D&D 5E Sorcerer vs Warlock

[Li Shenron]

Hi everyone. I'm going to take a small step away from mechanics to discuss something that's been on my mind. Outside of different class mechanics, should the Sorcerer and Warlock classes be separate? I like them both. They're some of my favorite classes. But, are they really two sides of the same coin?

Both get their power from someone else. Warlocks get their power from their patron, sorcerers get theirs from their bloodline. But what about when those overlap? What is the difference between a Great Old One's Warlock or the sorcerers scion of some bad aberration mixups?

Merging the two class concepts could open up more origins and stories for the character's power. Were they born with it, or was it Maybelline (you know, the Arch Fey of beauty)?

The only way I see the need to keep them firmly separate is if the story and theme of the Warlock serving their patron was more apparent. The Warlock is sort of the forbidden Cleric, so if that was more important then I see the class being it's own thing.

What are your thoughts?

Generally speaking, you could go and merge classes and then merge again and again, until there is only one class, and the game would still be good. But you can also go and split, and split, and split until you have a hundred classes, and again the game would be fine. There is no 'right' solution.

Having established that, I do think that in general the separation of character options into different classes is based BOTH on narrative concepts and mechanics. Let's not forget how both the Sorcerer and the Warlock were introduced into D&D: it was not because of narrative... the Sorcerer was introduced in 3.0 as a mechanical variant of the Wizard for people who didn't like Vancian magic and specifically wanted a spellcaster without spell preparation; the Warlock was introduced in 3.5 as a similar variant for those who also wanted it with at-will magic.

But without thinking about mechanics, from a narrative point of view you could have a single spellcaster class, leaving up all the details about WHY does she have magic powers in the first place. We know what is the narrative distinction with the current classes: Wizards cast because they are geniuses who studied hard, Clerics cast because they are chosen by their deity and promise to keep up with their faith, Sorcerers cast because they already have magic within themselves, Warlock cast because they bought power and knowledge from someone else...

If anything, I find more similarity between Cleric and Warlock in the sense that both their powers have an external source. And it might be even argued that because of that there may be situations when they are cut off from those sources and lose their powers. In fact, the first Warlock concept was the Fiend one of Faustian inspiration, with an almost-but-not-quite-divine patron, which in 4e was actually promoted to full deity.