D&D General One thing I hate about the Sorcerer

[Minigiant]

That implies that the other full casters all have "proper mechanics" and the Sorcerer doesn't... which I don't think is really true either. The Bard, Cleric, Druid, and Wizard all have standard full caster mechanics but none of them are all the special over that moreso than the Sorcerer. Bardic Inspiration, Channel Divinity, Wildshape, and Arcane Recovery are not any more impressive or proper than Metamagic.

All five classes are standard full caster classes, none of which have mechanics that are so wildly different as to make them special or "proper". So I don't see why Sorcerer requires something different over what they already have. Heck, the Sorcerer's Sorcery Points and Metamagic are arguably even more a "proper" mechanic than whatever the Wizard has currently. The only real "special" mechanic the Wizard gets is a larger spell list.

The Wizard, Cleric, Druid, and Warlock are only casters with special proper mechanics.

The Warlock and Druid ones from 2014 don't work and got heavily play tested in 2023 because of it.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I mean, we had a whole edition of interesting mechanics and the fanbase by and large rejected it

The Sorcerer has evocative flavour and is basically a ready-made backstory generator. The game should give it proper mechanics, not ditch it

Please don't pretend that folks only rejected 4e because they don't like interesting mechanics.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

The Sorcerer has evocative flavour and is basically a ready-made backstory generator. The game should give it proper mechanics, not ditch it

Yeah thematically I love the idea of a sorcerer. When it comes to mechanics, it's a bad wizard with the metamagic feat glued on. Half its subclasses are bland bundles of nothing, and looking at the draconic sorcerer from the playtest, that's going to continue. Mechanically, there isn't a single thing about the sorcerer which I enjoy, and would never play one again.

In 5e, if I want to play a sorcerer, I'll pick a warlock and talk to my DM. I just wish there was a draconic patron for it.

 

[Minigiant]

Please don't pretend that folks only rejected 4e because they don't like interesting mechanics.

People rejected 4e for the same reason as the 2012 playtestSorcerer.

Too much change too fast with bad layout.

 

[Micah Sweet]

People rejected 4e for the same reason as the 2012 playtestSorcerer.

Too much change too fast with bad layout.

I don't speak for others, but layout and issues I had with specific mechanics and the design philosophy are why I rejected 4e, not "too much change too fast". What was changed matters.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

I liked lots of ideas from 4e, but overall thought that it just wasn't DnD. I'm so glad that 5e stepped away from it.

It felt insanely 'gamey' and less like a bunch of people inhabiting an actual world. A lot of my criticisms about 5e are also aimed at 'gamey' mechanics, where it feels like the player characters inhabit a completely different world to NPCs and enemies.

• An example is character using their spellcasting stat for weapon attacks. It makes stats feel less like they actually mean something, and more like it's just 'primary attacking stat A, B, or C'.
• Another example is NPC's using 'spell like abilities' rather than spells. So everything your character has which might protect them from 'fireball' does nothing because the enemy does 'ball of fire'.
• Final example is the bastions UA. Rather than a base your characters can discover and use their resources to expand over time, interacting with the actual world, instead it just magically has expansions appear at arbitrary levels.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I liked lots of ideas from 4e, but overall thought that it just wasn't DnD. I'm so glad that 5e stepped away from it.

It felt insanely 'gamey' and less like a bunch of people inhabiting an actual world. A lot of my criticisms about 5e are also aimed at 'gamey' mechanics, where it feels like the player characters inhabit a completely different world to NPCs and enemies.

• An example is character using their spellcasting stat for weapon attacks. It makes stats feel less like they actually mean something, and more like it's just 'primary attacking stat A, B, or C'.
• Another example is NPC's using 'spell like abilities' rather than spells. So everything your character has which might protect them from 'fireball' does nothing because the enemy does 'ball of fire'.
• Final example is the bastions UA. Rather than a base your characters can discover and use their resources to expand over time, interacting with the actual world, instead it just magically has expansions appear at arbitrary levels.

Yeah, stuff like that, to me, represents everything I don't want out of D&D.

 

[Minigiant]

I don't speak for others, but layout and issues I had with specific mechanics and the design philosophy are why I rejected 4e, not "too much change too fast". What was changed matters.

Overall it was true for most of 5e's adopters.

5e and 4e Essentials have many similarities in change that the community didn't object to.

It's a meme that many 5e fans homebrew rules that mimic 4e. Giving Sorcerers their own spells or their own damage mechanic or easy rituals are some of them.

 

[Chaosmancer]

No, they don't all match and no one said they would. Some however do, and on those case this is less work for the writers, and lets them use the saved resources for covering not yet existing subclass concepts.

Wut?

If they combined it, and had to rewrite a bunch of bloodlines as pacts... that saves zero resources. Sure, they don't need to come up with a concept, but concepts are as common as dust. The mechanics would need to be rewritten, and that's where the resources are spent.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Wut?

If they combined it, and had to rewrite a bunch of bloodlines as pacts... that saves zero resources. Sure, they don't need to come up with a concept, but concepts are as common as dust. The mechanics would need to be rewritten, and that's where the resources are spent.

We are talking in the context of an edition or half edition revamp where things would be rewritten anyway. That's the only context in which the sort of big changes we want would make sense.