D&D 5E Xanathar hint from Crawford?

[Charles Rampant]

I think this is a great idea, although I question if everything that needs to be improved could be done through balanced spells.

Let us hope that Crawford et al are scribing furiously to bring about this very end

 

[Jester David]

Well the core of the problem is that it is compared to the wizard and *it suffers in the comparison*.

And if they make the sorcerer better, the wizard will suffer in comparison and suddenly we'll have threads about how the wizard sucks.
Perfect balance is impossible. One is always going to be better...

It's no coincidence that the sorcerer became the whipping boy class after they "fixed" the ranger last year. Whatever's at the arbitrary bottom is always going to get the most attention. And trying to "fix" them all just makes a treadmill that makes another class the least popular class.

 

[Wepwawet]

Well the core of the problem is that it is compared to the wizard and *it suffers in the comparison*.

I don't want to derail the thread, but I see this argument so much that I just want to share my experience.

I've played a Wild Sorcerer in the past up to 3rd level, and am playing a 4th level Wizard now, and honestly I find the Wizard pretty boring.

I felt the Sorcerer had a lot more magic in his hands than the Wizard. Mainly because of having the most Cantrips available to them, which allow me to give him a variety of useful and blasting tricks for different situations. Having limited spells known doesn't bother me at all, I do enjoy making those choices, I try to pick spells that can be used in different ways. That with the metamagic allows me to modify the effects a bit.

With the wizard I tried to go mostly for utility spells, but I didn't cast those much, I still ended up using the blasting spells a lot more. Having spells to cast as rituals is very useful, but the ability to prepare different spells I don't think is that valuable (I always end up preparing the same spells day after day, changing one or two at most).

Mine is a question of playstyle, I know. But I did have a lot more fun with the Wild Sorcerer (which has several other problems) than the supposedly superior Wizard.

 

[Aldarc]

And if they make the sorcerer better, the wizard will suffer in comparison and suddenly we'll have threads about how the wizard sucks.
Perfect balance is impossible. One is always going to be better...

It's no coincidence that the sorcerer became the whipping boy class after they "fixed" the ranger last year. Whatever's at the arbitrary bottom is always going to get the most attention. And trying to "fix" them all just makes a treadmill that makes another class the least popular class.

So since there will always be inequality, the "solution" is to do nothing about it?

 

[Jester David]

So since there will always be inequality, the "solution" is to do nothing about it?

Yes!
We've seen the alternative with 4e and Pathfinder. Pages and pages of errata to fix "broken" classes. And then re-errata to roll back fixes. Splatbooks after splatbooks to make weak builds valid.
World of Warcraft has been tweaking class balance pretty much non-stop since that game dropped. And it has the advantage of being automatically applied to every character. And some classes are still just better.

It's an endless self-perpetuating cycle.
They fix the sorcerer. Then the warlock needs "fixed" and everyone talks about that class. They "fix" the warlock and suddenly the monk absolutely needs to be reworked. And so on, until it becomes the ranger or sorcerer at the bottom again.

 

[Aldarc]

Yes!

It's an endless self-perpetuating cycle.
They fix the sorcerer. Then the warlock needs "fixed" and everyone talks about that class. They "fix" the warlock and suddenly the monk absolutely needs to be reworked. And so on, until it becomes the ranger or sorcerer at the bottom again.

This reasoning strikes me as bonkers, as it effectively advocates for maintaining game imbalance, and one helluva slippery slope argument to make.

 

[Ristamar]

This reasoning strikes me as bonkers, as it effectively advocates for maintaining game imbalance, and one helluva slippery slope argument to make.

I may be misinterpreting the good Jester, but I believe he's advocating for table specific tweaks as needed rather than perpetuating a call for a potential chain of official rewrites from WotC.

 

[Aldarc]

I may be misinterpreting the good Jester, but I believe he's advocating for table specific tweaks as needed rather than perpetuating a call for a potential chain of official rewrites from WotC.

Thank you for your attempt to clarify Jester's position. This is still an untenable slippery slope argument to make.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

Which class is, mechanically, spell-wise and role-wise, the closest to Sorcerer hmmmm?

The wizard *is* the appropriate comparison. Not the druid and not the rogue. And in that comparison, it suffers.

The sorcerer is supposed to be a blaster, so warlock is the more appropriate comparison. It uses the same casting stat and benefits from the same skills. The only real reasons to compare the sorcerer to the wizard are to cherry pick an argument and "by Lolth, that this argument we made 20 years ago, and we refuse to change". If a year or 10 years from now there is no revised sorcerer, well, you can guess that the devs eat more fruit than your stale cherry.

 

[CapnZapp]

Well the core of the problem is that it is compared to the wizard and *it suffers in the comparison*.

I don't think it is possible to have two classes do the same job equally well.

At least unless you make the Sorcerer more like the Wizard. Nobody wants that.

It is much easier to change the Sorcerers job so it isn't compared to the Wizard any longer, than to make it comparable without anyone suffering in that comparison.

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