D&D General One thing I hate about the Sorcerer

[Ruin Explorer]

The 3E sorcerer exists in large part to justify spending all that PHB space on the massive wizard spell list, so I'm afraid that was a non-starter from the beginning.

Ahhh finally, a view even more cynical than mine!

The real problem is clerics, because wizards and clerics are basically the same thing in most myths.

And an awful lot of games - indeed almost any game which isn't fairly directly D&D-derived, either has Clerics and Wizards as the same class, or "healer caster" is essentially a kind of Wizard, and has "wizardine" characteristics (i.e. staff, robes, may owe allegiance to a supernal being but isn't usually powered by faith, and so on).

Random list of examples:

Elder Scrolls - Wizard and Clerics are the same thing.
Dragon's Dogma 1/2 - Wizard and Clerics are the same thing.
Dark Souls/Elden Ring - Classless, but they use different stats - Arcane and Faith in ER, though a lot of more powerful magic requires both Arcane and Faith
The Witcher 1/2/3 - Wizards and Clerics are the same thing.
Final Fantasy - Varies but there are none where "Clerics" are really a thing, just healing-oriented robe/staff casters exist in some - most casters in most games can potentially cast heals though.
Ultima series - Wizards and Clerics are the same thing.
World of Warcraft - Complicated because Mages can't heal - except in the new experimental version of Classic, where they can, but Priests are a weird hybrid of Divine magic, Psionic-style stuff, and Cthulhu-adjacent stuff, and Paladins are basically D&D Clerics but with the faith element turned down very low (and not required at all in some cases). There's also a new-ish class which has Arcane magic AND healing - but is only available to dragon-people race.
Dragon Age - Wizards and Clerics are the same thing.
Pillars of Eternity 1/2- Intentional BG throwback and Wizards and Priests are very much separate and somewhat D&D-like, as are Druids (who can heal), Ciphers (Psions - can't heal), and Chanters (Bards - can heal, or at least pump out a ton of THP, I forget).

I could go on. And the same is true in a lot of TT RPGs - it's rare to see anything Cleric-like unless a game is OSR or otherwise aping D&D, and even then it's no guarantee. It's an old tradition, too - Shadowrun, one of the first RPGs I played after D&D, in about 1990, has Wizards and Clerics as the same thing.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I mean, Wizards are the worst class in the game due to how boring, uninspiring, and poorly designed it is, so they should be erased from existences like the waste of space they are.

I love the Sorcerer's identity of having this innate magical power that either manifests due to a connection to a powerful ancestry or by being so heavily infused with some form of magic power source at some point in your life that forever changes you, gifting you access to magic. The idea of a caster that wields raw magical power that is controlled through their force of will and emotions alone, learning to master themselves and these innate gifts is very appealing to me. That theme alone is enough to make me always pick a Sorcerer over a Wizard when I want to play a caster, regardless of mechanics. I also lean very heavily into this within my own campaign worlds, with higher level boons that often allow Sorcerers greater manifestations of power derived from their power source.

I think a good case could be made that Wizard should merely be a subclass of Sorcerer who just accessed their spells a bit differently, and could change the spells they knew more easily (at the cost of other Sorcerer abilities).

 

[SkidAce]

One thing I hate about the sorcerer is that they stole the inborn magical talent from the wizard. Now, everyone tends to treat arcane magic as:

1. Inborn, you're a sorcerer
2. Not inborn, don't worry, studdy hard and you can be a wizard.
3. I guess you can have granted power (be a warlock)

The way I see it is that, other than the warlock who is granted it, arcane magic is an inborn talent; sorcerer and wizard are just different ways of accessing that talent. This is why in a campaign setting you still have limited amounts of wizards, you don't have a large amount of people running around with an arcane magic initiate feat because they just don't have that spark for arcane magic.

The sorcerer might learn their magic somewhat randomly, focused around their bloodline. The wizard focuses their magic around their studies. They both have that inborn spark of arcane power, they just learn to harness it differently.

I agree. We've used the born with the talent for all wizards since 1st edition.

Its a common trope in literature.

RITUALS are the things anyone can learn if they study enough.

 

[Krachek]

Don’t bother with the phb rules when you populate your home brew world!

 

[SkidAce]

I think a good case could be made that Wizard should merely be a subclass of Sorcerer who just accessed their spells a bit differently, and could change the spells they knew more easily (at the cost of other Sorcerer abilities).

Huh.

This "fluff/lore" could keep both sides content. Brilliant.

Everybody either does or does not have the innate spark (or gains it later).

Sorcerers manifest spontaneously (firestarter) or at least more naturally.

Wizards have to nurture, train, coerce, study, etc to manifest their talent in codified fashion, casue they just cant somehow reach it innately like sorcerers can.

It explains my "schools" of sorcerery in my campaign too. Take that natural inclination, hear about the Sorcerers Firestarter Guild, boom! Unleash that fire!

 

[MoonSong]

Ahhh finally, a view even more cynical than mine!

One doesn't need to be cynical to acknowledge the facts. Nobody in WotC -and TSR before them- actually likes or has liked the sorcerer ideas. And it is only through plain luck that their hand has been forced by external circumstance. The sorcerer started as a sort of tax paid to justify the page count dedicated to wizards and was made with an alternative casting mechanic from a designers homebrew and random flavor tacked on. And than turned out to be easily and effortlessly way more evocative than the wizard/mage/mu. Sorcerers are a thing despite the designers and would flourish outside the wizard-centric orthodoxy at WotC and their derivatives -even Paizo-.

 

[Alzrius]

The sorcerer started as a sort of tax paid to justify the page count dedicated to wizards

Can somebody source this claim?

 

[MoonSong]

Can somebody source this claim?

It's something Skip Williams said on a blog or column at some point. May look for it later.

Edit: Scratch that, the interview I thought included it doesn't say what I remembered it saying. I guess I just assumed that something I read somewhere else was from a legitimate source I knew.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It's something Skip Williams said on a blog or column at some point. May look for it later.

I'd be interested to see it, because searching on Skip Williams and Sorcerers, there is a frequently quoted article where he discussed their design (available only via Wayback these days - https://web.archive.org/web/20020606120801/http://www.wizards.com/dnd/3E_intvw_SkipW2.asp ) but it doesn't say anything like that.

I find a lot of vague comments claiming Williams "hated" Sorcerers and said so, but absolutely none of them can link or even quote what he supposedly said - the closest anyone gets is Williams suggesting CHA is a raw deal as a primary attribute compared to INT (hilarious in a 5E context, but largely true in 3E).

But nothing supporting "They exist to justify the number of arcane spells in the rulebook" or similar.

 

[MoonSong]

I'd be interested to see it, because searching on Skip Williams and Sorcerers, there is a frequently quoted article where he discussed their design (available only via Wayback these days - Dungeons & Dragons ) but it doesn't say anything like that.

I find a lot of vague comments claiming Williams "hated" Sorcerers and said so, but absolutely none of them can link or even quote what he supposedly said - the closest anyone gets is Williams suggesting CHA is a raw deal as a primary attribute compared to INT (hilarious in a 5E context, but largely true in 3E).

But nothing supporting "They exist to justify the number of arcane spells in the rulebook" or similar.

I had already retracted that claim.