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Designer apathy and sunk costs, The reason the sorcerer is doomed to uncanny valley one-trick-ponieness.
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<blockquote data-quote="MoonSong" data-source="post: 6744454" data-attributes="member: 6689464"><p>Ok, I lost track of my original intention. Sorry will try to be less hysteric another time. </p><p></p><p>The original intention was. The designers refused to do anything that would invalidate the PHB archetypes, thus turning the chance of the storm sorcerer being a turning point for the class into yet another reason the class won't change. Any further attempt to improve it will have to worry about invalidating three subclasses instead of just two.</p><p></p><p>The sorcerer really has very little going for it at low levels, a first level sorcerer -that isn't a favored soul- has nothing to show it isn't just a poor wizard. And at higher levels metamagic is too limited, just two options are too little. Spell selection is also a problem, it is too limited, the storm sorcerer used to have a lot of flavor, power and versatility on those extra known spells, half of them weren't standard sorcerer spells and are forever out of reach. Overall sorcerers make better multiclasses than single classers, and warlock/sorcerers are kind of infamous for being OP.</p><p></p><p>I don't like the class as it is, I don't doubt it has a lot of power as a blaster, the problem is I would prefer to not being forced to blast. It isn't a matter of just power, but just opting out of blasting doesn't let you do all of these wonderful things you could do with magic in previous editions (bye bye familiars, rope tricks, summoned critters, greases, all sorcerer staples form the past.). That is the big gap in the sorcerer, but the designers are so invested on not invalidating the books that we will never see meaningful change. And this is frustrating because the sorcerer was completely left out of the open playtest, with no changes to help shape it like we helped with basically all other classes. </p><p></p><p>[sblock= The original post]I'm deeply disappointed with the designers handling of the sorcerer. And I have completely lost faith on being able to convert previous edition PCs, let alone have a sorcerer that doesn't make your party wish you had brought a wizard instead. </p><p></p><p>There are many reasons because of it. Everything started so well in the playtest, the sorcerer in there was a sorcerer's fan wet dream, hard to do conversions with, but very very cool and showing all of the strengths sorcerers traditionally had. The designers answer to this conversion bit? Jettison the sorcerer! get rid of it by wrapping it under wizard! Then it came all the negative feedback to it, but by then it was too late to include the sorcerer in the open playtest. But instead of just asking lots of questions about the soul of the sorcerer in the two last polls, they just decided to keep the sorcerer under wraps and avoid all mention to it, so it was one of the few classes that was designed with zero input from fans.</p><p></p><p>The end result pleased many, but disappointed a lot more. We had some underwhelming core subclasses -on a weak chassis- but they received so good feedback on the official polls that the designers refuse to admit there's anything wrong with them. Yes lets ignore that the dragon sorcerer was actually nerfed by the errata. The changes to Elemental Affinity before and after errata result on a net nerf, that feedback was given on a stronger version of the dragon sorcerer. </p><p></p><p>As for the wild magic sorcerer, we didn't have longterm play experience with it to know that it just kind of never triggers a surge, and surges are the main source of flavor and power in the wild magic sorcerer. </p><p></p><p>Not to mention that seeing the favored soul and the first Storm sorcerer were an eye opener for people, not for me I always held they were weak from day one but the strong elemental affinity kept everybody blind to it, but no, the missinformed feedback of one year ago is law, or at least a pretext to not do anything meaningful with sorcerers, because allegations of avoiding power creep go down the drain when in the same book we have a wizard subclass that is outright overpowered. Or is it a double standard? </p><p></p><p>The favored soul was a nice thing, it just isn't truly official, and I fear what they will do to it when the time comes to make it official. I think I prefer to them to leave it untouched, the idea of the Storm sorcerer being official was exciting, but the end result was very thematically weak. The removal of the bonus spells from it wasn't just some reduction in power, it took away the ability to fill the niche, half these spells were non-standard spells that are now out of reach to storm sorcerers, now the storm sorcerer is just yet another lightning blaster, just with a different rider and delayed flight. The sad thing is that we still have no reason to go full sorcerer on AL games, and the only reason to play one on house games is still in the air. Sorcerer used to be a second among equals with the wizard, now it is outright inferior to even bards. I really miss the familiars and other long term magic effects, and don't tell me familiars are a wizard thing, the original sorcerer had familiars as a class feature.[/sblock]</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="MoonSong, post: 6744454, member: 6689464"] Ok, I lost track of my original intention. Sorry will try to be less hysteric another time. The original intention was. The designers refused to do anything that would invalidate the PHB archetypes, thus turning the chance of the storm sorcerer being a turning point for the class into yet another reason the class won't change. Any further attempt to improve it will have to worry about invalidating three subclasses instead of just two. The sorcerer really has very little going for it at low levels, a first level sorcerer -that isn't a favored soul- has nothing to show it isn't just a poor wizard. And at higher levels metamagic is too limited, just two options are too little. Spell selection is also a problem, it is too limited, the storm sorcerer used to have a lot of flavor, power and versatility on those extra known spells, half of them weren't standard sorcerer spells and are forever out of reach. Overall sorcerers make better multiclasses than single classers, and warlock/sorcerers are kind of infamous for being OP. I don't like the class as it is, I don't doubt it has a lot of power as a blaster, the problem is I would prefer to not being forced to blast. It isn't a matter of just power, but just opting out of blasting doesn't let you do all of these wonderful things you could do with magic in previous editions (bye bye familiars, rope tricks, summoned critters, greases, all sorcerer staples form the past.). That is the big gap in the sorcerer, but the designers are so invested on not invalidating the books that we will never see meaningful change. And this is frustrating because the sorcerer was completely left out of the open playtest, with no changes to help shape it like we helped with basically all other classes. [sblock= The original post]I'm deeply disappointed with the designers handling of the sorcerer. And I have completely lost faith on being able to convert previous edition PCs, let alone have a sorcerer that doesn't make your party wish you had brought a wizard instead. There are many reasons because of it. Everything started so well in the playtest, the sorcerer in there was a sorcerer's fan wet dream, hard to do conversions with, but very very cool and showing all of the strengths sorcerers traditionally had. The designers answer to this conversion bit? Jettison the sorcerer! get rid of it by wrapping it under wizard! Then it came all the negative feedback to it, but by then it was too late to include the sorcerer in the open playtest. But instead of just asking lots of questions about the soul of the sorcerer in the two last polls, they just decided to keep the sorcerer under wraps and avoid all mention to it, so it was one of the few classes that was designed with zero input from fans. The end result pleased many, but disappointed a lot more. We had some underwhelming core subclasses -on a weak chassis- but they received so good feedback on the official polls that the designers refuse to admit there's anything wrong with them. Yes lets ignore that the dragon sorcerer was actually nerfed by the errata. The changes to Elemental Affinity before and after errata result on a net nerf, that feedback was given on a stronger version of the dragon sorcerer. As for the wild magic sorcerer, we didn't have longterm play experience with it to know that it just kind of never triggers a surge, and surges are the main source of flavor and power in the wild magic sorcerer. Not to mention that seeing the favored soul and the first Storm sorcerer were an eye opener for people, not for me I always held they were weak from day one but the strong elemental affinity kept everybody blind to it, but no, the missinformed feedback of one year ago is law, or at least a pretext to not do anything meaningful with sorcerers, because allegations of avoiding power creep go down the drain when in the same book we have a wizard subclass that is outright overpowered. Or is it a double standard? The favored soul was a nice thing, it just isn't truly official, and I fear what they will do to it when the time comes to make it official. I think I prefer to them to leave it untouched, the idea of the Storm sorcerer being official was exciting, but the end result was very thematically weak. The removal of the bonus spells from it wasn't just some reduction in power, it took away the ability to fill the niche, half these spells were non-standard spells that are now out of reach to storm sorcerers, now the storm sorcerer is just yet another lightning blaster, just with a different rider and delayed flight. The sad thing is that we still have no reason to go full sorcerer on AL games, and the only reason to play one on house games is still in the air. Sorcerer used to be a second among equals with the wizard, now it is outright inferior to even bards. I really miss the familiars and other long term magic effects, and don't tell me familiars are a wizard thing, the original sorcerer had familiars as a class feature.[/sblock] [/QUOTE]
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