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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6910575" data-attributes="member: 2067">You're on a slippery slope here.From 3e: "It’s true that sorcerers often have striking good looks, usually with a touch of the exotic that hints at an unusual heritage...A household with a budding sorcerer in it may be troubled by strange sounds or lights, which can create the impression that the place is haunted...sorcerers are on their own, feared by erstwhile friends and misunderstood by family...Arcane spellcasters from savage lands or from among the brutal humanoids are more likely to be sorcerers than wizards."In their very inception, sorcerers were "freaks." They didn't fit in. They caused disturbances. They were common among the "brutal humanoids." 5e preserves that flavor, and even backs it up mechanically with wild surges and dragon scales and flying. That doesn't mean only monsters are sorcerers, but it does mean that every sorcerer is at least somewhat of an outsider. That's part of the sorcerer's original story. And if flavor matters, then it should be part of the story of any sorcerer that you play as well. It doesn't have to be, of course, but then the flavor doesn't really matter very much and you can make whatever flavorful changes to whatever class or archetype you want and your "dimensional mage" can be a wizard. A new player doesn't know enough about what the spell options do to have an opinion one way or another. They don't have a level of system familiarity that lets them understand that spell lists are distinct between classes, let alone be capable of comparing them. Also, newbies don't typically come to the game with a strong character image initially in their head. They approach the game by asking "What can I be?" (Or "Can I be like (pop culture icon X)?" at best), and go from there. "Limitations" aren't something that you feel until you've explored the thing thoroughly first. Yeah, I would definitely argue that a Wizard in any edition is newbie poison. Hell, spellcasting alone is probably about six decision points more complicated than it should be from a purely newbie perspective, but we've got some historical baggage there that can't be shed without dramatically altering the brand identity of the thing, so I'm comfortable with "slightly less confusing than the editions before it" as a truce. The OD&D Wizard probably wins the newbie-friendly contest, and even it is saddled with system mastery issues and Vancian spellcasting.  If D&D is a game meant to be played at a table with friends, then it should be designed for that medium, and every other axis it could fire on is secondary at best. If D&D is not meant to be played at a table with friends, I've got more fun things to do with a free evening than pouring over books imagining how cool this character that I'll never actually get to see played would hypothetically be. My free time is overflowing with options. It weakens the fluff divide significantly to give sorcerers access to thorough, methodical, ritualistic magic. That isn't an instinctive power born in your soul, it's...wizard stuff. A spell or two might be OK in a subclass that specifically had need for it, but as a general principle, the sorcerer's spell list should only include spells that enhance it's playstyle as a user tightly themed spontaneous magic. Some spells, I could see a case for (silence maybe!). Others, no (Tenser's Floating Disc isn't spontaneous magic, it's a wizard spell developed by a specific wizard and trained to other specific wizards through their books).It could be a huge mistake to use narrow classes as a design ethos. But, 5e seems to be doing fine - whether that's because of, in spite of, or regardless of it's use of narrow classes is mostly a matter of opinion. The line is not nearly as hard as that. Which ability score you cast spells with or whether your spellbook is a literal book or just a sort of free-floating spell list or whatever is all fluff. What's more, deciding your Arcane Trickster has a mysterious magical origin is also fluff. There's nothing hypothetical about your frustration.However, your frustration sounds like it is based in aesthetics, not execution. These are very different kinds of frustrations. In as much as D&D is designed to be a game played at a table with friends, execution is much more important. Aethetics have a lot to say, too, sometimes even louder, but they are a secondary goal, and shouldn't get in the way of the primary goal.And narrow classes, IMXP, make D&D a better game to play at a table with more friends.</blockquote>

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