D&D General One thing I hate about the Sorcerer

[CreamCloud0]

How accurate will the enemy be? Will it be more useful to cast Shield of Faith to keep the Fighter on their feet, or bless to make them more accurate? How badly wounded will they be? Should I have more healing words prepared so I can keep my action open for hitting the enemy or more cure wounds prepared for after combat healing? Should I have one or two guiding bolts prepared to hit an enemy hard to prevent a disaster?

Quite literally, a single guiding bolt was the difference between our campaign becoming much harder, because a random encounter on the road to a safe haven involved fey beings who swiped a key plot important amulet, and I was the only one with a powerful enough ranged attack and the initiative to hit that enemy and prevent the amulet from being stolen. What scrying spell would have told me that the enemy would be out of reach of our melee fighters AND that I would win the initiative to be capable of making that attack to solve the situation? Could we have scouted the entire forest while splitting the party to prepare for a random encounter that the DM rolled on a table? Maybe while running for our lives we could have stopped to research the forest we were in, surely the people hunting us would have respected our library cards.

This isn't about charging in with no information. This is about how the game is played. You will never have all the information. All the research and scrying and scouting in the world won't tell you who is going to fail their stealth check or win the initiative. I've had fights won by throwing down an entangle or a web that COULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED if the melee characters had acted first and charged into the fray. And if your DM allows you to safely scout an entire dungeon, map every single enemy, in every single room, and note all of their abilities.... then sure, congrats, you win DnD. But that doesn't happen. It would be boring as heck. And even then, you can't predict what the dice will do and how that will shape what spells will or will not be useful and effective in the fight.

but that isn't information you are obligated or required to know to play the game, do you want the DM to micromanage your entire character for you? or leave the module open for you at the table? those problems are playing the game, you're meant to account for the things you don't know to account for, do you want a warning every time you take an action that might be detrimental or even just less than optimal?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sure, it isn't the end of the world. But... is it fun? Is it fun to think "Well, do I need to cast sleep once today or twice?" Because what ends up happening is people just default to the safest, blandest, most repetitive options. They won't pick a quirky spell, or a spell that may be useful in the right situation, they will pick the most guaranteed useful thing.

This already is happening in 5e. I've played a lot of clerics and unless I KNEW we were not going to be dealing with combat or that we would be dealing with an interrogation, I never prepared Zone of Truth. Which means that any time we are say, delving a dungeon and unexpectedly running into a situation where that spell would be useful... I never have it. Vancian casting is EVEN WORSE about this, because now I don't just need to decide to bring Zone of Truth, but I would need to guess how many times I'll find Guiding Bolt useful compared to Shield of Faith or Bless. If I do prepare Zone of Truth do I prepare one less casting of Pass without a Trace? Or do I drop a casting of Invisibility (Trickery Domain, btw)? What will I need? There is no way to know, so I might as well default to the most broadly useful spells the most times.

I don't see a problem with any of that. This whole line of discussion is subjective preference and nothing else.

 

[michaeljpastor]

There is the mistake.

A subclass should be a sub of the core idea. Not new interpretations of the core idea.

Changing or adding to the base idea is why this thread exists. The Warlock class is the Warlock getting power from the Patron via a specific Pactthat does that.

And I interpret that as "getting power from an outside source" What I think can be left to interpretation is the power dynamic between the caster and the source. Given that Warlocks have a high CHA, it would stand to reason that they could also command and control those power sources, instead of being stuck in a permanently subservient position.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It was hyperbole, that's why I used a statistically small number.

And I don't know any of them either, but not a single one I am aware of uses it. So, instead of just assuming some of them must use Vancian casting, why don't you link to your evidence?



Which is why most groups either bring nothing or bring everything. One or the other, because you can't predict what you will need.

I'm a player who will track every single thing they pick up and have, because at any point something I didn't think of could be useful in a situation.

You're the one who made the claim. You provide the evidence.

 

[Remathilis]

And again 3PP don't build the same classes. One makes the Warlord. Another makes the Shifter. A third makes the Apothecary. A fourth makes the Psion. A fifth makes the Anti-Paladin. So you need to buy 2-5 more books to include them and

• None of them are supported by DDB
• None of them are supported by WOTC books
• None of them are supported by other 3pp books
• None of them are supported by setting books
• None of them are supported by setting neutral splat books

How many Blood Hunter feats and subclasses are in Tasha's and Xanatar's or your general 3pp kickers?

I have a bloodhunter in my Ravenloft game right now, and I went looking for good magical items designed for a bloodhunter. You know how many I found? Zero. I scoured all the various Critical Role-adjacent stuff, nothing. D&D Beyond? Nada. DMs Guild? Zilch. Blood hunter is older than the artificer. It's the only 3pp supported class on D&D Beyond, it has CR's massive popularity propping it up, and it still has zero support beyond the original document. And Bloodhunter is the best-case scenario. I love Zariel's Witch class, but I hold absolutely NO illusions of any additional support in the way of subs, spells, or magic items for it. They are one-and-done.

And WotC is guilty of this too; we've never seen another artificer subclass beyond Tasha, but I guess they remember it when they are assigning new spells to classes (better than nothing). If its not in the PHB, its basically on its own.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Hmm, I think you could do it with Pact of the Chain, maybe tome. Reflavor the Fiend of the GOO and you could make it work. I've got a warlock in a one player story situation who has a patron, but also is a master of those beneath them, kind of a middle manager.

I think the reflavoring would need to be a bit comprehensive, but the power structure is there.

IMO, you'd get closer to the desired narrative if you used bespoke mechanics. Extensive re-flavoring is not worth doing in my view.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The problem isn't solely WOTC, it's the whole designer and DM community.

Basically, D&D needs new classes.

WOTC wont do it.
The 3PP community are sometimes willing to do it. But they all create different content instead of supporting a central idea.

So we never get what is needed spread across the community.

I don't see a solution to that beyond just being on top of things and integrating different 3pp and homebrew ideas into your game. That's what I do. What you seem to want is someone with WotC's influence who doesn't behave like WotC. It's a great dream, but not practical in my view.

 

[Micah Sweet]

No. Because people want more classes. People beg for ew ideas that would require new classes EVERY DAY!

People don't want unsupported classes.

Level Up has made new classes, as have their 3pp supporters, and all of them have been and continue to be supported alongside the ones translated from WotC 5e.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Some people. But probably not that many really. If there was genuine demand there would also be people offering it, and what they offer would become popular. But that's not really happening.


Yes. And more classes you have, harder it is to support them. Thus we need less classes so that they can be better supported.

There are people supporting new classes. This is their website.

 

[michaeljpastor]

IMO, you'd get closer to the desired narrative if you used bespoke mechanics. Extensive re-flavoring is not worth doing in my view.

If I really wanted to, I could achieve Pact of the Host just with reflavoring and a finely tuned spell list, but there are a couple unique subclass features that I want to try out that definitely need to be playtested to make sure that they're not over-powered, and I can't do it yet until the 5.5 conjure spells are finalized, so all I can do is twiddle my thumbs and work on ribbon and fluff. (Same with my Urban Druid)