Yeah really hope they don't double down on the 'bad wizard with metamagic duct taped on' this edition.

Hope they bring elements across from the dnd next playtest sorcerer. Like will point casting (merge sorcery points into that). Give every subclass its own unique metamagics too, which are thematically suiting, like maybe one for storm sorcerer which lets you push all enemies within 10 feet of you away when you cast a spell.

And maybe put more of the power budget into the subclass, to make each subclass more unique. Why should a guy with a failed ithilid tadpole play anything close to someone who's grandparents got closer than recommended to a dragon? Maybe even lower them to 2/3 casters for this like they were in the playtest.

After reviewing the thread (something I recommend everyone do)  there are some things pretty much everyone (certainly a majority) think should be in the 1D&D playtest version of the sorceror:
* 5-10 more spells known including subclass spells for those that don’t have them (so doing the draconic sorceror as the example and giving it a subclass list. Max known should be 25.
* 1 or 2 more metamagics by L10
* a few more sorcery points - probably getting 1/L + Charisma bonus points
* a way to recover sorcery points faster than on a long rest - doesn’t have to be all but at least a few. This could be PB or CHA bonus on a short rest or something like the spellfire absorbing spell energy mechanic.

then there are some things that may be better as subclasses than as class features:
* light armor and simple weapons proficiency - this could even be extended to shifting the bladesinger over to the sorceror class as a subclass and giving it access to Mithril (only) medium armors - to my mind the ideal fullcaster Gish.
* an elementalist orientation - probably a subclass here not as a class. 
* upgrading their hit die to a D8

Things to note from the playtest so far -
* they are going to drawing from the same spell list as the Wizard (arcane spells) unless a subclass feature allows them to draw from a different list as well. (could we get a + primal list subclass please!)
* we will not be seeing a completely new class or mechanic like a full on spell point system ala the 1-3e psionic, because of the need for back compatibility. 

while my personal take is that the sorceror is/should be a battlemage I do get that a strong character can be built on the chassis that is not battle/blaster oriented - the non musical social “face” caster, even the buff/de buff specialist etc. how many folks have tried building a sorceror using the 1D&D background/character creation system then adding current sorceror builds to that and seeing how they seem to work? I suspect that change may have a significant impact on the sorceror, I know it has on the classes seen so far (both good and bad) 

Quote from Wi1dBi11 >>

we will not be seeing a completely new class or mechanic like a full on spell point system ala the 1-3e psionic, because of the need for back compatibility.

While I don't know if it's likely or not, I would say that spell points isn't necessarily a back compatibility issue; if they're used in place of separate sorcery points then anything that says "sorcery points" instead means "spell points" (if not, no change is required) and anything that refers to spending a spell slot can instead spend the equivalent number of spell points (as if you had cast a spell of the same level using them). Not ideal, but not hard either.

I think the main reason we might not see a spell point based class (as much as I would like to see one) is the complexity of balancing against spell slot classes, and the complexity of multi-classing. Personally I expect we'll probably stay with spell slots + separate Metamagic/sorcery points, I just hope we get more of the latter to help us differentiate more.

In 5e the idea seemed to be that wizards have more spells, but sorcerers can do more with fewer spells, but it never felt like that really works 100%.

Yeah, I just don’t see a spell point system ( like the old psionics) ever coming back but I did like it too. One of the present problems with PHB sorcerors specifically is that by L20 you have 25 slots but only 20 sorcery points and only 15 known spells so you don’t have enough spells or enough sorcery points to do something to each spell slot you do have. Moving spells known and sorcery points up to match slots at least sort of solves this.

Quote from CynnamonV >>

Keep in mind, Battle Maneuver’s are a subclass feature and Metamagic are a class feature. So odds are you’ll run into fewer battle masters and then all having the same 9, 10 or 11 isn’t that big of a deal. By limiting it to 4 or 6 with the feat, each Sorcerer isn’t taking the same ones. Empowered, Quickened, Subtle and Twinned are probably my go to options. But Careful, Extended, Heightened are pretty good choices as well and I like that I have to choose. To be honest, I don’t play as a blaster but Distant, Seeking and Transmute are great blaster options

Actually they are taking the same ones. The exact same ones. Because Quickened and Twinned are just THAT much better than anything else and Subtle and empowered have a multitude of uses as well. Meanwhile something like transmute tends to straddle the line between 'completely useless' and 'OMGWTFOPED' and you're taking a gamble if you pick it. Like, if you're in a campaign where you're fighting a bunch of elementals, being able to change your element type can be a godsend and turn an immunity into a vulnerability. But if you're fighting foes who have no vulnerability or something you may as well have picked nothing. This isn't to say any of them are USELESS. Just that the lack of options means sorcs will either be sticking to generically useful stuff or recognize that there's a specific niche in play and pick up one of the lesser options.

Two ideas I had just now was that sorcs maybe should just get ALL of their meta-magic options but either... A) They cost double the sorc points with you getting to half the cost (to what they are currently) of several options (in place of learning the metamagic currently). Or B) They can gain some secondary effect. Like, hypothetically, if you picked transmuted as one of your 'learned/improved' metamagics maybe you could make it so that failing a save on a poison-element spell poisons the target, or a fire-element spell sets the terrain ablaze for X turns, or something. Or maybe add in other elements like radiant and necrotic to the list of possible options. I won't pretend for even a split second that I've thought through if this would be balanced or not as I'm both hopped up on cough syrup and sleep deprived (bloody colds), so while I'm interested in some thoughts, I'm expecting them to be as 'accurate' as frick.

Edit: In case you're wondering why, here's my logic. There are four MM options that are basically all so good that they just eclipse whatever else could be offered. These are Twinned and Quickened with Subtle, Empowered, Careful, and Heightened forming a 'B-tier'. Everything else is, effectively, competing with these six MM's for a slot and, depending on if MMA is in play or not and the level of the character, the number of free 'slots' ranges from 0 to 4 (since Twinned and quickened are so good it will be extremely rare to not have both). What this means is that something like extended MM may as well not exist anyways 95% of the time because most people simply won't be in situations where, even if they had it, they'd actually NEED it. Because if you're in the middle of combat and need to get mage armor up, are you going to expend 1 MM point to get it up for 16 hours instead of 8, or expend 2 so you can quicken it and still get to use your action for other stuff/cantrip, or just not spend a MM point? If I'm fighting a group of foes and want to fireball, there's no point in casting Careful if there's no allies in the radius. So for all practical intents and purposes, all those extra meta-magic options don't actually exist most of the time. So giving them to the player in situations where either quickened/twinned (the two you'd pick anyways) are blatantly superior or where you wouldn't use MM anyways... doesn't actually matter. But what it DOES is allow for situations where it will matter to actually arise without players having to risk picking a MM option they won't actually use all that much. Because if I'm limited to 4/6 options you can bet something like distant is unlikely to make the cut, but if distant is always there as an option and either just costs more or is lacking some other bonus effect, you can bet I will actually use it when those situations, few as they are, arise.

Whatever they do, I hope they stop being the only full casters without ritual casting.

I'm excited to see what dndOne is planning to do with the sorcerer class but I hope they make the spell point variant rule official. Right now it just seems like a nerfed wizard. Metamagic is supposed to be it's defining feature but you get so few and most are so situational that every  one picks the only two mechanically useful options. At the bare minimum a sorcerer should get the metamagic adept feat for free at creation.

They need to find a way to mirror what you see in the new movie. A Sorcerer's magic is supposed to be tied to their character in some inherent way, not simply a tool they pick up and use. It'll require a massive rework. Imagine mechanics to represent either morale (nice synergy with Bards and Paladins, probably) or maybe emotional stability or confidence... Something like that. We already have plenty of monsters and spells that would interact with this system -- things like Frightful Presence, Calm Emotions, or indeed Rage could easily be imagined as part of it. You could use it against monsters with things like Intimidation or even Major Image.

It would also open the doors for a rebuild of the old-school reactions tables. But I digress.

If you make a Sorcerer whose casting is linked primarily to the character's emotional state, I think you have a winner. Anything else will feel like a half-measure at best.

Quote from ChoirOfFire >>

They need to find a way to mirror what you see in the new movie. A Sorcerer's magic is supposed to be tied to their character in some inherent way, not simply a tool they pick up and use. It'll require a massive rework. Imagine mechanics to represent either morale (nice synergy with Bards and Paladins, probably) or maybe emotional stability or confidence... Something like that. We already have plenty of monsters and spells that would interact with this system -- things like Frightful Presence, Calm Emotions, or indeed Rage could easily be imagined as part of it. You could use it against monsters with things like Intimidation or even Major Image.

It would also open the doors for a rebuild of the old-school reactions tables. But I digress.

If you make a Sorcerer whose casting is linked primarily to the character's emotional state, I think you have a winner. Anything else will feel like a half-measure at best.

That sounds like an extremely terrible idea; especially when the RP'ers own emotional state would, inevitably, bleed over into the character. Having your spell list change because you had a rotten day at work or something would be a sure-fire way to cause people to rage-quit the class.

I don't think I understand that take, at all.

Quote from ChoirOfFire >>

I don't think I understand that take, at all.

Assuming you're saying that sorcs should have mechanics defined by their emotional state, the issue is that even under 'ideal' circumstances the emotional state of the player will bleed over into their character. A player that's grumpy because of a bad day of work will, intentionally or not, have their character also reflect that. Nevermind if you need your character in one emotional state but you, as a player, are in a completely different one. Can you imagine trying to be a supporting sorc and be in a 'cheery' state or something when you've been up for 48 hours straight because of stress? Or having someone cast emotionally-altering spells on your character and having to roleplay that out, especially if you're NOT a roleplayer and/or have any skill at acting? You're asking for a mess of irritation and frustration that would result in players steering away from the sorc class just because having to constantly play out the emotional states would be murder. Nevermind the reputation that would develop around the class as being overly-emotional monsters no one wants to party with.

If my assumption of emotion = game mechanic is wrong, then I apologize and retract my statement. But as-is I feel like it would just result in people giving sorc a wide berth, avoiding sorc players, and anyone who did try it would find irritations due to their IRL emotional states.

I mean, you already have this in the forms of charm and fear effects. You have it in the form of pretending you're really angry that the bad guy did a bad thing, when in actuality you know full well that the bad guy is fictional.

You are required to perform it exactly as much as you're required to perform those other things. Which is to say, not at all.

What I'm suggesting is that morale would be mostly affected by specific mechanical effects, not just based on whatever. As a parallel, consider: "Grognir wakes up tired, and slowly ambles over to the kitchen." Your DM wouldn't say, "okay, Grognir temporarily has his speed reduced by half until he drinks his coffee." Because you don't NEED a movement speed for going to the kitchen. That number doesn't matter in that scene. And it usually resets to the same default number when you're not looking at it.

As another parallel, tell me if this scenario strikes you as normal: "Grobak, my friend, I really would pay you twice this if I could, but times are hard. Can you do me a solid this time and give me a discount since we're pals?" DM: "It sounds like you're really charmed by Grobak's winning personality and strong work ethic. Based on how you're talking. And because you're charmed, he makes his Persuasion check against you with advantage."

Charm and fear effects aren't constant things though. And a bit of pretending compared to having to maintain that state constantly as a class mechanic are extremely different. Also your comparison doesn't make sense since you're comparing a minor, pointless, thing to something that would, presumably, be core to the class. And your second example is, once again, a minor situational thing.

Paladins are basically required to be lawful and clerics to uphold their deities oaths. We already see people shying away from paladins because of that lawful requirements and certain cleric things almost never get picked because of their associated deity/alignment restrictions. I'm not saying those are wrong, because they make sense. However what you're suggesting sounds like it would basically be that hopped up on steroids and only appeal to a very tiny subset of players. Can you imagine if, say, your meta-magic selection got determined by your emotional state? How many people would, hypothetically, want to play a sorc who is constantly stressed out just so they can gain access to twinned? Or shy/reclusive so they can tap into subtle? Nevermind if they want both twinned AND subtle at which point their sorc would be a constantly stressed out, reclusive, wreck. No one would want to do that and it would basically mean sorcs would have a bunch of extremely similar personalities because they'd need to be in order to have access to certain features.

It's a bad idea. Maybe as some sort of subclass it would be fine, but as a core aspect to the class, it would cause people to stay the heck away from the entire class all together.

Oh, that's not what I'm imagining, no. I was thinking more like, instead of having all these unconnected emotion-based effects that can be applied to characters and monsters, you'd have a universal morale system. You'd have, say, "Frightful Presence: Each creature within X range makes a DC 15 WIS save, losing 5 morale to fear on a failure." And it would be a general rule that if you have, idk, less than 10 morale, attacks against you have advantage because you're not fighting with your whole heart in it.

Then you have Sorcerers who need to roll checks using their morale to do magic. Presumably they have some upside to balance this limitation, like for example they don't use spell slots, or maybe they can upcast for free if they roll well, or something.

This is all really vague because I'm not trying to design a whole system right now, but hopefully that makes sense.

having my sorc become emo, would utterly kill it for me.  That's not a direction I'd like to see.

OK, THE new UA is out and the sorceror is n it with lots of changes but (to me) looking very good. More spells, more metamagic, and some nteresting abilities.

I don't know how I feel about the new stuff, TBH. While it's all clearly a buff I'm not sure it addresses the core issue and losing twinned in it's super-form is going to be a very... boring... nerf. I won't be shocked if people ask if they can use the old version at their tables.

Yeah, I don't feel having a couple of AoE spells as class features make the sorcerer more distinct. Their whole thing is metamagic the way monks have ki points. They should find a way to regain metamagic points faster or partially on a short rest. And nerfing it to only being able to stack one metamagic on a spell takes away the feeling of the skilled magic user. The way I've always seen the difference to a wizard is that a wizard is the encyclopedia of magic. They have a large breath of knowledge, so the creating spell skill seems appropriate. Whereas a sorcerer is more about control of magic. Being able to shape/modify spells to their whim is what makes a sorc unique. I would rather the sorcs get the modify spell ability that wizards got, and the sorc can add X metamagic to the spells based on sorc level. The sorcerer should be able to have all metamagics known by level 15. In fact, at my table I give all sorcerers the metamagic adept feat for free at creation. It just gives the sorcs more options and does nothing to unbalance the character or party. The ideal would be to have metamagics so useful that a sorcs uses one every time they cast a spell. Using spell scrolls for low levels spells and converting those low level slots into metamagic points. But the only options that are useful are quicken and twin. I understand why they had to be nerfed, but the rest of the options haven't been buffed enough to be contenders for regular use. And how about adding more non-concentration based spells to the sorcerer list. Maybe allow a mix of Arcane and Primal spell selection, or a subclass that allows you to use a different spell list?  

I wouldn’t mind more sorcery points either but I doubt we will get them. At best we will get some back on a short rest. Twinned spell was so OP you knew it was going to be nerfed. I agree a lot of tables will keep the old version but it’s actually worth looking closer at what they did. Now quickened spell allows you to get off 2 DIFFERENT cantrips in a single round targeting the same or different foes,  two 5d10 fire bolts(50 HP damage average) is a heck of a shot from anyone. In addition the very weakness of the nerfed twinned forces folks to actually look at the other metamagics which are now superior to it. Careful spell finally lets the sorceror protect his people inside an AoE like the evoker can, the 3 I’m starting with now are careful, quickened and subtle. You can’t counterspell a subtle spell, you protect your Allie’s with careful and you get two attacks when you need it with quicken. Since the sorceror only spells all allow you to chose the energy type you don’t need transmuting as much so it can go to the second set of 3 later at L13.

Quote from Wi1dBi11 >>

I wouldn’t mind more sorcery points either but I doubt we will get them.

In the UA playtest there are two new ways to regain sorcery points; first is the Sorcery Incarnate, a 5th-level Sorcerer-only spell that recovers a few sorcery points. It's probably a bit weak in its present form (or needs to drop to 4th) but it's not bad, though it would be better with the current version of twinned spell (the updated version isn't great). Sorcererous Restoration is also available sooner (15th-level?) and triggers when you roll Initiative, meaning you have a minimum of 4 sorcery points to spend in every single fight, it's still a later tier of play but that's potentially a huge number of sorcery points over the course of an adventuring day!

All subject to change of course, as it's UA, but seems promising.