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Chaosmancer, Sorry for my lack of communication skills. I will try to improve.
No need to apologize, I’m just as bad normally, plus I tend to post when I’m tired and/or rushed.
As to why it should cost more to make slots, I am not sure if it should, but the way I see it, font of magic gives a lot of flexibility to how a sorcerer can use their spell slots and sorcery points, and I consider this an advantage. If there was no cost at all involved in the conversion, a sorcerer could basically function as a spell-point caster while all the other casters are restrained by slots, and spell points are a stronger option, in my point of view, so for me it makes sense that some tradeoff should be in place.
As I posted before, I believe this is related to the benefit of flexibility. The slot is definitely worth more, but the sorcerer is taxed by breaking it, making the pool extendable, but at a cost.
I think where this inevitably breaks down though is that the sorcerer is highly encouraged to use their metamagic. It is their sole defining feature. It is the ability that previously, no one could exactly replicate (though a few things got close). Where you see flexibility, I see limitation.
Yes the ability to create a new slot as a bonus action is powerful, but it can only happen by sacrificing the use of metamagic instead. To give a poor analogy, it would be similar to tying a Rogue’s sneak attack, evasion, and uncanny dodge to a limited number of uses. Every time you use Uncanny Dodge to reduce damage, you give up a usage of sneak attack. It’s useful, it could be seen as powerful, but for the Rogue player it is a harsh decision to make, you get one or the other, never both.
When you say "pool" you are actually implying "pool plus metamagic", right? And that is versus everything else you just pointed out plus arcane recovery. And maybe the sorcerer is irredeemably weaker than the wizard, but I can never be sure. Every time I watch a 5th level sorcerer twining haste, it really looks awesome. This "breaks" a lot of common limitations imposed on everybody else, like being able to cast two spells at the cost of one action (action surge is even better, but only one class has access to it), or being able to maintain concentration in two targets at once (which nobody else can), or even just converting 3 sorcery points into a third level slot, which is doubly as efficient as arcane recovery ever is.
Yes, that was the situation implied.
Twin Haste is very powerful, but it highlights an issue with Metamagic. Very few things are as powerful as Twin and Quicken, so every sorcerer wants to take them. You rarely see Extend used on Haste. From one angle or the other, things look good, it’s when the scope is broadended I start seeing lots of problems.
Now, you got my original point. You may even go back there and check that I stated I was neither agreeing nor disagreeing with the evaluation of the abilities themselves. Are they better? Maybe they are, I was not commenting on their quality in the first place. What I wanted to point out was that the price is not the same. I know it sounds pedantic, but to undervalue the costs of those abilities does hurt the whole comparison. For some people it hurts less (even reaching irrelevance), but for some, more.
I apologize that I had originally missed your argument. It is important to see the costs accurately.
Just don't neglect the fact that so far the discussion is revolving around the whole of the wizard (class + subclass) being compared to the basic chassis of the sorcerer, without subclasses. And while I do agree the wizard subclasses seem to carry much more oomph, even to the point of delivering they power with less levels worth of abilities, this lore master is, in fact, giving up all the awesome features of some wizard subclass.
This is true, but if we use Dragon Sorcerer compared to Lore Wizard we have to decide which dragon, and that just highlights the problem with Elemental swapping.
Fire Dragon can use the +cha damage a lot, and they get good usage out of the resistance if they spend their points (1 and hour) but fire is a commonly resisted damage type, so you’ll be less effective in dishing it out depending on enemy type.
Poison and Acid suffer a worse fate, lacking almost any spell support and poison is resisted by hundreds of enemies.
But, I’ve often been told that this is me doing it wrong. Dragon Sorcerers aren’t supposed to be using a single damage type, they only need 1 spell of their type, and a cantrip, and then should focus on common spells like Haste and Fireball, which essentially invalidates all of their abilities and makes it sound like all a sorcerer should be doing is focusing on metamagic.
Also, it is quite difficult to imagine that this Lore Wizard isn’t superior to almost any other wizard subclass, until higher levels. Portent from Divination might edge it out, but it’d be close I think.
All in all, it doesn't even seem to me we are in much of a disagreement.
As is often the case, arguing small details not the larger point.
AUGMENTED CASTING
At 6th level, you learn to augment spells in a variety of ways. When you cast a spell with a spell slot, you can expend one additional spell slot to augment its effects for this casting, mixing the raw stuff of magic into your spell to amplify it. Expending the additional spell slot in this way requires the use of a bonus action.
The effect depends on the spell slot you expend.
An additional 1st-level spell slot can increase the spell’s raw destructive power. If you roll damage for the spell when you cast it, increase the damage against every target by the Wizards Proficiency bonus in d6's. Damage is of the same type as the base spell. Bonus damage dice applied to each target cannot exceed the number of dice that the spell would have normally have used. If the spell can deal damage on more than one turn, it deals this extra damage only on the turn you cast the spell.
Could just be tired, but this confuses me.
Fireball is so useful since everyone knows how it works so it makes comparisons so easy.
A 20th level wizard casts fireball, and burns a 1st level slot.
Fireball normally does 8d6 damage. This lets you add 6d6 more fire damage to every target?
IF they cast Chromatic orb, which does 3d8, they could only add 3d6 damage to every target?
