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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MostlyHarmless42" data-source="post: 8002842" data-attributes="member: 6845520">I do actually agree with a lot of your points in this post, but with respect, FIRE specced Dragon sorcerers and Devine Soul sorcerers dominate combat, with an arguable debate to be had for Lightning Dragon/Storm sorcerers. All other builds are lackluster, mainly because......of this. Not all spells are created equal. Notice how not all the elements even get a spell for every level, even after the Elemental Evil/Xanathar spells got added, and even then not all the spells of every element are actually mechanically good. And even when new spells come out in new books, there is often more spells that make the wizard list but not the sorcerer.The difference being that KI regenerates back on a short rest while sorcery points do not, resulting in a monk being able to not care if they spend all their ki points in a single fight (or just half if they wish to be conservative) because they can just take a nap or lunch break and gain them back. I see fighters often treat their abilities the same way. The number of times a fighter has said in our games "well, I might as well second wind because we're taking a short rest anyway!" is quite high.Meanwhile, the sorcerer who spends his spell points this way severely under performs after the first encounter (which granted they do at least shine in) and may end up being completely unable to use his class features if they have a spell point cost and they were not relevant for that fight. And the sorcerer can't have the simple fix of just giving his sorcery points back on short rest to fix this issue because he can then exploit font of magic to regain spell slots to absurd degrees.And then whenever we start a thread trying to figure out a houserule fix that we find optimal for this problem, people come swarming out of the woodwork every time claiming "sorcerers are fine because I played one specific fire build that spams fireball! or the divine soul support build (that conveniently again doesn't use spell points in any of their abilities except for a reactive healing ability). get over it!" until the original thread conversation gets lost in hateful ad hominems and emotional outbursts caused by text being an absolutely terrible method for conveying meaning, especially if one side is using a mobile app that causes the text box to reset in the d*** window EVERY time one has to erase a letter due to autocorrect + touchscreen keyboards being incompatible with any human hands other than those of a child!...but I am digress in a meaningless tangent that will no doubt be just a random idiosyncrasy of mine with a hatred of all things android or apple. Give me a real keyboard or give me death!...again, rant aside.The problem is that it just doesn't feel fun to use what is [presumably] supposed to be your primary class feature at best once per fight (assuming the adventuring day guidelines), and even then that is contingent on either selecting a lower cost metamagic or are converting spell slots sorcery points to do it. Nor does it feel good to pick two metamagics and then be stuck with them for possibly the rest of the campaign (if it doesn't go higher than 9th level), especially if you end up picking ones that don't suit the campaign...Forgive me if this was not your intention with this reply, but as his original post here referred to metamagics being more or less powerful in different types of campaigns, I do think that opportunity cost should not apply in the case of campaigns. Any DM who does not either cater his campaign to the builds his players have presented him, or warn his players that some of their choices might not be as useful in the game he is intending to run is frankly doing his players a disservice. I shalt go so far as to claim that he is going against the "one true fun" but I would be absolutely pissed if I was a player in his game if I wanted to play a specific character build and he gave me no warning that it would effectively be useless in his game. That goes beyond just sorcerer. If I rolled a kickass undead slayer and the DM is like "oh, too bad, there are no zombies in my world!" or a wizard who wanted to research rare magic and the DM is like "yeah...spellbooks/scrolls? They don't exist!" or a magical sweet-talking warlock/bard who finds out too late that the game is now heavily themed around creatures immune to charm. Nearly every class has caveats like that. The first question every ranger should ask is "what sort of enemies will we be fighting and in what sort of terrain will be doing it?" (or alternatively: "do you allow the Revised Ranger and if not, what can we change about it to let me play it at your table?"). Every rogue player should ask "how to you interpret stealth rules?" The wizard should ask "can I find spells in the world to add to my book?" The sorcerer should ask "Do you houserule that one can counterspell a metamagic subtle spell?" For me an answer of 'yes' to that last question means I shall NEVER play a sorcerer with them as a DM. It's about setting clear expectations between the player and DM.Even setting the social contract issue aside, there is another reason why campaign specific abilities are poor design (and are also brought up often in threads about the ranger and Favored Enemy/Terrain): a player shouldn't have to beg the DM for 'hints' about what the campaign will be like in order for their character to get to use their abilities. I'm not going to argue that sorcerers are the only class that suffers from this sort of problem or that they are even the worst (cough ranger cough), but choosing the wrong metamagic is hardly a forgiving choice.</blockquote>

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