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

[EzekielRaiden]

Did 5.5 surrender to the haters too?

Sometimes. It's a slightly more mixed bag. Emphasis on "slightly".

 

[Micah Sweet]

The Warlock is preview material, free, and the SRD as well.

https://www.daggerheart.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Warlock-v1.5-The-Void.pdf

This is what I was referencing however. The bottom section about a tithe.

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Sounds cool, but you'd have to translate the hope/fear mechanic, which is kinda Daggerheart's main deal right?

 

[Micah Sweet]

harry potter wizards, despite having certain families with more potent 'magical bloodlines' otherwise pretty much totally fall into the wizard position IMO,

i think in alot of media outside of DnD the types of characters which most fit into the 'sorcerer' archetype don't actually deal with 'special bloodlines' or being 'touched by magic' so much, it's there but it's not lingered on or treated as significant to the powers they develop, X-men mutants have already been mentioned, quirks from my hero academia i think fall into a similar niche, as do benders from avatar, characters for who developing their powers happens more as an extension of their body than as anything academical that they can 'study'

Except most people are Muggles who can't learn magic at all.

 

[Scribe]

Sounds cool, but you'd have to translate the hope/fear mechanic, which is kinda Daggerheart's main deal right?

I mean yeah it is, but some kind of currency is not unheard of.

 

[Charlaquin]

harry potter wizards, despite having certain families with more potent 'magical bloodlines' otherwise pretty much totally fall into the wizard position IMO,

i think in alot of media outside of DnD the types of characters which most fit into the 'sorcerer' archetype don't actually deal with 'special bloodlines' or being 'touched by magic' so much, it's there but it's not lingered on or treated as significant to the powers they develop, X-men mutants have already been mentioned, quirks from my hero academia i think fall into a similar niche, as do benders from avatar, characters for who developing their powers happens more as an extension of their body than as anything academical that they can 'study'

Except most people are Muggles who can't learn magic at all.

Yeah, it’s a bit embarrassing that I know this, but canonically magic is genetic in the Potterverse. Yes, muggleborn wizards are a thing, but they arise because of recessive magic genes passed down from some magical ancestor somewhere in the bloodline. Likewise, squibs are people born of magical parents who can’t do magic, because they either didn’t receive the right combination of genes, or a random mutation presenting the magical gene from expressing itself.

Leave it to Joanne to make the pureblood-supremacist villains of her story objectively right. They’re villains not because their ideology is fundamentally misguided, but because they “take it too far.”

 

[CreamCloud0]

Except most people are Muggles who can't learn magic at all.

what franchise is this meant to be talking about? HP or DnD? if it's the former, see below, if it's the latter, there's no evidence anyone can't really become a wizard if they study enough, seeing as there's no initial INT bar to entry to becoming one (unlike multiclassing into it for some reason).

Yeah, it’s a bit embarrassing that I know this, but canonically magic is genetic in the Potterverse. Yes, muggleborn wizards are a thing, but they arise because of recessive magic genes passed down from some magical ancestor somewhere in the bloodline. Likewise, squibs are people born of magical parents who can’t do magic, because they either didn’t receive the right combination of genes, or a random mutation presenting the magical gene from expressing itself.

Leave it to Joanne to make the pureblood-supremacist villains of her story objectively right. They’re villains not because their ideology is fundamentally misguided, but because they “take it too far.”

oh yeah, i'm not saying magic wasn't genetic in HP, but past that initial factor everything else about how they learn and use magic is basically DnD wizard rather than sorcerer.

 

[Scribe]

They surrendered instantly, because 5e was all about surrendering to haters, and now we're stuck with dull, boring, flavorless crap.

I'd argue there are plenty of reasons for that. When people are talking about banning Oath of Conquest Paladins, there is plenty of blame to go around.

 

[Hriston]

@EzekielRaiden, I see in this article that both Mark Chorvinsky and Nikolai Tolstoy have argued "that Merlin is based on a historical person, probably a 5th and/or 6th-century druid living in southern Scotland" or similar "based on the fact that early references to Merlin describe him as possessing characteristics which modern scholarship would recognize as druidical (but that sources of the time would not have recognized), the inference being that those characteristics were not invented by the early chroniclers but belonged to a real person." Is that what you meant by the "True proper Myrddin" being a druid. If so, I think that idea has merit.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

@EzekielRaiden, I see in this article that both Mark Chorvinsky and Nikolai Tolstoy have argued "that Merlin is based on a historical person, probably a 5th and/or 6th-century druid living in southern Scotland" or similar "based on the fact that early references to Merlin describe him as possessing characteristics which modern scholarship would recognize as druidical (but that sources of the time would not have recognized), the inference being that those characteristics were not invented by the early chroniclers but belonged to a real person." Is that what you meant by the "True proper Myrddin" being a druid. If so, I think that idea has merit.

Partially. I also meant that, in D&D terms, he had a very strong association with shape changing.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I'd argue there are plenty of reasons for that. When people are talking about banning Oath of Conquest Paladins, there is plenty of blame to go around.

I mean sure, but the point was that this was more or less the first time it hit. This was early. We're talking pretty much the exact middle of the public playtest. The playtest Warlock and Sorcerer were the first and only time I was actually upbeat about 5e's prospects: it wouldn't be what I liked best, but if it had been that, I could have been happy with it. Instead, they instantaneously caved and literally never touched those classes again in public, and as a consequence produced two classes that were very clearly half-baked. (Even many with much more positive views of 5.0 thought so eventually; it was one of the few actual criticisms anyone was even remotely willing to consider for a while.)