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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Petrosian" data-source="post: 908144" data-attributes="member: 1149">I will weigh in with my opinions.First, my bias.I prefer to play the sorcerer for several reasons. The sorcerer class opens up a much wider scope of character concepts from singing mage to elemental mage to the enchanter to any number of mage style character themes that are not "the bookish academic who spends most of his time hunched over his spellbook or rooting around arcane shops in search of scrolls." The time and money involved in feeding the spellbook habit eats way too much into "character downtime" and IMO restricts the wizard to a rather narrow concept. (When i feel like that concept would be fun, then the wizard is my choice but i find that one concept very rarely desirable.) The sorcerer involves a lot less accounting and bookkeeping, especially in play, with the trade off of making the out-of-session character development decisions more crucial. I like that idea. Having a character i can fit the stats for on one sheet and being able to just play and not tabulate as much in play is great for my money.Finally, the few times i do get to play, its nice to know what I am getting. The sorcerer is fairly self-contained and self-evident. The wizard is so very much dependent on campaign setting "how the Gm runs things" issues including wealth levels, wealth distribution, free time (VITAL!!!) and even something as basic as how often the plot is PC driven (we pick time and place) vs story driven (invaders sacking town) and how much foreshadow and how much availability of information ahead of time (crucial for dialing specific key spells even with typically some open spell slots.) These elements are all vital to the capabilities of the wizard and these all vary from game to game from Gm to GM and from player group to player group. So, a wizard is not a known quantity... if the game features lots of wealth, tons of free time, and lots of player driven events with ample resources for advance knowledge of the challenges ahead... the wizard will walk as a god among insects... if instead its a harried seat-of-your-pants survive the evil overlord's invasion and save as many people as you can and try and turn the tide before he defiles the holy city and breaches the wards entombing the evil god.... then these aspects will work against the wizard to a great deal and he will find himself struggling quite a bit.I prefer knowing what I am buying before i spend my time.**********************balance wise... the 500 lb gorilla for the wizard is the ability to when given adequate info dial up specific key spells. This does presume a broad spellbook. The 500 lb gorilla for the sorcerer is the spontaneous casting, which means if he has just one spell that is beneficial for the current encounter... he can ram that one spell down your throat until you choke.  The sorcerers spells per day is not just slots but the fact that he never "wastes" slots" he never has two shadow cache spells prepared and eating slots when the drow invade the castle.Its extrem,ely hard to assess independent balance between these two classes because the wizard is so very much dependent on external campaign issues which are NOT defined and regimented.So, like most things, balance is derived from the cross referencing of the challenges presented and the character's abilities. A Gm can certainly run a game where sorcerers are balanced and a game where wizards are balanced as well as games which work towards imbalance. The classes are so different as to make these require different styles for these.So to me balance is a GM choice issue more than anything else.The only time i would routinely look to preferring to play a wizard for "balance" would be when i was going to be the only spellcaster. If there was any other spellcaster, even just a cleric, then i consider the choices equally balanced.About the only time</blockquote>

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