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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Raduin711" data-source="post: 8506398" data-attributes="member: 15303">Ultimately, the problem with spontaneous casters isn't the extra spell slots, or their freedom in spending them it's how they learn their spells. Arcane magic on Athas only comes from study- no creature has inherent magical ability. Psionics, yes. Magic, no. So how to rectify a Sorcerer who learns his magic through study, but is fixed in how many spells they know?So my answer is... Spell tattooing.When a wizard memorizes a spell, he commits a little bit of his own life energy to hold that spell in his mind, a bit like a virtual scroll. If he wants to cast a spell multiple times, he invests twice as much energy into the memorization so that it can be used that many more times. Then, when it is time to cast the spell, he needs to take that internal life energy and makes it real with external life energy, either through Preserving or Defiling.But there is another method. Sorcery is the arcane practice of tattooing oneself with magical formulae. These formulae are both obviously magical (to even the daftest Half-giant) and legible to a wizard. In fact a wizard can copy a spell to his spell book from a Sorcerer's tattoo much like another wizard's spellbook. But this is more than just a novel way of writing down a spell.By tattooing the spell onto their bodies, that "virtual scroll" is forever burned into their minds- but not in the short-term memory, like a wizard. Instead, it is held, permanently in the cortical homunculus- where the mind "senses" the various parts of the body. Once there, the Sorcerer only needs to think about the particular location on the body, and the arcane formula just appears there in his mind. No need to look at the tattoo at all. The spell is a part of him now. Because of this added efficiency, a Sorcerer gets more uses out of his spells than a Wizard does before he becomes mentally exhausted.There are a few downsides, obviously. The cortical homunculus is an awful place to store a spell. It's not really made for information storage. If you write down spells in the wrong places or before you are ready to cast them, you are going to do damage to your mind. Sorcerers have developed a system, a sort of magical path, that they learn their spells by. Where Wizards have the freedom to add any spell they come upon to their spellbook, provided they can cast it, Sorcerer's paths are much narrower. And while Sorcerers can use scrolls and other spell completion items just like a Wizard, their particular path excludes the standard "spell memorization" techniques that Wizards use (unless they want to be wizard/sorcerers...)Oh, and there is also that problem of arcane magic being illegal and feared across the tablelands and Sorcerers looking like walking spell books. The tattoos can be hidden with Disguise skill checks using clothing or dyes (with gradually increasing DC's as the sorcerer learns new spell levels) or hidden with spells like Disguise Self or Hide Tattoo.So. there's my solution. I think it's pretty setting-friendly. I am debating whether I should change the Sorcerer's spellcasting attribute to INT instead of CHA, but I think CHA works fine. They do still need to study, though.</blockquote>

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