D&D 5E Sorcerer Changes

[KnightGwen]

Really enjoying this discussion, it always intrigues me to see how people change the Sorcerer, given the relatively low satisfaction among players.

I've compiled some homebrews that I think would be terrific additions to the game, based on the things players are generally dissatisfied with, namely:

1. Sorcerers feel like an underwhelming class choice for a player
   1. Sorcerers don't feel underpowered, they feel under underwhelming
2. Flavour text does not match reality in play
3. Too few spells known (max 15)
4. Too few sorcery points (max 20)
5. Too few metamagics (max 4)
6. Severely limited class spell list
7. Unappealing class Capstone

I personally don't think the sub-classes themselves are the issue, most of these problems seem to stem from the main class features. You can definitely add stuff to sub-classes (like additional, unique spells) to alleviate an issue you're having, but I thought it more straightforward to change the class itself, rather than fiddle around with each sub-class.

So, my proposed changes are, in no particular order:

• Sorcerous Component: You are your own spellcasting focus, only requiring materials to cast a spell if there is an indicated cost. You must still have a free hand during casting to perform the somatic components. Addresses Issue 1 & 2
• Increased Sorcery Points: Your sorcery points equals your Sorcerer level + your Constitution modifier (minimum +1). Addresses Issue 1 & 4
• Increased Metamagics: You gain 3 Metamagics at 3rd level. You gain another two at 10th and 17th level each. Addresses Issue 1 & 5
• Metamagic Versatility: You may exchange one Metamagic you know, for another you don't, whenever you finish a long rest. Addresses Issue 5
• Master of Elements: "Elemental Spell" Metamagic (from UA) becomes a Font of Magic Option (so all sorcerers can use it), which upgrades to include all damage types when you hit level 15. Addresses Issue 2
• Sorcerous Insight: At level 11, and again at level 20, you may pick one of the following classes: Bard, Cleric, Druid or Wizard. Addresses Issue 1, 2, 3, 6 & 7.
  • You may pick a number of spells equal to your Constitution modifier (minimum +1) from each of the chosen classes' spell lists.
  • These spells do not count against your number of spells known,
  • These spells cannot have Metamagics applied to them. In all other aspects, they are sorcerer spells for you.
  • The chosen spells must be of a level you can cast, and you use spell slots as normal to cast them
  • You can spend 8 hours of uninterrupted meditation to exchange one spell for another from the same class list.
• Archsorcerer (Capstone): At level 20, you regain half your expended sorcery points (rounded down) on a short rest. Addresses Issues 4 & 7
• Archsorcerer (Capstone): At level 20, you may expend 20 sorcery points to re-create an expended 9th level spell slot. You may not use this feature again until you finish a long rest. Addresses Issue 7

I don't think any of the above is a game-breaker, and goes a long way to making the sorcerer feel like their own fleshed out class. I'm super interested to get some feedback!

EDIT: Amended point #1

 

[Ruin Explorer]

This is an ancillary issue, so not trying to thread jack, (and constantly quote R.E...damnit man stop raising interesting points! ), I feel the opposite.

The multiple, different “power timers” is actually the worst aspect of 5E, in my opinion.

Now ‘Worst’ in 5e, means inconvenient...as the party now has to negotiate within itself, what rest type to use:
The Bard and Barbarian want to long rest because they are out of spells and rage uses, the Fighter and Monk want a short rest...cause that is all they need, and the Rogues just wants a Druid to cast pre-errata Healing Spirit, because Rogues don’t rest....they just need Red Bull...err Healing Potions.

I hate it when on encounter 2-3 of a scripted adventuring day, dice roll swingy, or somebody goes crazy with the cheesewiz and uses too many spell slots ......
........and now the debate of “ Hut or Suck ( it up) happens”.

4e in it’s Daily/Encounter/ At Will format had the best balance.

At least with the 5MWD, all classes can Nova and shine. Sure Endurance slog setups with no resting is fine once in awhile. I’m tired of the Rogue feeling great on encounter 7 of the day, and the rest of the group is lowkey dissatisfied.

A Sorcerer in tier 1 can suck it up....4 Cantrips is nice. At higher tiers I am not so sure. Converting all of one’s spells into Fireballs or Sickening Radiance , means you are playing the 5e equivalent of an animated 3e Wand.

Sorcerers either appeal to those that feel other spell casting classes do not adequately represent the “I am Magic” theme, or those players whom want the challenge of a class with a handicap, (handicap meant in golf terms, not Able-ist terms).

Personally I favor a radical redesign of the class. Something on the order of 1/2 caster status similar to the Artificer, (including preparing from the entire list of very limited spells), to represent sorcerers being a general magic autodidact.

The Big, Themed 1-9th spells should come from the Subclass, either through Font of Magic or from something like Mystic Arcaneum.

With you on all of this. I get the dislike lot of people have of AEDU, I genuinely do, I even share it in some ways, but god it was nice when everyone shared desires there. It made designing encounters massively easier too, DM-side. In my current campaign the Warlock is like "Can we have a Short Rest yet?" "What about now?" "And now?" "But after this fight right?" and like "ARGH OKAY FINE!" "Now we're being attacked by death dogs, is that you wanted Short Rest-y?!".

 

[Guest 6801328]

Really enjoying this discussion, it always intrigues me to see how people change the Sorcerer, given the relatively low satisfaction among players.

I've compiled some homebrews that I think would be terrific additions to the game, based on the things players are generally dissatisfied with, namely:

1. Sorcerers don't feel underpowered, they feel under underwhelming
2. Flavour text does not match reality in play
3. Too few spells known (max 15)
4. Too few sorcery points (max 20)
5. Too few metamagics (max 4)
6. Severely limited class spell list
7. Unappealing class Capstone

I personally don't think the sub-classes themselves are the issue, most of these problems seem to stem from the main class features. You can definitely add stuff to sub-classes (like additional, unique spells) to alleviate an issue you're having, but I thought it more straightforward to change the class itself, rather than fiddle around with each sub-class.

So, my proposed changes are, in no particular order:

• Sorcerous Component: You are your own spellcasting focus, only requiring materials to cast a spell if there is an indicated cost. You must still have a free hand during casting to perform the somatic components. Addresses Issue 1 & 2
• Increased Sorcery Points: Your sorcery points equals your Sorcerer level + your Constitution modifier (minimum +1). Addresses Issue 1 & 4
• Increased Metamagics: You gain 3 Metamagics at 3rd level. You gain another two at 10th and 17th level each. Addresses Issue 1 & 5
• Metamagic Versatility: You may exchange one Metamagic you know, for another you don't, whenever you finish a long rest. Addresses Issue 5
• Master of Elements: "Elemental Spell" Metamagic (from UA) becomes a Font of Magic Option (so all sorcerers can use it), which upgrades to include all damage types when you hit level 15. Addresses Issue 2
• Sorcerous Insight: At level 11, and again at level 20, you may pick one of the following classes: Bard, Cleric, Druid or Wizard. Addresses Issue 1, 2, 3, 6 & 7.
  • You may pick a number of spells equal to your Constitution modifier (minimum +1) from the chosen classes spell list.
  • These spells do not count against your number of spells known,
  • These spells cannot have Metamagics applied to them. In all other aspects, they are sorcerer spells for you.
  • The chosen spells must be of a level you can cast, and you use spell slots as normal to cast them
  • You can spend 8 hours of uninterrupted meditation to exchange one spell for another from the same class list.
• Archsorcerer (Capstone): At level 20, you regain half your expended sorcery points (rounded down) on a short rest. Addresses Issues 4 & 7
• Archsorcerer (Capstone): At level 20, you may expend 20 sorcery points to re-create an expended 9th level spell slot. You may not use this feature again until you finish a long rest. Addresses Issue 7

I don't think any of the above is a game-breaker, and goes a long way to making the sorcerer feel like their own fleshed out class. I'm super interested to get some feedback!

Those are all intriguing ideas, but you introduce it by saying the issue is not that the sorcerer is underpowered, and I would categorize all of those changes as increasing power.

 

[GlassJaw]

Those are all intriguing ideas, but you introduce it by saying the issue is not that the sorcerer is underpowered, and I would categorize all of those changes as increasing power.

Agreed.

While I do think the sorcerer needs a bit of a power boost, that's certainly not the biggest problem with the class. The biggest problem is that the sorcerer is generic and bland. The mechanics don't fit the fluff at all.

The sorcerer needs an overhaul. It needs mechanics that evoke the feel of magic running through its veins. I like to think of sorcerers as comic book mutants. They also need a clear differentiation from wizards and warlocks. Metamagic is a start but not enough.

A spell point pool immediately give the feel of a well of power at your disposal. You can go nova but can quickly "drain" yourself of power.

Metamagics are great to evoke the feel of shaping and altering your power as you desire. But the system needs to be expanded. One of the best ideas I've seen is to tie new metamagics to the subclasses. That makes the subclasses much more unique.

The sorcerer also needs an "overcharge" ability: push yourself at the cost of your health (hit points, Hit Dice, exhaustion, etc). I also like the idea of a "sense magic" ability, sort of like a limited use detect magic ability.

I would create multiple spell lists - one for each origin - and have them be highly thematic and specific.

For bonus points, a system like the warlock's invocations would also serve the sorcerer well.

 

[jsaving]

I've compiled some homebrews that I think would be terrific additions to the game, based on the things players are generally dissatisfied with, namely:

1. Sorcerers don't feel underpowered, they feel under underwhelming
2. Flavour text does not match reality in play
3. Too few spells known (max 15)
4. Too few sorcery points (max 20)
5. Too few metamagics (max 4)
6. Severely limited class spell list
7. Unappealing class Capstone

These seven points do a nice job summarizing the range of objections people have to 5e's sorcerer. I also love the creativity behind your proposed solutions. The problem is that #3-#7 represent a potentially sizable power boost which is the wrong way to go if sorcerers are correctly powered already but simply underwhelming or poorly flavored as #1-#2 would suggest.

 

[KnightGwen]

Hmm, good points! Definitely should have been more clear with what I meant in point #1. Whoopsie!

Underwhelming: The overall issues with sorcerers seems to be with how dull they are. The unique things they do have don't make them as appealing as other spellcasters, due to the limited access you get to them. In most ways, they come across as a worse version of a wizard. Sorcerers definitely have some neat tricks, but they don't make up for the excessive limitations they also have.

Underpowered: With access to Quickened Fireballs, Twinned Hastes and on-the-fly spell slots, sorcerers CAN be amazing in combat, able to nova right along with Paladins. The only problem with this is that, to be that effective in combat, a sorceress will need to stifle her desire for other, more utilitarian spells. Basically a sorcerer needs to lean towards optimisation to not feel lacking in a fight. Which sucks, because you need to sacrifice fun, flavour and individuality in your choices. A powerful sorcerer will look very similar to another powerful sorcerer, but the same is less true of wizards.

I feel my listed changes will encourage more fun choices and individuality, so I don't mind if there is also a power increase. Also, my feeling is that all class Capstones should be MIGHTY

To that end, I'll revise point #1

1. Sorcerers feel like an underwhelming class choice for a player

 

[Benjamin Olson]

So those of you who don't feel they're underpowered, at what levels do you feel they are not underpowered?

I see how they start feeling up to par or maybe very strong at whatever point after level 3 where they start finding they have enough sorcery points and/or spell slots to cannibalize to make fairly regular use of metamagic (mileage will vary based on play-style and adventuring day). But I just don't see how they are up to snuff in first tier play, which sadly is as far as many characters get. It feels like they are kind of a slog, and all the more so if they choose to go for the most talked up metamagics, Twinned and Quickened, because those action economy abilities that are supposed to make them uniquely great are spell point gobblers that they won't have the resources to use regularly for a while, but if they don't take their medicine at level 3 then they won't get to grab one of these until level 10.

I feel like I might be arguing for "needs fixing" at second level or such with people who are thinking about "godlike" at 20th level or something, which is a somewhat meaningless argument. Everyone is good at high levels, their flaw in terms of power is not coming online at the same speed as their peers in basically every other class.

An increase in base Sorcery points (I'd go with equal to Charisma bonus, because Con does not fit a d6 hit die class, as much as they may want Con all the more for that). Yes it would modestly boost the power of higher level Sorcerers, but it would do a lot to make low level ones feel more worthwhile.

 

[jsaving]

Well, what we know for sure is that sorcerers are much less popular than wizards around the gaming table despite sorcerer spells coming exclusively from the wizard spell list. D&D Beyond pegs sorcerers as the game's second least popular class based on data from tens of thousands of players and char-gen sites also put sorcerers more or less at the bottom.

But as @KnightGwen and others illustrate, there is no consensus on why they are unpopular. Some people see 5e sorcerers as similar to 3e rangers, wimpy power-wise but with flavor text that hints at great possibilities if only the proper power-ups could be found. However others see 5e sorcerers as more akin to the 2e cleric, fine power-wise but terminally dull because party dynamics force them into cookie-cutter build choices lest they offend somebody around the gaming table by choosing too many "fun" spells. For example:

Sorcerers CAN be amazing in combat, able to nova right along with Paladins. The only problem with this is that, to be that effective in combat, a sorceress will need to stifle her desire for other, more utilitarian spells. Basically a sorcerer needs to lean towards optimisation to not feel lacking in a fight. Which sucks, because you need to sacrifice fun, flavour and individuality in your choices.

I personally think the 5e team made a couple of key design mistakes that contributed to this perception. The most fundamental mistake was to "balance" the sorcerer's class features by severely limiting the size and variety of its spell list, which fails to actually do much for balance but does greatly increase the chances of cookie-cutter meta builds dominating the sorcerer landscape. A related mistake was to choose that limited spell list in such a way that sorcerers more or less automatically have specialist schools, but without the rich set of abilities and lore provided to 5e's specialist wizards. And a third mistake was not leaning much more heavily into the flavor of why sorcerers are supposedly different from wizards, their ability to shape spells rather than simply memorizing formulae.

What I would do is give them no extra "nova" power whatsoever but lots more versatility. Give them the wizard spell list. Let them retrain metamagic feats every time they rest. Let them hot-swap flavor variables like the type of damage done to emphasize their no-need-to-prepare ethos ("oh it's a fire elemental, step aside wizard while I cast an iceball"). And then make sure wizards never receive the ability to make similar substitutions in as fluid a manner.

That, I think, is the way to actually give sorcerers a unique and viable role in an edition where wizards have absorbed just about everything sorcerers used to be.

 

[Kinematics]

Like many, for me the problem is that the flavor and the mechanics of the sorcerer don't match. There are tons of characters that I could build off of the class's flavor. Very few of them work with the class's mechanics.

So I'm stuck trying to force a round peg into a square hole, trying to find some way to work around the class mechanics to reach the character I envision. The only other class I have somewhat similar problems with is the ranger, which is likewise at the bottom of the player preference list. This makes me feel that this is part of the core problem with the class — not being able to create the character you want, even when it seems like you should be able to.

I don't think there's a problem with power. Not even the crappy Beastmaster is actually that bad on the power scale. As such, I don't think tweaking sorcery points or metamagic by little bits will be enough to fix sorcerer. Instead, you have to step back and look at "What does sorcerer claim itself to be?", and "How can you make it easy to shape a character into that general design goal?"


I think the fundamental mistake for the sorcerer class was building it based on metamagic. (Note: I can only speculate on this, so it may not be factually correct.) It feels like WotC saw metamagic as a major system component that needed to be carried over to the new edition, but the change in magic (Wizards no longer being strictly Vancian casters) made such mechanics superfluous. They built an entire class around this mechanic without considering whether it was actually a good match for the class's flavor.

If you look at the core sorcerer class, ignoring its flavor, it's "the spellcasting class with metamagic, that had to sacrifice spells in order to gain that extra mechanical power". Metamagic dominates everything about the class, to the extent that the class flavor just feels tacked on.

So the first thing I'd do to fix sorcerer is to rip out metamagic entirely. You can relegate it to a subclass, similar to Battlemaster fighter, but don't make it the be-all, end-all of the class.

That leaves the class with Flexible Magic, and the associated sorcery points that can fuel whatever you want, similar to the ki points for monk. (NB: Per Mike Mearls, part of the problem people have with abilities that cost sorcery points [such as the dragon fear] is the competition between those abilities and the class's primary mechanic. Get rid of that primary mechanic, and those secondary uses open up as far more viable.)

That creates a tremendous amount of additional design space for each subclass. Thematic spells should be the norm. And more importantly, you're free to make use of sorcery points to create crazy power options (such as the darkness and hound abilities in the Shadow Magic sorcerer) that really shape the subclasses to match their flavor. Expand with spell-like abilities, rather than more spells (similar to how the warlock works).

If you want that nova power that comes from fancy metamagic use, feel free to jump on the Battlemaster analog. But a Storm Sorcerer doesn't really need that; the Storm Sorcerer needs lightning bolts and wind storms and floods and blizzards. I want to blow your house down, and sink your ship; I hardly care about twinned haste.

Or the Wild Magic sorcerer. It feels weird that the archetype that has so little control over its magic also gets the power to finely control how that magic works. Why not give the Wild Magic sorcerer the ability to choose to roll on some random magic table (instead of being at the whim of the DM)?

I could go on, but the basics is this: The sorcerer already has the fuel source for doing whatever you want to do with it, and it has Flexible Magic to allow it to manipulate that fuel source. Anything beyond that should be about creating custom effects that match the flavor of the subclass.

The main additional minor tweak that I would consider would be to make it so that you get sorcery points starting at level 1, instead of level 2, because that's what you should be working with from the very beginning. (And obviously provide something you can do with that starting sorcery point.)

 

[Guest 6801328]

Thinking more about sorcerer. I mentioned earlier (not even sure if it was in this thread) that I'd like to see bloodline spells AND let the sorcerer cast those directly from sorcery points, at a cost equal to the level of the spell. (Just like Shadow Sorcerer and darkness.)

The other mechanism that could reinforce the idea that they're "better at fewer things" would be if they could pick one of their known spells (or maybe one of each level?) to specialize in. The benefit to the specialized spell would vary depending on what kind of spell it was:

• If it is a to-hit spell, it would be +1 to hit
• If it does damage, you re-roll 1's (or can choose to re-roll 1 die)
• If it has a saving throw, the DC is increased by 1
• If it requires concentration, you get advantage on the save
• If it has a ritual form, you can cast it as a ritual

At each level, you can change your special spell(s).

Whaddya think? Too much?