D&D (2024) Could the DnDNext Sorcerer be revived as its own class?

[Paul Farquhar]

While I love the "deplete resources to gain martial buffs" concept

"Concept" is one thing. Play is something else. You would have players deliberately burning their high level spells on nothing at all because they wanted to play a character who changed into a dragon all along. If you have consumable resources, the character has to get weaker when those resources are consumed.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

3.5's Green Star Adept turns you into a construct. It's not a good PrC (suddenly losing your Con score one day is pretty terrible) but it's thematically interesting. Weretouched Master was in one of the Eberron supplements. And as I recall, I think it was the Dread Necromancer that slowly became something akin to a Lich.

Constructs not having a CON score was a weirdness of 3rd edition and Pathfinder, but the obvious thing to do would be to make CON your dump stat. But of course that would mean you had terrible hit points until they became what the player wanted them to be from the start. Not being able to start as the character you want to play is the issue with this version of sorcerer.

There is an 3PP Eberron artificer subclass that replaces parts of it's body with mechanical parts in Dread Metrol. It works because the abilities gained build on what it has from the start in its base class.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Why not an axemage, or a macemage, or glave-guissarmemage?

PF calls it magus to indicate it's not locked into any specific weapon.

Why "Rogue" and not "Thief" or "Blaggard" or "Burglar" or "Crook" or "Assassin"?

Why "Fighter" and not "Warrior" or "Soldier" or "Battler" or "Hero" or "Trooper"?

Why "Wizard" and not "Mage" or "Magus" or "Sorcerer" or "Magician" or "Thaumaturge" or "Warlock"?

Why "Paladin"? The Palatine hill doesn't exist anywhere except in Rome, and the knights of the pious Big Chuck (Charlemagne) certainly didn't exist, so surely that should not be called by such a hyperspecific, historically-bound term, particularly since the use of "Paladin" was always reserved for a monarch's closest personal guard. Yet D&D not only coined the term for "knight dedicated to a deity", it has effectively been the sole reason the term "Paladin" continues to exist at all in modern fantasy fiction, and almost completely displaced the old "closest retinue of a king" meaning. Like it would genuinely be the equivalent of calling the martial leader-of-men class "Praetorian" instead of Warlord; why should any world except Earth have any concept of a "Praetorian"?

For that matter, why "Eldritch Knight"? Most Eldritch Knights are not knights of any kind--they swear no oaths and have no liege-lord who calls them up. Surely they should've been called "Eldritch Soldier" but then they aren't soldiers fighting in war, they're mercenaries, so it should have been etc., etc.

Names come to us from a lot of sources. Some of them are way overly specific but kept for legacy reasons. Consider that many Bards will not be bards in any sense (neither performers nor royal chronicler-satirist-historians), many Rogues will not be rogues (and may in fact be entirely upstanding, law-abiding citizens--Sherlock Holmes makes sense as a high-Int Rogue, for example), many Druids will not be priests of a specific cultural group, etc.

The PF Magus is a horribly fiddly class.

An entirely subjective judgment that in no way invalidates the archetype behind the class.

 

[TwoSix]

"Concept" is one thing. Play is something else. You would have players deliberately burning their high level spells on nothing at all because they wanted to play a character who changed into a dragon all along. If you have consumable resources, the character has to get weaker when those resources are consumed.

It depends on the strength delta between the pre-buff and post-buff versions. I can certainly see a lot of players focusing on casting a long lasting Conc buff and another non-Conc spell to trigger the boons.

I say if they want to use up their tactical versatility to become an alt-Fighter, let them.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I say if they want to use up their tactical versatility to become an alt-Fighter, let them.

Sure, let them play it from the start, rather than forcing them to ply X levels of alt-wizard first.

It depends on the strength delta between the pre-buff and post-buff versions.

Yes it does. It's ether weak, and the people who wanted to be alt-fighters are left disappointed; or it's strong, and people will complain that the game "forces" them to blow all their spells and play as an alt-fighter. Meanwhile the actual fighters complain because the alt-fighter is better.

 

[TwoSix]

Sure, let them play it from the start, rather than forcing them to ply X levels of alt-wizard first.

I'm not against that.

Yes it does. It's ether weak, and the people who wanted to be alt-fighters are left disappointed; or it's strong, and people will complain that the game "forces" them to blow all their spells and play as an alt-fighter. Meanwhile the actual fighters complain because the alt-fighter is better.

This sounds like the standard discourse around "balance" that has existed for decades. Squashing diversity of mechanical concepts over concerns around an illusory balance has never made much sense to me.

Assuming we're making this around an alt-Warlock chassis, I'd put the expected final stage somewhere around EB+AB damage with a bit more physical robustness.

 

[Remathilis]

There is an 3PP Eberron artificer subclass that replaces parts of it's body with mechanical parts in Dread Metrol. It works because the abilities gained build on what it has from the start in its base class.

Mastermaker. It's an update of a 3e prestige class Renegade Mastermaker.

Renegade Mastermaker – Class – D&D Tools

Complete list of all D&D spells, rulebooks, feats, classes and more!

dnd.arkalseif.info

Still works better than GSA.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

The "blood hunter" has got that touch of "monster-touched" class.

Have you thought about the role in the battlefield, would be in the first line or casting spells from the rear like the standars spellcasters?

How would be the spell reload, daily, a short rest like warlocks, once-encounter like in 4e or almost-ati-will reloadable like martial maneuvers from 3.5 Tome of Battle? If it is the last option then before a class like a warmage should be designed before.

* Do you imagine anything like the "superhero" Firebreather by Image Comics, or Draego-Man (Master of Universe)? Or the dragon slayers from "Fairy Tale" anime.

Is there any prestige class from 3.5 we could update or recycle?

Other idea is a variant of incarnate or soulborn classes from "Magic of Incarnum" but more dragon-themed. Of course we would need a lot of work and feedback to update the incarnum soulmelds. Maybe it would be like spells but until the end of the encounter it could be spent and reloaded like a martial maneuver from 3.5 Tome of Battle.

 

[James Gasik]

The 4e Essentials Barbarian might be a good reference for this sort of thing. The class could flip from Defender to Striker based on what the player wanted to be doing at the time. Maybe instead of "lose spells to gain dragon powers" the class could choose which mode to be in, so you either cast spells or be a dragon, but not both at once. Sort of like an anti-gish.

 

[TwoSix]

The 4e Essentials Barbarian might be a good reference for this sort of thing. The class could flip from Defender to Striker based on what the player wanted to be doing at the time. Maybe instead of "lose spells to gain dragon powers" the class could choose which mode to be in, so you either cast spells or be a dragon, but not both at once. Sort of like an anti-gish.

I think that could be an interesting design, but spell availability would be key. If they have combat spells, than choosing a "mode" is an interesting and complex decision. But if they have access to a bunch of non-combat/utility magic, then they simply have a spellcast-OOC mode and a no-spells combat mode.