D&D 5E The Sorcerer's Spells OR Do we want another magic class?

[The M'hael]

For more raw mage sorcerer I see something like this.


ARCANE ORBS
At the 2nd level, you can make an fist sized orb of pure arcane essence as an action. The arcane orb as no weight and glows with a faint aura in the same color of your magic aura as it revolves around you. You have a number of arcane orbs in existence equal to your sorcerer level, destroying the earliest created orb when you exceed your limit. If you die or enter another plane of existence, all your arcana orbs disappear. You can destroy one of your orbs as if manipulating a minor object as part of your action or movement.
As part of this action of creating a arcane orb or as a bonus action on your turn, you can spend sorcery points to alter one or more arcane orb.
You can spend sorcery points to make any number of arcana orbs shed bright light in a 10 ft radius at the cost of one sorcery point per orb.
You can energize and hurl an arcane orb. Make a ranged spell attack against a target within 60 ft. If the orb hits, the target takes 1d12 force damage per sorcery point invested into the arcane orb and the orb is destroyed. If the orb misses, it returns to you at the end of your turn .
You can turn an orb into a magical sensor for 2 sorcery points. You mentally receive visual information from a sensor orb, which has normal vision out 30 feet and can look in every direction. and can move up to 30 feet in any direction as an action. A solid barrier blocks the sensor orb's movement and 5 points of damage destroy it.

Yes! this is good! Maybe later you can get to change the damage type and apply meta-magic to the orbs. If you made these versatile enough the sorcerer could turn all his spell slots into points and not use spells at all. You could then give him the ability to mimic utility spells like unseen servant, tensers floating disk, and the like, the "rituals" from 4e.

 

[The M'hael]

Also, with what you guys are saying I think you just want to try a different system. DnD 5e can only go so far with "raw magic" type things. I am looking for a system, (as much as I love 5e) that has Eragon style magic, shape your magic with your knowledge, powerful true names, along with Adventurers Wanted style "who gets magic", even the dwarves have some innate magic talent, something like the psionic natural talent table but for magic in general. (this concept is also present in the Eragon series) I like 5e for what it is, but it is not this.

 

[The M'hael]

There is a big problem when you say "houserule it" the DM is the one houseruling not the players. But notice I don't want to replace the wizard, I just want the sorcerer to work more like it used to, to have the chance to be something other than a blaster, blasting just feels empty. I don't want the wizard to be invalidated, I want the sorcerer to feel like it can create, to have a more lasting effect in the world. Giving them some invisible servants, talking ravens, shadow ponies and your own personal demiplane takes nothing away from the wizard. But not having them as a sorcerer feels like a demotion, one thing would be if those couldn't be done at all, but they can be done I just didn't need to be a wizard to do them before. Losing tactical supremacy and on top to lose access to the "real magic" -I'm sorry but 100 ways to fry a kobold doesn't feel like magic- is too much. I used to have a PC and you expect me to be happy with a calculator...

I totally see your point and love that type of sorcerer too. for solving your dilemma I would ask my dm if I could make and use a wizard sub-class that uses charisma as a casting stat and doesn't get a spell book, so he doesn't learn extra spells and doesn't prepare them. In thirdandahalf edition the sorcerers schtick was non vancian casting, but in 5e vancian casting is pretty much gone with some faking of it in the wizard class. In 5e the sorcerer's schtick is metamagic and sorcery points, but if you don't care too much about those in your character concept then the 5e wizard is your way to go. But you don't like the concept of a wizard so use his 5e core mechanics (schtick) but the sorcerer fluffy crunch, like charisma and no spellbook. Put a new operating system on your PC.

Hope this helps.

 

[MoonSong]

I totally see your point and love that type of sorcerer too. for solving your dilemma I would ask my dm if I could make and use a wizard sub-class that uses charisma as a casting stat and doesn't get a spell book, so he doesn't learn extra spells and doesn't prepare them. In thirdandahalf edition the sorcerers schtick was non vancian casting, but in 5e vancian casting is pretty much gone with some faking of it in the wizard class. In 5e the sorcerer's schtick is metamagic and sorcery points, but if you don't care too much about those in your character concept then the 5e wizard is your way to go. But you don't like the concept of a wizard so use his 5e core mechanics (schtick) but the sorcerer fluffy crunch, like charisma and no spellbook. Put a new operating system on your PC.

Hope this helps.

The wizard mechanics are full of wizard flavor, from the schools -magic is in my veins, why do I care about the way they are studied?- to minor details all over the place. And well, maybe it would be less work to try to convince my 2e DM to allow the class from Baldur's Gate...

....................

Anyway my ideal sorcerer would be like this:


Hit dice: d6
Profs: all simple weapons, con and cha saves. skills the same as normal

1st level: Spellcasting. Everything as normal, you don't need to provide any material, verbal or somatic component beyond what is indispensable for an spell to function. (Spell list includes all wizard spells without a costly component)

Spells known start at 3,

1st 3
2nd 4
3rd 6
4th 7
5th 9
6th 10
7th 12
8th 13
9th 15
10th 16, and 1 additional per level. Can only retrain spells known on given levels for one of the same level.

Sorcerer Theme feature (subclass)

2nd level: Bonus slots. 1 slot of first level, they grow and increase as you gain levels,


2nd 1st
3rd 1st 1st
4th 1st 1st
5th 2nd 1st
6th 2nd 2nd
7th 2nd 2nd 1st
8th 2nd 2nd 2nd
9th 3rd 2nd 2nd... or something.

3rd level metamagic. You need to provide components (but not material ones) and spend an additional slot according to the metamagic option (2 is fine right now)
Quicken 2nd
Careful 1st
Substitute energy 0
Distant: 1st
Empower: 2nd
Heighten: 2nd
Warp 1st
Twin: Equal to spell level.
Extend: 1st and
so on.

4th level ASI
5th level 1 metamagic option
6th subclass
7th empty, 8tth ASI 9th empty
10 metamagic (1) - and at 14th, and 18th
11th Retrain spell - And at 13th, 15th and 17th
12 ASI And at 16th and 19th
Capstone: At-will first level spell, with free metamagics.

Or something.

 

[The M'hael]

The wizard mechanics are full of wizard flavor, from the schools -magic is in my veins, why do I care about the way they are studied?- to minor details all over the place. And well, maybe it would be less work to try to convince my 2e DM to allow the class from Baldur's Gate...

....................

Anyway my ideal sorcerer would be like this:


Hit dice: d6
Profs: all simple weapons, con and cha saves. skills the same as normal

1st level: Spellcasting. Everything as normal, you don't need to provide any material, verbal or somatic component beyond what is indispensable for an spell to function. (Spell list includes all wizard spells without a costly component)

Spells known start at 3,

1st 3
2nd 4
3rd 6
4th 7
5th 9
6th 10
7th 12
8th 13
9th 15
10th 16, and 1 additional per level. Can only retrain spells known on given levels for one of the same level.

Sorcerer Theme feature (subclass)

2nd level: Bonus slots. 1 slot of first level, they grow and increase as you gain levels,


2nd 1st
3rd 1st 1st
4th 1st 1st
5th 2nd 1st
6th 2nd 2nd
7th 2nd 2nd 1st
8th 2nd 2nd 2nd
9th 3rd 2nd 2nd... or something.

3rd level metamagic. You need to provide components (but not material ones) and spend an additional slot according to the metamagic option (2 is fine right now)
Quicken 2nd
Careful 1st
Substitute energy 0
Distant: 1st
Empower: 2nd
Heighten: 2nd
Warp 1st
Twin: Equal to spell level.
Extend: 1st and
so on.

4th level ASI
5th level 1 metamagic option
6th subclass
7th empty, 8tth ASI 9th empty
10 metamagic (1) - and at 14th, and 18th
11th Retrain spell - And at 13th, 15th and 17th
12 ASI And at 16th and 19th
Capstone: At-will first level spell, with free metamagics.

Or something.

Yea, something vaguely like this is what I was envisioning, basically throwing out all the wizard bits and adding metamagic. I just thought changing the wizard would be an easier rout to get what you wanted rather than changing the sorcerer or writing a new class. Of course, you could also just play 3.5 of PF. I know your group might want to play 5e and this may not an an option, but I played a great 3.5 campaign 2 summers or so ago. We were ridiculously poor, at each other's throats half the time, and pulled crazy shenanigans all the time. The homebrew world was really bare bones but that wasn't really important. We all had lots of fun. I still can't get the guy who DMed it to play 5e.

(by the way sorry for my nostalgic tangent)

 

[MoonSong]

Yea, something vaguely like this is what I was envisioning, basically throwing out all the wizard bits and adding metamagic. I just thought changing the wizard would be an easier rout to get what you wanted rather than changing the sorcerer or writing a new class. Of course, you could also just play 3.5 of PF. I know your group might want to play 5e and this may not an an option, but I played a great 3.5 campaign 2 summers or so ago. We were ridiculously poor, at each other's throats half the time, and pulled crazy shenanigans all the time. The homebrew world was really bare bones but that wasn't really important. We all had lots of fun. I still can't get the guy who DMed it to play 5e.

(by the way sorry for my nostalgic tangent)

Palying a fovred soul is quicker than that. I would never ever touch the wizard class, not even if they paid me -this was made from scratch, ignoring the wizard except for the spell list, they shouldn't have the exclusivity for long term magical effects-. The problem is not brewing, the problem is well, I consider myself lucky to find DMs without pointless restrictions that allow UA material, let alone 3rd party or allow for special concessions. The problem with the designers not admittinng that the class is underpowered, is that you get munchkin stigma for even asking -heck I haven't been able to play a Bard3/sorcerer x that gets closer to the 3e sorcerer, and that is within raw- If it isn't on an official source, it is only a far away dream for me. I would have an easier time if the designer just came out to say "sorry we screwed with the sorcerer, we cannot make any change or meaningful progress to it without invalidating the phb, but individual DMs are encouraged to be flexible and allow changes to it on their tables. You can be generous without upsetting balance" Knowing that things won't change anytime soon is more discouraging.