D&D General One thing I hate about the Sorcerer

[Yaarel]

magic is dangerous, etc.

I hope to see in 5e, "rituals" split away from spells as a separate design space.

Any player can use a skill check to perform a ritual successfully. Each ritual has its own prereqs depending on concept and gaming balance. Many are gated by level. Some require the ritual to be during rare astronomical events, others require rare ingredients. Most have strange evocative requirements: hold a white rose in the right hand, and a red rose in the left, then choose only one of them and eat it.

A Ritual is a mechanic whose flavor is more like the magic of fairy tales.

Because it is a skill check, anyone can attempt it, which is also more like fairy tales − and many novels and movies − like say "Beetlejuice" three times in front of a mirror.

Also because it is a skill check, it can be dangerous. Each ritual can specify what happens if the check is a crit, success, fail, or fumble. For a fumble, the magic might go horribly awry. Failure to meet the prereqs properly might auto-fumble.

It all depends on the specific ritual.

 

[Gammadoodler]

Yes, Forgotten Realms is the default setting. Everything in core is true in the 2014 version of FR, but not necessarily true in other settings.

Meanwhile, specifics like places like Icewind Dale, are Forgotten Realms geography, and persons such as Drizzt, Tasha, Mordenkainen, etcetera as well as specific Human ethnicities and religious traditions, officially exist in the FR setting.

This is explicitly contradicted in the beginning of the 5e PHB. See '"Worlds of Adventure" starting on pg 5.

 

[Yaarel]

This is explicitly contradicted in the beginning of the 5e PHB. See '"Worlds of Adventure" starting on pg 5.

Heh, and yet, every single page in the Players Handbook is describing the Forgotten Realms. In detail.

The intention is for players to use the Players Handbook for other settings too. But it actually doesnt work well. There are too many problems. Other settings actually require their own Players Handbooks with their own setting-specific flavors and details.

The only way to make other settings use the Players Handbook is if those other settings are ... exactly like Forgotten Realms.

For example, a setting that lacks gods is an extreme pain to do well, because so much of Forgotten Realms theism is baked into so many pages of the Players Handbook, even class descriptions and spell descriptions, plus official adventures.

 

[Yaarel]

I agree with original post, all Human mages are innately magical: Wizard, Sorcerer, and Warlock. The three classes are different methods to develop ones magic talent.


These three classes are way too similar to each other. Wizard and Warlock are scholars. Wizard and Sorcerer do the same spells. Sorcerer and Warlock are altered by an otherworldly power.

To distinguish them, consider the following brainstorm.


Wizard is creator magic − wielding cosmic forces, force objects, elemental energies, substances, and quasi-real objects.
• Remove mind magic (Enchantment) from the Wizard list, but let the Enchanter subclass add it (so fans wont cry).
• Remove planar magic from the Wizard list. No more Planeshift, Contact Other Plane, no more summoning spells.
• Remove necromancy from the Wizard spell list. Give it to Warlock.
• Remove life magic, including animal, plant, and healing. No Clone spell.
• Life magic belongs Bard and Druid, to some degree Cleric.
• Emphasize Material component with alchemical science flavor or more typically a Wand or similarly engineered focus.
• Let Wizard cast cantrips without components, as these express magical talent. But higher slots need technique.
• Wizard is a scholar who can cast any found spell, but remove less relevant spells from automatic while leveling.

Warlock is darkside − the dreadful aspects of magic.
• Emphasize necromancy, including Undead, Fiend, Aberration, and Unseelie Fey.
• Emphasize planar summoning spells as agents of the necromantic Patron. Find Familiar works well for Warlock.
• Reflavor and diversify the tedious Eldritch Blast, maybe as a poltergeist that is Undead, Fey, Fiend, or Aberration.
• Emphasize Enchantment and Illusion with flavors of deception, unwholesome influence and falsity.

Sorcerer might be the "become a monster" class − specifically via a planar magic.
• A Sorcerer personifies and incarnates a plane, wielding its nonhuman magic. Unlike a Warlock Patron who is a creature.
• Magic must be innate − without Material spell components ever − never even a "costly" gp component
• Maybe Somatic hand gestures are a Sorcerer feature, as the body itself is augmented.
• Sorcery is magical self-expression, including to express a nonhuman identity.
• A "Vampire class" can effectively be a Sorcerer subclass for Shadowfell, and be model for other planar concepts.
• The limited number of spells represent the monster concept, each subclass recommends default spells.
• Players can choose differently, but a subclass recommends the spells that are thematic for the subclass.
• Emphasize planar magic that is specific to the incarnating plane.
• Emphasize Enchantment, because sorcery is an influence that centers on a persona personality.
• Emphasize Elemental Evocation as a vehicle of flashy self-expression that correlates with the plane.

 

[Gammadoodler]

Heh, and yet, every single page in the Players Handbook is describing the Forgotten Realms. In detail.

The intention is for players to use the Players Handbook for other settings too. But it actually doesnt work well. There are too many problems. Other settings actually require their own Players Handbooks with their own setting-specific flavors and details.

The only way to make other settings use the Players Handbook is if those other settings are ... exactly like Forgotten Realms.

For example, a setting that lacks gods is an extreme pain to do well, because so much of Forgotten Realms theism is baked into so many pages of the Players Handbook, even class descriptions and spell descriptions, plus official adventures.

Holy hyperbolic inaccuracy Batman. Every single page? In detail? Using the PHB means making every realm exactly like the PHB?

Get outta here.

 

[Chaosmancer]

There's nothing inherently un-fun about being a high level Fighter. You take the hits, you deal the damage, you can play out several fantasies, from the visceral, primal satisfaction of beating someone up with a sword the size of Texas to being a cunning archer, to being a savvy master of tactical combat, and so on.

What is unfun is when the game shifts to requiring you to deal with "weird enemy supernatural ability #483" and you find yourself needing magic to overcome it. What is unfun is when things you struggle with, the magical classes have answers for. What is unfun is when the abilities of other classes are more impactful than what you are given. Like, take Indomitable, which lets you reroll a failed save (which you were probably unlikely to succeed at in the first place, since you can, at best, have 3 good saves), and Mr. Paladin over there gets to add his Charisma bonus to all saves no matter where he is (but for you to get that benefit, you have to be glued to him).

Or how you have no ability to make your attacks more accurate (outside of subclass), but every Barbarian can just give themselves advantage whenever they want, the casters are tossing d4's, d6's, and rerolls around like candy, and the Rogue, of all people, gets the power to say "nah, I hit brah"!

If a Fighter gets grappled, he has to hope he has good Athletics and luck. If a caster gets grappled, hey, they might be able to Misty Step away!

If a melee Fighter has to fight a flying dragon, he has to use a bow or toss javelins. A caster could have powerful spells, or even the ability to leap into the air or fly.

If a Fighter gets poisoned, paralyzed, petrified, or any other of nasty occurrences that he is probably the prime target for being on the receiving end of, he can't do much about it. But a spell can be cast to make that all go away.

By this point, I can tell some people are ready to angrily reply to me on this, so let me be clear. I'm not saying playing a non-supernatural character isn't fun. But D&D is built to make playing a supernatural character potentially more fun, or at the very least, to have abilities to handle the various circumstances the game throws at a character that the non-supernatural character can only dream of.

Which can lead to a miserable experience. I stress the word "can" here because I know, someone is going to say "I've never seen any of this in any game I have ever played or heard of" or "obviously the DM has to do X, Y, or Z to make sure this never, ever happens" or even "working as intended" (lol).

But this is a reality some people do have to deal with, I've seen it a lot, and it's a consequence of the fact that, from the very beginning, D&D's approach to magic has been pretty much "magic can do anything", while trying to keep people without magic more or less grounded when it comes to their abilities.

Agreed, there are a few really fun things that fighter subclasses can do, but ultimately the fighter simply lacks tools for dealing with the challenges that they are often facing, unless that tool is "attack with weapon"

One of the few things I'm glad about the One DnD fighter is the Tactical Mind and Tactical shift abilities. They aren't enough, but they are at least steps in the correct direction to open the way for something MORE in the future.

 

[Chaosmancer]

It's more that High level Mundanes would squish High level Arcanes, Divines, Primals, Psionics whatever if they are not explicitly stated as being also a martial.

As well making skill challenges High level Mundanes would find challenging would be Impossible for nonMundanes or Mundanes under other paths.

That's bad gameplay for a team game.

Lady Shiva of the DC universe terrifies human, metahumanz and aliens alike. And she's only a regular u augmented human lady.u

But if Lady Shiva attacks you with a sword, you one of 4 things

• Are one of the maybe 10 people who can block her attack
• Are immune to sword attacks
• Are uncatchable or untargettable
• ARE DEAD

That's bad gameplay for what D&D. High level Mundanes in media are "Dodge or Die", "DC 20 skill check or die", or "Make DC 30 skill check or Suck" over and over and over.

That's before you needing to make rules and ruling for all the untold actions they have via training.

See but... there are already parts of that which are true the other way around.

For example, I don't care if a level 20 Fighter can squish a level 20 wizard they can get their hands on. 9 times out of the 10 the level 20 fighter is putting hands on Pit Fiends and Ancient Dragons which are already billed as powerful martial and mundane threats. So I don't care about that angle of it.

As for the DCs... that kind of doesn't matter. Spellcasters can ALREADY achieve things that are utterly impossible for non-casters to handle. A Non-Caster can't interrogate a tree, or teleport through a Wall of Force, or sneak into a fortress as a mouse. This is actually why I've seen a lot of people say that Druids, Wizards and Bards are better at exploration challenges than rogues. Rogues have to play by the rules of physics. Spellcasters don't. Let us say that a Lock has a DC 35 to pick, a level 20 Rogue with a +17 to the roll would still need to roll an 18 to unlock it. Knock unlocks it automatically. So, my concern on that end is minimal, though it would be a hard thing to figure out how to make all that work.

And that kind of demonstrates the point, to a degree. That thing you say is bad for team gameplay? That certain challenges and fighters are IMPOSSIBLE for one side of the divide to deal with? That is already true. A high level human fighter's best defense against a high level spellcaster is winning initiative and killing the spellcaster before they can cast. Fighter's don't have answers to things like fear effects, hold person, charm and dominate effects, sure they can take the right feat and with the changes to Indomitable they actually can succeed on a few of those saves, but overall they are much more vulnerable. And if a skill challenge involves something like flying, speaking to the dead, heck enchanted bars that cannot be broken with the McGuffin on the other side are a terrible challenge for even high level martials (Quite literally, you just have to make it unreasonable for a lasso to work and they are out of options entirely), while low-level casters will laugh at how trivial it is to get the item (Mage hand, unseen servant, misty step, enlarge/reduce, just to name a few).

So... we are ALREADY in this situation, and many of us see widening the martial toolbox as the best solution.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Another problem that 5e has that I should have mentioned is allowing magical classes the ability to poach the things the non-magical characters have as well. If you're a full caster, you have no business having access to Extra Attack. I know people love Gishes (as do I) but it's silly to be like "so my Bladesinger can mix it up in melee with super high AC if I want, but I can't do that, I'm still a Wizard". You should build a whole class around this concept, not slap it onto a Wizard (or Bard)*. I guess it's ok for a class like Warlock or Sorcerer, who have harsher limits on their spell use, but I think it's telling when comparing Eldritch Knight to Bladesinger. It's like, wait, so I can fight good and have 1/3 casting from a somewhat limited pool of spells or I can fight reasonably good some of the time on my guy with full casting and all the best spells?

*I guess since they're sort of built to occasionally hit stuff, Clerics might be ok with Extra Attack, but thanks to how the War Domain functions, there's apparently no budget for it in Cleric subclasses. Or maybe it would make War redundant, I dunno.

I think it cuts a little deeper than that.

When you think of poaching from non-magical characters.... extra attack is kind of it. And as someone who has place a druid and a cleric with Shillelagh and Booming Blade... you don't even NEED extra attack for most characters. So, what else do non-martials even have to poach?

 

[Chaosmancer]

I often wonder what a D&D campaign would look like if it lacked any obligation for the DM to provide rewards like that. Call it the A-Team game: the PCs adventure for whatever cause they Believe in, but they never get a substantial reward. No magic items that aren't macguffins, no titles, no money except just enough to pay for a night's rest and some new arrows. Every session starts out just scraping by.

I wonder how long interest would last?

Depends on how engaging you make the story, and how upfront you are with the players. I've had great success with some games where the group went quite a long time before reminding me that I hadn't given out any rewards for months.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I'm not a "scream bloody murder" person. But I do see their point. Magic (in myth and literature, and movies, etc.) does things and solves things like wall climbing, lock picking etc.

Its magic. Of course the wizard would develop a spell to open locks, or spider climb etc. Why wouldnt they? But that viewpoint is a result of what would happen if magic was real, and we are playing a game where its supossed to be fun for all, no matter what class they chose.

I think its a table thing/style. We dont have fighter valets for the wizard, because they are to busy bashing skulls. We play slightly old school, so the fighter does have their own magic items to help solve things. (/tangent..ahh the glory days when the fighter got boots of flying, had improved invis cast on them, and drank a potion of haste, it was a flying invis helicopter of doom)

Its also weird...wizards can cast wish, but they cant research or create a spell to open locks because...?

BL: I'm not disparaging anyone's view; its a hard thing from both sides, and its been debated for many a year.

Using this as a jumping off point.

One of the single most powerful exploration spells I have ever seen in play is Mage Hand. It is so insanely versatile that many times I actively choose not to use it optimally. Nothing it really out of reach, trapped chests or really any traps are nullified. And the thing is, the more creative you get with it, the more powerful it is.

But it isn't anything that seems gamebreaking. To take magic to a point where you can't overshadow a character just by having mage hand, you would need to cut it back so drastically... it wouldn't be modern DnD anymore. There are such simple things, and eventually you would end up with magic solely being regulated to combat direct damage spells.... which isn't what magic DOES. Like sure, we see that sort of magic, but the vast majority of magic in culture is not 2d10 fire damage.

So, I kind of immediately reject the notion that we can solve the martial/caster divide by stripping the Wizard back to the era when the phrase "linear Fighter - Quadratic Wizard" was coined. Because it was still a truism then, and we'd have to strip the wizard even further down, giving them even less magic. Instead, I am far more interested in giving the martials more interesting abilities. Some like the paladin and ranger do this with magic, but the rogue from One DnD is largely sitting pretty as well. They have a fascinating new combat system and really all they need is a way to utilize their skills to break what skills are currently capable of. To answer the question of what do spellcasters give up in exchange for their ability to automatically solve problems.