices.
Sure, a wizard only has 2 chances to use a second level spell. And if they do, they still have all of their first level spells, all of their rituals, all of their class abilities
A sorcerer
could choose to have a third second level spell. As soon as they do, they are either cutting off metamagic or devouring their other spells. As soon as they choose to do something the wizard can't they've cut off their other options. If they decide that Quicken Scorching Ray is a good idea, they no longer can cast a third second level spell, or use other metamagics, unless they then also decide to get rid of their first level spells.
That is the point I'm trying to make. Sorcerers look like they have a lot of options. They can have a bunch of spells or they can use metamagic, but the problem is that those two things are mutually exclusive. And the "more spells" only works for more higher level combat spells. If you take into account sheer volume of spells, the wizard can come out ahead for all of their rituals.
At higher levels, certainly about 7th if you've had a chance to twin polymorph. You have plenty of resources to shift battles more than once. You can actually quicken fireball and still have enough to twin polymorph. It would have to be on a different turn but it's the same for the wizard, isn't it? And any other spellcaster except someone that dipped fighter.
At 7th-level, you have 11 spell slots. You can cast 11 leveled spells. Apparently, there's some games that only has one or two 5-6 round combat so you might find there's more spellslots than you have rounds to cast them.
Which is why I said once for low level sorcerers. And double twin polymorphs and a single quicken uses everything, no extra spells this time, so if the day has more than those three fights, you've started cutting into your resources. Meanwhile, the wizard still has everything, and likely has a fourth 3rd level slot to use. And has been doing things outside of combat as well.
If you need to get a better idea, you may have run into the "spell point variant" thing from the DMG. Spell points are much more fluid than spell slots and sorcerer actually just gets more spell points than anyone else because of their sorcery points.
Combining spell points and sorcerery points is against the design. They are supposed to be two separate pools. That way you can still convert 3 sorcerery points into 2 spell points, or 7 sorcerery points into 5 spell points.
If you really want to know the number of metamagics a sorcerer can do, it's about 11 at level 3. They can subtle/twin/empower/careful/distance/extend eleven times in a full rest. So think of it as a spectrum between only metamagic, only spellslots, and what happens when you go in-between.
Huh?
How are you getting those numbers? Quicken costs 2 points. At 3rd level you have three points. So, that is 1.
We have two second level spells, so if we convert them I get up to 3.
Four first level spells gets us up to 5 uses of quicken by third level.
5, not eleven. And, you only used Cantrips. You cast zero leveled spells. So, you seem to be completely wrong here.
OMG, I never thought I'd say this but Chaosmancer is right. We should probably add that barbarians stink because they have to ration when they rage, fighters stink because they have to ration when they action surge, rangers are garbage because they have so few spells, paladins are trash because they get so few smiles, monks have so few ki points that there is really no point in playing them, warlocks only get 2 spells (i can't even,) apparently there is a rule that rogues can only sneak attack once a round that nerfs them into the dirt, wizards (the masters of magic) can't even metamagic, and druids have to decide to cast OR Wildshape. Whats that all about? I guess everyone should just play a cleric.
Ah yes, when barbarians rage they use up their limited uses of Reckless attack correct?
Action surge turns off a fighter's fighting style and prevents them from using second wind right?
Rogues using cunning action to disengage means that they permanently loss dice from their sneak attack damage until a long rest, correct?
Druid wildshape costs a second level spell correct?
The issue isn't that they can't do everything. It is that the moment they do their unique mechanic, it shuts down their other options. If a Sorcerer wants to keep up with the number of spells a wizard can cast, they can't use metamagic. If they want to use metamagic, they fall behind in spells per day.
This is undeniable.
Yeah I’m not buying this argument that Sorcerers suck because you might spend your resources at the wrong time. Isn’t that, like, just about the whole point of the game?
Except for the Champion, which everybody dismisses as too boring precisely because it lacks that?
Other classes don't lose access to their unique class features when using their resources. If a wizard casting a spell meant that they lost potential spell levels from their Arcane Recovery, then you'd be seeing something more similar to what the sorcerer is dealing with.
