So, the more time your DM allows to prep for combat, the more the DM favors wizards. The more combat comes on the party unawares, the more the DM favors the sorcerer.
Unless the Sorcerer still doesnt have the spell that would be helpful in the situation, preperation or no preperation.
I think its better to say if your caught totally unawares the Sorcerer is at less of a disadvantage than if any degree of foreknowledge is allowed. It evens things out, but it doesnt give the Sorcerer any special advantage...he's still limited to whatever spells he knows.
A sorcerer has access to all the spells the does know, while the wizard only knows those spells he has prepared, as far as any single combat is concerned.
Yep, but most of the time, a Wizard can prepare as many or more spells of a given level as a Sorcerer knows.
a 4th level Sorcerer knows a single 2nd level spell. A 4th level Wizard knows 4, and can have 3 prepared (assuming a deccent Int).
A 7th level Wizard is going to know at least 7 or 8 first level spells, four spells of 1st through 3rd level, and two spells of 4th level, minimum. And assuming even only a 17 Int (he'll probably have at least an 18 by then in reality) he has spells prepared of 5/4/3/1 (in reality would probably be 2)
a 7th level Sorcerer has spells known of 5/3/2.
The Wizard can have avaible to him more spells of each level than the Sorcerer, even with preperation. Or at least as many. Spell preperation is the original way of doing things in D&D, and the system is built around it.
And you say a wiz and a sorc have the same number of rounds to act in a combat, but the sorcerer is ready for combat more times per day than a wiz because of his increased spells per day.
But the system is balanced around a certain number of encounters per day. Including the Wizard. So the Sorcerers extra spells per day are usualy pretty meaningless. Unless your in a game with a well above average number of encounters per day.
Especially since a party is only as fast as its slowest member so to speak. In my experience once any character runs out of spells or whatever for the day, the party then rests.
If you're going to have the wizard stocked up with scrolls to scribe into his spellbook, then you must give the sorcerer all those same scrolls (to equalize the wealth).
Not neccesarily. The wealth should be equal, but theirs no requirement for it to take the same form. If the party defeats a group of enemies and gains a 4,000 GP treasure and splits it evenly, the Wizard is quite possibly going to spend at least some of his on scrolls and scribing materials. The Sorcerer would get an equal share as well, but the player would decide what to spend it on.
At this point, both classes can cast all those spells, but the sorc will only be able to cast the spell once before having to buy it again, and the wizard will have to spend a part of his day memorizing the thing
Which is still Advantage: Wizard. Big time. The Sorcerer uses his scroll and its gone. The Wizard scribes it and knows that spell and can use it from then on if he chooses.
So, the sorcerer will have access to, and be able to cast, just as many different spells as the wizard, he just won't be able to cast them over and over. The wizard will be able to cast these spells repeatedly, as long as he had the foresight to memorize the spell.
I dont find this to be a very good comparison. Having an item to cast a spell once is not the same thing as knowing and being able to cast a spell.
Now yes scrolls can help to slightly increase a Sorcerer's diversity. But its still not the same as actually knowing more spells.
And don't dismiss the fact that you can't remove a sorcerer's spells from him... you can only prevent him from casting them. A wizard, well his spellbook is his achilles' heel. It makes him vulnerable to attack, and it also makes him a target for other wizards who don't want to spend the money to buy all those spells. A sorcerer has neither the heel, nor the reward for other casters that do away with him out of hand.
Technically this is true. But most gamers I have heard from on the issue find the idea of actually using that weakness quite repugnant. Wizards are the only class in the game that can be totally negated by removing a single possession. The spellbook is mainly present as a flavour element. To actually use such an absurdist aproach, as a DM, to basically destroy one of your PCs to me just smacks of sadism.
Also remember that in a standard game both are pretty dependent on a spell component pouch.
And this is to balance the wizard and the sorcerer, along with the lack of sorcerer bonus feats. Were the sorc to have the same spell level progression and feat aquisition as the wizard, the sorc would be undoubtedly more powerful. Ergo, on other levels not including spell progression and feat aquisition, the sorc should be stronger. And he is.
But not enough to make up for what he looses. The Sorcerer was not designed especially well. They decided they wanted to introduce a caster who doesnt have to prepare ahead of time.
But instead of making him truly unique they simply made him a non-preparing Wizard. A caster with spells and nothing else. And so to try to maintain balance, they took and took and took from the class and all it got in exchange was spontaneous casting which 1) isnt as hot as some thing to begin with and 2) is even less so if you dont know any spells to spontaneously cast.
But the trouble is, a spellcasting class with nothing but spells, that hardly has any spells, has issues.
They at least should have actually done something with the whole bloodline idea and given the Sorcerer some other class abilities, to make up for the fact that all else it has is spells...and it gets very little of that.
I must disagree. Because the sorcerer knows fewer spells, the best spells for the sorcerer to pick are the complicated spells that can be applied in many situations, and have many uses. Complicated spells are the sorcerer's bread and butter.
But a Sorcerer isnt going to take spells like Fabricate or Mord's Secret Chest. Thats more what I meant. A Sorcerer having such an absurdly limited selection is mostly going to stick to bread and butter stuff.
Not in the number of spells, but a surviving sorcerer must find versatility in the uses of his spells
Sadly in D&D thats extremely diffacult. There are not many multiple use spells, and especially in current editions what a spell can do and cant do is defined to the nth degree, making improvisation diffacult.
When I speak of the versatility of spellcasters, I mean the ability to create many different effects. The Sorcerer has far, far less of that ability than any of the other casters.
As I said above, that wouldnt even be so bad if Sorcerers got anything else. But they dont.
Happily, he can create a wide variety of effects with those spells on the fly
Not compared to a Wizard. Or a Cleric. Or a Druid. Having only one or two spells of a given level is having only one or two spells of a given level.
Especially since as I mentioned most spells in D&D have a single function. Sure there are numerous exceptions that you could list. But the majority are still more or less single function.
Only in the spells they can choose from. The way these two classes can react to any situation is completely different. The sorcerer is an improvisationalist, the wizard a prepare-o-phile.
They are redundant in their spell list. They are redundant in the fact that they are both casting classes with no other class features of any meaningful kind. And they are redundant in their basic concept and archtype. Conceptually their only difference is that the Wizard is a "learned mage" and a Sorcerer is a "born mage".
Any classes can be redundant. It is up to the players to make their characters individuals.
I disagree. Mechanics are mechanics. Two classes with mostly the same mechanics are mechanically redundant no matter how they are played.
Wizard and Sorcerer are two very slightly different versions of exactly the same thing. No other classes in the game have that redundancy. Even the various melee classes have different strong themes and mechanics to support them.
As I said, the class isnt unplayable. But it was not as well designed as it should have been mechanically or conceptually. They scrambled to include "spontaneous casting" in the game, and it didnt go as well as it should have.
