D&D 5E Designer apathy and sunk costs, The reason the sorcerer is doomed to uncanny valley one-trick-ponieness.

[Ovinomancer]

Thunderclap and stormsphere off the top of my head. I only know those because I have a tempest cleric and I convinced my DM to have those as domain spells

Thunderclap is thunder damage.

As far as green dragon, how many poison spells are there in total, regardless if they are sorcerer or wizard? I.e., how does the sorcerer get shorted any more than a wizard for poison spells?

That's exactly my point, though, there are great big trap choices for Sorcerers. Picking Green as your dragon bloodline makes your 6-th level ability nearly useless (you do get some nice resistance to poison, which is a very common damage type, so there is some balance). If you're going as a thematic caster, Green is a bad choice, and it shouldn't be. Blue is a bad choice, at it shouldn't be. Black is a bad choice, and it shouldn't be. White is acceptable, if you use the Elemental book. Red is the only one shown love and variety. (all of this goes for the appropriate metallic choices, as well).

I find that a serious design lack, but one that can be easily remedied by more spells added to the list. It would help if those spells had a common thematic element, like lightening having a stun effect to trade out for raw damage, or thunder pushing people around, acid damaging equipment or lingering, poison being stupid strong damage, but very close range, etc. But I'd just take a better spelllist that actually accomplished what appears to be the main goal of an entire sub-class.

-- Ovi "tried to play a Blue Dragonborn Brass bloodline sorcerer and was quickly disappointed" nomancer

 

[Sacrosanct]

There aren't a lot of poison spells in general, for sorcerer or wizard, so I don't see how that means they are getting screwed. I do agree that a green dragon isn't a great option on the surface, because there aren't a lot of poison spells. But that's true of wizards too. But there a good selection of acid, lightning, fire, and cold spells when you include the EE supplement. The aforementioned storm sphere is my favorite AoE spell, actually.

 

[Ovinomancer]

There aren't a lot of poison spells in general, for sorcerer or wizard, so I don't see how that means they are getting screwed. I do agree that a green dragon isn't a great option on the surface, because there aren't a lot of poison spells. But that's true of wizards too. But there a good selection of acid, lightning, fire, and cold spells when you include the EE supplement. The aforementioned storm sphere is my favorite AoE spell, actually.

Wizards can choose spells to be thematic if they want to. Sorcerers have 'thematic' clearly written into a subclasses abilities. Saying 'but it hurts a Wizard just as much' is de facto accepting that sorcerers have no special place in the design over wizards.

And there isn't a good selection of acid, poison, and lightening spells if you include the supplement. You can do a great earth theme, or wind theme, or storm theme, but not a good acid theme, or thunder theme, or lightening theme. You could come up with a number of themes that a sorcerer could pull off, but a Wizard will be at least as good if not better (due to some odd spell restrictions on the sorcerer list) at the same theme. Given that sorcerers have staked out a themed subclass (dragon bloodlines) that doesn't seem odd or poorly done to you? Again, just adding in some new spells to the lists that address the lack of choices outside of fire to engage the sorcerer subclass ability would be a perfect fix. Until then, it remains a glaring hole.

ETA: heck, just adding an energy substitution metamagic ability would be sufficient.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I disagree. A wizard isn't just as good because the wizard doesn't get to add bonuses to damage of the element type, nor do they get resistance to that damage type. The other is purely subjective. You don't think there are enough spells, and I do.

 

[Ovinomancer]

I disagree. A wizard isn't just as good because the wizard doesn't get to add bonuses to damage of the element type, nor do they get resistance to that damage type. The other is purely subjective. You don't think there are enough spells, and I do.

The fact remains that, outside of fire and possibly ice, there are few options for the sorcerer to use his bonus damage ability. When making a selection for dragon bloodlines, there is an overwhelmingly best choice (fire), a decent choice (ice), a poor choice (lightening) and two trap choices (acid, poison). Even adding a supplement doesn't change this arithmetic. While I'll be the first to say that 5e isn't much about balance, I at least expect there to not be trap choices lurking in the sorcerer class.

And my second point is that this is easily corrected by the addition of a relatively small selection of spells -- ones targeted to address this lack. Or the inclusion of a special metamagic, specific to the bloodline, that allows for the substitution of energies to the favored energy of the bloodline only. Done. Fixed. No issues, no major power gained.

 

[discosoc]

Wait a second....Is the OP the same one who a few days ago said he/she wanted the sorcerer to pretty much do everything the wizard does, but refused to play a wizard because they wanted INT as a dump stat? Or am I thinking of someone else?

I don't know about the OP, but that's a common argument I've come across over the years. Mostly from people who played it during 3rd edition, where the sorc was sort of a kiddie-wizard that could focus on the fireballs and magic missiles but didn't require much in the way player upkeep.

 

[Sacrosanct]

I guess we just disagree. There are acid, lightning, and poison spells that are single target and AoE in the game already. Not sure what else you want. I hardly think acid is a trap option when I can acid splash individual targets over and over, and drop vitriolic spheres when I want to AoE the place, or shoot Melf Acid Arrows. I don't even know if I'd consider poison a trap option between poison splash and cloudkill. If you've got single target spells, and AoE spells, and protection spells, what is really missing that makes those choices broken?

 

[jayoungr]

When making a selection for dragon bloodlines, there is an overwhelmingly best choice (fire), a decent choice (ice), a poor choice (lightening) and two trap choices (acid, poison).

Possible solution, in the absence of something official: could you refluff some fire spells to do damage of the element of your choice and make the new spells available only to dragonblooded sorcerers of the appropriate color?

EDIT: Never mind, just re-read your post in full and realized you already proposed this. I will definitely pitch the idea to my DM if/when I ever play a Dragonblooded sorcerer.

 

[mellored]

I do have the issue that if you want to go with a theme, the spell list choices are very narrow and exclude some spell that would be very thematic but, for some reason, aren't on the list.

That's a fair point. They could use more (non-fire) elemental spells on their list.

Fortunatly, it's not hard to houserule a blue dragon sorcerer getting call lighting. Or turning fireball into iceball.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Unless your only opportunity to play is Adventurer's League... work with your DM to borrow/create an applicable spell or two that fits your theme. Heck, the spells are all balanced at the levels they are given, so you're not gaining OR losing anything if you add a spell from another class's spell list and putting it in your own to satisfy a theme.

Or of course just remember that with spells casting in higher slots, you only really need ONE 1st level spell of an applicable energy type to be able to cast your entire suite of spell slots thematically.