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Message: <blockquote data-quote="MostlyHarmless42" data-source="post: 8003128" data-attributes="member: 6845520">While I do agree that the situation is not as dire in a post Elemental Evil/Xanathar's world, there is still a problem. Ice storm is in fact a good spell in the right situation, but by the time they get it, fire and lightning sorcerers have already been using their respective signature blasts for two levels already, which can be a big deal if the campaign never reaches past 9th level. I've both played and ran in campaigns in which the party was 6th level or so for almost 6 months to a year. Said campaigns are quite fun, but could be frustrating to certain builds because of it. With ice storm in particular, the spell also will outright piss off your party members royally if you have any melee in your group, and while having to carefully aim aoe spells is nothing that is just an ice element or sorcerer problem, lack of instant damage spells of every element for every level is something that gets noticed by players. As a DM I can remedy this by giving players magic items or homebrewing alternative metamagics/feats to allow them to alter spell elements on the fly, but but RAW dragon sorcerers are heavily incentivized to only pick one element of spells and frankly do not have enough spells known to go off script too much if their particular element is lackluster. I'll concede that only really acid or poison is arguably unplayable though.This DM dependence of rules interpretation is precisely why I label the archetype lackluster though. Yes, it can be great fun with the right DM. One of my regular sorcerer players loves it to the point that I regularly find reasons to include the wild magic table as must as I can. It can also the weakest archetype if the DM never calls for wild surge rolls.Again, what I want my involvement to be in these threads is to find solutions to this precise problem of preventing font of magic abuse on short rest sorcery points houserule and identifying other potential concerns, or to talk about other suggestions myself or others have tried and actually playtested. I don't think the sorcerer even needs much. A few bonus origin spells known [which again if you read my original posts I talk about how I feel giving them cleric style at first directly led to my sorcerer knowing nearly twice the spells of the warlock and more than what a wizard would prepare as well, and led me to conclude that giving a bonus spell each odd level chosen from a list of 10 1st-5th level origin spells more like the warlock was a better idea], an extra metamagic at 7th level, and ....something to help with spell point regeneration and I feel we are there. The problem is figuring out that last point.Instead I have to deal with the same "just play a fire sorcerer or devine soul! that's what sorcerers are!" or "twin spell, subtle, and quicken are great therefore every other metamagic is fine!" comments in...every...thread related to this. I'm not saying that other class related threads (or just any thread in general really) don't have similar issues that bloat up their threads because they do, but they each have their own "fanatics" defending them as well. I might gripe offhandedly about the 17 warlord threads but I don't go seeking them out to tell them their thoughts are dumb and they should feel bad. It's a toxic culture of internet forums in general and it needs to cleansed like the cancer it is. People need to be respectful of each other.Another step towards something that I feel really evens the playing field for the limited spells known for a sorcerer, the unearthed arcana class variant that lets spells known classes switch out one spell on each long rest. My sorcerer player has said that she loves this change more than anything else and it really helped her issues with the class. This is the same person, mind you who says she doesn't like playing prepared casters like wizards or clerics because she feels they have too many choices and it leaves her with decision paralysis. Interpret that as you will. I just hope it sees official print.This is a fair point. People should probably be more clear in stating what is their opinion and be aware of using authoritative language. I myself am guilty of this. Though I have also seen plenty of people preface their threads with things akin to "I get that this is all my opinion and that not everyone agrees that class x or ability y is in need of fixing, let's just keep the thread to feedback of possible tweaks for those who feel this opinion may hold weight and the comments of It's fine! to a minimum" and the threads STILL get bogged down not 5 pages with two idiots arguing over whether the original topic is even a valid subject of discussion in the first place. Again toxic forum culture.You'd be hardpressed to make that claim though, given that evoker wizards have the best fireball out of any fireballs by a wide margin, and all other fireballs are still blatantly overpowered for their level due to WOTC feeling it was a good decision to make certain spells "iconic" and therefore OP. sigh But that is a whole other topic of discussion. Point granted that one could make arguments of any class combined with any ability and still receive toxic criticism though.Again, I am guilty of speaking authoritatively when I should not have. You are welcome to have fun and I do not mean to diminish it, but by that same regard, I have had multiple players and myself playing multiple sorcerers all express independently similar gripes about that class that all really boiled down to two key issues: not enough spells known and not enough sorcery points to get through the day. They all stated that trying out some of my proposed changes made the class feel more fun. Interpret that as you will. I still also am of a personal belief that sorcerers not getting ritual casting is a glaring oversight by the developers. They are the ONLY full caster [I'd argue that only tomelocks are the only full casters for warlock and that is sort of their design intent, but this is kind of a semantics problem, granted] whom does not get it as a feature and while again comparing abilities on a single basis is flawed giving the sorcerer ritual casting like a bard and adding a few more ritual spells to their list in general hardly a broken sorcerer makes.You bring up newer players (at least that what I assume you mean by "bright-eyed" as that is the original meaning of that phrase). New players are actually a big concern of mine. One the underlying issues I have with the sorcerer is that as written now it is a deceptively punishing class for new players. One wrong spell selection and they are stuck with it until they level up (which again in some campaigns/groups could be quite some time). One wrong metamagic choice? They may never get the option to get another in many campaigns. There is a certain pair of youtubers (Dungeon Dudes) who did a video on best classes for newer players and one of the points one of them brought was precisely this when they had a debate as to whether sorcerers or wizards were more forgiving of new players.This is admittedly a minor mistake on your part and I do not mean to be overly nitpicky, but as you mentioned it multiple times now, sorcerers by RAW do NOT have light armor proficiency nor (what I think you seem to think based on the implication of some of their comments) more health than a wizard (excluding dragon sorcerer). I've seen a common houseruling of giving sorcerers d8 hit dice, light armor proficiency, and simple weapons, and it is a change I've considered due to having a player specifically tell me he chose warlock over sorcerer precisely because he wanted more health and was considering using weapons on occasion (he also considered pact of the blade for awhile, though ultimately setting for tome). My current sorcerer is typically a martial player and has definitely noticed the difference in health and AC with her sorcerer as well (albeit this is more a musing than indication of problem).What I think would help is if at minimum sorcerers had simple weapons. It would mean that dragon sorcerers could be a decent gish, and I'd be all for a subclass like blade warlocks or bladesinger wizard for sorcerers. And yes, sorcerers DO get Con save proficiency, and that is in fact nice for concentrating on spells, but they also loose out on wisdom save proficiency and have little incentive to have a high wisdom, leaving them vulnerable to other things. Ask any fighter if they feel at times having a low wisdom is a vulnerability to certain spells. The save proficiencies are ultimately a trade off and that is good design.As I said before, the sorcerer is a class that requires significantly more system mastery to perform than a lot of others, excluding very few specific builds a new player could luck into (fire/lightning dragon and divine soul). Letting the sorcerer switch a single spell on the daily and metamagic at level up could help deal with this issue tremendously with very little power impact on the overall class in terms of adding too much brute force. Let's hope the former sees official print and WOTC at least considers the latter.Agreed as a DM. But counter point, not all DMs run campaigns this broad (or what I'm guessing is rather sandbox-y), and many of the official modules have strong themes like I described previously. Try playing a fire sorcerer in decent into Avernus without the DM having some sort of magic item or houserule to Elemental Adept that let's players damage fire immune monsters (a rare case where the build that is great for sorcerers does fall flat), or being told you're being told to play one game, then "surprise it's now a Curse of Strahd game!" and feeling like that heavy giant themed fighter rune knight (I know it's UA) is now thematically off point and you spend the game wishing you'd gotten to play that undead slaying paladin/cleric/ranger and the DM hadn't pulled a damned fast one, or the charm-themed warlock/bard realizing that most of the same game's bosses and much of their minions are immune to charm. Or wanting to play a fighter who hits things really hard and asks questions later only to realize that Dragon Heist is a largely political/roleplaying themed game and that Waterdeep's laws can literally get you killed, exiled, or thrown in a dungeon for multiple weeks/years for accidentally murdering a commoner, and how are you to know as a player which random NPC will get cut in half with a single blow and which is a secret CR 12 ex-adventurer that will kill the entire party if you so much as sneeze at them wrong?None of these modules are bad or awful by any means, hell Dragon Heist and Curse of Strahd are some of my favorite prewritten modules ever, but it doesn't change the fact that I'd never not at least give my players a hint that they might be taking a trip to Barovia to fight a vampire, or clearly communicate that Waterdeep has strict laws and that this game may not end up being heavily filled with combat. They are merely themed games.Agreed. The designers were largely on the mark with this edition. But like every other edition before it, there are still random hickups here or there. Sorcerer and Ranger are arguably two of them from the PHB. Crunch time and deadlines also happen and interfere with design quality, one should note that in the case of the sorcerer during the playtest for most of it they DID go with a radically different design at first, using one that make the class much more variant based on origin selection, dragon sorcerers were full on GISH machines as an example. Players largely gave them feedback that "this isn't how they were in 3.5!" and they changed it last minute to hardcore casters and doubled down on the metamagic mechanic and sorcery points. Part of these backlash may have been fueled by them not having many other origins available to test pre-launch so testers just had to go with "trust us, not every sorcerer will be so beefy and focused on melee!", but the end result is that the current version of the class had basically no actual playtesting as a result. There is also something to be said about them learning more about class design as further products are released. It's why concerns about power creep are a thing if they are unwilling to offer erratas or edits to previous subclasses.Again I don't dispute any of these (aside from that again only Dragon sorcerers have more HP or a higher AC than wizards and that again Con saves are arguably an even trade for wisdom, especially when group dynamics are considered, the sorcerer is effectively the same as a fighter for saves which could mean the party is might now be vulnerable to group wisdom saves that the wizard would likely have succeeded on). But again I point out, that when factoring in other class abilities wizards will never find themselves unable to use any of their class features because they spent their daily uses on making extra spell slots, and again that is fine if the sorcerer is intended to have everything be based on sorcery point expenditure, but again if that is the case, they do not have enough sorcery points.</blockquote>

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