What if, just as the wizard can recover half their level in spell slots once per day during a short rest, the sorcerer could recover half their level in sorcery points?
Well, that might help some, sure. Up to this point I haven't really had an opportunity to explain why I think the sorcerer is a second-class caster compared to the wizard, so I'll try to do so now. First, I'm assuming that a Sorcerous Origin is roughly equivalent to an Arcane Tradition. I don't want to go into the specific origins except to say that I think they are pretty narrow, but really whether one appeals to you or not is a matter of preference. So that leaves the basic class features for comparison.
Both classes have the exact same spell progression and slots per day. However, the Wizard recovers half of his level in spell levels once per day, so this is actually an advantage to the wizard. The wizard will be casting more spells per day than a sorcerer.
In terms of spells known, a wizard has a tremendous advantage. Wizards have access to every spell that a sorcerer does, plus many more. Wizards can also have every possible wizard spell in their spell books, whereas a sorcerer only has 15 spells known, ever. That's roughly 2 spells per spell level. In addition, wizards can cast rituals, which sorcerers cannot do. The number of spells that a wizard casts, and the variety of those spells, far outshines anything a sorcerer might be able to do. The sorcerer does know one extra cantrip, but, eh, I'm not sure how much that really matters.
So what does the sorcerer get in return for crippled access to spells? Sorcery points. These sorcery points can be used for one of two things: to recover spell slots or for using metamagic. Using sorcery points to recover spell slots is actually slightly better for recovering high level spell slots than Arcane Recovery is for a wizard, so in theory a high level sorcerer could get a very slight advantage in number of spells during a day than a wizard. Of course, this is at the cost of slashing the sorcerer's number of spells known and choosing from a stunted list of spells available, and even then the wizard can still cast any number of rituals, against which the sorcerer can never compete. Based on that, using sorcery points is generally a terrible option.
Metamagic must be the equalizer. However, you start with only two options for metamagic, and you don't get another option until 10th level. The most "twists" you'll ever have is 4. You have one sorcery point per level, and you generally have between 1 to 1.5 spell slots per level. So if you choose a metamagic such as Careful Spell, Distant Spell, Empowered Spell, or Subtle Spell, you can pretty much use one of those options on nearly every spell you cast. Unfortunately, since you only start with two choices of metamagic, if you do that, you've essentially said that you want to impose all of the spell selection limitations on yourself just so that you can cast all of your spells silently, or extended, or whatever you chose. If you really want to be a blaster, Empowered might fit the bill here. I don't recall the math, but I think being able to re-roll a die increases the average result for the die by about 1, so Empowered effectively grants you +Cha to any damaging spell - not bad, if you really, really want to be a blaster and nothing else.
For sure, some of the other metamagic options provide some neat abilities. Quicken is pretty nice, for a reasonable cost in Sorcery points, and Heightened Spell can be useful when trying to get a key spell to stick. But the problem is, you can only choose a scant number of these options. If you choose Heighten Spell, don't count on using it more than once per day until 6th level, and don't count on using your other metamagic much on the days when you use Heighten. If you choose Careful Spell, how often is that really going to be useful, and with how many spells?
And that's the crux of the problem. The sorcerer sacrifices so much in terms of spell casting variety and spell casting frequency in return for an extremely narrow and limited set of tools that he can use via Sorcery Points.
So what would I like to see from the sorcerer? Honestly I would have preferred a different casting mechanic altogether so that the sorcerer doesn't seem like just a mentally challenged wizard who only prepares a handful of blasting spells every day, but it's too late for that. Other than that I'm not sure, but the proposal to allow recovery of Sorcery Points might not be a bad idea. Access to more Metamagic options, or even all of the options from the start, might be another idea. Allowing the sorcerer to really focus on what makes him different than a wizard (altering spells) rather than just dabbling in it would do the most at this point to not only differentiate the sorcerer, but also give the class its own space to shine.
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