D&D 5E New class options in Tasha

[Cap'n Kobold]

Really... people cry injustice at the idea of removing sorcerers or warlocks or other classes, but getting rid of wizards is not an issue?

No one here is talking about removing wizards outside of the most bombastically disingenuous hyperbole. Wizards have a solid place in both power and the fiction.
Even with all the changes, they are still going to be better than Rangers for example, and we still see plenty of those around.

 

[Helldritch]

No one here is talking about removing wizards outside of the most bombastically disingenuous hyperbole. Wizards have a solid place in both power and the fiction.
Even with all the changes, they are still going to be better than Rangers for example, and we still see plenty of those around.

So says the man playing PF...
Again, in my games and many others around me, there are classes and subclsses that are almost never played because an other class does it better. Ranger were rare to the extreme before I made a few small changes. Same fir monks and, yes you guessed it sorcerers.

There was way more efficient ways to make them better than this rule. The only thing going for this rule is that it is am optional rule that I and my players will happily ignore and encourage others to ignore.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Lets actually have a look at what this change entails:

There are, maybe 30 solid utility spells on the Sorceror list in the PHB. Sorcerors only get 15 spells total, so they will not have them all, and this ability will allow them to adjust their loadout for specific situations that have been telegraphed in advance enough. It two weeks they can swap almost completely.

This is not a particular boost compared to the Wizard. The Wizard gets 44 spells in total. - They can have 30 utility spells available to them plus 14 combat spells and they can adjust their loadout in one night, not two weeks.
Furthermore due to ritual casting and having 10 more spells known, it is much more likely that the wizard can solve this specific problem immediately, rather than the party having to wait for days until the Sorceror adjusts their loadout. - The wizard still has immediate access to more spells and can generally cast more spells per day than the sorceror as well.
In fact the main reason that the sorceror might have a few utility tricks that the wizard can't do is that the wizard has access to a significant number of rather good spells that the sorceror does not, and so might want to take some of those instead. Deigning to allow the sorceror some relevance in utility because the wizard has better things to do.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

So says the man playing PF...

?
No, seriously. What?

Again, in my games and many others around me, there are classes and subclsses that are almost never played because an other class does it better. Ranger were rare to the extreme before I made a few small changes. Same fir monks and, yes you guessed it sorcerers.

You have my deepest condolences.

There was way more efficient ways to make them better than this rule. The only thing going for this rule is that it is am optional rule that I and my players will happily ignore and encourage others to ignore.

If you have very . . . power-focused players, a very relaxed sandbox with few time-critical events, and houserules that already address the wizard/sorceror capability gap, you may not have a use for them. But I believe that combination is an outlier rather than typical, and so I would not discourage the use of that rule for others running more commonplace games.

This rule is designed for the benefit of newer players and beginners to the hobby primarily.
It is extremely unlikely that I will not use it in most of my games, but even if I had no use for it myself, I would not encourage others to ignore it.

 

[Chaosmancer]

1) You faiped to read the posts so I'll say it once again. Rituals can be obtained with a simple feat: "ritual caster". This line of thought of yours is useless.

Ah, starting off with accusations of failure to read. An excellent start to a civil discussion.

Spell versatility is a level 1 class feature. So multi-classing sorcerer gets you that feature. This makes your line of thought useless too.

More constructively, ASI's are not a cheap resource to burn. So that is not an insignifgant cost for the sorcerer. Additionally, people have made it very clear how burdensome writing new spells into a ritual book is. Making the wizard "obsolete" takes quite a lot of effort on the part of the sorcerer.

Meanwhile, my comparison was base to base. Not base to base + feat + infinite time and resources.

2) As I said in earlier thread, I was not seeing many sorcerers until I applied two fixes of my own. Sorcery points bonus for charisma and one more known spell for charisma bonus with the bonus equal to one spell of the corresponding level. This has done wonders without balance issues.

Congrats. I homebrewed the fighter's level 20 capstone. That has just about the same level of relevance to my point as your homebrew.

3) As for the simulations. We used four scenari. Attack on lich lair. Assault on the efreet strong hold, The warlord and Githyanky for the ride. All are high level adventures that can be done in an evening about three or four hours of game time.

The players know these scenari well and know that they are test material for rule and balance checking. We have premade characters of appropiate levels with basic magic items and the expected spell list/known for a character of that level (13, 15 17 and 20) With the wizard, the difficulty is acceptable. With the sorcerer, the difficulty goes down the drain. Given the expected prep time, it means that the sorcerer will not only be able to change any "useless" spell for the task at hand, but will also be absolutely certain to get the best spell his list allow. This is not the case of the wizard as if the spell is not in his spellbook, too bad.

After the tests, the players looked at me and asked if I would really implement this rule. I said no. The sorcerer player told me it was a good thing as it was making him way to powerful.

This boost the warlock too but to a smaller degree.

You assume that we make these test blindly without careful thinking. We have been playing together for 37 years in some cases and well above 30 for the others. We are not novices in playtesting.

I don't assume you made them blindly, but I immediately see some questions about your methodology.

1) You ran four test games, but they are all adventures you all know well. This gives an information advantage when rebuilding the character.

2) What is "Expected Prep time"? Did they get a week to prepare? Were there any random encounters during that time? Because a sorcerer might want to hang on to a spell for potential encounters. Meanwhile, your players knew all the encounters coming at them.

How much information do the players have about the adventure, the enemies, and the traps?

Because, if your test gives them even 80% of the available information then you have a character with the ability to tailor their spells and very few unknown variables to account for. Of course that is powerful.

 

[Helldritch]

Lets actually have a look at what this change entails:

There are, maybe 30 solid utility spells on the Sorceror list in the PHB. Sorcerors only get 15 spells total, so they will not have them all, and this ability will allow them to adjust their loadout for specific situations that have been telegraphed in advance enough. It two weeks they can swap almost completely.

This is not a particular boost compared to the Wizard. The Wizard gets 44 spells in total. - They can have 30 utility spells available to them plus 14 combat spells and they can adjust their loadout in one night, not two weeks.
Furthermore due to ritual casting and having 10 more spells known, it is much more likely that the wizard can solve this specific problem immediately, rather than the party having to wait for days until the Sorceror adjusts their loadout. - The wizard still has immediate access to more spells and can generally cast more spells per day than the sorceror as well.
In fact the main reason that the sorceror might have a few utility tricks that the wizard can't do is that the wizard has access to a significant number of rather good spells that the sorceror does not, and so might want to take some of those instead. Deigning to allow the sorceror some relevance in utility because the wizard has better things to do.

The ritual part of your argument can be ignored as it has been debunked a few times already. Even a fighter can take ritual caster so imagine the sorcerer...

At high level, players will have the means to get information on what they will face. The sorcerer weakness was exactly the fact that he was generally stuck with his spell selection. His strength was that juicy, powerful meta magic shtick that came with making a sorcerer. I just gave them a sorcery point bonus equal to their charisma bonus and one more spell known for each level equal to their charisma bonus (at 20 charisma, it is 1 more spell known for level 1-5 anf 5 more sorcery points) not that much at first glance but it was enough to make the class competitive and interesting without overdoing it.

The rule as it stands is a bad one.

?
No, seriously. What?

You have my deepest condolences.

If you have very . . . power-focused players, a very relaxed sandbox with few time-critical events, and houserules that already address the wizard/sorceror capability gap, you may not have a use for them. But I believe that combination is an outlier rather than typical, and so I would not discourage the use of that rule for others running more commonplace games.

This rule is designed for the benefit of newer players and beginners to the hobby primarily.
It is extremely unlikely that I will not use it in most of my games, but even if I had no use for it myself, I would not encourage others to ignore it.

Sorry for the sarcasm of the earlier post. I apologize it went out way arsher than I intended.

Yes I have power gamers but not because they are in an easy sand box. I have seen more TPK in 5ed than in all the other editions combined. So no, I don't give a break to my players and that is why they try to optimize as much as possible.

As for the beginners. It is exactly for them that I fear that this rule is way over the top. Not all young DM will notice that the wizard never shine and that the sorcerer has all the spot light. Then they will wonder why no one is making wizards just as no one was making rangers. When they saw a beast ranger lauching his bear at an enemy an kept having his full attacks, using a bonus action only to redirect the bear to an other target they said it was not in the rule. I asked if they had lots of rangers in their games and replied no. And they understood why I had made the small changes I had made.

The only rules that are accepted are those that can't be abused easily. The change your spell over night can be abused very easily.

 

[Minigiant]

Again what spells would the sorcerer be swapping?

 

[Undrave]

Even with prepared spellcasters, my experience in 5e is that spell-swapping is fairly rare—people tend to find the spells they like and keep them prepared, only swapping out on occasion.

Same here. Plus it means having to no always check back the rules on your spells if you get familiar with them.

If that’s the worst thing that happens because of the rule change, than that’s no problem at all.

I still don't get why a DM should care that a specific class never appear in their games? Like... maybe their players just don't want to play Wizards, Rogues, Warlock, or whatever regardless of power level? If you're a Wizard player and feel your class is weak, that's one thing, but if nobody is raising objection why should a DM worry about the class choice of their players exactly?

Again, THAT'S THE WIZARD THING. Of course it involves a rest to swap spells to do those plans! It's what the Wizard has done in almost every edition! That's their Schick! Nobody PREPARES the Knock spell (it doesn't come up often enough to require a precious spell slot prep in unknown danger situations). It's on the list to do just what I described - prep it when you see the need and you have time to come back to it. Same as most of the other highly situational exploration spells.

Not seeing how you are obsolete, Mr. Wizard. Maybe you won't always be the only one with the solution, but that isn't the same thing.

Ya know I get it... In the previous editions, especially in 3e and before, the Wizard was 'the Batman'. The guy who's always like "I got a spell for that!" if they prepare well enough, and that felt good. It felt gratifying to be the one guy with the solution... And now you're not the only one who can pull off the "I got a spell for that" and it feels like a betrayal.

Because the Wizard's identity began to rely on that single aspect too much it feels like if THAT part is taken away, even just partially, the Wizard's got nothing.

Because the 5e Wizard has no class features between level 2 and level 18 that aren't linked to their weaksauce subclasses.

I don't think spell versality is an issue in itself, it just showcase how weak of a design the 5e Wizard is because its 'Batman' aspect was all the designers care about... And they really needed to have more rituals in the game. Because if the 'one spell' happen to be a Ritual, the Wizard can still be the 'I got a spell for that!' guy, all the time, with no rest. They're the premiere Ritual Caster, you can't copy that with a feat.

Also, maybe the Wizard just needs a feature where they can change their prepared spell list on a short rest? Like, just switch one prepared spell for another a number of times per day equal to proficiency bonus?

If you take into account the fact that around level 12 you have a feat to burn, the sorcerer will take ritual caster wizard and now have access to all wizards rituals fully achieving complete appropriation of what was the strong points going for the wizards.

That's exagerating.

The Ritual Caster feat gives you TWO level 1 Rituals. That's it. You still need to find and recopy any other ritual.

And since you gained those from the Ritual Caster feat, they are not affected by the Spell Versatility ability since they were not gained through the Spellcasting feature.

If I had been designing subclasses for the PHB, you know one of the Wizard one would have been a Ritualist. Someone who can copy rituals cheaply, can turn certain spells into rituals, cast rituals more cheaply, learns bonus ones at certain level, and even poach rituals from other classes.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

The ritual part of your argument can be ignored as it has been debunked a few times already. Even a fighter can take ritual caster so imagine the sorcerer...

No, it cannot be ignored.

There have been attempts to debunk it, pointing to the Ritual Caster feat, and they have been, frankly, dishonest.
For one, they ignore the Metamagic Adept feat.
For two (and this is the really important part): They are lying about what Ritual Caster actually does.
Ritual Caster does not let you substitute for a wizard who has been adding ritual spells into their spellbook as they level. Ritual caster gives you two, 1st level rituals.

That is it.

You don't get additional ones as you level. The only way that you can add to it is by finding scrolls or spellbooks and copying spells into you book, at a cost of time and money. - This should sound a little familiar to you, since it is exactly like what the wizard does, except the wizard does it better. (Since they can actually scribe and cast from spell slots rather than just rituals.)
When comparing the wizard and sorceror, the wizard's ability to scribe additional spells isn't generally brought up, because it is DM fiat and so cannot be assumed.

So, to clarify for those people making the claim that a sorceror with the Ritual Caster feat is a fair comparison to a wizard without it:
Are you talking about comparing a sorceror with two 1st level rituals in their book to an nth-level wizard?
Or are you comparing a sorceror with an extensive collection of rituals through additional spells with a wizard that has also had access to lots of additional spells?

Pick. Your. Hill.

As for the beginners. It is exactly for them that I fear that this rule is way over the top. Not all young DM will notice that the wizard never shine and that the sorcerer has all the spot light. Then they will wonder why no one is making wizards just as no one was making rangers. When they saw a beast ranger lauching his bear at an enemy an kept having his full attacks, using a bonus action only to redirect the bear to an other target they said it was not in the rule. I asked if they had lots of rangers in their games and replied no. And they understood why I had made the small changes I had made.

New players don't tend to perform an intricate cost/benefit analysis of classes, or have the knowledge about the game that allows them to do so. In the majority of games by new groups (often using official adventure paths), there is simply not going to be the downtime required to abuse this option, even if the players were able to find some telegraphing of future encounters.

I fully accept that your particular game, because of its several unusual factors, may suffer from this rule, and so it would be better not to use it in that case.
It is the rather hyperbolic insistence that it will break D&D as a whole that I find objectionable.

 

[Helldritch]

Ah, starting off with accusations of failure to read. An excellent start to a civil discussion.

Spell versatility is a level 1 class feature. So multi-classing sorcerer gets you that feature. This makes your line of thought useless too.

More constructively, ASI's are not a cheap resource to burn. So that is not an insignifgant cost for the sorcerer. Additionally, people have made it very clear how burdensome writing new spells into a ritual book is. Making the wizard "obsolete" takes quite a lot of effort on the part of the sorcerer.

Meanwhile, my comparison was base to base. Not base to base + feat + infinite time and resources.

If you want to abuse a rule to see how it might be; then you use all the tools at your disposal. You don't limit yourself to level 1. You go for the levels I mentionned

Congrats. I homebrewed the fighter's level 20 capstone. That has just about the same level of relevance to my point as your homebrew.

Homebrew has nothing to do with the tests. It was to show that WotC could have found way better correction to the problems of the the sorcerer and some other classes (were they willing).

I don't assume you made them blindly, but I immediately see some questions about your methodology.

Thank you for not assuming, but you imply it nonetheless.

1) You ran four test games, but they are all adventures you all know well. This gives an information advantage when rebuilding the character.

Characters are all fixed at their levels, magical items, expected spells for their classes and subclasses. Nothing is ever changed from test to test.

2) What is "Expected Prep time"? Did they get a week to prepare? Were there any random encounters during that time? Because a sorcerer might want to hang on to a spell for potential encounters. Meanwhile, your players knew all the encounters coming at them.

Prep time, is situationnal depending on the scenari. The warlord offers about 3 days worth and is the lowest level. The Githianky is the highest and offers unlimited as Astral you know....

How much information do the players have about the adventure, the enemies, and the traps?

Any information that can be obtained through contact other plane an even more powerful divinations. Up to the point where they would have the whole map with expected numbers of opponents as any high level characters would try to get information. The information gathering of high level characters is over whelming. You don't go for absolute secrets against these. You go for tactics and the unexpected surprise opponents.

Because, if your test gives them even 80% of the available information then you have a character with the ability to tailor their spells and very few unknown variables to account for. Of course that is powerful.

Only 80%?????? A high level character can get way more than that. But traps are placed randomly around the map to keep a level of surprise and reinforcement are never taken into account as they might be or not be there.

On the other hand, opponents are expected to the same to the players as they could get a warning (especially the Giths) and this could lead to interesting traps that divinations would not reveal.

Some of the spell that were swap and I remember the Gith adventure as it was the last one. I'll ask the sorcerer player if he still have his notes. But those I remember:
Charm person for Silent Image
Dark Vision for Alter self
Hold Person for See invisibility
Fly for Stinking cloud
Banishment for Dominate beast and then Wall of fire at rest.
Teleport circle for Animate object
Reverse Gravity for Delayed Blast Fire Ball
Time Stop for Meteor Swarm.

That is a lot of spells.