Which Is The Stronger Character Class - Sorcerer or Wizard?

[iwatt]

It'll depend on the type of campaign. In a campaign with a lot of down time and access tor esearch and spells, a wizard rock on toast. The same wizard will suck on a campaign with 4+ encounters per day and no down time.

As a DM, sorcerors are the favored choice. Since they only need to be useful for one combat (unless he's a BBEG) he can repeatedly cast the spells he needs over and over.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

In terms of bonus feats, if the Sorcerer didn't have zero but, say, 6 or 7, THEN would it be more equal to the Wizard?

That would prevent a bit of PrC jumping ... but their real sore point is the low number of spells.

Now, with lots of bonus feats, a sorcerer could keep buying Extra Spell Slot (which should have been core, IMO), but it's not as good as the wizard in that area (who gets the spells early, and gets a fair number of the highest level spells) but maybe it would balance out since sorcs still get to cast more spells per day.

 

[WarlockLord]

Psions>Sorcerors.

Psions get Int-based spontaneous casting, and can pull off many of the same tricks. They can quicken, and they get schism. Ok, they have to take a feat to get a psicrystal, but their skill points are cool, they get good class skills, and can use the awesome power point system. Also, they get psionic body, which is a good feat to jack those HP through the roof, and bonus feats! How cool is that?

 

[jeffh]

It's a lot harder to play a wizard well than to play a sorcerer well, especially if you're on a clock and don't know what you're going to be facing next. As many have said, situations where you can take a relaxed approach to problems favour the wizard, but in, say, Red Hand of Doom, I'd rather be a Sorc, even taking into account having lower-level spells 50% of the time.

A couple of my players back in Winnipeg were convinced Sorcerers were the more powerful of the two, and even ones who didn't think that tended to regard Sorceres as more fun, with way less fiddly resource management and not being channeled into item creation, which while powerful, not everyone enjoys. Being a bit more plugged into the conventional wisdom at sites like this one, I don't agree with them about the power issue, but I do think it's a lot closer than many people here and elsewhere seem to think.

 

[EyeontheMountain]

Please, not another one of these threads. For some reason they are popping up on all the boards i visit these last few days.

For me both are good, and can be very powerful, but as they play totally differently, it is ahrd to compare them. If you like prep and micro-management, go for a wizard. If you want to play more freely, then go sorceror. Some people like one, others the other. Doesn't mean one is worse or better.

For me, in a fight, I would go with sorceror until the early teens in levels, and then it gets hard, but I think both are valuable additions to a party. In more RP or investigative games, the wizard wins hands down in all levels.

 

[EyeontheMountain]

In terms of power the wizard shines.

As a class feature you get scribe scroll. Now you can have as many and more spells per day as a sorceror. Yes you need some time money and xp but the sorceror can't di it at all. Even if he could he has an extremely limited spell selection. Wth scribe scroll you get the sorcerors advantage and the wizard flexibility.
.

This is one point I always see brought up. But how much time does it take to scribe all those scrolls? Ignore the money and xp, though for any spell where you want them to be equal in power to your memorized ones, the hit is heavy, especially in mid-high level games. Sure a scroll of mage armor made at first level is probably enough for most cases, a magic missle sure isn't.

Plus the obviouus point the wizard also has to choose what spell to scribe in the first place.

Factor in the actions in combat. Getting a scroll out of storage is not a free action in core, though I remember some way to do it in some book or another. A move action that draws AoOs is not cool in combat, especially if you have to do it several times.

Wizards really shine if the DM abhndwaves a lot of the annoying, time consuming aspects of their spellcasting, which is a major limiting factor on them. Between learning a spell (a day) scribing it (another day) Making a few scrolls of it (at least a day, depending on how your Dm reads the scroll creation rules) you have been sitting around a whole lot. Ifthe rest of the party and DM allow you too, then a big drawback ahs been negated.

 

[Nightfall]

Cheese is nice...especially Vermont extra sharp cheddar.

 

[airwalkrr]

I do not think anyone has said it so far, so I will.

I find that while the sorcerer is less powerful than the wizard, it is still a useful class for teaching new players the mechanics of the game. Although my first character ever (in AD&D) was a wizard, I asked my DM to let me play an online variant which was more similar to the sorcerer. I did not understand at the time how important resource management was to the game, and more spells per day with spontaneous casting is more forgiving than fewer spells per day with preparation. If I had been a typical wizard, I probably would have prepared nothing but burning hands any way, but with the variant we used, I was actually able to get some use out of my other spells by having them available spontaneously. There were some drawbacks of course, but at the time, I was not versed enough in the game to appreciate them.

So for new players, I usually recommend a sorcerer. For veterans, the flexibility of the wizard will always win out.

 

[Nightfall]

Cheese is more powerful than wizards or sorcerers!

 

[Drowbane]

blahblahblah...

So for new players, I usually recommend a sorcerer. For veterans, the flexibility of the wizard will always win out.

Precisely.

Sorc = Wizard Lite.