Is this in addition to spellcasting or replacing spellcasting?
Since I don’t want to rewrite, probably addition, as a metamagic option or as a new feature.
If it's added: should be fine. You've basically given them a few extra spells known, which cover the most basic effects you'd want in combat - which in turn frees up Spells Known for more fun/interesting/thematic stuff.
That’s about what I’m thinking.
Ohh... Now -you're- on to something, here...
Make a few more cantrips to cover different areas at fairly small sizes (10ft cone, 5ft radius burst at range, 15ft line). Still typed damage, of course. Give them some secondary effects as well, have them target different saves and give them some single-target options...
And then let them use their Sorcery Points to empower their cantrips in various ways. Like adding smiting damage to a cantrip, or increasing the radius or size by 1 square, or the range by 15ft per Sorcery Point spent.
Want a Fireball? Take your fire-blast cantrip (5ft radius burst that deals 1d6 at 60 feet) slap 1 Sorcery Point for a 15ft range increase, slap 3 more points down to make it a 20ft radius, and then slap more Sorcery Points into it to increase the damage by 1d6 per point. Level 11 so you're already doing 3d6 it'll take 5 points to make it do 8. So that's 9 points... You'd need to completely revamp their sorcery-point economy but... wow.
Hell yeah. Give the sorcerer more cantrips than anyone else, or some automatic variable cantrips Like “Elemental Evocation, choose either range 120ft single target, range 60ft 5ft radius, 15ft cone centered on you, or 20ft line from you. If you target one creature, deal 1d10 damage on a hit. If you target 2 or more, you deal 1d8 damage on a hit. Reduce damage by one step if you add one of the following effects; [list of basic effects by element].
Would go a -long- way to making Sorcerers stand out from Wizards since they'd be able to scale their spells. They could make a 5ft radius 10d6 Fireball by sacrificing some Sorcery Points and Spell Slots so they don't hit their allies but absolutely roast the baddies in those 4 squares. Or make a massive ice effect that deals very little damage but creates a big patch of ice on the water.
They'd need a Sorcery Point limit per turn... Could call it "Channel Casting" instead of true Spellcasting? 'Cause they're channeling tons of pure raw power into a teeny tiny magical framework!
Honestly I’d love that. That is basically how physical magic works in my own TTRPG, though a bit looser than that even. I’ve referred to it as “Gary’s Mod Casting” or “Portal Gun Casting”. You’ve a simple framework for how the skill works, and freedom to do whatever you want with that, extrapolating and improvising as you like. Skill checks are either to determine if you do the thing, or to increase some factor of the working, like range, area, intensity, etc, or to do soemthing especially odd or complex.
So, a Portal or Warp skill would say basically, “you make an In portal and an Out portal, each within range, at an angle and orientation you choose. What goes in the In portal comes out the Out portal, losing no momentum from the transfer, and then acts as normal.”
Absolutely, I actually wish the sorcerer had been designed more as the "simple caster" focused on cantrips which could be upgraded. But that's really leaning into class redesign territory which I've already posted about.
Yeah I’d like to work out a fairly simple feature that gets some of what I’d do if rewriting the sorcerer. At most a “variant optional feature”.
Being able to choose damage type on the fly can be quite potent.
And not all damage types are equal. Lots of monsters have fire immunity/resistance, or poison immunity/ resistance, but nearly no monsters have resistance or immunity to force damage. Therefor, an effect that deals fire damage should
deal more damage than a similarly leveled effect dealing force damage, because force damage is "more valuable." You can see a breakdown of immunity/resistance by damage type of MM monsters
over here.
I’d definitely either restrict damage type to a short list, or a “the same damage type as the cantrip” is doing the “cantrip smite” route.
This really reminds me of a Skyrim-inspired system I had for spellcrafting. Basically allowing a spellcaster to choose the Element, Form, and Potency instead of choosing a normal spell.
Really, it's basically the transmuted Spell Metamagic option from Tasha's, but more systematic.
I never developed it beyond the initial idea.
Yeah? Did you use “single target d10s based on the dmg table” as the default, and then lose die sizes, range, or number of dice to add other effects?
The spell slot scale is solid, and the expected damage per spell level tracks reasonably with the SP costs of spell levels that you could probably do a 1 for 1 for spell smiles on cantrips. Then, yeah, build cantrips of different sizes and shapes and elemental effects, then have them have different scaling effects based on how many points you put into then.
Should be an easy structure to build. They could then have limited spells known so they can do more utility things, but if you want to just be a blaster you could.
Yeah I think that you and
@Steampunkette totally get the direction I’m seeing for this, and are running with it beautifully. I’m off work tomorrow, might write something up.
