Sorcerer's Spell Choices

[Fenris]

Has anyone developed an alternative to the sorcerer picking their spells? I was thinking about allowing the player to choose half and then randomly selecting the other half. This would seem to better simulate the innate randomness of their gift. But would this seriously cripple the class? make it less desireable thatn the wizard? Is it fair? I think that since they can choose half of the spells it wouldn't be too bad and with some non-standard spells might make them think more creatively about how to use their spells. Any thoughts?

 

[Happiest_Sadist]

If you are doing this you probably want to have more sorc spells known. Maybe +1/spell level. It really does hurt the sorc, who wants to beable to cast continual flame, or Drawmij's Instant summons, so I probably wouldn't play one.

Still this dosn't help with the sorc having a theme. A sorc would probably have linked abilities. Most sorcs wouldn't have random spells, but they might have a lot of fire spells for instance. What I do is require that a sorc take their first spell from any level in accord with their theme.

Ex. Pyromancer, the first spell a pyromancer learns of any spell level must be a spell with the [fire] discriptor or a protection from elements type spell.

Ex. Fey blood: invisibility spells, charm spells, etc.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Lela, Vrylakos, some other individuals and I worked out a domain based sorceror which is very similar to the PHB sorceror but half of their spells are preselected based upon the ancestry that gave them their powers. You can find it on Vrylakos's website:

http://members.tripod.com/vrylakos/sorcerer_domain_system.htm

 

[Fenris]

Elder-Basilisk, I like the idea of the themes based upon ancestry. Even if I limited it to dragons, that certainly gives plenty of options. I was wondering how this has worked out in play though. The 2 additional spells of any level part would seem to me to be a potential problem. I would think that player would take the highest level they posssible could each time. Have you founf that to be the case? But I like this, it really would differntiate wizards from sorcerers.

 

[Rybaer]

Lela, Vrylakos, some other individuals and I worked out a domain based sorceror which is very similar to the PHB sorceror but half of their spells are preselected based upon the ancestry that gave them their powers.

Elder-Basilisk - Kudos to you and the others who put this together. I really like the flavor it adds to the sorcerer class. I'm on the cusp of bringing in new characters to my game and one has chosen the Sorcerer. I think I may have him peruse this for more concept material and give the optional rules a whirl.

Are you or any of your co-creators actively using these rules? If so, how do y'all like them?

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

I must admit that I am not currently using these rules in my campaign. I believe that Vrylakos is, however, and he posted a character sheet for one of his characters using this class on his webpage. IIRC, Lela is using it as well.

As to the two additional sorceror spells: when I wrote the class spell progression, I assumed that the sorceror would choose two spells of the highest level available to them. Assuming that, the sorceror ends up with 5 first level sorceror spells known and 4 spells known of every other level. Sorcerors come out slightly ahead of the PHB sorceror in the deal but since the domains are themed, there is some duplication in them (thus reducing the overall effective number of powers available to the sorceror) and a number of suboptimal choices for the spell level (again, reducing the relative power of the sorceror who tends to do best by cherrypicking the most powerful and effective spells of each level).

On the whole, I suspect that the domain sorceror compares more favorably to the wizard than the PHB sorceror, but I've always been of the opinion that PHB sorcerors got the short end of that stick.

 

[MeepoTheMighty]

I also created my own domain-based sorceror around the time that Vrylakos was creating his. I didn't change the spells known or the spell progression, but just said that the first two spells learned of each level had to come from the sorceror's two domains. Also, my domains didn't provide any granted powers.

I liked the system, and one of my players used it to justify taking the Dragon Disciple class.

The next time I run a campaign, I think I'm going to use Monte Cook's alternate sorceror, but modify it using my domain system. That will require a little bit of tweaking of the domains to accomodate the new levels of certain spells, but it shouldn't be too hard to integrate.