Are Sorcerers really that bad?

[Evilhalfling]

I boosted sorcerers slightly, giving them a extra spell of each level based on bloodlines, and minor special abilities at levels 2,8,14. In the current campaign, sorcerers siphon power from dragons (there are a lot of dragons) without being related to them. (which I agree is silly)
The special abilites are also based on blood line and tend to be skillbonus, 1 type of energy reistance 10 and a minor power at 14th. Just little benifits for staying out of PrC.

 

[Aus_Snow]

I use essentially the same variant that Frukathka mentioned above. With that tiny 'boost', if you can even call it that, I think they are just fine as a standard D&D class, easily the equal of others.

 

[Graybeard]

I am playing a Sorcerer in one of my games that I'm in. He's currently 12th level. I enjoy playing him a lot. My spell selection for him is varied. I have charm person, dim door, lightning bolt, acid arrow, grease, cloud kill, veil, and several others. I have found some interesting uses for the spells. As for metamagic, I have extend spell and energy substitution-cold. The many tkmes I've used Disguise Self or Alter Self as a solution to an encounter are numerous.

 

[orchid blossom]

I loved playing a sorcerer. Personally, choosing and maintaining a spell list every day (cleric or wizard) is a pain for me. I spend way too much time at it. As a sorcerer I knew what I had, and I learned those spells intimately.

My sorcerer used silent and still spell for metamagic, as well as quicken. Action points can do some amazing things. I actually took the feat for the character, then would use an action point to erase the whole taking the entire round to cast problem. We had some extra feat slots in this campaign, so I didn't mind taking a feat I could only use with action points.

You can also say a lot about your character with your spell selections. I helped a friend make pregens for a one shot once, and I was in charge of the sorcerer. The person who took the character for the playtest could tell, just from the spells, that I had intended the character to be a bit cowardly and out for himself.

You do have to be careful with spell selection. For my sorcerer, I tried to pick different energy types of damage so she wouldn't get stuck against creatures with immunities. But sometimes there is just a fight where you can't do anything. In those I usually ended up Dimension Dooring a lot to quickly move other party members, or just standing wearing a spiked gauntlet to help the rogue get flanks.

 

[wuyanei]

I find that sorcerers easily match wizards in spell casting oomph (not in DUELING, not by a long shot, but that is another kettle entirely), but do lack somewhat in the 'uniqueness' or flavor department.

To fix that, I use the variant that Frukathka mentioned (except I use 1/10 gp cost), plus the option to conduct a 'Ritual of Blood Bonding' to sort of absorb a focus component into themselves (or 'attune themselves to the mystical energies within the focus, so that they can use their own bodies as the focus yadda yadda...').

Basically, pay 500 gp times spell level or 100 times the cost of the focus, whichever higher, plus 25 XP per spell level or 5 times the cost of the focus in XP, whichever higher, and you never need to use that focus for that spell again. This may seem a lot, but it really isn't: 25 x 9 = 225 XP which is way cheap for removing the focus component of a spell. For really expensive focus components, you can just continue to use the focus.

I also give a sorcerer a wizard's bonus feats, 4 skill points per level and most Cha-based skills as class skills -- I do think that WotC overcompensated a bit on this one.

The end result is that a sorcerer, with the right feats and rituals, increasingly approaches an innate spellcasting creature, while the wizard uses sympathic magic (material components) and other mystical mumbo jumbo to achieve the same effect.

Finally, instead of the very weak dragon-bloodline theory, sorcerers IMC claim to follow the 'Greater Path' of magic, ala the Tsurani black-robed mages in Raymond E Feist's Magican: Apprentice, Magician: Master and other books of the Riftwar Saga series. You might be surprised to learn how much of the antipathy sorcerers recieve is simply due to a lack of inspiring fantasy 'rolemodels'. Once my players identified Pug and Macros as the archtype for sorcerers -- wresting raw power from the cosmos itself, taming and molding it with sheer will and discipline, while the 'lesser mages' putter about with their rats tails and bat droppings -- they took to the sorcerer class much more enthusiastically.

Basically, the sorcerer becomes more 'cool' while the wizards becomes simply 'nerdy'.

Anyways, I think much of the reason sorcerers are less popular in D&D has to do with the fact that D&D fantasy emphasis wizard types over sorcerers (Elminister, Rastilin etc). That is only natural, since the Sorcerer did not exist in AD&D. However, a DM that can weave the sorcerer into his campaign setting as an independent force, instead of simply 'wizard-lite', can and will inspire his players to choose and love the sorcerer class.

 

[Caliban]

Reposted from another thread where a similar question came up ( http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=151417&page=1&pp=40 ):

Factors that (I believe) affect the comparative power levels of sorcerers and wizards:

1) Availability of spells - in many campaigns you can't count on buying scrolls (or accessing spellbooks) of any spell you want. This gives an advantage to wizards in that they only have the find the scroll once and they can scribe it into the book and have it available for casting or scroll creation from then on. It hurts wizards in that they can't count on buying a specific spell to round out their spell selection, removing one of their advantages over sorcerers (it doesn't really hurt them much, just makes it less of an advantage).

2) Downtime - In campaigns where the DM keeps the action moving, with little downtime, a wizard may not be able to take advantage of the ability to scribe scrolls, scribe spells into their spell books, or create items like Boccob's book. In campaigns where there is frequent downtime between events, these abilities become much more advantageous.

3) Wealth Levels - how much money is available to the wizard? In poor campaigns sorcerers have a clear advantage. In campaigns with a higher than normal wealth level it swings toward the wizard.

4) Frequency of combat - in campaigns where you tend to have more than two combats in a single day, a sorcerer has an advantage. In campaigns where you tend to have one or two fights a day and usually have a chance to recover spells before the next combat, the sorcerers extra spells don't really give him an advantage (although if the campaign also features a lot of out of combat problem solving, the correct spell selection for the sorcerer means they can use their spells to help out with that instead).

Availability, Downtime, Combat Frequency, and Wealth levels are highly variable from campaign to campaign and can swing the advantage one direction or the other.

I think this is why people can have such different perceptions of how powerful sorcerers and wizards are in relation to each other - based on the situations they are used to seeing them in each perception may be true.

Personally, I think that all things being equal, a wizard is more useful out of combat (better class skills, more skill points, can make knowledge checks all day long, better item creation), while the sorcerer has the advantage in purely combat situations (a well designed sorcerer can have the spells to meet almost any combat situation, and can do it 3 or 4 fights in a row if need be), and being able to drop the same spell over and over again until it sticks is something most wizards can't do. Sorcerers also make better party buffers if they choose to go that route.

In the end, I think they balance out, and for some people the wizard will be more fun, and for others the sorcerer will be more fun.

That being said, in my home game I do give sorcerers the Eschew Material feat for free at first level. I just think it fits.

 

[Crothian]

I actually think sorcerers make better adventures then Wizards. Wizards are awesome if they can prepare the right spells, but as an Adventurer you rarely know what is going to be needed. Sorcerers with the more spells per day can learn a few verstaile spells and really be ready. They can fire those 6 magic missile spells in a day that needs lot of combat if that's what's needed. They don't have to worry about the spellbook being stolen or the pain of the money and time and takes to place spells in it. And when spells are useless the Sorcerers have more weapons they can use.

 

[Mark Hope]

I give sorcerers an additional spell known at each level, drawn from a themed "domain". The list of arcane domains in Unearthed Arcana gives a good starting list and I work from there if needed. It adds a touch of extra power (not too much, though, as sorcerers are pretty much on the line where balance is concerned, imho) and gives the sorcerer a personal flavour irrespective of the other spells that he selects.

 

[Arkhandus]

Caliban's got it right.

The usefulness or balance of sorcerers versus wizards varies with the campaign's general tone. Wizards rock when they have the wealth and downtime to craft magic items and especially to scribe a bunch of scrolls so they can handle any situation. Sorcerers rock when the party has to slug their way through several combats in a day or one long combat against a tough foe, or when the party doesn't have the cash and downtime that a wizard would need to fully prepare himself and make use of his spare item creation feats.

Sorcerers are also superior when the whole party has to get around a problem or obstacle that's going to need multiple castings to bypass, whereas a wizard likely only has one or two copies prepared of Fly, Erase, Dispel Magic, Water Breathing, or what-have-you. But then, any smart wizard (and they really are more-or-less geniuses in Intelligence in most cases, even if the players aren't) will leave a few slots open for preparing spells that the situation demands. Or they'll carry several scrolls of extremely-situationally-dependent spells.

However, I think it is fairly obvious that Sorcerers are a bit shafted compared to Wizards, in a standard or high-magic campaign like the rules-as-written already support. Sorcerers have to base their casting on Charisma, which does almost nothing for them outside of spellcasting, even if they somehow were to obtain all Charisma-based skills as class skills. They have pitiful skill points and a poor selection of class skills. Sorcerers get no bonus feats and can't use metamagic quite as well as Wizards (though their spontaneous application of metamagic usually makes up for that). A Sorcerer could really use some extra skill points or some bonus feats to compensate. Not both, but one or the other would help offset their Charisma-dependency and horribly limited spell selection. There aren't as many spells these days with multiple functions, unlike "back in the day". Generally I'd prefer to give sorcerers 4 skill points per level, some extra class skills, and maybe a bonus feat at some point.

In my Rhunaria homebrew campaign at present, I have three kinds of sorcerers: common/natural/blood sorcerers, who have magic in their blood and get a few bonus feats over time, but limited to metamagic, skill focus, spell focus, spell penetration, and combat casting feats; talisman/fetish sorcerers, who have a magical connection to some sort of items such as coins, or feathers, or needles, or mugs, or whatever (it's a strange magic, aye), and have to expend one such item as a bonus material component for each spell, but they add +1 to their spell save DCs and they learn 1 extra spell at each even-numbered sorcerer level; and spirit sorcerers, whose magic works simply through an ability to talk with spirits and garner their aid, gaining a few varied benefits over time, such as the ability to see and communicate with certain spirits, Improved Familiar at 5th-level, a bonus feat of choice at 11th-level, and permanent See Invisibility at 17th-level.

 

[wuyanei]

Hmm... interesting. Many of us like sorcerers, but almost all of us sorcerer-lovers have given sorcerers some extra benefits, be it bonus feat or skill boost or extra spells known.

Has anyone here chosen a RAW sorcerer over a wizard? Or can I conclude that the RAW sorcerer is really a bit weak, and could stand to use a few feats/skills/spells known worth of boosts?