The Sorcerer - Spell-like abilities vs. Spells

[Angel Tarragon]

Okay, so I have been thinking about tweaking the Sorcerer just for the fun of it. What I came to think of is giving the Sorcerer innate Spell-like abilities instead of just spells. The sorcerer would have access to all spells available to wizards to pick their spell-like abilities. Their spells castable per day equates to how many spell-like abilities they can use per day. In addition they could take a feat to increase their spell-like abilities derivitive from one spell level to increase the number of uses per day by one plus one-quarter of their current level. By using this system, the sorcerer's body would be the material component for all spells. Thoughts?

 

[Shellman]

Okay, so I have been thinking about tweaking the Sorcerer just for the fun of it. What I came to think of is giving the Sorcerer innate Spell-like abilities instead of just spells. The sorcerer would have access to all spells available to wizards to pick their spell-like abilities. Their spells castable per day equates to how many spell-like abilities they can use per day. In addition they could take a feat to increase their spell-like abilities derivitive from one spell level to increase the number of uses per day by one plus one-quarter of their current level. By using this system, the sorcerer's body would be the material component for all spells. Thoughts?

Check out the Warlock Class out of Comlete Arcane, it may be what your looking for.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

I already own it. If I wanted to use the Warlock, believe me I would not have made this post. I honestly think the warlock is a tad overpowered.

 

[UltimaGabe]

I already own it. If I wanted to use the Warlock, believe me I would not have made this post. I honestly think the warlock is a tad overpowered.

The warlock looks that way at first glance, but honestly, from someone who's played two different warlocks and seen another played, they're powerful- but only in the perfect circumstances. They know so few abilities that they have to choose extremely carefully- and when a situation arises that requires, for example, the Wall of Fire invocation, they're going to excel- but if they ever need to see an invisible foe, if they didn't take the See the Unseen invocation, they're screwed. The only time that they outshine anybody is when you're facing multiple battles in the same day- true, they can use their Eldritch Blast an unlimited number of times, but unless you face four or five encounters a day, the Sorcerer's never gonna run out of spells either. If anything, the warlock, statistically, is slightly UNDER-powered.

Anyway, back on topic...

Your system for the alternate sorcerer is interesting- but it looks to me like you're making it much more complicated than it needs to be. A much easier way of handling it, in my opinion, is to simply say that Sorcerers don't need material components- rather than converting their spells over to Spell-Like Abilities with the exact same limitations as their spells. However, I'd be a bit leery (although depending on the campaign I might allow it) of negating ALL material components- for spells like Stoneskin, for example, the material component is there for a balancing factor, and for a Sorcerer to be able to do it several times a day at no cost is kinda iffy. And yet, just giving them the Eschew Materials feat for free just seems a bit too wimpy, don't you think?

 

[Michael Tree]

You could always do what Monte Cook did with his alternative sorcerer. No material components are neccessary, but if a spell calls for expensive material component, the sorcerer instead spends 1 XP per 25gp of the component's cost.

 

[Arkhandus]

Making the sorcerer's magic into spell-like abilities would have all kinds of overpowering or annoying consequences. They'll take 1 level of figher (or paladin, if possible) to gain proficiencies and (if paladins) some added power from Charisma, then progress as a sorcerer wearing full plate and wielding a bastard sword in one hand and a heavy shield in the other, because spell-like abilities aren't arcane so have no spell failure and no need for somatic components, nor verbal or material or focus components for the most part. And that's just the most obvious side-effect of using spell-like abilities instead of spells.

I'd suggest something along the lines of what others have already said, just change sorcerers to ignore most material components and such. Have them ignore any material or focus components of less than 25 gp, and for other material or focus components they just spend 1 XP per 25 GP of the component's cost instead. Or something like that. In the case of focus components that are integral to the spell, such as the mirror a mage needs for Scry or the gem used for Trap the Soul (I think), those should still be required.

 

[ARandomGod]

Your system for the alternate sorcerer is interesting- but it looks to me like you're making it much more complicated than it needs to be. A much easier way of handling it, in my opinion, is to simply say that Sorcerers don't need material components- rather than converting their spells over to Spell-Like Abilities with the exact same limitations as their spells. However, I'd be a bit leery (although depending on the campaign I might allow it) of negating ALL material components- for spells like Stoneskin, for example, the material component is there for a balancing factor, and for a Sorcerer to be able to do it several times a day at no cost is kinda iffy. And yet, just giving them the Eschew Materials feat for free just seems a bit too wimpy, don't you think?

I've houseruled all spells with material components so that they have a less powerful effect if you don't have that component... IE, if you know stoneskin, you can cast it as written, or without the material component for a substantially lesser spell effect. I realize that this basically requires the GM to come up with and approve a "new" spell for each spell with an expensive component, but I like the flavor AND, in this case, it could fix the issue of 'not needing material components'. Of course they don't NEED that expensive component, but the spell won't do as much.

 

[Khaalis]

This was the same thought I originally had when I decided to revitalize the Sorcerer. However, if you read through the original posts of my Sorcerer threads you will see a lot of discussion on why this doesnt work for a PC. The idea was scratched pretty early on in the process. SLAs are very adventageous and have a lot of loopholes and openings for serious abuse unless they have special rules attached to them (aka Warlock). One interesting House version of the Warlock to Sorcerer conversion I saw was basically using the Warlock but taking away the Eldritch Blast and DR and granting 2 new SLA's instead of one at each level they gain a new SLA and letting them choose from the Warlock list or the Sorcerer spell list. Not sure if its balanced as I never got to see it playtested, but it was an interesting idea none-the-less.

 

[Liquidsabre]

Don't forget a sorcerer that casts spell-like abilities, metamagic feats become useless to them. They can't use 'em, the morphing of spells through metamagic is suppose to be the sorcerer's bread and butter. As others have already suggested, I'd steer away from this concept for the sorcerer, not very useful.

Instead, go with the whole Eschew Materials bit, spending a portion of XP to replace gp amount of material components. Though I'd recommend upping the portion to 1/10 XP rather than Monte's 1/25 XP amount, what with 3.5e's general reduction of gp values for material components.