D&D 5E (2024) What’s the difference between sorcerers, warlocks, and wizards?

[Micah Sweet]

Money. You said money. Money literally works the same regardless of the source.



Surely this is the one who got cheat codes via a pact?



Certainty this rapidly recharging magic and always-on magical features signify an innately magical being?



But clerics channel power of literal gods, so certainly this would be true for them as well, and even more so?



OK. It is weaksauce. Sorcerer in particular. It is just a terrible design. It is basically a wizard with metamagic. And converting sorcery points to spell slots and back is awkward as hell. Either metamagic should work via upcasting, or the class as whole should operate on spell points. And the thematics are super confuses. Like if it was strictly about magical blood, then there might be cleared distinctiveness, but it is not. It is just "can do magic for some reason," and many of those reasons sound a lot like Warlock.

I think it is mistake to put a class in the game just because class with that name existed in previous editions. If you don't have good mechanics or fluff for it, just don't do it.

Or make better mechanics and fluff. Justify the class's existence.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Not in D&D. Your framing, incidentally, biases things inherently. Why would pacts be "cheat codes"? Why wouldn't they be, say, carte blanche, or stuff too hot to handle (which is the analogy I used)? You're inherently twisting it so the only story you permit is the one that makes you right and everyone else wrong. There are other stories we can tell. WotC chose a different one. You don't like the one they chose. That's not the same as saying that it's bad that they chose it!


No? Why would it?

Do dragons work that way? Do angels work that way? Do demons work that way?

Now you're just literally inventing things without basis.


Uh....no?

How...do you think divine magic works...?

Because, as a religious person myself, no. That's nothing like how reverence and transcendental experience work. Like, at all. Not even a little bit.


I mean, I have very literally argued--I'm pretty sure to you personally--that the Sorcerer we got sucked, and that the playtest Sorcerer was awesome. It had this whole thematics of being dual-souled, of having a constant tug-of-war battle between their mortal soul and their arcane one, with the distant but theoretical threat of the latter consuming the former, leaving them a twisted monster forever. Unleashing their magic power (which, in this context, was specifically spell points, so they did in fact access their power differently compared to Wizards) literally was taking off the leash, allowing their arcane soul to physically manifest in the world.

It was cool as naughty word, GENUINELY completely different from Wizards, nothing to do with metamagic, everything to do with an evolving playstyle across the course of each day. The possibilities of what other sorcerous souls could produce--what would a storm soul do? A shadow soul? A celestial soul?--were incredibly tantalizing.

But nope. Welcome to 5th edition, the place where creative game design went to die. Everything had to be """traditional"""--and by "traditional" I of course mean "like 3.5e as much as possible while paying lip service to the fact that it's known to have problems."

If you want to be mad, don't be mad at me for saying Sorcerers and Warlocks are cool. Be mad at WotC for caving to peer pressure at a moment's notice when they should have given even one single attempt to address the concerns and create something people could get behind.

But they didn't. They surrendered instantly, because 5e was all about surrendering to haters, and now we're stuck with dull, boring, flavorless crap.

Congratulations on winning the edition war. I'm sure your winnings must be ever so sweet.

Did 5.5 surrender to the haters too?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Warlock is 8th-level.
Sorcerer is 9th-level.
And Wizard is 11th-level.

Serious answer: wizards are Dying Earth wizards.
Warlocks are Elric of Melniboné.
I'm not that familiar with Sword and Sorcery and can't think of a character that fits the Sorcerer archetype, but Merlin comes to mind.

Mutants. For me, sorcerers have always been the mutant menace.

 

[Aldarc]

What kind of help are you looking for then?

Please read the following:

Wanna go to the moon? Do it yourself. It's as simple as that. Same sort of unhelpful energy but certainly easy for you to say to someone, and then when they say that they can't do it (for whatever their reasons) or that it's just what they want to see for the game, you can come along and just smugly blame them for their failures or unwillingness to try. As if the only way you can advocate for something new or an alternative approach is to create it yourself, which is utter BS. As I said, I find these sort of replies to be unhelpful and lacking real insight. Simple as that.

I'm not asking for any help. I was making a proposal for an alternative approach to the classes in question because I was asked by someone in this thread what I would do.

 

[Corinnguard]

Mutants. For me, sorcerers have always been the mutant menace.

Does this make a character who multiclasses into sorcerer, a mutate?

 

[Hriston]

True proper Myrddin was a druid, but the Arthurian romances, particularly those that re-cast Merlin as an incubus' child baptised on the day of his birth so he was free of Satan's influence, definitely put him closer to "sorcerer" than "wizard" in many cases.

Yes, I was thinking of Geoffrey of Monmouth's cambion Merlin. By druid, I suppose you mean in the D&D sense, referring to his notable shapeshifting ability. Technically, Myrddin Wyllt was a bard.

The Sorcerer archetype is more common in modern fantasy fiction, where the idea that your dad or grandmother (or whatever) was magical, and thus so are you, took off due to the Young Adult fiction genre.

Again, I'm not widely read in the genre, but I suppose Harry Potter would be the primary example of the archetype?

 

[Hriston]

Mutants. For me, sorcerers have always been the mutant menace.

Any examples of this depiction from fantasy fiction?

 

[Micah Sweet]

Any examples of this depiction from fantasy fiction?

The X-Men, etc al. People born with strange supernatural abilities gain from their ancestry, whose powers spontaneously manifest, initially out of their control until they learn to harness them.

Don't tell me the Marvel Universe isn't a fantasy setting!

 

[Scribe]

I've long advocated that any creature beholden to a more powerful being (warlocks, clerics, maybe paladins and druids too) should have strings attached to that power. But that doesn't jive with the "showing off our cool powerz" playstyle of modern D&D.

Daggerheart has a proposal for this that is quite nice, not sure if you have reviewed all the material there, but it would be easily transferable.

 

[Voadam]

Any examples of this depiction from fantasy fiction?

Anything where magic/psychic abilities are in born and magic users are feared.

Wheel of time comes to mind. There is the Tower which teaches skill but the power is just in certain people and not others to start. The White Cloaks hunt down those with the power.

So some versions of Merlin are he is part demon and that ties into his magic.

Seventh son of a seventh son.

Harry Potter with its muggle divide and wizarding magical family lines.

Burning witches can be a mutant menace analogy.