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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Li Shenron" data-source="post: 7058588" data-attributes="member: 1465">I still can't shrug the feeling that WotC maybe has done a terrible mistake with Sorcerers.As you say, the Sorcerer originated in 3e for the specific purposes of providing an easy-to-play Wizard (because a lot of beginners want to start with a spellcaster just because it's cool) and introducing essentially a non-vancian spellcasting option into the game (for a few long-term gamers who never liked it).Then, in 3e they designed it under the idea "more spells per day, less spells known" (you can do less things but more often), but because spontaneous casting was still a striking advantage against vancian casting, they also delayed spell level advancement by 1 Sorcerer level, compared to Wizard/Cleric/Druid.Fast-forward to 5e and we got a huge update on spellcasting rules, and now everyone has the same progression of spells levels and daily slots. The Sorcerer concept of being "strategically inferior, tactically superior" is supposed to remain. They start the design from the "strategically inferior" hence less spells known. And then they keep the "you don't need to prepare your spells" as think this still means "tactically superior" but it doesn't! Because what it really means when combined with less spells known, is that in practice every Wizard prepares about as many spells as a Sorcerer knows, meaning that the Wizard is essentially equivalent to a Sorcerer that can change the list of spells known on a daily basis...At this points, they should have realized that this means there is ZERO tactical superiority in the Sorcerer's not having to prepare spells, so the tactical superiority should be provided by another class feature...Enter the spell points. This is a good idea, because they mean either metamagic (boost spell power) or extra daily slots ("more spells per day" is back).But then something else happened... at some point during the 5e playtest a few key Wizard playtesters (some of which are known people in the industry) demanded to add what became the Arcane Recovery feature.Now try to make some calculations on how many spell slots a Wizard (at different class levels) can recover using Arcane Recovery, and compare it with how many spell slots a Sorcerer (at equivalent levels) can create using Spell Points, and you'll get very close numbers. The Wizard is slightly more restricted (she can't recover slots she hasn't used yet, and she has to recover all those slots in a single short rest, while the Sorcerer can do so quickly if needed), but it still remains the fact that a Sorcerer basically does not cast more spells than a Wizard on a given day, she casts about the same amount. And worse, she has to completely give up her unique* ability of metamagic, if she wants to cast the same amount (not more!) of spells as the Wizard.*unique so far, because I bet that early or late Wizard-fans will manage to get metamagic for the Wizard tooThe tactical advantantage of metamagic is too small by itself. It could be big, but unfortunately for the Sorcerer it's diminished by the following:(a) every caster can already use the core mechanism of augmenting spells by casting them using a higher slot to get (some) effects similar to metamagic(b) a Wizard just knows more spells, and can use similar spells of different levels to achieve a similar tactical flexibility(c) a Sorcerer knows only 2 metamagic effects below level 10, which is where probably >80% of the adventures are played (and then 3 below level 17, where probably >95% of the adventures are played), and that's very little for flexibility</blockquote>

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