D&D 5E Why is the Sorceror so limited in spell knowledge?

[Li Shenron]

1) They know a lot less spells at base than a wizard does.
2) They can not learn new spells except when they level, as opposed to a wizard who can add spells to his book.
3) Their spell list is much narrower than the Wizard.
4) They don't get ritual casting as a base.

For 1) and 2) these are actually supposed to be the Wizard's edge, not the Sorcerer's weakness (Clerics and Druids might know even more spells than a Wizard (as a base), however overall the divine casters' spells often overlap in function). Nobody learns additional spells during adventuring besides the Wizard, not just the Sorcerer.

While adding spells between level is quite a lot of fun, I have never been sure it's fair, because it also depends on the DM making scrolls and spellbooks available. I've played in 3e games where every class had a fixed number of learned spells per level (so no automatically knowing all new level spells for Clerics and Druids) but at the same time everyone could find & learn additional ones at some cost. It worked very well, but unfortunally legacy is too strong for such a change.

3) I don't know how much narrower, in 3e Wizards and Sorcerers had practically the same list, but during playtest it sounded like people wanted each class to have its own list... we were also promised some unique spells for Sorcerer and Warlocks, did we get any?

4) This one sounds like a thematic design choice.

Overall it saddens me if the Sorcerer ends up being inferior to the Wizard... already in 3e it got some serious penalties just because the designers didn't playtest enough and were afraid that spontaneous casting was going to be too powerful: so they delayed new spell levels by 1 class level, fixed the number of spells known, and didn't grant a Sorcerer any bonus feats. The 3.5 revision boosted every class except the Sorcerer, which was indirectly penalized by other changes such as halving Spell Focus. All in all there was a feeling like "who cares about the Sorcerer, everyone's playing a Wizard anyway" (which obviously wasn't true). I think if they didn't care about the Sorcerer, they should just skip it entirely... if you design a class, it deserves all care and attentions!

I guess the idea that they can metamagic spells into things that seem like other spells. So your spells known is multiplied by every metamagic that is affected by them.

If metamagic effects are similar to those of 3e, this is hardly the case... they used to multiply effects (damage, duration, range, targets) or remove restrictions (somatic/verbal components, speed up casting time), but only a few metamagic feats actually changed the spell... I can remember Energy Substitution, but you still got a spell with the same general purpose i.e. combat-oriented damaging spell.

In 5e many spells also scale without metamagic, so I expect metamagic to be generally less unique.

Unless of course the PHB has some definitely new metamagic effects I am unaware about!

 

[Minigiant]

If metamagic effects are similar to those of 3e, this is hardly the case... they used to multiply effects (damage, duration, range, targets) or remove restrictions (somatic/verbal components, speed up casting time), but only a few metamagic feats actually changed the spell... I can remember Energy Substitution, but you still got a spell with the same general purpose i.e. combat-oriented damaging spell.

In 5e many spells also scale without metamagic, so I expect metamagic to be generally less unique.

Unless of course the PHB has some definitely new metamagic effects I am unaware about!

It is a bit overestimated but it do help.

5e spells scale with slots and not automatically. Scaling with slot is also inefficient. The sorcerer's strength is the ability to scale spells without using higher slots.

So at Sorcerer 10, a level 1 spell like burning hands is weak as it deals only 3d6 damage in a 15 foot cone. In the hands of a Wizard 10 it is mostly useless.

But for a single sorcery point, you can drop any low rolls to make burning hands respectable with empowered spell.


Not the biggest bonus but it's something wizards cannot do.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Overall thoughts on Sorcerer:

I think it has definitely become much more of a "finesse" class than it was previously. The apparent key to their power is the efficient use of sorcery points and metamagic. It wasn't brought up on this thread, but due to the way spells scale there are ways to do more overall damage (significantly more over the course of the day) by converting higher level spell slots into lower level spell slots and/or sorcery points to use for metamagic. You really have to study your class features and spells to figure out how best to make use of that. It isn't hard per se, but for those of us who don't have an instant internal calculator, we need to take a bit and think through the possibilities and determine some general conversion strategies and techniques that our character is going to use. While that is focused on damage, there are also metamagics that work well for non-damaging things, like Extend Spell that not only doubles range, but allows you to turn touch into 30' range; and Twinned Spell that allows any single target spell to target 2 targets.

It's also worth noting that even if you ignore metamagic and use sorcery points only to create more spell slots, you get more spell slots out of it than a wizard's arcane recovery (remember--arcane recovery takes place during a short rest but only once per day; a lot of people have missed that for some reason).

As far as subclasses, the draconic bloodline is a pretty strong. In addition to some draconic social skills, you get an extra hp per level and what amounts to permanent mage armor right from the get go. If you are focused on damage, you are adding your charisma mod to your chosen element from 6th level on, in addition to other features. Wild mage seems rather weak to me in the beginning by contrast, but at 14th level wild mage gets a major power boost if the DM is frequently allowing you to roll for wild surges. Rolling twice and picking which result to use on a table that has slightly more positive results than negative results is great. I did some test rolling and tried doing that (roll twice, take the best) dozens of times and only ended up having to take a bad result 2 or 3 times.

Note also that if you are willing to spend a feat you can get wizard style ritual casting (no preparation required) for the spell list of your choice. They could choose wizard and have the same ability that the wizard does, or pick a different class and expand their repertoire that way. That isn't sorcerer specific, I just thought it was worth mentioning as it's a pretty awesome feat (which would be a lot more awesome if there were about 3 times as many rituals as there are).

Maybe I'm just completely misreading multiclassing rules, but it seems to me that if you take 1 level of wizard and the rest sorcerer, you can learn a ton of spells (though you can only prepare a few from your spellbook).

The rules on spellbooks say you can only scribe spells that you have spellslots for.

The rules for multiclassed spellcasters say you add all the class levels together and look at that chart.

So a wizard 1/sorcerer 6 gets 4th level spell slots, right? Would he be able to scribe 4th level spells into a spellbook? It seems like that is sorta mitigated by him only being able to prepare a number of wizard spells per day equal to 1 + his Int mod.

Yes, you are completely misreading multi-classing rules. (Okay, actually just slightly misreading .)

The point you are missing is that you have to keep your spells known and highest level spells castable separate for your classes. A spell you scribe from a scroll is added only to your wizard spell list, not your sorcerer list. And since you only have access to 1st level wizard spells, you can't learn (from scrolls or otherwise) or cast any spells above 1st level from the wizard class. So you can't scribe, prepare, or cast ice storm as a wizard spell. If you want ice storm, you have to learn it as one of your limited sorcerer spells. What your are allowed to do is use higher level spell slots to cast lower level spells, regardless of what class those spells come from. So if you know magic missile because you scribed it into your wizard spell book you can cast it using a 4th level spell slot for greater effect.

The real key here is that spell slots and spell levels are handled very differently. Multiclassing never gives you access to spells that are of a higher level in a class than you could learn from your levels in that class. 1st level wizards can't learn any wizard spells that aren't first level. Therefore multiclassed 1st level wizards can't learn any wizard spells that aren't first level, even if they have 19 levels of sorcerer and a spell is on both lists. They'd have to learn and cast higher level spells as sorcerer spells.

It can be a bit confusing if it's new, but once you get it it makes sense.

Forced specialization for Sorcs would be fine, but they have a more restricted spell list than Wizards (so you can actually only specialize in some things), and what do they get in return for having a much more limited scope (and no freebie rituals)? They cannot get more slots anymore (like 3e did it), because all casters have a unified progression - so they try to sidestep the issue with power points, but then Wizards get arcane recovery, while Sorc has to choose either slots OR metamagics...

Sorcs certainly look much weaker than Wizards. It's like the power points need to be doubled.

If they just go with spell slots they come out better than arcane recovery, but as you said, they have to divide their points between spell slots and metamagic.

I haven't seen them in action yet, but I agree that more sorcery points are probably warranted for the class.

Sorcerers don't have a narrow spell list; it's bigger than the warlock list and is roughly on par with the size of the bard, cleric and druid lists. No, it's wizards who get an expanded spell list, because versatility is part of their schtick.

The thing that bugs me is that the sorcerer gets so few spells known overall, fewer even than the bard. That sucks.

Not only is it bigger than the warlock list (by far) it is the second largest spell list. The relative size of the spell lists is:

Wizard > Sorcerer > Bard (yep, you read that right)> Druid > Cleric > Warlock > Paladin* > Ranger.

*Tied with ranger for base spell lists, but get extra spells from Oath.

Sorcerer's list is noticeably bigger than bard, and has a few spells (generally about 1-2 per level, but none at some levels) that aren't on the wizard spell list. One notable example is Enhance Attribute, the 5e equivalent of all the 3e bull's strength, cat's grace line of spells.

I agree that known spells can probably stand to be increased. I'm not sure of the logic behind giving bards more than sorcerer.

It is possible that in an attempt to make sure sorcerer isn't outshining wizard they underpowered it, but I'll have to see it in action for a while to make a real judgement on it.

It's also worth noticing that if someone just wants to go with a relatively simple to play blastery caster, a draconic bloodline sorcerer with the right metamagic options is probably at least on par with an evoker, all things being considered.

 

[RangerWickett]

Where does it say that? Page 164 says you determine what spells you know and can prepare for each class using only your levels in that class.

Page 114 says you can copy a spell into your spellbound as long as you have a spell slot of the right level.

I don't even think it's overpowered. A cleric 4 wizard 1 misses out on improving his turn undead in exchange for slightly more spell options. That works for me.

 

[Li Shenron]

I think it has definitely become much more of a "finesse" class than it was previously. The apparent key to their power is the efficient use of sorcery points and metamagic.

Very interesting observation... in 3e the Sorcerer was a lower-complexity class than a Wizard, because you didn't have to worry about preparing spells in advance, and you had less spells known to choose from. While the original reason to have the Sorcerer in 3e might have been to make an experiment of a caster without vancian magic, it also served the purpose of providing an easy spellcaster class for beginners.

It does look like the 5e Sorcerer is more complicated to play, due to the versatility of sorcery points.

 

[Eric V]

Very interesting observation... in 3e the Sorcerer was a lower-complexity class than a Wizard, because you didn't have to worry about preparing spells in advance, and you had less spells known to choose from. While the original reason to have the Sorcerer in 3e might have been to make an experiment of a caster without vancian magic, it also served the purpose of providing an easy spellcaster class for beginners.

It does look like the 5e Sorcerer is more complicated to play, due to the versatility of sorcery points.

Sorcery seems so limited, though, being a long-rest resource rather than a short-rest one. I think of the monk who gets all his ki points back after a short rest and wonder if it would break the sorcerer to have the same feature or merely make it competitive?

 

[Minigiant]

Very interesting observation... in 3e the Sorcerer was a lower-complexity class than a Wizard, because you didn't have to worry about preparing spells in advance, and you had less spells known to choose from. While the original reason to have the Sorcerer in 3e might have been to make an experiment of a caster without vancian magic, it also served the purpose of providing an easy spellcaster class for beginners.

It does look like the 5e Sorcerer is more complicated to play, due to the versatility of sorcery points.

No, the sorcerer at its base is still simpler. Sorcery points can be used for extra spells and Empowered Metamagic.

It comes of as a spontaneous and flexible Arcane recovery with a flexible school via meramagic.

I suspect the sorcerer will shine at high levels when they can cannabilize lower level slots for sorcery points and power up higher level spells.

Burn a first level slot for 1 point then empower 4 dices of your fireball. Whereas the wizard is stuck with burning hands and mage armor with that slot.

 

[CapnZapp]

While this thread started out with a specific question, it seems to have broadened out to a general "sorcs are useless WHY" thread.

To which I say: please master the class before crying out how weak it is.

The preceding comment is fairly telling: if a sorcerer is roughly equal to an Evoker, then it clearly can't be all that weak...

Regarding Wild Magic:

A Wild Mage Sorcerer has the potential to gain advantage N+1 times each day, where N is the total number of non-cantrip spell castings/slots allowed to the class. Including slots from Sorc points.

Which is huge, given that you decide freely when to use it.

• A feeble pit trap opens up beneath your feet. Ok, I'll save my Advantage - I think my high level Sorc can survive a few dice of damage.
  
• An invisible Liche casts a major save-or-die spell on you. I believe I'll have my advantage on this save right now, thank you very much.

And then you cast any spell back at the lich, and automatically gain back your advantage...

Pretty heady stuff if you allow me. And I say that despite polymorphing myself into a Sheep just last night...


/Zapp

 

[CapnZapp]

Where does it say that? Page 164 says you determine what spells you know and can prepare for each class using only your levels in that class.

Page 114 says you can copy a spell into your spellbound as long as you have a spell slot of the right level.

Ranger, by the ruletext in the PHB its fairly unclear. The example is slightly better, however.

I'm not telling you you've read the PHB wrong - it is fairly reasonable to read it your way. But Mearls has been consistent in explaining the intent of the rules:

It's only the SLOTS that multiclass.

(You use the levels of the specific spellcasting class in order to LEARN and prepare spells.)

Meaning that a Wiz1/Whatever19 can only put level 1 wizard spells in his spell slots.

Also: this guy can only put level 1 wizard spells into his spellbook, even if he casts high level cleric or sorc spells elsewhere.

 

[ppaladin123]

I think they over-compensated for metamagic by limiting the spells known so much. It wouldn't have been unbalancing/game breaking to give them another 5 spells known over 20 levels!