D&D 5E Sorcerer Changes

[MostlyHarmless42]

In a way, almost any type of DM can ruin any build for a character even if they follow the RAW and a module. I'm not sure that's exactly the qualitative reasoning.

In a vacuum I agree with you. Most DM's are reasonable. But some are oddly pendantic on rules and while it's all well and good to suggest not playing with them, in practice navigating the minefields of friendships and finding reliable gaming groups can be...difficult.

I get that chromatic orb isn't the best spell in the world, but it allows all sorcerers to do their additional damage until they have access to another higher-level spell. It also bypasses magic resistance and you can still use it if a creature resists your main damage spells. And now that I peeked at Xanathar's there's really an elemental option for every element of almost every level.

Chromatic orb also costs 50g to cast (albeit a one time cost), meaning that any sorcerer that isn't fire or lightning is effectively paywalled to get a decent 1st level spell of their element to use. Minor gripe that many DMs might overlook? Yes. But again another instance of sticking to RAW pushing certain builds over others. And in Adventurer's league this matters.

Well, I bring these things up because I want to imagine what would happen if you brought these fixes to an AL RAW-type game. In that I mean, If I'm a very rude player that wants to hog all given aspects of a game and be the "winner", how would I go about it currently? Sorcery points on a short rest is essentially "I can cast a truckload of multiple spells in any given downtime opportunity by constantly short resting throughout the day."

Forgive me for not being intimately familiar with the rules of DM'ing adventurer's league, but I was under the impression that DMs were heavily discouraged from implementing a lot of houserules in an attempt to make AL games as universally accessible as possible. Also, if we are being honest, if official league play has taught us anything from numbers of various different types of games and editions over the years, random pickup play games tend to have a reputation for players that show up with a competitive "I only care for myself and making the most powerful character possible!" I'm not going to go so far as to say that every player who plays in official league play is this way, or that they are even the minority, but I've certainly heard more than a few horror stories of exactly this and stricter adhereance to the rules being less than ideal at discouraging this mindset. I'll concede that is all anecdotal though, so I cannot hold it against AL.

What I can say though is that I was under the impression that most homebrew/house rule discussions had an inherant assumption that they were NOT discussing Adventurer's league or official play by default, though perhaps that assumption was not as universal as I thought. To clarify for the sake of my suggestions, I care not one whit about AL balance concerns and I would never advise anyone to attempt to use them in AL.

I hold that constitution saves are better than wisdom saves because not a lot of enemies can break concentration with their wis saves but any damage can break concentration.

True, and perhaps it might be more common. But I'd not underestimate the number of effects (not just spells, but monster abilities) that can break concentration. Any effect that incapacitates, stuns, or forces the caster to act against their will might break concentration. And a surprising number of them are either Wisdom or Intelligence saves (wizard's other save proficiency). Granted the ocassional charisma saving throw gains a point in the sorcerer column, and I do not belittle the large about of advantage having a high charisma has in ability checks out of combat. Fortunately for both classes there are feats that allow either the option to shore up these weaknesses, and admittedly a sorcerer with a decent con and warcaster is a hell of a fun "I never want to lose my spells...ever" build.

Okay, I'll say that wizards with spellslots or resources at the end of the day is horrible. Because those spell slots disappear without a chance to be used. I don't think they should lose all their spellslots as quickly as possible, but a spell that could've been cast to do more damage but didn't might have costed the others damage from the enemy living too long or could've been used to cast charm person on that abrasive guard.

Spellcasters should thrive to effectively use all their resources before a long rest by pacing themselves. Like a marathon, you don't want to be slow but you don't want to get exhausted.

On this we agree. Sorcerers do have greater freedom in losing out on wasted resources. I'm just still not convinced that amount of sorcery points given are sufficient, or that giving sorcerers ritual casting is going to make them overpowered. It's a quality of life feature that every caster should receive that is damned hard to quantify the quality of because casting detect magic or identify without using a spell slot isn't going to crash anyone's campaign, but sure makes out caster characters out of combat feel like they are fulfilling their party role.

 

[MostlyHarmless42]

The game has not started, I'm working on the campaign.

This sorcerer doesn't have flexible casting. At level 2, you instead get 1 metamagic option (which is extra), and short rest points.

Converting sorcery points to/from slots isn't possible.

I consider this a significant power upgrade, but it is still white-room.

Let me know if you do find any issues then. I'm hesitant to take away flexible casting because as some have said it is a great feature, but am still trying to figure out a fix to balance it with short rest sorcery points that isn't incredibly fiddly and hard to remember. Best I've come up with so far is getting half their points back on one short rest per day. I've also considered maybe implementing a cap on maximum spell levels they can generate for flexible casting per day, but have yet to figure out a suitable number.

 

[Asisreo]

Here is my stab at a sorcerer.


The game in question has modified "gritty" rests, so having many encounters per long rest is expected.

Both of these aim to make "modifying spells" core to the class. You end up with fewer spells/day than anyone except a bard, and fewer spells known, but you get to play with all of them really often.

You keep your slots for your spells; per-encounter sorcery points is enough to make you a really strange caster compared to everyone else.

Subclasses get bloodline spells:

plus a fun tweak to Storm Sorcerer flight and Wild Magic.

These spell selections are a mix of strong spells, strong spells weakened by restrictions, and fun/utility spells.

This certainly leans heavily into metamagic, assuming the metamagic costs are the same, they really won't run out of metamagic in a day.

The 20th level feature is massive. They can quicken-heighten Dominate Monster. They can twin-quicken haste. They can subtle-heightened a Dominate Person. Twin-heighten a wished feeblemind. Twin-Subtle wished Maze.

These are just some of the PHB things I can determine from this.

 

[Asisreo]

In a vacuum I agree with you. Most DM's are reasonable. But some are oddly pendantic on rules and while it's all well and good to suggest not playing with them, in practice navigating the minefields of friendships and finding reliable gaming groups can be...difficult.



Chromatic orb also costs 50g to cast (albeit a one time cost), meaning that any sorcerer that isn't fire or lightning is effectively paywalled to get a decent 1st level spell of their element to use. Minor gripe that many DMs might overlook? Yes. But again another instance of sticking to RAW pushing certain builds over others. And in Adventurer's league this matters.

I think there's also a 1st level spell for all the available elements except, I believe, Acid.

Forgive me for not being intimately familiar with the rules of DM'ing adventurer's league, but I was under the impression that DMs were heavily discouraged from implementing a lot of houserules in an attempt to make AL games as universally accessible as possible. Also, if we are being honest, if official league play has taught us anything from numbers of various different types of games and editions over the years, random pickup play games tend to have a reputation for players that show up with a competitive "I only care for myself and making the most powerful character possible!" I'm not going to go so far as to say that every player who plays in official league play is this way, or that they are even the minority, but I've certainly heard more than a few horror stories of exactly this and stricter adhereance to the rules being less than ideal at discouraging this mindset. I'll concede that is all anecdotal though, so I cannot hold it against AL.

Yeah, AL isn't an ideal place to play but it's standardized which puts a common ground for understanding classes between each other.

You can disrupt a warlock player's ability without houseruling by pressuring them to not short rest and you can disrupt a Druid's ability by not giving them a good list of animal transformations.

What I can say though is that I was under the impression that most homebrew/house rule discussions had an inherant assumption that they were NOT discussing Adventurer's league or official play by default, though perhaps that assumption was not as universal as I thought. To clarify for the sake of my suggestions, I care not one whit about AL balance concerns and I would never advise anyone to attempt to use them in AL.

And these are my main thing with these arguments. People keep claiming "fixes" and "changes needed" but if they aren't balanced, the people who do care about AL play will just have an unbalanced game. Some people aren't being malicious when trying to be the most effective player but a balanced ruleset keeps them from using RAW as a shield. If the rules are in favor of their cheesing of the rules, they'll feel justified to do it and the system itself is less credible. Some people feel the need to "fix" Pact Magic and luckily most games don't revolve around "Nat20's autosucceed charisma checks" because then Bard's expertise would be seen as "in need of a fix."

True, and perhaps it might be more common. But I'd not underestimate the number of effects (not just spells, but monster abilities) that can break concentration. Any effect that incapacitates, stuns, or forces the caster to act against their will might break concentration. And a surprising number of them are either Wisdom or Intelligence saves (wizard's other save proficiency). Granted the ocassional charisma saving throw gains a point in the sorcerer column, and I do not belittle the large about of advantage having a high charisma has in ability checks out of combat. Fortunately for both classes there are feats that allow either the option to shore up these weaknesses, and admittedly a sorcerer with a decent con and warcaster is a hell of a fun "I never want to lose my spells...ever" build.

It's really only being incapacitated. They can lose their actions by being forced to halt by Command or frightened and unable to do anything but dash but keep their concentration up. There's not alot of wisdom saves that stun or incapacitate. They're usually just Con saves.

On this we agree. Sorcerers do have greater freedom in losing out on wasted resources. I'm just still not convinced that amount of sorcery points given are sufficient, or that giving sorcerers ritual casting is going to make them overpowered. It's a quality of life feature that every caster should receive that is damned hard to quantify the quality of because casting detect magic or identify without using a spell slot isn't going to crash anyone's campaign, but sure makes out caster characters out of combat feel like they are fulfilling their party role.

To put into perspective a boost in power of +1 sorcery points with all else equal:

By 2nd level, they can cast a 2nd level "burning hands" or 2nd level "sleep." Not a huge deal, but it's already heating up. By 3rd level, they can make their extra 2nd level slot and still twin their chromatic orb. By 4th level, they can cast 3rd level upcasting spells like scorching ray if they desire. By 5th level, things get spicy because they can cast 4th level spells 1-level earlier. Why does this matter? Because at level 6 they can choose 2 4th-level spells, because if they level up while they have a 4th-level spellslot in their character, they can choose to 4th-level spells since it meets all the requirements. And at 7th-level, they'd be able to choose 5th-level spells. They'd be objectively better than other fullcasters at that point.

Why no ritual caster? Besides the flavor being off that someone that uses their willpower to cast from an awakening must perform rituals, either for a god/entity (Druid/cleric) or as a step-by-step process (wizard/bard), they'd also be able to metamagic their rituals (and can currently at the cost of a feat).

But I think, most importantly & most likely, they just thought it would be unnecessary. They have 4 ritual spells to their entire spell list. They aren't a utility caster like a wizard or bard and the other spells really wouldn't make sense on a sorcerer (beast sense?) So it would just be a few spells that they'd have to purposefully pick up and wouldn't really fit the theme anyways, so they just didn't need it.

 

[NotAYakk]

This certainly leans heavily into metamagic, assuming the metamagic costs are the same, they really won't run out of metamagic in a day.

At level 2-3 they will. 6-9 encounters and 6-9 points.

At level 19, with 19 points and 3 encounters between rests, and 5 rounds per encounter, that is 19 points and 15 rounds to cast spells. You cannot quicken a spell every single round, let alone twin a 3rd level spell and a quickened cantrip (5 points/round).

It does make metamagic much, much cheaper.

The 20th level feature is massive. They can quicken-heighten Dominate Monster. They can twin-quicken haste. They can subtle-heightened a Dominate Person.

Note that quicken-heighten is a bit of a waste. Your other action has to be a non-leveled spell, like a cantrip. If you are doing a cantrip as your main action, you could just quicken the cantrip instead.

Subtle-heighten looks cool, but subtle and cast it again works almost as well (more slots, more time, but same ROI). Failing a save on a dominate person has no obvious effects, so you can just try again next round.

It does give you speed (1 round) and saves slots at the cost of metamagic points.

A heighten twin dominate monster followed by a quickened twin empowered cantrip is more like it.

Twin-heighten a wished feeblemind. Twin-Subtle wished Maze.

Twinning wish isn't legal, as it is capable of targeting more than 1 creature when cast as a 9th level spell.

 

[Redwizard007]

So, what I've taken away from all this is that I need to play a bunch of one sots with sorcerers of different builds at different levels in different party compositions to see how I really feel. There are some interesting fixes suggested and some of them sound like good options in a vacuum. It will be a neat exercise.

 

[Asisreo]

So, what I've taken away from all this is that I need to play a bunch of one sots with sorcerers of different builds at different levels in different party compositions to see how I really feel. There are some interesting fixes suggested and some of them sound like good options in a vacuum. It will be a neat exercise.

Be sure to be thorough, at least one in each tier and one at level 20. It'll give a good estimate for what to expect.

 

[Asisreo]

Twinning wish isn't legal, as it is capable of targeting more than 1 creature when cast as a 9th level spell.

It is, according to Sage Advice which is also the thing that made twinning firebolt illegal so

At level 19, with 19 points and 3 encounters between rests, and 5 rounds per encounter, that is 19 points and 15 rounds to cast spells. You cannot quicken a spell every single round, let alone twin a 3rd level spell and a quickened cantrip (5 points/round).

You don't need to quicken every round. You don't need to cast metamagics every round. If casting metamagic would, in your mind, need to be more than a rare occurence, make it at-will and nerf it. Choose a metamagic to use once per turn. That way, a sorcerer can twin haste at no real expense.

I'm trying not to be ridiculous here, honest. That's just where this line of thinking is heading.

Removing a sorcerer's font of magic and buffing their metamagic is, to me, like removing a barbarian's rage and improving their reckless attack by having it do a +1 damage bonus and can use a reaction to resist the damage. It's plausible, yes, and perhaps even balanced, and a barbarian is usually quite reckless in terms of flavor but a barbarian is definitely supposed to have Rage as it's shining feature and taking it away can feel...wrong.



People say you can't metamagic enough as a sorcerer and depending on how they play, that may be entirely true but, just as I was telling another person, you don't have to choose metamagic or font of magic, you can use both.

For example, let's say your 5th level sorcerer decided the first combat was appropriate for their quicken fireball/twin ray of frost stint and next turn they quicken fireball and firebolt. After that, combat complete. Now, the sorcerer has no metamagic and no 3rd level slots. But they realize that the boss is coming up and a quicken fireball would be perfect. They're not interested in being efficient, they're interested in finishing the fight quickly before anyone takes more damage from the enemy. Well, they can still quicken fireball at the cost of 2 2nd-level spells and 3 1st-level or any other combination that adds to 7 (not all at once, get the 5 points and convert them to the 3rd level slot then add the 2 points). No other spellcaster has this raw ability to grab extra spells and cast more useful spells.

If you don't want to Nova, no problem. There's nothing wrong being a regular spellcaster until there needs to be a metamagic. And if that time doesn't come, they can cast more spells and use their font of magic to manipulate spell slots.

Yes, they can be expensive but going from higher to lower can give more quantity of spells castable like 1 4th-level spellslot into 2 1st-level spellslots increased the quantity of your castable spells by 1. Using a sixth level slot increases it by 2 and so on. In case you've used up all your 1st-level slots already and you suspect a few more "shields" needed. You can also reverse and go lower to higher level spellslots because a shield and 2 invisibility spell slot is very much worth a counterspell/dispel magic spell slot when you're fighting a spellcaster.

At level 2-3 they will. 6-9 encounters and 6-9 points.

At level 19, with 19 points and 3 encounters between rests, and 5 rounds per encounter, that is 19 points and 15 rounds to cast spells. You cannot quicken a spell every single round, let alone twin a 3rd level spell and a quickened cantrip (5 points/round).

This assumption is a bit of a mix of too types of games. I need data to back this up, but I doubt people running 4+ rounds of combat are frequently running 6-9 combat encounters. I also doubt people running games with 6-9 combat encounters have encounters that last longer than 3-4 turns each.

I sometimes run 6-8 encounters a day and they are usually over in 2 rounds quickly because they can't afford running into a deadly encounter or anything that prolongs the fight and uses up too many resources. They'll be bled dry halfway there.

Somtimes, an adventuring day is 3 combats that last roughly 4 rounds long since I can turn up the heat and even add a deadly encounter or two.

In my gaming experience, 6-9 encounters with 5 rounds each sounds like a super slog. Spellcasters throw out cantrips for a minimum of 8 rounds because they actually ran out of spells and martials have said "I swing my sword" 120 times with occasional flourishes in between representing their once per long rest abilities.

Note that quicken-heighten is a bit of a waste. Your other action has to be a non-leveled spell, like a cantrip. If you are doing a cantrip as your main action, you could just quicken the cantrip instead.

You might not want to cast a spell, rather hide/dodge/ready an action. This is also why I think Quickened isn't so hot, since the other stuff you do is basically a 1st level spell's worth just to do an extra cantrip of damage. It's useful for maximizing NOVA. But you do not have to cast a spell as your action. You can use your action to attack, too, but you probably would've wanted to have multiclassed.

 

[MostlyHarmless42]

So, what I've taken away from all this is that I need to play a bunch of one sots with sorcerers of different builds at different levels in different party compositions to see how I really feel. There are some interesting fixes suggested and some of them sound like good options in a vacuum. It will be a neat exercise.

It would be a good exercise and I would be keen to see the results, no matter how subjective the observations may seem. Actual play data is useful, and while "It doesn't feel fun" is not qualitative, it is still useful feedback, especially if one can follow up with an explanation of why they feel that way. It kind of makes me thing of doing it pitched as an "X-men" game.

I think there's also a 1st level spell for all the available elements except, I believe, Acid.

Correct, and while one can argue as to the effectiveness of each spell compared to others until the sun goes down, it does not change that yes, Elemental Evil/Xanathar's Guide went a long way towards fixing the issue. Again I do not dispute this. Related to the only element I still think is arguably unplayable: acid, the new Unearth Arcana does have a fairly decent 1st level acid spell that I hope sees official print. It would just be nice though if they released some sort of official way for the sorcerer to convert spells other elements damage-wise. I would prefer it to be a feat myself.

Yeah, AL isn't an ideal place to play but it's standardized which puts a common ground for understanding classes between each other.

You can disrupt a warlock player's ability without houseruling by pressuring them to not short rest and you can disrupt a Druid's ability by not giving them a good list of animal transformations.

Agreed. Terrible DMs and players need not be that way.

Semi-related musing and a totally-not-completely-aside, I've currently a celestial warlock that for the life of me just never uses his spell slots except to heal or cure disease. I tend to favor two or three deadly encounter games with plenty of times to short rest in between and the party does love to take short rests. He fully understands the mechanics of the game but chooses to just spam eldritch blast and just seems happy to do it, and who am I to cramp down on his fun, but it is just...odd. It's led me to consider whether the optimal magic item for from a fun standpoint him is a certain pair of cantrip spamming bracers from Ravnica that I'm debating about whether or not I should implement some sort of limitation (i.e. charges per day) or not.

And these are my main thing with these arguments. People keep claiming "fixes" and "changes needed" but if they aren't balanced, the people who do care about AL play will just have an unbalanced game. Some people aren't being malicious when trying to be the most effective player but a balanced ruleset keeps them from using RAW as a shield. If the rules are in favor of their cheesing of the rules, they'll feel justified to do it and the system itself is less credible. Some people feel the need to "fix" Pact Magic and luckily most games don't revolve around "Nat20's autosucceed charisma checks" because then Bard's expertise would be seen as "in need of a fix."

Perhaps I was too blunt with my word choice. I don't care for AL personally, but I respect those who do. What I do, however, is strongly prefer to find and implement as few houserules as possible from the current game as written. Any of my proposed changes to anything I run I am always striving to find the most surgical and concise way to address a shortcoming and always strive to consider the larger impact upon the game. I realize not everyone else does. It's why discussions about different topics are useful though as even if I didn't feel that Class X Ability Y has a problem balance wise I try to understand where they are coming from, because I want to help them find a way that works for them. I personally am quite inclusive with homebrew stuff being tested in my games or houserules, but I am quite strict on making the anything that sees my table fits the spirit of DnD 5e: a fast paced, concise and unfiddly (if not truly rules lite) rules game that actively tries to avoid abilities that are overly complicated with situational modifiers and stacking effects. It's not an exact science by any stretch of the means but I've play many different systems over the years and I can fairly reliably spot something that feels more "3.5/Pathfinder-y" (great games that are clearly about Rules over Rulings and have obscure rules for just about any strange thing you can think of and are totally not annoying to lookup mid play.). It's basically just about making sure rules match the spirit of the game.

It's really only being incapacitated. They can lose their actions by being forced to halt by Command or frightened and unable to do anything but dash but keep their concentration up. There's not alot of wisdom saves that stun or incapacitate. They're usually just Con saves.

A fair point. I've seen some people call for concentration checks on fear effects pointing to the rules about how a DM can call for saves on stuff like bad weather, horse jostling, etc. Maybe I've just had DMs that are more draconian in their approach to the rules. I'd never make such a call myself because I interpret it the same way you do, but then again I'm also quite eager to make sure to remind casters of horseback casting, am genuinely bothered that someone can use a longbow on horseback or sleep in fullplate without detriment (yes I know and use the Xanathar variant) within the rules, and love putting in random rainstorms to mess with all of the ranged people, so to each their own. shrug

Why no ritual caster? Besides the flavor being off that someone that uses their willpower to cast from an awakening must perform rituals, either for a god/entity (Druid/cleric) or as a step-by-step process (wizard/bard), they'd also be able to metamagic their rituals (and can currently at the cost of a feat).

But I think, most importantly & most likely, they just thought it would be unnecessary. They have 4 ritual spells to their entire spell list. They aren't a utility caster like a wizard or bard and the other spells really wouldn't make sense on a sorcerer (beast sense?) So it would just be a few spells that they'd have to purposefully pick up and wouldn't really fit the theme anyways, so they just didn't need it.

And I would argue that the designers likely only gave them 4 ritual spells because they chose not to give them ritual casting, much the same way they likely tried to avoid giving them "named" spells (i.e. Bigby's Hand, Mortenkainen's Sword, etc. - focus on the general name schemes, not necessarily these two specific spells) because it felt less "intuitive" to use spells created by other casters they deemed "wizards"...completely glossing over the large mechanical impact that this might have in the long run and that all of these named "wizards" were NOT wizards but came from a time that predates classes. Frankly it surprises me that WOTC hasn't retconned some of these named people to have been sorcerers or warlocks and it is a bit telling that they tend to default to the wizard list with the large majority of their NPC statblocks in their modules, but I acknowledge that that is all interpretation and assumption of developer intent on my part.

Related minor gripe: they should've release their spells as "Spell Name, Famous Caster's Name" (i.e. Hand, Bigby's or Floating Disk, Tensor's) in the spells description/lists. Looking up spell names in the current game is a complete pain for those who don't know who the hell half of these people even are and couldn't care less. God I miss that about pathfinder.

As for sorcerers casting from willpower intuitively, I'll concede that while I personally feel ritual casting is too universally game friendly that I don't think they should've kept it from just sorcerers it is just that, my opinion. Though
I put out that the concept that same sort of explanation doesn't really do much to support why Bards or Warlocks should get it if the sorcerer does not, as all also use the same casting stat. If the only justification possible is "well, the bard spent time practicing music" and the warlock "read an evil book and went a bit mad" why can't the sorcerer roleplay that they read a few magical tomes out of curiosity (justified by their arcana proficiency) in order to help them learn to control their magic puberty and use Charisma to do it like the warlock? Yes I get that I could take a feat as a sorcerer and mechanically fluff it as this, but as you yourself stated, the sorcerer list has almost no ritual spells, the warlock list is quite small, leaving the choice between bard or using intelligence as a caster stat (while the same warlock uses their charisma and can pick from ANY rituals.) At the very least give sorcerers an option to learn it baked into their class like the warlock through a subclass or something.

Also, your line of reasoning here also poses me to ask: if sorcerers are supposed to be magical inherently, why do they need to use spell foci or material components. Gold cost ones I could see as a justification as maybe the inherent magic in someone isn't powerful enough to fuel the spells, but regular items? Why didn't sorcerers get the ability to be their own spell focus? Especially seeing as they had such an ability in previous editions?

 

[hexblade lover]

I'm new here but not new to D&D, sorcerers are my favourite class, and I firmly believe any sense of "underwhelment" comes from mechanical weaknesses. I don't think there's an inherent issue with the class mechanics, though (well, aside from SP, spells known, and metamagic options known being too few). Using spell points, especially if SP and spell points are rolled into one pool, as well as throwing in another metamagic option at level 3 makes the class good enough in my book. Spell Versatility from the feature variants is very helpful as well.

However.
I don't know if anyone suggested this since I only read the first pages of this thread, but if we really want to redesign the class and make it vastly different from all other casters... then how about removing the spells known entirely? What if sorcerers could cast any spell in their list whenever they wanted. No knowing, no preparing, no nothing. You just pick a spell and cast it, provided you have a slot of the respective level. Boom. Nobody will ever complain about a sorcerer being too weak, ever again.

If you want to go real crazy, remove the sorcerer spell list entirely and allow sorcerers to cast any spell in the game if they have the slots for it. And if you think that's overpowered, just replace slots with spell points and slash the total amount they get by 20-33% or something, or give them one less slot per level or whatever. You have less total capacity than a wizard, but given that you're a real spontaneous caster and have metamagic, you should be fine. I'd play this, and I highly doubt it'd be broken, or that it can't be tuned if it turns out to be too good.