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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7081267" data-attributes="member: 996">It can look that way, but OTOH, if you /can/ resist that temptation at chargen and level-up, you're good.  From then on, you make the optimal choice of which spell known to cast each round of each encounter of each day until you level again (then you maybe succumb to temptation and retrain one flavorful spell for one optimal one).  The wizard is much tastier system-mastery bait, and every day it comes back and whispers "memorize -er prepare an optimal slate of spells!" and whenever an opportunity to learn a new spell materializes, there it is again "go ahead, learn the spell, it's a good one, who cares what your 'concept' is? You're a wizard!"OTOH, it's less pronounced than it was in 3.x, when spontaneous casting was the Sorcerer's thing, not also the wizards, and you got more slots/day to play with. It does, though, as I said, maybe less than it seems to, and system mastery is always going to be a thing, and 5e does address it with BA and by the simple expedient of having far fewer player-facing choices than 3e (not just in the obvious ways, by not having tons of feats, or PrCs or whatever, but by eschewing wealth/level, putting magic items very much back in the DM's bailiwick, and generally putting all resolution in the DM's hands).   That was so true in 3.x - I mean, literally true:  there were Sorcerer builds of the X-men floating around gleemax.  IMHO, precisely for the reasons I mentioned to Hawk, above.It's less true in 5e because of the loss of extra slots and everyone being spontaneous - and because of sub-classes hitting the vague-3.5-suggestion of draconic heritage and the 4e chaos-sorcerer 'build' (really just a reprise of the 2e Wild Mage) so hard - if justifiably so in the name of concept-first flavorful design.   Heh, just like him, and unlike any other 'wizard' outside of Vance & D&D fic, yeah. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />  (Well, not just like Mizirian - among the great magicians of his age and only able to memorize half a dozen spells - like Gandalf, he must have been around 5th level!  "Did I say Prismatic Spray? I must've meant Chromatic...")(OK, now I have to play a Wizard named Wizirian, because: alliteration. Yeah, who only preps his half-dozen highest-level spells & never uses cantrips, because that's all just beneath his dignity.) Yes, very true. And, by the same token, the Wizard is a stronger case (than the Sorcerer) of 'forcing system mastery,' because the opportunity to optimize is there every time you prepare spells and every time you have an opportunity to learn a new one. Nod.  In 3.x it was a sub-set of the Wizard list, but only by 2 spells that would be meaningless if you didn't prep.  Like the Bard, it'd make sense for Sorcerers to be able to poach spells from other classes - if they fit their Heritage. OK, sure.  Especially compared to the olden days when you started out with Read Magic, three random 1st level spells, and that was it, you had to find anything above that (maybe you got one new spell when you gained a new spell level?) or engage in insanely expensive and time-consuming 'spell research' (which, if you ever did, you might as well try for a completely unique spell!). I think the 3e differentiation worked:  Make the Wizard prep into his slots instead of cast spontaneously.  Give the Sorcerer a few more slots. Assuming the new spell fits his heritage, sure.  Nice idea.</blockquote>

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