D&D (2024) 4/26 Playtest: The Sorceror

[UngainlyTitan]

Question for those following the Sorcerous Burst math:

The spell description indicates that your exploding dice total (up to your Cha mod) gets added to the base damage of the spell, which of course starts with 1d6. However, while I was reading it as exploding per die, it could also be read as exploding as per cast.

In other words, at 1st level I roll 1d6 base, and could get up to an extra 3d6 of exploding dice. However at 5th level, I get 2d6 base, and could either get 4d6 exploding dice per die, for a theoretical max of 10d6, or only 4d6 exploding dice for the entire cast, for a theoretical max of 6d6.

In your opinion, which is the correct reading? The latter seems more reasonable from a game balance perspective, but I'm not able to program it in Anydice, so it's hard to know what the actual quantitative difference is.

I read it as exploding per die but capped per cast.
If you have are 5th level and +3 on the mod and the results are 6,6 you get 2 extra rolls, and they roll 6,6 you get one more roll.

 

[Chaosmancer]

There are some great changes here for Sorcerers, things I really like... but the best things are often stopped as soon as you think about concentration.

Concentration spells are often the best in the game, but if you look at something like the nerfed twin spell... it can't work with concentration. You cast it, and then next turn... you can't cast it again. So this only works for instant spells. I just did a quick scan of the 3rd level arcane spells, and out of 29 spells only 2 seemed worth casting two turns in a row, Fireball or Lightning Bolt. It is slightly better for 2nd level, where you have 5 spells (Ray of Enfeeblement, Scorching Ray, Shatter, Misty Step, Melf's Acid Arrow) but most of these are not massively impactful spells.

And this is the same with the sorcery incarnate. So many of the major abilities are limited by not having enough spells good enough to use them with.

Now, most of the metamagic changes are AMAZING. Extended spell? New favorite. Heighten Spell? Actually amazing. The ability to swap them? Better than I hoped. But, empowered didn't change and it still isn't super useful. Better now, with some of the unique spells, but not something I'm eager to use. Transmute spell is questionable. Seeking spell is also really only useful with those same attack roll spells that aren't super useful.

Something similiar happens with Vitality. The healing is way too small for a 3rd level spell, and while it does remove some conditions... I feel like that isn't supposed to be the main focus. It is useful, certainly, but niche. I'd much rather have the healing... heck, I'd double it to 4d6 (I believe all healing needs to be improved)

The Cantrip is slightly too weak. I'd go with 1d8 instead. Right now, Fire Bolt can give a Draconic Sorcerer 2d10+mod, compared to 2d6+mod with a chance of more? Those aren't great odds, for doing better than the other options, especially since the only utility is damage and the option to swap type.


Draconic Sorcery's only downside I see is the Wings, everything else is awesome, especially with the improved AC. That's game changing for them.

 

[mellored]

The Cantrip is slightly too weak. I'd go with 1d8 instead. Right now, Fire Bolt can give a Draconic Sorcerer 2d10+mod, compared to 2d6+mod with a chance of more? Those aren't great odds, for doing better than the other options, especially since the only utility is damage and the option to swap type.

The Cantrip is free and comes with a bunch of damage types. Which is handy.

But math time..
It's 4.1805555555 damage per d6
So yea, I could see it being d8's...

Hmmm... what if it was 2d4?

 

[Kinematics]

So, epic boons.

The Epic Boon of Energy Resistance (EBER) seems pretty nifty, and feels like it would easily fit in with one of the various elemental themes of sorcerers. In particular, the second part of the boon only specifies that you have to have resistance to the damage type in order to redirect it. That gave me ideas.

(Aside: It's probably meant to only apply to energy damage types, and specifically the ones listed in the option choices, not piercing/bludgeoning/slashing, or force.)

One immediate thought I had was to stack it on a storm sorcerer, who gets resistances to lightning and thunder, and then choose two additional resistance types from the boon itself (say, fire and cold), and be able to redirect any of those types. (Or maybe use Protection from Energy for yet another resistance, though the concentration requirement is really annoying.)

Except... storm sorcerer actually gets an improvement on the lightning and thunder resistances. It actually gets full immunity to them at level 18 (assuming that is retained when rewritten). Which leads to a problem: The redirect feature of the boon only takes effect if you take damage of a given damage type. If you're immune, you don't take damage, which means you can't redirect that energy at another target. This feels like a mistake in the design.

I think a better expression of the boon's feature would be:

Energy Redirection. When you take damage of an energy type from among those listed above, or are hit by a damaging effect of one of those listed energy types, to which you are immune, you can use your Reaction to direct damage of the same type toward another creature you can see within 60 feet of yourself that isn’t behind Total Cover. If you do so, that creature must succeed on a Dexterity saving throw (DC equals 8 + your Proficiency Bonus + the ability modifier of the score increased by this feat) or take damage equal to 2d12 + your Constitution modifier.

 

[Chaosmancer]

The Cantrip is free and comes with a bunch of damage types. Which is handy.

But math time..
It's 4.1805555555 damage per d6
So yea, I could see it being d8's...

Hmmm... what if it was 2d4?

2d4 explode on 4's? I could be happy with that, since that is an average of 5 and isn't going to hit the low-end of the damage numbers very often. Especially since the dice explosions are capped (which only really applies at higher levels, because you are almost never going to roll the same result multiple times)


And yes, the damage types can be handy, but really not as often as I'd like. If vulnerabilities were more common, it would be really powerful, but they aren't so I feel like most situations it is just for special effect.

 

[mellored]

And yes, the damage types can be handy, but really not as often as I'd like. If vulnerabilities were more common, it would be really powerful, but they aren't so I feel like most situations it is just for special effect.

Well it's free.
So you just use firebolt as normal. But if you ever run into a fire elemental, you have a backup.

Also, i haven't done the math with empowered metamagic.

 

[Chaosmancer]

So, epic boons.

The Epic Boon of Energy Resistance (EBER) seems pretty nifty, and feels like it would easily fit in with one of the various elemental themes of sorcerers. In particular, the second part of the boon only specifies that you have to have resistance to the damage type in order to redirect it. That gave me ideas.

(Aside: It's probably meant to only apply to energy damage types, and specifically the ones listed in the option choices, not piercing/bludgeoning/slashing, or force.)

One immediate thought I had was to stack it on a storm sorcerer, who gets resistances to lightning and thunder, and then choose two additional resistance types from the boon itself (say, fire and cold), and be able to redirect any of those types. (Or maybe use Protection from Energy for yet another resistance, though the concentration requirement is really annoying.)

Except... storm sorcerer actually gets an improvement on the lightning and thunder resistances. It actually gets full immunity to them at level 18 (assuming that is retained when rewritten). Which leads to a problem: The redirect feature of the boon only takes effect if you take damage of a given damage type. If you're immune, you don't take damage, which means you can't redirect that energy at another target. This feels like a mistake in the design.

I think a better expression of the boon's feature would be:

Energy Redirection. When you take damage of an energy type from among those listed above, or are hit by a damaging effect of one of those listed energy types, to which you are immune, you can use your Reaction to direct damage of the same type toward another creature you can see within 60 feet of yourself that isn’t behind Total Cover. If you do so, that creature must succeed on a Dexterity saving throw (DC equals 8 + your Proficiency Bonus + the ability modifier of the score increased by this feat) or take damage equal to 2d12 + your Constitution modifier.

My big worries about that boon are

1) Limited usefulness in redirecting energy that the enemy is immun or resistant to (we are talking level 20 here at a minimum)

2) Reactions are valuable. For example, your Storm Sorcerer would have to have no reaction spells, and not want to use the Storm's Fury ability (it may not apply, but lightning damage in melee isn't uncommon at those levels)

I'd also say immunity is rare enough, I'd be more willing to rely on GM fiat, but I could see that being something worth including to cover bases

 

[Chaosmancer]

Well it's free.
So you just use firebolt as normal. But if you ever run into a fire elemental, you have a backup.

Free is kind of meaningless. If you get a free crappy ability, it is still a crappy ability, and I'd rather the playtest give good abilities for free.

Also, out of all the classes, Sorcerers have the most cantrips. So they are the easiest to grab a second damage cantrip for anyways.

Also, i haven't done the math with empowered metamagic.

Yeah, that is a... bizarre interaction. But I don't give it a lot of weight. While it is easier to get metamagics, it is still a cost to get them and to spend the points on them for a cantrip attack. I'd rather stick with analyzing it as most people will use it at-will, then find the corner cases.

 

[Kinematics]

All right, third code revision. A bit of help at rpg.stackexchange.com finally got me a working version that properly caps rerolls per cast rather than per die. Link: AnyDice

This also has dramatic effects on the final values when used with Empower Spell, at least of what I can see so far. (The base spell results didn't change.) Unfortunately the code is slow enough that the server times out for 3d6 and higher, so I haven't figured out how to get values for those yet.

Edit: I can run it with fewer rerolls and get results. It seems the first couple rerolls have significant boosts, and then it tapers off after that. I put down minimum estimates below, based on what results I was able to get.
Edit 2: Improved the code enough to get more complete results.

My new results, plus the old previous ones to see the error:

Level	Charisma	Burst d6	Burst+Emp d6	Wrong Burst+Emp d6
1	16	4.20	5.34	5.94
5	18	8.40	9.87	12.03
11	20	12.60	13.68	18.20
17	20	16.79	17.66	23.98
20	22	16.80	~17.7+	24.43

At the very least, it doesn't appear competitive with the d8 cantrips like it had been before.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Thank you for the work