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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Liquidsabre" data-source="post: 1653172" data-attributes="member: 15635">That's why giving the Sorc more skill points makes sense, as it shows how the sorc has more time to spend learning other skills. Plus the core sorc already gets weapon proficiency with all Simple Weapons (including spears for a total of 17 weapons) as opposed to the Wizard who gets proficiency only 5 weapons. Clearly the core sorc already is more skilled in combat than the wizard.We tried that permutation of a light-armor-casting-variant but it turned out to be a little too good and also stepped on the toes of the bard (making it completely obsolete, though perhaps not entirely a bad thing heh). We also tried the increased hit-die but I found it much more flavorful to just add other things to the class than HD or light-armor, such as Bloodline Spells (spontaneous arcane domain spells, along with two unique class skills relevant to the sorcerer's chosen bloodline: source of their magic-infused blood), Augment Familiar, and Bonus Metamagic Feats in an attempt to fill-out the class at higher levels making it worthwhile to pursue besides a PrC. The experiment turned out quite well but, as you can see, many folk have their own versions that suit them. The Sorcerer is the new 3e ranger in 3.5e... <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />It isn't as easy as it would seem to produce a balanced version of a variant sorc. For some reason you start tweaking the known spells (up or down) you get massive haywire in balance. # of known spells go up = broken, # of known spells go down = too weak. So we ended up leaving them the same and went with the spontaneous arcane domain spells (Arcane Bloodline Spells). Instead of subtracting or adding to known spells, we just subtracted 1 slot/level/day across the board (so base 5 instead of base 6 as with the battle sorcerer) and inserted Arcane Bloodline spells at each spell level cast 1/day. Essentially racial spells (i.e. Bloodline) cast 1/day but can be used to cast down level by expending higher slots if desired (for limited flexibility). We left these as regular spells and not spell-like abilities so that these spells could still be altered with metamagic feats.It also made more sense that the Sorc should be able to metamagic at least as well as a wiz could (or at least have that capability). Core sorc left the sorc lagging in the metamagic department by one level behind the wiz due to getting higher slots one level later. This was remedied somewhat by giving the Sorc 0 slots for 2nd level spells at 3rd level, but without any known spells of 2nd level this only left the Sorc with an extra slot if they had the bonus spell due to a high enough Cha mod. This higher level bonus slot could be used to cast a metamagic spell if so desired, giving the limited ability to the sorc, as well as access to their bloodline spell to boot. This also gave the Sorc a boost in the early levels where the core sorcerer is at it's weakest and the bonus levels out at the higher levels, essentially balancing the class out.For some great ideas and more discussion on balance for the class (which should help you get a better "feel" for balance of the class, for our version we just play-tested the heck out of different permutations until we found something that was more balanced/playable across the 1-20 level spread and flavor spells and abilities). So I definately suggest checking out past threads on other variants.Well, that's the process our variant went through and the problems with the class we attempted to address in a nut-shell. Hope it'll give you some insight into the weaknesses of the core class vs building your own variant.Cheers!</blockquote>

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