Wotc Sorcerer Fluff - Poll

[Stormonu]

On the latest article with Mike Mearls, do you agree or disagree with the background fluff presented for Sorcerers?

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Sorcerers and Warlocks)

 

[KidSnide]

On the latest article with Mike Mearls, do you agree or disagree with the background fluff presented for Sorcerers?

As covered more fully in Is the Sorcerer Story Too Narrow for a Base Class?, this sorcerer fluff would be fine as one specific type of sorcerer, but "sorcerer magic is hard to control and overwhelms the sorcerer physically" is too narrow a concept to cover the full range of D&D sorcerers.

-KS

 

[TwoSix]

If I could, I'd give it a 6.

 

[TerraDave]

They don't nail it like they do the warlock...but its interesting.

As to the "too narrow" point that has come up in a few places...on this I don't agree. Everything out of the core 4 should be narrower and more focused.

 

[ComradeGnull]

As covered more fully in Is the Sorcerer Story Too Narrow for a Base Class?, this sorcerer fluff would be fine as one specific type of sorcerer, but "sorcerer magic is hard to control and overwhelms the sorcerer physically" is too narrow a concept to cover the full range of D&D sorcerers.

-KS

I tend to agree. The dual-souled physical transform thing could be one valid interpretation of what goes on with sorcerers, but I don't want it as default for all of them. Seems a little too much like a bad episode of Inuyasha. I wouldn't, for instance, want blanket lore that says "wizards study a lot, so they have poor social skills. Also, all wizards are cranky from keeping late hours and not sleeping enough."

It intrudes a little too much into DM and player prerogative.

 

[Victim]

It seems overconstrained to me.

 

[DEFCON 1]

I like the idea behind it, as it takes the basic premise of the sorcerer through the last two editions "you have magic within you!" and then extrapolates it out from there on what that would actually mean.

Without that fluff... it's basically assumed you're a superhero. You have powers. Yes, they match quite nicely to the spells a wizard casts, but still... you just have magical abilities. No reason for it... you just do.

While that blank slate might be fine for some people so that they can layer whatever story they want on top of it... I'm not really one of them. If I was... I wouldn't want the story of the cleric having to pray to his god to receive his power, or the wizard being a studious fellow who works with the arcane power to shape it to his whim either. But at that point... all I have left is a pile of mechanics onto which I have to create stories to explain what they mean and why my PC has them. At which point I'd wonder why I wasn't playing Fantasy HERO or GURPS Fantasy (and thus able to create whatever random idea my heart desired at that point).

I just find I'd rather have a really interesting story already in place for my D&D classes that I can play and work with... and if I feel like a class's story isn't doing it for me for a particular character I want to create... then I just strip the fluff away and make something new. But I feel like that should be the exception to the class story design focus, rather than the rule.

 

[haakon1]

It seems overconstrained to me.

I agree. It would make it hard to multi-class with a Sorcerer.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

It's altogether too close to the Warlock.

Who offers mortals untold power in exchange for unspeakable things: Otherworldly Entities, Fey, Devils, Demons, Great People Who Are Dead, Shadow Beings and (ironically) the Sorcerer King.

Who does weird stuff with mortals so that some of them end up with magic in their blood: Otherworldly Entities, Fey, Devils, Demons, Shadow Beings (Great People Who Are Dead and the Sorcerer King could just be your ancestor already) - oh and Dragons.

No, I'd much rather have magic ITSELF empower the sorcerer than some bloodline. Let's have elementalists imbued with living fire or ice, and astromancers born when the stars are right, and wild mages who are accidental conduits for awesome power.

 

[n00bdragon]

I give this class a Grapefruit/5. It's one of the two classes in the game that actually knows what it wants to do with itself. For that I commend it and dearly want it to be in the game and wish that every class were as well defined with a union of fluff and mechanics.

I have absolutely no interest in whether it captures some nebulous "essence" of a sorcerer.

So yeah, the sorcerer is one of two things (the other being the warlock) that makes me go "ooh, maybe I should play 5e instead of whatever else so I can play with this thingy".