Right now, the warlock is a spellcasting class that has a power selection like other primary spellcastering classes. The warlock's subclasses focus on his or her warlock pact; the source of their magical ability. For example, having an infernal pact is one method of obtaining magical power, but another one we’re exploring is exposure to wild magic via a fey pact.
Obviously, I changed some of that. The point is that the idea behind the setup sounds a lot like the 4E Warlock (to me.) You gain power just like other classes, but the source of your power is a choice made in the beginning. While, yes, that does also sound like the 3rd Edition (and Pathfinder) Sorcerer, and the manner in which you choose a bloodline, something about the presentation sounds more like the Warlock to me. At the very least, it sounds similar enough to the Warlock that I'd like the two classes to be more distinct.
Well last week we learned Warlocks were going to be shapped around being the classic warlock, hexblade or Binder intersecting with the different patrons and probably having some degree of "recharge" powers. Sorcerers being casters with a reduced spell list and metamagic with flavor coming from a bloodline. Sound pretty distinctive to me.
With the current mage (wizard) appearing to function like something stuck somewhere between the 3rd Edition Wizard and 3rd Edition Sorcerer (again, my opinion; that's how slots currently feel to me,) I think it would be rather easy to just play a wizard and simply call it a sorcerer in-game.
I dare to say most of the concepts I mentioned were very troublesome to express with a magic user/mage before sorcerers existed. While the current flexibility of casting could help, the wizard/mage/MU is just too loaded thematically on other direction. There are lots of things that get in the way like the spellbook, non commital spell list and the scholarly flavor everywhere.
Some of the magic paths available also already give options for shaping your spells to some extent; adding a sorcery path which focused more on doing that wouldn't be difficult. Being suave and other such things could be achieved via background, feats, and/or having charisma.
If all else fails, talk to the GM about playing a wizard; ask if you can base your spells on Cha instead of Int. Receiving training in one less lore skill; replacing it with a social skill. Then trade out one of the other wizard class features (I don't have the packets in front of me to pick one) in exchange for some sort of growing bonus die on charisma checks to portray your presence and force of personality... maybe the start the die at 1d4 (added to Cha checks) for levels 1-3; then it turns into 1d6 at level 4. I would do that instead of giving advantage because adding a die instead of giving advantage means spells which give advantage on Cha checks are still useful.
I like your suggestion, but at that point I think I could have more luck convincing a 2e DM to let me use the sorcerer from Baldur's Gate than try to reinvent the wheel with Next. (after all it is already balanced to the MU)
What I liked about the early versions of the sorcerer were that they played up the idea of a sorcerer having innate power rather than book-learned and book-studied power. They were literally infused with magic to the point where their mortal bodies had trouble containing it. I'm not so sure I liked the idea of the sorcerer suddenly becoming a melee class, but I certainly did like the idea that sorcerers could lose control of themselves in a manner somewhat akin to barbarian rage. I feel that gave a really nice relationship among the various classes; the wizard and sorcerer would then have a relationship similar to the relationship that barbarians and fighters have... nature versus nurture; that also plays nicely into the D&D concepts of law and chaos.
That is still there, sorcerer has always been the barbarian to the wizard's fighter, the performer to the wizards tactician, I don't discuss that it could have been better expressed mechanically on previous editions, but it is always been there.
Now that I think about it, it also gave a pretty cool relationship to the warlock and wizard and sorcerer. The warlock has the ability to buy into the power of a higher being; gain some of it, but a sorcerer is born with it and just has it without question. The wizard reads about and learns his power. I like this because it also gives some thematic reasons for multiclassing between different casting classes. The sorcerer who wishes to better understand his nature might seek out a place to study it in a scholarly manner (mc into wizard,) or the sorcerer who wishes to better understand his nature might seek out a powerful patron to show him how to use it (mc into warlock.)
This was already possible in 4e, and has no reason to change. The wizard is still the one to study hard for the test, the sorcerer the one to get lucky and the warlock the one shagging the teacher for the grade.
Basically, what it boils down to is that I feel the early versions gave the sorcerer its own place; its own niche. In a way, I can also see thematic reasons for going the opposite direction; it does sort of make sense to me that a create innately born with power would have greater control over it, but it just doesn't seem as interesting to me as the original ideas. Besides, if part of the mentality behind Next is trying to recapture tradition, wizards (at least in third edition) were traditionally the class which had the most access to metamagic via bonus feats. With that in mind, I think going with the early ideas serves two different things: 1) it allows players who want a more traditional approach to the wizard and the sorcerer to use the existing mage class; 2) it allows players who feel a new edition should come with some new ideas to have some novelty value built into the game.
Like I said it takes more than just tactical flexibility to express some characters that the W/M/MU class has always been a poor fit to (the W/M/MU is very loaded with flavor that gets in the way of character concepts, it has never been generic enough, no matter how hard you tried, the Mage/wizard/MU would always have a hard time making a believable fresh of the farm confused kid or someone who doesn't want his/her power and doesn't understand it). And sorcerers already have a niche, is being there to cover those characters and specialized flavor casters. (I dare to say that unless you play a sorcerers for their mechanics, you don't play it to be smart, you play it to be dumb, something a wizard cannot ever be)
Now while a wizard could get more MM feats in 3.x, that wasn't necesarilly the case, they could always fill bonus slots with spell mastery or crafting feats, but sorcerers were the ones who actually derived most of their power from metamagic, and a pair of their exclusive spells dealt with mixing spells. Giving sorcerers metamagic as a thing makes a greater service to the class fans than turning all sorcerers into monstruous characters and taking away the tematic flexibility of the class, 4e burned enough bridges when it made sorcerers nothing but blasters, (and the current scheme still allows for enough monstrous sorcerers, it just has to be at subclass level, no need to taint a versatile class by hardcoding that unstable stuff at class level).
