MoonSong
Rules-lawyering drama queen but not a munchkin
But D&D isn't run in anthropological definitions. In D&D terms a psion is a sorcerer.
D&D General What’s The Big Deal About Psionics?
- Thread starter Smackpixi
- Start date
The two anthropology dictionaries I quoted above didn't particularly mention external spirits for sorcerer... (or did I miss that emphasis). It felt like they seemed to focus more on social acceptability and professionalism almost.
Do you have a particular anthropological text that defines sorcerer primarily by the using external spirits definition?
Yaarel
🇮🇱 🇺🇦 He-Mage
Fair enough. The Sorcerer is part of an already ongoing D&D tradition.
Painfully it is a tradition that has run dry. The 3e Sorcerer class was a wizard casting wozard spells, but its niche was mechanical only, having spontaneous spellcasting. But later, the Warlock and the Psion stole that niche from it. And now in 4e and 5e, all spellcasting is spontaneous. So the 3e Sorcerer no longer exists. 4e made the Sorcerer a "striker" Wizard instead, and 5e made it the "metamagic" Wizard, instead. The 3e Sorcerer is dead.
The theme of bloodline is in each tradition, but is vague and inconsistent, and is never explained mechanically, except sometimes as a flavors for different subclasses.
There is no going to the 3e Sorcerer. There is only forward. What should a "sorcerer" concept do now? Is it worth hanging on to a name that lacks meaningful mechanics?
Yaarel
🇮🇱 🇺🇦 He-Mage
You missed it, and it wasnt obvious.
"The most commonly accepted definition was provided in Evans-Pritchard 1937, a detailed, empathetic study of the Azande, of colonial Sudan, in which the author distinguishes between witchcraft and sorcery by their technique. Evans-Pritchard defines the former as the innate ..."
Namely: [The latter one, sorcery, is non-innate, albeit he makes sorcery intentionally evil as opposed to unintentionally.]
In any case, "anthropological use of the term [sorcery] highlights efforts to manipulate supernatural forces".
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How does non-innate imply spirits (as opposed to something like alchemy or D&D-esque trained wizardry)?
A sentence down has "[t]he Azande refer to sorcery as the performance of rituals, the uttering of spells, and the manipulation of organic substances, such as herbs, with the conscious intent of causing harm." Similarly, the next source doesn't make it sound like it uses spirits: "As typically used in the anthropological literature, sorcery is a pragmatic, conscious practice, involving acts of magic and leading to personal power for the practitioner. Sorcerers typically must learn the texts, practices, rituals, or other components of magic as understood in their culture; such knowledge is esoteric and not normally available to everyone."
Do you have one that actually says it uses spirits?
Yaarel
🇮🇱 🇺🇦 He-Mage
Sorry, I hit enter too soon, I finished the post with distinguishing between witchcraft versus sorcery, as innate versus manipulating supernatural forces.
That seems to fit. The necessarily involving spirits part was throwing me off.
Yaarel
🇮🇱 🇺🇦 He-Mage
I already gave the definition by American Heritage Dictionary, it specifies that sorcery uses spirits.
That is the definition in the academic circles that I deal with, for archeology.
I don't sees the point of the sorcerer line for a vehicle for psionics.
WotC designed the sorcerer with shallow mechanical execution and a niche spell list despite the wide range of possible archetypes. Had they designed sorcerer with a wide base breadth, we could have tweaked it to be psions, wilders, aberrant minds, ardents, battle minds, and other psionic archetypes. But it wasn't.
WotC designed the sorcerer with shallow mechanical execution and a niche spell list despite the wide range of possible archetypes. Had they designed sorcerer with a wide base breadth, we could have tweaked it to be psions, wilders, aberrant minds, ardents, battle minds, and other psionic archetypes. But it wasn't.
James Gasik
We don't talk about Pun-Pun
I could see a better sorcerer becoming a psion, actually, giving them a pile of "psionic points" (sorcery points) that they turn into "power slots" (spell slots) to manifest their abilities on the fly. But then I realized that would probably be better than the Sorcerer in every way.
