D&D (2024) The sorcerer shouldn't exist

[James Gasik]

Sometimes a designer comes up with a cool mechanic and then has to find a home for it, in which case the lore is created second. A lot of magic items were created this way over the years, where someone was like "I want something that does X" and then creates an evocative name for it.

My example is a 3.5 magic item called the Ring of the Darkhidden. It renders you invisible to darkvision. There's no lore about it, it just does it's thing. But that mechanic, being invisible to darkvision, has lingered and found a new home in 5e, just look at the Gloomstalker Ranger.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Concept: a caster who isn't shackled to a spellbook.
Mechanics: fixed spell, greater versatility in casting, focused on offense/active magic or themed lists, Charisma caster stat.
Lore: blood of dragons/supernatural origins, draws in inner reserves, often viewed as outsiders.

You can argue how well the sorcerer actually accomplished any of that, but you can't argue they started with "let's make a class who has the blood of dragons" and worked backwards to "huh, this is a caster without a book"..

"Class with the blood of dragons" is a fictional concept.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Sometimes a designer comes up with a cool mechanic and then has to find a home for it, in which case the lore is created second. A lot of magic items were created this way over the years, where someone was like "I want something that does X" and then creates an evocative name for it.

My example is a 3.5 magic item called the Ring of the Darkhidden. It renders you invisible to darkvision. There's no lore about it, it just does it's thing. But that mechanic, being invisible to darkvision, has lingered and found a new home in 5e, just look at the Gloomstalker Ranger.

I'm not saying it never happens that way, but the claim in the post I was refuting was universal.

 

[TwoSix]

Hard disagree. To use your example, you think Weis and Hickman created the rules for moon magic before they designed the fiction for it? That makes no sense. Same thing with defiling and preserving. The idea comes first, then you create rules to make it work in a game. All the stuff you're talking about is making new rules for concepts that already existed and in many cases had several iterations of rules for them already.

I think that's backwards. They came up with the idea for moon magic, or defiling/preserving, because they were trying to attach a new idea to existing rules (the wizard class).

They didn't say "I have a cool idea about a world with 3 magic gods, and they test people in towers" and then decide to put that in D&D instead of writing a book about it.

 

[Remathilis]

Hard disagree. To use your example, you think Weis and Hickman created the rules for moon magic before they designed the fiction for it? That makes no sense. Same thing with defiling and preserving. The idea comes first, then you create rules to make it work in a game. All the stuff you're talking about is making new rules for concepts that already existed and in many cases had several iterations of rules for them already.

Concept: all magic is provided by the gods.
Mechanics: rules for moons (gods of magic) influencing arcane magic
Lore: the wizards of high sorcery, the robes, renegades and the Test.

Concept: magic in Athas is dangerous
Mechanics: defiling gives powerful benefits, but at a cost.
Lore: magic kills the sparse vegetation left, a wizard can choose power or preservation when casting arcane magic

The concept always comes first but the concept isn't lore. Elf is a concept, silvanesti elf is lore. You keep assuming the concept is the same, but that can't be true because the concept of elf can manifest in a variety of different ways, all using the same mechanics but with different lore. If what you were saying was true, then every elf culture would have unique rules and the elf rules from one setting could not be used in another.

Yes there are counter-examples (as stated above, an RPG based on an existing non-Rpg IP like Star Wars builds backwards) and lore can influence rules to a degree, but lore is always subservient to the rules in D&D and it has to be unless D&D decides to focus exclusively on one setting forevermore.

 

[Vael]

I generally agree with the 5e philosophy of not having a bloated list of classes, like Pathfinder and earlier DnD editions, while also not being reductive and making giant umbrella classes. Sorcerers and Druids are two of my favorite classes and I tire of the push to just make them wizards or nature clerics. I want Psionics to be more than just casting spells without components.

So I don't think DnD should be adding more and more classes, there is space for a few more.

 

[James Gasik]

I'm not saying it never happens that way, but the claim in the post I was refuting was universal.

Which it isn't, it happens both ways. I don't think Gary Gygax had a clear fiction in mind when he created Chainmail, for example. It was a historical wargame with magicians subbing in for siege units. But then Dave Wesley's Braunstein campaigns led to Dave Arneson's Blackmoor, and suddenly this existing rules set was jury-rigged to become the D&D we all know and love.

Since then, we've seen a lot of both kinds of design- many of the game's features, like classes or spells, were largely developed because someone wanted to emulate a particular narrative. But at the same time, there's equally an amount of "I had this cool idea for a system element, here, I've wrapped it in some lore" to be seen.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think that's backwards. They came up with the idea for moon magic, or defiling/preserving, because they were trying to attach a new idea to existing rules (the wizard class).

They didn't say "I have a cool idea about a world with 3 magic gods, and they test people in towers" and then decide to put that in D&D instead of writing a book about it.

Do you have evidence of that claim?

 

[TwoSix]

Do you have evidence of that claim?

Nope. Just seems pretty obvious.

 

[Minigiant]

Fiction, then rules, then fiction again. And so on and so on.

Inspiration then rules then lore.

Inspiration and lore isn't the same.