Oooooh - A sorcerer with flavor

[Stalker0]

While the concept of antimetamagic is quite cool and original, as stands I can't see it without a serious abuse problem. With enlarge alone, you can drop the spell levels of some key spells. And often the range isn't all that important. What about antiheighten? That could be really nasty.

Of course I think the antimaximise would be funny. I throw a fireball, and always do 10 point of damage as a 0th level spell

 

[starwolf]

I made a homebrew 5-level Prestige Class for such a transformation into a genie, and it added lots of flavor to my character.

Hey Fenes 2: Would you e-mail me that homebrew PrC. Sounds interesting and of some potential for my current game.

 

[Adam_Coath]

I really like your spheres. They seem fairly well balanced and add flavour to the characters.
My only quibble with the class is that it is over-powered compared to the original sorcerer.
It gains new feats, and proficencies, as well as one extra spell known of each level and only loses the ability to summon a familiar.

I would suggest making the sphere spells required spells instead of bonus spells. That is, reduce the number of known spells of each level by one. Alternately you could limit the spell list to balance the bonus spells. I would either give them a smaller spell list (such as the one from Monte's sorcerer) or perhaps make them choose some opposition spheres that they couldn't cast spells from.

Perhaps you could make sphere spells have a higher save DC than the other spells.

The new metamagic feat is way too powerful. Perhaps a feat that let you cast a spell as one level lower and reduced numeric results by half and other results had a 50% failure chance?

 

[IceBear]

Hehehe - I didn't design it, so it's not mine I saw it on the Dragonlance Nexus and thought it might be interesting (mainly the spheres, the rest I was less sure of) and asked for more experienced input. I was thinking of replacing the PHB sorcerer with this one if the responses were favorable.

IceBear

 

[dshai527]

The way I read the spell shape was that the spell was based off the "original" spell level. So a reversed empowered fireball would be a 1st level spell but would be a 10ft radius 3d6 (1/2 of the original value that the spell became available) fireball. Still a bit over powered maybe but not nearly as bad.

I like that the class adds more flavor to the sorceror and I like the spheres. I may have to try thi sone out myself.

 

[Zhure]

I like it; I would've prefered domains instead of spheres, but the change in terminology is good and a cantrip instead of a domain ability seems to work ok. Adding spheres while domains would work just as well is bad, IMO.

My only real complaint is that the trade-off of losing a familiar vs gaining the spell secrets thing isn't even close. One of these sorcerers could potentially know more spells than the wizard, which strikes me as odd.

I have a home-brew sorcerer type class which gets a d8 hit dice, 2 skill points per level and casts spontaneously based like a sorcerer, but only gets domains to cast from... it's a very similar idea and seems to work on paper.

 

[wolff96]

I really like this class.

It isn't balanced with the original sorcerer, true, but it has a huge advantage -- the sorcerer is actually giving something up to take a Prestige Class.

They give up bonus feats or more spheres. That's a huge loss, comparatively.

If I were going to run this in a normal campaign, I would give the wizard one more free spell per level and lower scribing costs dramatically.

That would keep them in the same ballpark, balance-wise, IMO.

 

[MadWand]

I also would love to play this class. It would add a lot of flavor to the sorcerer - this is badly needed. There are just a few things I would change:

Some cha-based skills should be part of the sorcerer spell list.
Spellshaping should go -- too open to abuse.
New spheres should be possible to create with DM approval.
To balance the extra spells known from spheres, the generic spells known list should be reduced... probably to one less spell known at each spot in the table.

 

[Sixchan]

Well, obviously some metamagic feats cannot reasonably be reversed. Quicken Spell would be one of them, since it doesn't have a clear inverse. Changing to a full-round action seems inappropriate, since it's clearly not worth four spell levels. Perhaps if the casting time changed to two rounds, or something, it'd make more sense.

Metamagic feats like Silent Spell and Still Spell also don't seem subject to being reversed. Would you just speak louder? Wave your arms in bigger gestures? Neither applies any real penalty in the game, so they shouldn't be worth spell levels.

Methinks the exact use of this ability needs to be clarified.

Perhaps for Silent or Still spell any creature making a spellcraft check could get a bonus because you're making it really obvious what's going on. Also, an inverse Still-Spell could double Arcane Spell failure from armour.

 

[Hygric]

It looks interesting, but I have serious balance issues about the inverse metamagic.

The sphere ideas look good, but the summoning sphere has a few minor problems. Planar binding / greater planar binding without a magic circle spell and dimensional anchor? The dimensinal anchor spell is just really handy. while the magic circle is a vital part of planar binding spells.

Makes me wonder about the overall quality of design of this class...