Sorcerers and Wasted Spell Slots

[KarinsDad]

The thing you are forgetting is that those non-recurring villainous sorcerors implicitly swap spells all the time. Have you ever met a 10th level Sorceror without MM because he got Sleep, Mage Armor, Burning Hands instead? Or one with Toughness? But those little quirks that make for a lame 10th level sorceror in fact make the NPC vastly more likely to have survived to 2nd level.

Come on RC. Give me a little credit here.

I didn't forget this, I just create my villain NPC Sorcerers without the "need for speed" that PC Sorcerers tend to have. One of the reasons this is ok is that NPC Sorcerers tend to not have to fight for their lives every other day like PCs. For example, unlike PCs, they can hire some hencemen, raid an occassional caravan and are then set for money for a long time.

So, they are allowed to gain in power slowly, using up other resources such as potions and other magic items to fill in their weak spots. PC Sorcerers have to gain in power just as quickly as other PCs, or they get left behind.

For example, I have a 12th level Evil NPC Sorcerer who does not have any really good offensive spells above 3rd level. So, he does things like Heightened Empowered Lightning Bolt from within a Minor Globe of Invulnerability and with a Stoneskin spell up.

Any melee combatant who comes within range loses his buffing spells and the first 10 points of damage from his attacks. Any missile combatant loses the first 10 points of damage from his arrow.

On the other hand, the Sorcerer is easy to hit since he does not have too many lower level buffing spells up either.

Does this make the Sorcerer weak? Nope. He has on multiple occassions challenged our group of 6 9th level PCs. Once the PCs really start to damage him, he Dimension Doors away to fight another day.

Sometimes, it's not what you have, it's how you use it. I'm not convinced that any spell is a must have for any class (with the possible exceptions of Haste and Dispel Magic). It's only within some people's minds that their Sorcerer must have Sleep to survive at lower level (or some such spell) and therefore should be granted a boon at higher level. Sigh.

 

[spunky_mutters]

I think if I were playing a wizard and the sorcerer in our party was able to swap spells with any degree of frequency, I'd feel pretty shafted. This was a limitation that I would have considered when choosing a wizard over a sorcerer. To have it removed post facto would cheese me off.

As a DM, I like the idea of having the Sorcerer spend a feat to get access to a ritual that lets them spend XP to swap out spells. I like game mechanics that are explainable IG. This is increasing the effectiveness of the class, and so I think balancing it with XP/Feat expenditure is reasonable.

To comment on the hard limits that sleep and others have:

I think that metamagic is designed precisely to extend spell limits, and I wouldn't apply the same limits to a meta version of a spell that I would to an unmodified version. That said, I'm not sure under what circumstances I would allow that limit to be raised. There aren't any metamagics that would affect it directly, so it would have to be considered a side effect.

Hmm. Have to think about that some more.

 

[Pax]

I think if I were playing a wizard and the sorcerer in our party was able to swap spells with any degree of frequency, I'd feel pretty shafted. This was a limitation that I would have considered when choosing a wizard over a sorcerer. To have it removed post facto would cheese me off.

Exactly.

Not only the Sorceror's enjoyment of the game is at stake; also the Wizard, the Cleric (might want to change out that Domain that turned out to be useless), and so on.

 

[Petrosian]

The thing you are forgetting is that those non-recurring villainous sorcerors implicitly swap spells all the time. Have you ever met a 10th level Sorceror without MM because he got Sleep, Mage Armor, Burning Hands instead? Or one with Toughness? But those little quirks that make for a lame 10th level sorceror in fact make the NPC vastly more likely to have survived to 2nd level.

Uhh Ok some thoughts here...

None of my sorcerers, either played by me as PC, played by me as NPC, or other's PCs in game i run have ever taken sleep (since the main dif between a sor and a wiz is NO CHANGE), have not taken burning hands (too many others that are better), have ever skipped MM (best overall use esp long term hitter) or have skipped mage armor (best scaling defense to Ac spell.)

None have ever taken toughness, tho that may be due to no campaign (out of 6 so far) for 3e i have been in started at first level, always 2nd or 3rd.

So, as far as i can tell, there is no skew between "designed at Y level NPC" vs "designed at X level and then played as PC"

When i ran my sor, i had a spell plan, which covered most of the spells and adjusted as i played based on character druthers. his decision to take MOUNT was purely based on trouble keeping horses as campaign ran.

Perhaps in your games there is a serious disconnect between NPC design and PC design, but that to mee seems to be a GM issue, not a system or class issue, and its certainly not evident here.

YMMV and clearly does.

(For the record, i much prefer mage armor as the spell... mage armor spell plus cheapo shield wands is a much better set for bang-per-buck than the reverse (shield on the spell list and mage armor items typically bracers of armor) from every angle i can figure.)

 

[IceBear]

I think everyone with half a clue understands that. What if they don't have a wizard character in their group to feel he got shafted? What if there is a wizard player who just doesn't care about power gaming but about roleplaying, so it doesn't bother him either. For all you know, that's the situation in their groups.

Like I said before, as long as everyone understands that it *COULD* affect balance and tick off some players, that's all that matters. It's not for you to judge what works for Uller's and Daniel's groups, because it appears to be working for them.

IceBear

 

[Petrosian]

FWIW on the swap thing... the sorcerer is curently rewarded for not taking 'the same ole wizard spells" in many cases by paying close attention to the spells chosen scalability... as such i see fewer shields, NO sleep, and other differences between sorcerers and wizards IN PLAY as PCs.

This helps make the classes perform differently, to be different, etc. Often a sor will take a "slower" spell, one that begins weak but scales better while a wizard will just ignore it until it becomes better.

I do not think that is a bad thing, having two classes with more differences.

if the sor would be allowed to cheaply swap out sleep, then, just like a wizard, he would take it and keep it for five to six levels and then discard it.

Why make a change to make two distinct classes MORE similar?

Not good for me.

 

[Arnix]

Currently in the campaigns that I have run/played in, I have seen 0 (zero) sorcerers.

Running some LC/LG tables at conventions, I *think* I might have seen 1. Maybe.


There is a reason for this. The stuff you need to level, is wasted later on. The stuff you need later on, is pretty useless early on (yes there ARE exceptions). Giving them a way to swap a spell out at a cost should not be game unbalancing. Esp. if you use the "done by wish or limited wish" method. Those spells are NOT cheap.


Arnix (tm)

 

[Pielorinho]

FWIW, I use Monte Cook's sorcerer IMC. And I don't care about making wizards and sorcerers more similar: I care about allowing sorcerer players to try different strategies if that's what they want to do.

And if a wizard player complained about my adding flexibility to the sorcerer class -- why, that's nothing that a good whack upside the head couldn't cure.

Daniel

 

[KarinsDad]

Why make a change to make two distinct classes MORE similar?

Not good for me.

Oh NO!

I'm agreeing with Petrosian.

Can I change my answer teach?

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

[Good point deleted.]

Sometimes, it's not what you have, it's how you use it. I'm not convinced that any spell is a must have for any class (with the possible exceptions of Haste and Dispel Magic). It's only within some people's minds that their Sorcerer must have Sleep to survive at lower level (or some such spell) and therefore should be granted a boon at higher level. Sigh.

I don't really care about the Sleep issue one way or another. And I would agree with you it is not a must have spell. What concerns me are themed Sorcerors who will get hurt in the long term.

A sorceror of illusions would likely take Invisibility, but taking Improved Invisibility later also is just too impractical.

A sorceror who likes to summon is likely to take SM I & SM II early on. But taking them every spell level hurts the character too much, even though it makes sense for the character concept in the short term.

The idea of upgrading spells actually makes more sense than the vanilla rules wizards now use. To my mind if you are going to allow a wizard who has not yet learned Invisibility to get Improved Invisibility, then allowing a few minor upgrades for the sorceror seems more natural than not. Knowing the lower level spell should be a prereq for the later spell.

Personally, I would never allow a PC who took Sleep to swap it for something totally different. But maybe a "Greater Sleep" spell, frex.

This whole upgrade/prereq issue haunts psions even more than sorcerors. IMHO, it is the biggest flaw in the psionic system.