D&D 5E Sorcerers and Versatility

[Delandel]

No, eight spells minimum, the same number he had prepared when he lost his spell book. I've seen a 5E wizard lose his spellbook and not have a backup.

No, potentially zero spells minimum, if he picked all spells with components and lost his component pouch. If we're arguing about ultra rare situations we may as well go all the way.

It is is clear advantage. However a wizard is easier to screw up than a sorcerer for an adventure day.

After level 3, a sorcerer can bail themselves out of a bad choice with metamagic. The orc general is a half white dragon and your only fire spell is little old burning hands? A sorcerer can empower it, distance it, heighten it, or quicken it.

Empower is a tiny boost to 3d6. Distance is a stretch here, if you're not in range of this general just use Fire Bolt, and if you're super keen on getting that +5 damage just Quicken another Fire Bolt instead. Heighten blows your entire SP load to increase the chance of full damage (EDIT: and again you're better off just Quickening for more efficient SP). Quicken is the only one I'd consider, +5.5 damage for for 2/3 SP if it's a dire situation.

Just so we're clear, the sorcerer can only do two of these metamagics: you get two at 3rd, another at 11th, and one more at 17th. You're not throwing out a variety of metamagic willy nilly. Most of your options are barely worth mentioning because Quicken and Twin are generally better, and that's all you have room for until the higher levels.

Meanwhile, the wizard has 2 more spells prepared. If we're in hypothetical land, maybe one of those extra spells that the sorc doesn't have is chromatic orb, which is better suited to this particular fight, dealing the damage that the sorcerer spent extra spells for.

Or maybe there was a short rest before this encounter, where the wizard recovered his 2nd level spell that is more useful here, at no cost, while the sorc would have to spend 2 of his SP to do the same.

And if you had fireball but ran out of slots for it, they can convert 5 points into one of the 2 3rd level slots you ran out of. And you can always melt down those useless slots into points. A wizard is stuck. All hey can do is cast it as a higher slot.

This is true! I'll give you one point here. That is a perk of the sorc -- regaining his spell on demand. Except for that bit about "useless slots" -- if you ever played a low/mid caster, you'd know how precious all your slots are.

Oh yeah, and if you check the Sorcerer's page, you'd also know that melting down spells is ALSO inefficient. It's not like oh hey let's take three 1st level spells and make a 3rd. No, it's oh hey let's take two 2nd level slots and one 1st level slot to make a 3rd.

The thing is though, the Wizard's recovery mechanic is still better. Not strictly better, as you touched on, but still much better. You have to prepare in advance, but it's much more efficient by a wide margin. A 5th level sorcerer needs to spend all 5 of his SP to get back one fireball. The Wizard? He gets his Fireball back on a short rest -- done. Oh, mr. Sorcerer, did you also want to use your cornerstone class ability, metamagic? Well you don't have anymore SP, you spent it all getting back your Fireball. Best be melting down your spells!

The CONCEPT is okay, but the NUMBERS are bad. The CONCEPT of sorcerers having less spells than a wizard, but casting those spells better, is a good one. The NUMBERS of it is bad -- 15 is too little. That's why FS and SB get more. It was a goof. Here is another similar issue.

The wizard is VERY STRONG when they guess right and kind of bad when they guess wrong.

The wizard can literally prepare the exact same spells as the sorcerer plus extras. There's literally no "worse" here, just better. But this fact keeps getting conveniently ignored.

The sorcerer doesn't have choices and kinda hard to choose wrong because of it (provided you choose a theme).

Except if you didn't choose Quicken/Twin metamagic at 3rd. I chose Twin and Empower because I didn't realize Quicken was actually really good. I won't get Quicken until 10th level. I'll never get to retrain out of Empower. You get the final metamagic at 17th.

So yeah, you can screw up big time if you didn't pick the right metamagics at 3rd. Way, way worse than the Wizard. Oh, didn't like X spell? Who cares, throw it on the pile of spells you know, you're good.

Oh, you picked Subtle and Careful Metamagic? Tough, because you're stuck with those, and only those, for basically the entire campaign, unless you're one of the lucky ones that gets to even play at level 11+ -- then you're STILL stuck with them, but you get to pick up Quicken or Twin. Just one.

Definitely a huge screwup potential there.

In the end, those 2 more 2nd-level and 1 more 1st-level spells are unlikely to matter given the low number of spell slots because they aren't likely to see play. The extra cantrip and metamagic are more likely to see play and therefore more likely to matter. If they do see play they still aren't necessarily impacting.

Says you. Ok.

The wizard also cannot simply cycle 3 slots as needed. The first flaw in that reasoning is the assumption those spells will be needed. The second flaw is that he doesn't know which he needs until the encounters and by then it's to late to cycle them; he might guess and hope he's correct but that can be hit or miss. The third flaw is the assumption that having those spells and using them will have more impact than metamagic would even if the spells do come into play. The fourth flaw in that reasoning is in the lost opportunity for the first set of spells being useful because the spell slots are gone at that point so the first set of spells can no longer be useful (that's just traded benefit instead of additional benefit).

You must have misread what you just quoted there.

Sorcerer Bob knows/prepares spells A, B, C, D.

Wizard Joe also prepares A, B, C, D. Exact same spells prepared. But Joe can also prepare 3 more spells, and he knows a lot of them. So he chooses E, F, G as well. It could be those extra spells aren't needed that day. Or it could be that they came in handy. But never did Joe pick "worse" than Bob, because he prepares the exact same spells plus more!

That's as simple as I can make it. Sorc prepares X spells, Wizard can prepare X + Y spells. It was in response to Jester lawyering that Wizard's extra spells known is actually detrimental in some ways because they can "pick wrong." Context is everything.

You want to say that it's not that great of a benefit? That's cool. That's not what I was talking about, or responding to, however. Context, please.

It's not more amazing than metamagic. The grass just looks greener.

Is this really a debate of "the grass looks greener?" What about the WotC survey results saying people think sorcs are kinda meh? What about the communities like GitP and Reddit having a certain consensus about this? Why is this particular class, these particular complaints, being brought up so often if it's just "grass looks greener"? You think it's just coincidence? Where are all the threads about wizards complaining that sorcerers are so much stronger?

I guess Beastmaster Rangers and Elemental Monks complaints should also be quickly dismissed as "grass is always greener," too.

A wizard obviously cannot go back in time and select a different spell added to the spell book as part of leveling up. Spells known casters can reselect from the entire class spell list when they swap while leveling while the wizard reselecting prepared spells is limited to that selection of 2 or 4 class spells acquired for that spell level.

The wizard selection will always be restricted to what's in the spell book so needs to hunt down an option while a sorcerer can trade a spell from the entire sorcerer spell list instead when a spell outlives it's usefulness.

A wizard who added fireball, dispel magic, leomunds hut, and haste isn't going to be able change his mind later and have hypnotic pattern as an option.

It's not a huge benefit but it is a benefit over wizards.

I'm trying really hard to be civil but this one point baffles me to no end.

I can't even.

I really can't.

A sorcerer can swap out spells he doesn't like, yes.

But a sorcerer who swaps out a spell every single level, tries out every single spell he possibly can, WILL STILL HAVE TRIED OUT SIGNIFICANTLY LESS SPELLS THAN A WIZARD WILL LEARN, MINIMUM!

MINIMUM!

It's frustrating that this argument is parroted yet my rebuttal seems entirely ignored by you and Jester.

HOW can you actually say that a sorcerer retraining spells is a BENEFIT over wizards? Who cares if wizards decides he doesn't like haste (really) anymore and wants something else? He just learns "something else" because he knows so many spells! A sorcerer that retrains a spell every single level until 20 has tried out 34 spells. A level 20 wizard that has never purchased/found any spells on his travels, quite a stretch but still, knows 44! He could not like NINE of those spells and STILL be up on the sorcerer in terms of "tried out" spells (not known, he KNOWS 29 more minimum) and have those disliked spells in his back pocket for a rainy day.

You can't twist that into a "benefit" for the sorcerer. You just can't. My brain is hurting at this.

sorcerers are fine once you realize they're not wizards.

Showing a Paladin 6 / Sorc 2 build as proof that sorcerers are fine would be like arguing the merits of the entire Warlock class because you took a 2 level dip for Agonizing Eldritch Blast.

Yes, Paladins MC well with Sorcerers. It's not strict upside: your build missed an ASI/feat at 8th, you missed your Oath's Aura (really big if you were Oath of the Ancients), next level you would've gotten 3rd level Pally spells and Haste if you were Vengeance, and at 11th you'd be getting 1d8 on your swings. But you do reap significantly more spells, SP, and metamagic, which I think is a worthy tradeoff.

But again, that says nothing for the pure Sorcerer, only about the Paladin/Sorcerer mix. "Sorcerers are fine when you take 6 levels of Paladin first and then start taking Sorcerer levels."

 

[Minigiant]

Empower is a tiny boost to 3d6. Distance is a stretch here, if you're not in range of this general just use Fire Bolt, and if you're super keen on getting that +5 damage just Quicken another Fire Bolt instead. Heighten blows your entire SP load to increase the chance of full damage (EDIT: and again you're better off just Quickening for more efficient SP). Quicken is the only one I'd consider, +5.5 damage for for 2/3 SP if it's a dire situation.

Just so we're clear, the sorcerer can only do two of these metamagics: you get two at 3rd, another at 11th, and one more at 17th. You're not throwing out a variety of metamagic willy nilly. Most of your options are barely worth mentioning because Quicken and Twin are generally better, and that's all you have room for until the higher levels.

Meanwhile, the wizard has 2 more spells prepared. If we're in hypothetical land, maybe one of those extra spells that the sorc doesn't have is chromatic orb, which is better suited to this particular fight, dealing the damage that the sorcerer spent extra spells for.

Or maybe there was a short rest before this encounter, where the wizard recovered his 2nd level spell that is more useful here, at no cost, while the sorc would have to spend 2 of his SP to do the same.



This is true! I'll give you one point here. That is a perk of the sorc -- regaining his spell on demand. Except for that bit about "useless slots" -- if you ever played a low/mid caster, you'd know how precious all your slots are.

Oh yeah, and if you check the Sorcerer's page, you'd also know that melting down spells is ALSO inefficient. It's not like oh hey let's take three 1st level spells and make a 3rd. No, it's oh hey let's take two 2nd level slots and one 1st level slot to make a 3rd.

The thing is though, the Wizard's recovery mechanic is still better. Not strictly better, as you touched on, but still much better. You have to prepare in advance, but it's much more efficient by a wide margin. A 5th level sorcerer needs to spend all 5 of his SP to get back one fireball. The Wizard? He gets his Fireball back on a short rest -- done. Oh, mr. Sorcerer, did you also want to use your cornerstone class ability, metamagic? Well you don't have anymore SP, you spent it all getting back your Fireball. Best be melting down your spells!

The CONCEPT is okay, but the NUMBERS are bad. The CONCEPT of sorcerers having less spells than a wizard, but casting those spells better, is a good one. The NUMBERS of it is bad -- 15 is too little. That's why FS and SB get more. It was a goof. Here is another similar issue.



The wizard can literally prepare the exact same spells as the sorcerer plus extras. There's literally no "worse" here, just better. But this fact keeps getting conveniently ignored.



Except if you didn't choose Quicken/Twin metamagic at 3rd. I chose Twin and Empower because I didn't realize Quicken was actually really good. I won't get Quicken until 10th level. I'll never get to retrain out of Empower. You get the final metamagic at 17th.

So yeah, you can screw up big time if you didn't pick the right metamagics at 3rd. Way, way worse than the Wizard. Oh, didn't like X spell? Who cares, throw it on the pile of spells you know, you're good.

Oh, you picked Subtle and Careful Metamagic? Tough, because you're stuck with those, and only those, for basically the entire campaign, unless you're one of the lucky ones that gets to even play at level 11+ -- then you're STILL stuck with them, but you get to pick up Quicken or Twin. Just one.

Definitely a huge screwup potential there.

I was talking bout screw up per adventure day. The sorcerer is easy to screw up on character creation but impossible to to screw up while preparing to adventure. Because they cannot change and a sorcerer is best built for one job.

Let's look at a player created NPC from my setting

Goldie Dreadlocks, 6th level gold sorcerer
Cantrips:true strike, fire bolt, light, ray of frost, shocking grasp,
1st level: burning hands, charm person, chromatic orb
2nd level: enhance ability, scorching ray
3rd Level: fireball, counterspell
Metamagics: quicken spell, empower spell.

There's no messing up Goldie. He "burn fiya pon his enemies" and casts chromatic orb, ray of frost, and shocking grasp if they're immune. In interactions, he has high Charisma (20) and charm person and enhance ability. While exploring he has enhanced ability and light.

Now an equal level wizard has 1 less cantrip, 4 more spell prepared, and a spellbook full of rituals. Much better. He can copy Goldie's list (swapping mage armor in for enhance ability) and add 4 more spells. But with more options and the ability to swap spells on long rest, a chance of error creeps in. If the party doesn't gather the rumor that a half dragon leads the orcs, the wizard might not be prepared.

But Goldie never changes. Cast fire spells or shoot out the biggest chromatic orb you can. Sorcerers with a theme are always prepared as they have one job and the features to always have a hammer.

That's how it always has been. The Wizard's Tony Stark to the Sorcerer's Bruce Banner.

 

[DaveDash]

I was talking bout screw up per adventure day. The sorcerer is easy to screw up on character creation but impossible to to screw up while preparing to adventure. Because they cannot change and a sorcerer is best built for one job.

Let's look at a player created NPC from my setting

Goldie Dreadlocks, 6th level gold sorcerer
Cantrips:true strike, fire bolt, light, ray of frost, shocking grasp,
1st level: burning hands, charm person, chromatic orb
2nd level: enhance ability, scorching ray
3rd Level: fireball, counterspell
Metamagics: quicken spell, empower spell.

There's no messing up Goldie. He "burn fiya pon his enemies" and casts chromatic orb, ray of frost, and shocking grasp if they're immune. In interactions, he has high Charisma (20) and charm person and enhance ability. While exploring he has enhanced ability and light.

Now an equal level wizard has 1 less cantrip, 4 more spell prepared, and a spellbook full of rituals. Much better. He can copy Goldie's list (swapping mage armor in for enhance ability) and add 4 more spells. But with more options and the ability to swap spells on long rest, a chance of error creeps in. If the party doesn't gather the rumor that a half dragon leads the orcs, the wizard might not be prepared.

But Goldie never changes. Cast fire spells or shoot out the biggest chromatic orb you can. Sorcerers with a theme are always prepared as they have one job and the features to always have a hammer.

That's how it always has been. The Wizard's Tony Stark to the Sorcerer's Bruce Banner.

The Wizard can take exactly the same spells though, and everything he adds is on top of that. You have to assume both players are equally as careful otherwise your example is meaningless. With an equally as careful Wizard, he will have a distinct advantage over the Sorcerer.

The only time the Sorcerer has an advantage is when spell slots (resources) get pressed in one big long fight, but there are ways to mitigate this as a Wizard as well (great resource friendly spells like Sunbeam or Bigby's Hand that do damage each round over the course of a fight).
This resource advantage the Sorcerer has also decreases relative to how high your level is due to many reasons, but the Wizard usually doesn't run out of resources over the course of a day due to Arcane Recovery. Clerics/Bards/Paladins/etc usually run out of resources well before the Wizard and dictate the pace of rest, making that advantage the Sorcerer has fairly small.

Your Sorcerer can't really do much, he's not as versatile as you think. When things really go bad and damage isn't the best way to deal with a situation (someone gets swallowed, someones about to die and you can't kill the creature right away, you encounter a monster that's way too difficult for you to face and need to escape) you're going to wish you picked Wizard over a Sorcerer.

 

[Minigiant]

The Wizard can take exactly the same spells though, and everything he adds is on top of that. You have to assume both players are equally as careful otherwise your example is meaningless. With an equally as careful Wizard, he will have a distinct advantage over the Sorcerer.

The only time the Sorcerer has an advantage is when spell slots (resources) get pressed in one big long fight, but there are ways to mitigate this as a Wizard as well (great resource friendly spells like Sunbeam or Bigby's Hand that do damage each round over the course of a fight).
This resource advantage the Sorcerer has also decreases relative to how high your level is due to many reasons, but the Wizard usually doesn't run out of resources over the course of a day due to Arcane Recovery. Clerics/Bards/Paladins/etc usually run out of resources well before the Wizard and dictate the pace of rest, making that advantage the Sorcerer has fairly small.

Your Sorcerer can't really do much, he's not as versatile as you think. When things really go bad and damage isn't the best way to deal with a situation (someone gets swallowed, someones about to die and you can't kill the creature right away, you encounter a monster that's way too difficult for you to face and need to escape) you're going to wish you picked Wizard over a Sorcerer.

I think you are not catching on to my point. I can understand that because some of it deals with DM style and adventure preference.

The strength of the 3rd edition sorcerer was that they didn't have to prepare spells into their slots. If they needed a fireball and had a 3rd level slot, you had a fireball. A wizard had to prepare fireballs into slots. If the wizard needed more than that amount they were out of luck. Of course, 3rd made items cheap so this was minimized.

In 4th they had different roles.

Now in 5th, everyone is spontaneous. However spells don't scale with caster level, they scale with spell slots. And casting a low level spell with higher slots is inefficient. If you have an adventure or DM style with lots of varying encounters, the wizards need those bonus spells prepared as they have no easy scrolls and wands to bail them out.

I've seen it cause it happened to me. "I have 2 fire spells already." He says. "Lightning bolt is good enough, he says.". Well a fireball would have been great in that last battle in the dungeon. A fire sorcerer would have a fireball and could metamagic it. Or 3rd level a scorching ray but with bonus damage and metamagic.
A lightning sorcerer would still have the lightning bolt with bonus damage and metamagic.

It's a situation that can happen. It's as common as the adventure or DM makes it however. But the wizard spell groan sometimes happens.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

No, potentially zero spells minimum, if he picked all spells with components and lost his component pouch. If we're arguing about ultra rare situations we may as well go all the way.

Having no components doesn't reduce his spells known. It just means he can't cast those spells until he gets a new arcane focus. Losing your spellbook is a permanent reduction in spells known unless you have a backup. Sorcerers can lose their component pouches, but never their spells known. Ergo, the wizard's minimum spells known is equal to his spells prepared, which he cannot lose. It's still more than the sorcerer but not twice as many.

But again, that says nothing for the pure Sorcerer, only about the Paladin/Sorcerer mix. "Sorcerers are fine when you take 6 levels of Paladin first and then start taking Sorcerer levels."

If we're talking specifically about pure sorcerers, then I agree they're not as much fun. Sorcerers IMHO, like rogues, rangers, and barbarians, multi-class better than they single-class.

 

[Jester David]

How do you define "minimum"? I can't envision a campaign with fewer spells in the wizard's spellbook than what the PHB grants for free.

Perhaps you meant to say "it's not just the minimum, it's also the baseline"?

It's the baseline for the rules.

Finding spell books and spell scrolls are far more likely than finding "bonus spells known". I hope you agree since the former can happen anytime the DM interprets "enemy spellcaster" = specifically a enemy wizard, anytime the DM wants to answer the question how a wizardlike NPC stores her spells, and anytime the DM rolls on the official random treasure tables and ends up with a spell scroll.

While the latter happens if and only if the DM by her own initiative decides to throw a sorcerer a bone above and beyond what the rulebook gives him.

I feel it's safe to make the baseline assumption this: wizards very often (but not always) get more than two spells per level, while sorcerers (PHB sorcerers, at any rate) very seldom get more than one spell per level.

Maybe. Maybe not.
I've played in a magic lite campaign where the party only encountered a single hostile wizard. Princes of the Apocalypse only has a single spellbook to be captured and most of the scrolls are for the spells in the appendix of that book. Despite Red Wizards being a focus of the campaign, there's no mention of spellbooks in either Hoard of the Dragon Queen or Tyranny of Dragons, and the former has maybe a half-dozen scrolls while the later has twice that but provides the same spell on a scroll multiple times.
This also assumes the NPC wizard has the "correct" number of spells (the one example, in Princes of the Apocalypse, only has her prepared spells, so less than half her expected spells) AND assumes the spells provided are ones the PC needs. There are go-to spells a spellcaster will prepare, both for a PC and an NPC combatant. There's a good chance of overlap unless the wizard is really playing support (in which case the added spells are ones undesired anyway).

I don't see adventuring providing a wealth of desired spells unless the DM is feeling generous, or setting out explicitly to provide new spells.

 

[Eric V]

Fine, but it doesn't have to be a wealth for it to still be more spells than the sorcerer gets.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

It also depends on your DM's take on spell research. In my games, PCs can research spells during downtime. It takes a number of weeks equal to the level of the spell, and requires a successful Arcana check each week. Cost is the spell's level times 100 in gold pieces per week (so 8100 gold total for successfully researching 9th level spell), so it's not necessarily easy or common to get a lot of spells, but a wizard can supplement his automatic spells with a few months' worth of research. A sorcerer can't do that unless he is willing to drop existing known spells.

I think as sorcerers as somewhat like me playing the piano: I can learn new pieces over time, but it invariably makes me forget the old ones because I stop practicing them intensely. Unlike some people, I just don't have that much capacity for knowing how to play lots of music.

 

[Jester David]

The Wizard can take exactly the same spells though, and everything he adds is on top of that. You have to assume both players are equally as careful otherwise your example is meaningless. With an equally as careful Wizard, he will have a distinct advantage over the Sorcerer.

The only time the Sorcerer has an advantage is when spell slots (resources) get pressed in one big long fight, but there are ways to mitigate this as a Wizard as well (great resource friendly spells like Sunbeam or Bigby's Hand that do damage each round over the course of a fight).
This resource advantage the Sorcerer has also decreases relative to how high your level is due to many reasons, but the Wizard usually doesn't run out of resources over the course of a day due to Arcane Recovery. Clerics/Bards/Paladins/etc usually run out of resources well before the Wizard and dictate the pace of rest, making that advantage the Sorcerer has fairly small.

Your Sorcerer can't really do much, he's not as versatile as you think. When things really go bad and damage isn't the best way to deal with a situation (someone gets swallowed, someones about to die and you can't kill the creature right away, you encounter a monster that's way too difficult for you to face and need to escape) you're going to wish you picked Wizard over a Sorcerer.

A sorcerer can regain just as many spells through sorcerer points as a wizard can gain via Arcane Recovery. But the sorcerer can still use the points if a short rest is not imminent, either for more spells or other benefits.
A sorcerer with the same spells prepared as the wizard are pretty darn close to equivalent. The wizard has a small number of other spells prepared, which are likely to be situational utility spells, and can cast rituals. So, yes, the wizard is *slightly* better, but not game breakingly so. In the unlikely event of a game having both a wizard and a sorcerer, the difference is likely to only come up a couple times in a campaign, making it anomalous.

However, the wizard also requires much more system master, making it a harder class to learn and play. Poor spell choices and memorization for the day can easily render a wizard inept and ineffective, making the sorcerer a more effective choice. Conversely, someone with the requisite system mastery can do a lot more with the wizard, reactively swapping out spells and being strategic with spell choices each level. So the wizard has the potential to become more powerful. It can be played as more powerful, with greater player skill. But player skill will always make a character more effective, so that's a neutral argument.

The sorcerer could have likely used a titch more... something. Like an extra spell castable to balance against the wizard's spells known. But I imagine WotC really wanted spells/day to be hard capped to better balance martials with casters and spell resources per day. So I'm not sure what else they could have given them.

 

[Minigiant]

My personal house rule is to let sorcerers suck charges out of magic items for sorcery points.

Wizards get scrolls and spell books.
Sorcerers suck charges out of magic wands, staves, and rods.