A Quick Fix for the Sorcerer

[User3]

A quick fix for the Sorcerer

Oh, the poor, maligned sorcerer. His smarter, better built sibling the Wizard is superior in almost everyway. The Wizard gets a better primary attribute (intelligence vs. charisma), an insanely better means of acquiring additional spells and he even gets a few feats out of straight classing. What the sorcerer does get is 2 additional spells/day/spell level and the ability to cast spontaneously (too bad he knows too few to make that important). Unless the wizard is a specialist, in which case its just 1/day/level. Unless the wizard bothers to actually scribe scrolls to fill in the gaps (which he will). Now the sorcerer would have better flavor text if anyone could really agree on what it was. The concept of being the sociable jock that was blasting goblins and wooing barmaids while the other guy sat in a library doing homework is appealing and some people are willing to suffer character-wise for it. Too bad the conversation goes something like this: Are you descended from dragons? No, that’s the kobolds. Oh, demons then? No, then I’d be a warlock… or a tiefling. Fey? Still warlock. So why are you magical? Because I’m pretty and I like evocation. I have wept for the plight of the sorcerer and propose a few home brewed tune ups for the class. They aren’t perfect, they aren’t even fully balanced but they are simple. Here goes:

1) Talk softly and carry a big schtick:
Sorcerers are supposed to be swimming in magic. He should urinate potions and pick his teeth with cantrips. If the sorcerer’s two advantages are # of castings and flexibility of casting then I say go all out. Increase his spells/day cap to eight. Also, give him access to higher level spells like a wizard (2nd level spells at 3rd level, 5th at 9th, etc.). If a person is supposed to be some sort of magical savant, the insider of arcane casting, why is it he’s the last to know about the next level of spells?

2) I am the blue mage, coocoocachoo:
A guilty secret of mine is that I love the spellthief. The class doesn’t work well and it allows for all sorts of rule bending from “borrowing” spells from teammates but I love the concept. What if we gave the sorcerer a spellthief infusion to get him up to speed? Give him the spell absorption ability and bonuses to saves vs. spells so he can eat magic and turn it into spell fuel. Give him a class ability to make range touch attacks to steal spell resistance, energy resistance and maybe even spell slots (though none of that spell-like ability cheese). This makes the sorcerer an even better foil of the wizard class and helps the sorcerer fill a slightly different niche than the party wizard/batman. Plus, throwing someone’s targeted dispel magic at them is pretty pimp…

3) All your spell slots are belong to us:
Along with or instead of a spell slot increase, give him a better spell level conversion. By this I mean, allow him to turn one X-level spell slot into 2 (X-1) level spell slots and vice versa. This means he could literally cast magic missile all day but who cares. It also means he could double his number of top-level spell slots if he sacrificed ALL of his lesser spell slots (to clarify, this would be a temporary thing like casting a 2nd level spell from a 3rd level slot. You aren’t permanently changing the slot, just modifying its use for that day). That way he could cast magic missile until the cows come home (and be a boring archer character), destroy ONE playing field ONCE a day with extreme vengeance, or something between the two. Regardless, it gives him way more flexibility than he had before and would allow him to use some of those wasted lower level slots if need be (since having X castings per day is useless if you only need to cast X-3 times a day so putting the unused portion somewhere else actually IS useful). As a general rule, I’d argue that cantrips couldn’t be traded up for 1st level spells (though the reverse would be allowable).

4) My Mage-Fu is superior:
Make the sorcerer the fighter class of arcane casters. On every 2nd or 3rd level give them a bonus metamagic feat. This allows them to get the most out of their limited arsenal without having to sacrifice their normal feat progression just to keep up. Also, I’ve never heard of anyone having an abundance of metamagic feats and it would be interesting to see what would come out of it.

As always, let me know what you think. Remember, WoTC hates charisma and fears spontaneous casters so help this class in need.

[Brobdingnagian]

Give him 3/4 BAB. If magic comes so naturally to him and he's not spending his time in his mom's basement reading books, he probably knows how to fight about as well as the idiot in heavy armour who spends all his time praying to the sun god and turning undead to dust without even moving very much.

[Catharz]

1175706351[/unixtime]]
3) All your spell slots are belong to us:
Along with or instead of a spell slot increase, give him a better spell level conversion. By this I mean, allow him to turn one X-level spell slot into 2 (X-1) level spell slots and vice versa. This means he could literally cast magic missile all day but who cares. It also means he could double his number of top-level spell slots if he sacrificed ALL of his lesser spell slots (to clarify, this would be a temporary thing like casting a 2nd level spell from a 3rd level slot. You aren’t permanently changing the slot, just modifying its use for that day). That way he could cast magic missile until the cows come home (and be a boring archer character), destroy ONE playing field ONCE a day with extreme vengeance, or something between the two. Regardless, it gives him way more flexibility than he had before and would allow him to use some of those wasted lower level slots if need be (since having X castings per day is useless if you only need to cast X-3 times a day so putting the unused portion somewhere else actually IS useful). As a general rule, I’d argue that cantrips couldn’t be traded up for 1st level spells (though the reverse would be allowable).

In other words, you make them manifesters and change the PP costs to
1st==1
2nd==2
3rd==4
4th==8
5th==16
6th==32
7th==64
8th==128
9th==256

Interesting...

[User3]

Exactly. The way I’ve represented it in the past was that the cost of a given spell was 2^(N) where N is the spell level (meaning a 0th level spells costs 1). I don’t want a level 1 spell to cost 1 “spell point” (or whatever we end up calling it) because that gives you no simple integer representation for 0th level spells. Of course, you could just rule that no one cares how many 0th level spells you have in which case your version works just fine.
A 6th level sorcerer has 6/6/5/3 spell slots, though in reality he’ll need at least a 13 charisma to cast 3rd level spells so he’ll have at least one bonus 1st level slot giving him 6/7/5/3. He could roll six of his 1st level spells into three 2nd level slots giving him 6/1/8/3. He could then roll his eight 2nd level slots into four 3rd level slots giving him 6/1/0/7. That’s a lot of fireballs or dispels. Or he could drop everything into castings of “magic missile” leaving him with 5*2^(2+1) + 3*2^(3+1) = 88 castings in addition to his original 7 slots. That’s a LOT of magic missiles but it doesn’t matter because no one is ever going to cast MM that many times in one day meaningfully. Even if you’re popping the heads off of goblins in that way than your probably not even gaining XP so who cares. I’ve just found that most players have a hard time looking at their “spell point pool” and visualizing how much that actually represents, let along perform the necessary “powers of two” arithmetic. So the trading-in-two-to-get-one seems a simple enough metric to work in its place.

[User3]

As far as upping the BAB to ¾… That would help but not meaningfully. We’re talking about a difference of +0 at level one, a +5 at level twenty and something less during the levels in between (which are the levels most people actually play).

I agree that the flavor lends itself towards the sorcerer beating the wizard in non-magical melee (did someone just yell “Cripple Fight”?). That is delivered (crappily, I might add) through the difference in weapon proficiencies (short spear for the 1d6!) but balancing the sorcerer class by reinforcing it’s martial prowess is like making the Titanic less sinkable by welding pontoons onto the sides. The class is not about combat or skills (d4 hit dice, 2+Int skill points and no weapon or armor proficiencies worth mentioning) so I think our efforts are better spent if we work on the spellcasting aspect of it. Granted, gishes the world over would love it if the sorcerer class didn’t form the “limp wristed” levels to their otherwise strong arm characters but various supplements have included suitable gishy base classes that I think that niche has been filled.

[Brobdingnagian]

I was actually making a RoW reference. Assuming you're using those rules, it's simply a way to say "Only straight martial characters get The Edge on me, so I'm not dead if someone tries to trip me." It gets really sucky when people like Rogues get The Edge.

If you're not using RoW, then yeah, it's not really a meaningful difference.

[User3]

What I'm really curious about is how other people have handled this class. Whenever I build a sorcerer I'm in a state of physical discomfort from the heavy limit of spells known. As the primary DM of my group I've taken my discomfort out via houseruling. Have other DMs houseruled differently or is my chafing from trying to force a sorcerer to be a wizard? Are there any other good threads that have discussed how to play a sorcerer well or how to fix the class? Out of curiosity, is the Tome of Tiamat supposed to contain sorcerous material?

[MrWaeseL]

If you're in actual physical discomfort because of a class in a pen and paper roleplaying game you have some serious issues.

[Fwib]

Yeah. Mental discomfort, surely?

My group house-ruled once that sorcerers (and some other spont. casters) got to add their casting-stat bonus to spells-per-day to spells-known, too. Not sure if we're still using that rule...

[User3]

I'll try and tone down the hyperbole in future posts.
Fwib: when you say that you added the ability mod-based bonus spells to your spells known, how exactly does that work? Do you mean a sorc with a 16 charisma knows one more 1st through 3rd level spell than normal or is it along some other line?

[NineInchNall]

I seriously said ,"fuck it," and gave Sorcerers Ignore Material Components* as well as Automatic Silent Spell and Automatic Still Spell. It's quite bullshitty that a class whose flavor text describes them as changing reality through force of will has to toss around bits of guano. Nonsensical, even. Further, they got more skill points and bonus feats. Wheeeee.



*I used the psionics model for handling costly material components. The Sorcerer has to spend 1 XP per 5 gp of the costly component. The same went for costly foci, too.

[Crissa]

Frank allowed them to take prestige classes to get spheres like priests... But even that's not really a solution, as that's always better than a level of plain Sorceror.

They just suck when viewed against Wizards and Clerics. Personally, I think we need to decide whether we shuffle cards or have spell slots like ammo boxes on the character sheet. This mix and match crap we have now with Clerics, Wizards, Sorcerors, and Warlocks suck - the latter two will always be mechanically inferior, yet more fun to play.

I'd give the Sorceror a higher BaB, more skills, and basically something to lose from classing out. I'd also ditch the whole set slots thing, as well as Specialists, while allowing casting from the book... And make a similar mechanic for Clerics. So that the mechanics of Wizards/Clerics having to 'guess' spells per day and 'lose' a random amount per day because they didn't read the DM's notes ahead of time. It needs to go away.

-Crissa

[Brobdingnagian]

I also house-rule that a sorcerer's bonus spells from Charisma apply both to spells known and spells-per-day, exactly as the bonus spell table describes it. (So yes, a 16 CHA would mean a single bonus spell known from 1st to 3rd level... it's a little much to keep track of in a campaign where ability drain is everywhere, but it's functional).

Also, the whole "cast slower when using metamagic" bit is just outright dumb. A sorcerer makes up each spell he casts as he casts it; applying metamagic shouldn't take any longer than straight out casting a higher level spell, and Quicken should be an acceptable feat.

There was one other thing I did, though I haven't playtested it (and in truth, even on paper, it's pretty weak... at least it's noticeable, though). I give Sorcerer's a bonus on all numeric spell effects that are a result of the spell itself (so, not Saving Throws or Spell Resistance, and not spell notes like spell level or whatever, but rather things like damage, duration, range, AoE, etc.) equal to either half their Charisma modifier or the level of the spell, whichever is higher. (For effects like range and AoE, each point would equal five feet, and for duration, the bonus is added in minutes, rounds, hours, or whatever time is listed for the standard duration.)

You could make them really effective by giving them the same bonus, except equal to their Charisma modifier*spell level, but that may be bordering on overpowered (though, with the Evocation fix we've been working on, that'd make damage spells really worthwhile).

Just stuff to think on.

[User3]

We all know that the problem is that Sorcerers have literally no class features past level 1. Let's fix that.

Level 1: As before, plus Eschew Materials
Level 2: Bonus Metamagic Feat
Level 3: Extra Spell Known (highest level you can cast)
Level 4: Bonus Metamagic Feat
Level 5: Extra Spell Known (highest level you can cast)
etc.

That gives you ten extra spells known over 20 levels, which isn't game-breaking, and you get a bunch of metamagic feats. This actually enhances your core shtick, while giving you relevant class features that you actually want (as opposed to +BAB or d6 HD or whatever).

Throw in the 3.0 wording that made Quicken work properly, and we're all set.

[Endovior]

^ Not really. As K pointed out in the Revised Necromancer Handbook, any class feature that gives more spells known gets lumped in with '+1 level of arcane spellcasting class'. The moment your Sorcerer hits 3rd level, every second '+1 level of arcane spellcasting class' he gets gives him an extra spell. As such, that's really not a good way of stopping Sorcerers from jumping ship, since it doesn't actually stop if they do so. The feats, moreso, but that's bland.

As an idea, I'd point out that there are so many crappy 'heritage' feats out there for Sorcerers to waste their feats on that it's not even funny. How about we give them a choice between Heritages at first level (rather like the True Fiend gets) and give out those feats as class abilities every few levels? That meets the flavor requirement for powering up Sorcerers; the power requirement can be filled by giving them more spell slots and an exchange program (the 2/1 system mentioned earlier). Add metamagic feats every few levels, do away with the 'metamagic takes longer' bullshit, and add Charisma as a bonus to spells known, and you've succeeded in making the Sorcerer a pretty decent class.

[Cielingcat]

Why do we need a general "Sorcerer" class? We already have the Wizard as the generalist spellcaster, the Beguiler as the trickster mage, the Warmage as the guy with fireballs, the Dread Necromancer as the dark cultist, so why not simply make more such classes, like Frank and K's Summoner? Or, in the Warmages case, fix Evocation so it doesn't suck ass.

[Fwib]

1176422500[/unixtime]]I'll try and tone down the hyperbole in future posts.
Fwib: when you say that you added the ability mod-based bonus spells to your spells known, how exactly does that work? Do you mean a sorc with a 16 charisma knows one more 1st through 3rd level spell than normal or is it along some other line?

Yeah. like that - a sorcerer with more charisma has the ego to stuff more magic in his head, or something.

Not sure how it works with temporary changes, since thinking too much about all the spells there are when I consider playing a caster gives me mental pain from the problems of having to read through them ... maybe some time I'll get around to it.

[Aktariel]

I can understand Cielingcat's point about "Why play a sorceror?"

It's about flavor, man. We want to play a caster whose blood burns [or boils or freezes or whatever] with the power of... powerful creatures. Yeah. Because we want to play full arcane casters without having the bookish academic wizard type.

[I myself prefer to play juiced warlocks, but that's just me. Before they came out I absolutely loved sorcerors.]

What we did in my campaign to "fix" the sorceror:

1] Gave him Eschew Materials as a bonus feat. In fact, pretty much ignored spell component requirements alltogether, and got rid of that stupid "applying metamagic feats increases casting time for sorcerors" bit. Hey look! There's a feat for that now, from Complete Mage... [Rapid Metamagic].

2]Converted his spell slots per day into Spell Points, from Unearthed Arcana, and gave him bonus spell points based on Charisma [as normal].

3] Gave him a free major bloodline, also from Unearthed Arcana. Free as in, he didn't have to take levels to offset the power gain. This is very nicely in keeping with the flavor bit, and gives him a bit more than all those craptastic heritage feats.

And you know what? It worked fine. I might even give him more spells known and better skill points, and I don't think that would kill it, either.

For those of you who like your sorcerors to be a bit more melee capable, take a look at Unearthed Arcana's Battle Sorceror variant. Course, that needs more juice too, but it's a start.

[User3]

I agree the sorcerer class needs some text on every level to make straight classing worth while. I like giving bonus spells every odd level and giving bonus metamagic feats ever even level. In response to Endovior’s quip about every caster PrC granting the bonus spells, the fix for that is easy: instead of granting bonus spells known, grant the feat that gives you a bonus spell known. That gives an incentive to straight-class sorcerer.

My next challenge is to distinguish the Sorcerer from the Warmage. Sorcerer’s are traditionally the ‘splodey mages but Warmages do it better. That’s not saying it’s a good thing to be a splodey mage but something needs to be done to explain why you’d choose the class that doesn’t give you charisma-based bonus damage and armor proficiency. My take on it is this: the warmage is a sort of specialist sorcerer who is very adept at hurling direct damage and surviving as the battlefield artillery. A mundane sorcerer should be able to do roughly the same thing but not as well: he won’t ‘splode quite so hard and is much more fragile. Instead, the sorcerer is the build-your-own-specialist class. You don’t get enough spells to NOT specialize but you get to pick what your specialty is. You can ‘splode, buff, divine, summon or whatever. So let’s make them good at that specialty. Let’s make them the counterpart to the wizard/batman. Give sorcs LOTS of castings per day (I’m still a big fan of the 2-1 spellslot conversion to achieve this) and give them LOTS of options with those castings (metamagic feats). Also, give them a special relationship with magic to make up for the fact that they aren’t schooled in magic but innately magic.

I can see this last option manifesting itself a few different ways:
1) Heritage Feats/Major Bloodlines (though I must confess, I don’t actually know what the bloodlines thing is/does). This adds flavor and specialization to the nature of a sorc’s magic. Giving this out for free at 1st level and enhancing it as you gain sorc levels would make sense mechanically and flavor-wise as you are delving into your eldritch heritage or something.

2) Spellthief theft. This allows sorcerers to channel magic beyond their own to their whims. It means they can encounter magic and say “Mine!” This should also come with bonuses to saves vs. magic add/or magic detection at will.


3) Magic detection and deflection. I’m suggesting that sorcerers have the ability to detect the casting of spells nearby (maybe permanent Arcane Sight) and they should be good at directing their prodigious magical ability towards snuffing out offending magics. Give them a good means of counterspelling (which would make the sorc vs wizard rivalry less laughable) as an immediate action. If that strikes you as too powerful, let them expend spell slots to weaken enemy magic (lowering the damage, lowering the DC). So a sorcerer knows, from his innate spidey-sense, that the enemy wizard is casting a 5th level spell. The sorc only knows up to 4th level spells so he expends a 4th level spell slot to lower the save DC by 4 if saves are involved or lower the damage by 4/5s if damage is involved. If an equal or greater slot is given up than the spell is nullified completely. If nothing else, give them a scaling bonus to their dispel checks.

What do you think of that?

[Cielingcat]

1176475996[/unixtime]]I can understand Cielingcat's point about "Why play a sorceror?"

It's about flavor, man. We want to play a caster whose blood burns [or boils or freezes or whatever] with the power of... powerful creatures. Yeah. Because we want to play full arcane casters without having the bookish academic wizard type.

I certainly understand that, and for the very same reason I prefer Sorcerers. But if we want a "dude with magic blood", why do we need the Sorcerer mechanics? There isn't really an overlap between "my mother was a Nymph" and "my dad was a demon" mechanically; while they both seem like they would cast spells, the fey chick should be OMGHOT and woodsy while the demon should get horns and have dark urges that make him struggle not to slaughter people. Even their spell lists are totally different, so why do we need a single class for both of them?

[User3]

1176450798[/unixtime]]^ Not really. As K pointed out in the Revised Necromancer Handbook, any class feature that gives more spells known gets lumped in with '+1 level of arcane spellcasting class'. The moment your Sorcerer hits 3rd level, every second '+1 level of arcane spellcasting class' he gets gives him an extra spell. As such, that's really not a good way of stopping Sorcerers from jumping ship, since it doesn't actually stop if they do so. The feats, moreso, but that's bland.

I actually meant those as the feat "Extra Spell" but without the restriction that it be one level below your highest spell known. The whole idea was to give a bonus feat every level, so that they get something, rather than nothing.

[NineInchNall]

Or you could not worry about the fact that Sorcerers often take PrCs. Taking PrCs is pretty much expected, so don't even bother trying to discourage it. Instead, make their core casting schtick good enough that the multiclassed Sorcerer is comparable to the multiclassed Wizard. That's really the problematic point: Sorcerer based characters are generally inferior to Wizard based characters.

Fix that.

[Draco_Argentum]

1176483346[/unixtime]]Even their spell lists are totally different, so why do we need a single class for both of them?

If you can cover two bases with one class thats automatically better. With a decently varied spell list and a choice of class abilities based on your heritage its workable.

[Catharz]

1176518689[/unixtime]]

1176483346[/unixtime]]Even their spell lists are totally different, so why do we need a single class for both of them?

If you can cover two bases with one class thats automatically better. With a decently varied spell list and a choice of class abilities based on your heritage its workable.

Sorcerer: Classless level-based D&D.

->Seriously. You've got a class with no class features except some scaling bonuses (Familiar? What familiar? Shut up!), and a bunch of abilities selectable from a massive list each level.

I seem to remember somebody arguing that the sorcerer is basically a good replacement for every warrior class in the PHB. And being completely right.