D&D General One thing I hate about the Sorcerer

[FrogReaver]

Yes I do. Classes with coherent metaphysics and less crowded design space. I rather have fewer good classes than many bad ones.
And we simply could represent more concepts. If the writers do not need to write duplicate subclasses for every magical being that could be your ancestor/patron they could do more of them.

Part of it is also design space. If you have one class then is the spell list shared? Or do you make completely different spell lists for each subclass and if you do then haven’t you just turned subclass into class?

 

[Chaosmancer]

But the sorcerer doesn't have a playstyle let alone compelling one, so we can safely remove it. Then the superior warlock mechanics can be expanded to represent that concept.

Except, Warlock pacts and contracts DO NOT cover all of the concepts of the sorcerer. They don't. A warlock is not covered under the concept of being left in the Shadowfell, exposed to the magical radiation of the plane, and your soul being altered by that magic. Warlocks. Make. Deals. That isn't a deal, that is radiation damage. A warlock cannot cover that concept. The closest you can get is that your parent made a deal, and you are written into that contract and bound by it, but that does not cover all sorcerer origins.

And the bolded part? That sounds like a mechanical problem that could be fixed, rather than an excuse to delete a concept that is closer to the actual depictions of magic than any of the other three classes in the game. We shouldn't delete sorcerer stories because they lack a good mechanical hook, we should FIX the mechanics.

 

[Minigiant]

Yes I do. Classes with coherent metaphysics and less crowded design space. I rather have fewer good classes than many bad ones.
And we simply could represent more concepts. If the writers do not need to write duplicate subclasses for every magical being that could be your ancestor/patron they could do more of them.

I think I explained earlier why in practice the theory almost never work.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

No. It does.
It's not a great one.
But playing a sorcerer is not like playing any other class in the hands of a skilled user.

The issue I'm having with you and many other people in this topic is saying "This is a weak play style. Let's get rid of it." instead of "This is a week playstyle that some people love. Let's make it better".

"I don't like it. Let's remove it over improving it" is a mentality I never got why it's so pervasive in D&D fandom. But it's popular in humanity as a whole.

Some things just are not worth fixing. The designers do not have infinite resources, so sometimes it makes more sense to just use them for improving other things.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Yes I do. Classes with coherent metaphysics and less crowded design space. I rather have fewer good classes than many bad ones.
And we simply could represent more concepts. If the writers do not need to write duplicate subclasses for every magical being that could be your ancestor/patron they could do more of them.

Bards. Heck, Druids as well then. Both of them suffer from the "coherent metaphysics" problem far more than the sorcerer does.

I don't want to get rid of either of them. I want to fix the metaphysics to solve the ACTUAL problem.

 

[FrogReaver]

Except, Warlock pacts and contracts DO NOT cover all of the concepts of the sorcerer. They don't. A warlock is not covered under the concept of being left in the Shadowfell, exposed to the magical radiation of the plane, and your soul being altered by that magic. Warlocks. Make. Deals. That isn't a deal, that is radiation damage. A warlock cannot cover that concept. The closest you can get is that your parent made a deal, and you are written into that contract and bound by it, but that does not cover all sorcerer origins.

And the bolded part? That sounds like a mechanical problem that could be fixed, rather than an excuse to delete a concept that is closer to the actual depictions of magic than any of the other three classes in the game. We shouldn't delete sorcerer stories because they lack a good mechanical hook, we should FIX the mechanics.

I mean if wizard didn’t exist then it’s arguable that sorcerer as is would likely be regarded as the strongest class.

 

[Minigiant]

Some things just are not worth fixing. The designers do not have infinite resources, so sometimes it makes more sense to just use them for improving other things.

Who gets to judge.

If you followed that logic there would not be a Warlock nor Sorcerer nor Artificer as the designers originally wanted to combine every arcanists into one class and every psionics user into one class and every nonspellcasting warrior into one class.

If not for community pushback, 5e would be 5 totally classes with EVERYTHING flavorwise competing as a feat slot.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Except, Warlock pacts and contracts DO NOT cover all of the concepts of the sorcerer. They don't. A warlock is not covered under the concept of being left in the Shadowfell, exposed to the magical radiation of the plane, and your soul being altered by that magic. Warlocks. Make. Deals. That isn't a deal, that is radiation damage. A warlock cannot cover that concept. The closest you can get is that your parent made a deal, and you are written into that contract and bound by it, but that does not cover all sorcerer origins.

Yes it can. "Pact" is merely the incident which infused you with power. It doesn't need to be literal pact. Hell, it says in the warlock fluff that the patron could even be unaware of the warlock's existence.

 

[CreamCloud0]

in previous editions with metamagic, when vancian casting was actually a thing, am i correct in thinking you had to pre-prepare your metamagics as part of that spell when you memorised it? i think if we gave sorcerers the ability to do something like that it would be really cool.

you burn the required sorcery points at a long rest to memorise a spell altered with the metamagic ingrained in it, so you might invest the one sorcery point into transmute spell fireball to turn it into a lightningball, and you can spend every 3rd level slot you have casting lightningballs and need to use no other sorcery points on it, it'd offer interesting decision points of how much it's worth locking up your sorcery points into fixed metamagics that are more cost effective for repeated use or if it's worth more to have the flexibility of a larger pool of points to use on any metamagic you need in the moment.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Who gets to judge.

Me, ideally. But Crawford probably.

If you followed that logic there would not be a Warlock nor Sorcerer nor Artificer as the designers originally wanted to combine every arcanists into one class and every psionics user into one class and every nonspellcasting warrior into one class.

Which doesn't sound terrible. Well, perhaps the warrior part, but I'm sure that too could be made to work.