There is no channeling of choice because there is an actual choice with tradeoffs (which is obviously and compellingly true, otherwise you wouldn't be railing so hard against just taking the barbarian level before the druid level). Your own argument hurts you here: you keep saying that it hurts the story of your character to take artificer first. That is a consequence of taking artificer first with impacts to your character. That is good game design.
Channeling of choice would occur when there is a clear best path and taking any other is the wrong answer. Like if you simply got to choose from a list of 6 options where 1 is clearly best. That is bad game design.
That is a consequence of taking artificer first with impacts to your character.
Impacts to your character that will affect the performance of the character for the rest of their lives. The constitution throw proficiency given to aritificers will be one of the reasons for a character, from whatever background, to choose to take on the artificer class first. They are channelled this way by game mechanics.
You continue to argue that mechanical power boosts with no consequences are better than choices with tradeoffs. Forget it. Lay off, you're not going to find support here.
... a wizard/fighter starting out as a wizard would actually be a very different character than one starting out as a fighter.
That's the best argument presented so far so thank you. Leaving aside issues of sorcerer/warlocks for a moment, even in the case of the wizard/fighter it would not always apply.
Your character is devoted to their background as a guild artisan or something. You are keen on fitness but have less interest in philosophy. Troubles come and in one incarnation you find an opportunity to learn wizardry while in another incarnation you train to fight.
As a wizard you realise that you need to toughen up and train as a fighter while as a fighter you think that you could really take advantage of spells like sleep.
Despite the similarities here, the option with the most mechanical strength to which player will be channelled is to start with fighter. You can't toughen up later except for the cost of a feat.
In the case of the guild artisan who was destined to become a sorcerer/warlock. Storywise it might really fit in to start with that encounter with your influential otherworldly patron but mechanically you are channelled towards a start as a sorcerer.
It comes off as you wanting a mechanical boost and trying to hide your reasoning behind "I need freedom to roleplay."
Another interpretation could be of not wanting to lose a mechanical boost for a prospective fighter/wizard because you made a roleplaying decision to start as a wizard.
Many choices available in character building are terrible mechanical choices.
Thank you. That's how it is. There are choices that are taken for mechanical advantage. Indeed they can be terrible and a player's roleplaying choices can be superseded by such mechanical influences. I personally think that's a shame.
I personally think that begging for someone to justify free con saves for a wizard for any other reason than mechanical advantage is a shame and shameful.
I'd have said that if a player really wants a character to have a particular saving throw then chose a class that has them or pick the resilient feat (if you're playing feats) when you get the choice.
While this sounds draconian and inflexible I can see CON becoming a de-facto choice for any spellcaster for concentration checks if you give players a completely free choice. This might just be paranoia (or projection) on my part though!
Doesn't seem paranoid to me. If I could choose saving throw proficiencies, I would almost always just choose CON for a caster and DEX for a non-caster.
I don't know why this is DMs only, this is clearly about player benefits, the OP is not discussing this as something they're doing or considering at their table. This seems like something for a Rules and Mechanics debate, a Homebrew discussion, or general discussion.
OP is free to re-orient, but the focus is on a single character build for the most part, and DMs Only is supposed to be a discussion about running the game, not providing someone with random online DM validation to take back to their DM with a "see! the Internet says" even though in this instance the internet you're arguing with is by and large not on your side.
Just going to concur that this is a weird hill to put your flag on. My curiosity of the "why" of this thread makes me think it's not just weird, but sorta uncool and weird.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
You may never see, in your games, a fighter/wizard starting as a wizard, a druid/barbarian starting as a druid, or a warlock/sorcerer starting as a warlock.
Either you would set a player who chose those roleplaying options at a mechanical disadvantage or, more likely, you would prevent players from taking these role-playing options.
I have no personal axe in this. I currently run a druid/barbarian and that's fine. I started, as anyone would, with the barbarian class. It would be unthinkable mechanically to start otherwise. However, if it wasn't for the mechanical penalties there would have been strong rationales, characterwise, for starting with druid but these are the kind of character arcs that will be denied for your players.
Yes, I see that, at whatever time a character got into their first adventuring class, this would be a formative experience and that's why I suggest holding off taking on saving throw proficiencies until attaining a class with the saving throw proficiencies that suit.
I don't appreciate the continual assumption by some respondents here of bad faith.
I shared views with genuine intention to encourage greater freedom in regard to player options in various games. That's all.
Thanks also for various insights presented which have helped me modify my views.
Not using the optional multiclass rule would get rid of all these shinanigans.
In my experiance multiclass is either done by new players who want to try a bit of everything or power-gamers who want a character as strong as they can get and theyn try to force a backstory into that character. Subclasses allow pretty much any character concept without multiclassing
If you want ot be a wizard who can wield a sword go bladesinger.
Not using the optional multiclass rule would get rid of all these shinanigans.
In my experiance multiclass is either done by new players who want to try a bit of everything or power-gamers who want a character as strong as they can get and theyn try to force a backstory into that character. Subclasses allow pretty much any character concept without multiclassing
If you want ot be a wizard who can wield a sword go bladesinger.
shenanigans
Again just dismissal an issue I raised with honest intent.
However, I agree that not using the optional multiclass rule would make elegant gaming sense.
As it is I think that the RAW situation in which a warlock/sorcerer can only directly gain constitution saving throw proficiency by starting with sorcerer is weirdly restrictive. If you are going to let people multiclass then why not leave some practicality for characters to get there by their various available routes?
As it is I think that the RAW situation in which a warlock/sorcerer can only directly gain constitution saving throw proficiency by starting with sorcerer is weirdly restrictive.
I said as much in an earlier post.
I think most of the game design was around single classes. Sorcerers got con save proficiency to balance them with other full casters. It is difficult enough to balance 13 single classes turn that into the hundreds of multiclass possibilities and it is just about impossible to consider the impact of every possible combination of features.
There have been several referances to every experanced player will take a level of sorcerer first when planning a sorlock. This is probably true of those players that want to maximise the power of their character but is this necessarily a good thing? There is a thread about the min-max arms race and if one player is making super powerful build the others fell they have ot do the same to be relevent. Planning your character's level progression is a form of metagaming. If you start with a level 1 sorcerer how do you know they are going to have an opportunity to make a pact with an otherworldly being (and usually in such crcumstances you are deciding before the start of the campaign exactly when that offer from an otherworldly being is going to be made and what sort of otherworldly being it will be)
I was a bit flippant about banning multiclass but I think it is a good rule to say that multiclass can only be made for legitimate story reasons and the DM can choose to enable players to multiclass within the story, for example if a player wants their sorcerer to take levels in fieldlock, the DM might put the party against a field who is willing to parley with them and offer a pact with their master. The player might not get what they want, the rest of the party might kill the fiend.
If the group want free choice of multiclassing without feeling they have to take classes in a particular order I would have no problem with a house rule that if the class which you have most levels in you change your features as is you had taken that level first. This would also mean that things like armour proficiency would depend on the class you have most levels in. (you would probably need to think about what would happen is a character already has a proficency through a feat, for example a warloch taking resiliant con and then getting more levels in sorcerer than warlock)
You haven't provided a reason why they would be proficient in CON saves on top of just having that typically higher score, which is already giving them a better save bonus
It just seems strange to me that a dwarf, whose essence is centred on constitution and resistance, has to wait until class level 4 to gain proficiency in con saves.
It seems strange to me, if you have a build plan for a wizard that utilises some levels in a class like fighter, that you have to start with fighter in your wizard build for the sake of the saving proficiency.
Why does this seem strange? Saving throw proficiency appears to be assigned on the basis of class training (if there is any design parameter at all). A hardy dwarf might have a high con but if they go off and study magic, their training naturally makes them better at resisting wisdom based effects. They will also be better than average at con based effects due to their high con but haven't (yet) received the training needed to maximize their ability to resist constitution based effects. By level 4, they may have done additional training and study and become proficient with resisting con based effects (represented by the resilient con feat).
If you want to decouple the saving throws from the training the character receives from their class, you are free to do so but in theory the class training is probably the largest part of the character background contributing to their abilities. Their background and race just give the starting point - a dwarf with the soldier background might have a solid constitution but they don't really learn how to properly resist effects until they start their class training. At that point, each class tends to give the character the ability to be better at resisting effects based on certain stats.
Makes sense to me from a "fiction" viewpoint and also works more or less from a design viewpoint. However, there is nothing wrong with you home brewing it if you want to and leaving out the benefits from the intensive class training and say the character picked up the ability to resist effects based on another stat through some sort of alternate intensive training in their backstory.
Class-based saving throw proficiencies contribute less than nothing to a role-playing game as they produce an artificial channelling of player choices.
It would give more freedom in character development if these proficiencies did not exist outside of access to the resilient feat.
D&D is a class-based role-playing game. Lots of things are linked to the class of your character.
There are many other RPGs around which aren't class-based which allow you to mix-and-match all abilities to your heart's content.
... If the group want free choice of multiclassing without feeling they have to take classes in a particular order I would have no problem with a house rule that if the class which you have most levels in you change your features as is you had taken that level first. This would also mean that things like armour proficiency would depend on the class you have most levels in. (you would probably need to think about what would happen is a character already has a proficency through a feat, for example a warloch taking resiliant con and then getting more levels in sorcerer than warlock)
Thank you again for your consideration. Absolutely, this would give a savvy player a potential opportunity to always retain a story arc for their character that they preferred.
It just seems strange to me that a dwarf, whose essence is centred on constitution and resistance, has to wait until class level 4 to gain proficiency in con saves.
It seems strange to me, if you have a build plan for a wizard that utilises some levels in a class like fighter, that you have to start with fighter in your wizard build for the sake of the saving proficiency.
Why does this seem strange? Saving throw proficiency appears to be assigned on the basis of class training (if there is any design parameter at all). A hardy dwarf might have a high con but if they go off and study magic, their training naturally makes them better at resisting wisdom based effects. They will also be better than average at con based effects due to their high con but haven't (yet) received the training needed to maximize their ability to resist constitution based effects. By level 4, they may have done additional training and study and become proficient with resisting con based effects (represented by the resilient con feat).
If you want to decouple the saving throws from the training the character receives from their class, you are free to do so but in theory the class training is probably the largest part of the character background contributing to their abilities. Their background and race just give the starting point - a dwarf with the soldier background might have a solid constitution but they don't really learn how to properly resist effects until they start their class training. At that point, each class tends to give the character the ability to be better at resisting effects based on certain stats.
Makes sense to me from a "fiction" viewpoint and also works more or less from a design viewpoint. However, there is nothing wrong with you home brewing it if you want to and leaving out the benefits from the intensive class training and say the character picked up the ability to resist effects based on another stat through some sort of alternate intensive training in their backstory.
Thank you. In my defence, these are comments that I made four days ago since when several more constructive criticism respondees have pointed me in similar directions. I'd also like to say that the dwarf mentioned was a character from a game I was playing six months ago. It's not a current character and I am not raising the issue for the sake of trying to buff this character.
I appreciate the question as it prompts me to work through my previous and present thoughts on the matter. I agree with you that "Saving throw proficiency appears to be assigned on the basis of class training" and this seems to certainly show the gaming dynamic.
Part of my thinking was to consider which classes might have a reason or a natural tendency, beyond a desire for health for hit points, to work on their constitution saving throws. The classes that came to my mind were: rogue due to a potential to dabble in poisons; druid and artificer because of an affinity with sometimes harmful substances of various kinds; and wizard simply for having reason to work on their system shock endurance. What I failed to consider was that the training of fighters would naturally bring them through even ptsd type situations with the potential to develop the constitution saving throw proficiency even though an improvement in the saving throw side of constitution may not be a fighter's greatest need.
Outside of game mechanics it does seem strange to me that dwarves, with their resistances and iconography in hardiness do not get this save proficiency but I also appreciate the current system of game mechanics in the way it works.
I also agree at least with the possibility, for wizards, that "their training naturally makes them better at resisting wisdom based effects" but think that may be reading into the material to justify their currently applied proficiencies. For many wizard characters, wisdom is a significantly neglected part of their build with constitution typically being more of their focus. If desire was a factor then wizards might certainly see value in working on their system shock resistance at least to the same extent as their wisdom based shock resistance. Again I see the possibility of your interpretation and can certainly respect your "Makes sense to me from a "fiction" viewpoint".
"It [still] seems strange to me, if you have a build plan for a wizard [or warlock or druid] that utilises some levels in a class like fighter [or artificer or sorcerer or barbarian], that you have to start with fighter [or artificer or sorcerer or barbarian] in your wizard[/warlock/druid] build for the sake of the saving proficiency."
However, I'm certainly persuaded that it would make sense if a wizard or other build, at least, gained an equal number of levels in a class with constitution saving throws before adopting these saving throws, that the character might be required to forego the benefits of any saving throw proficiencies up to the point of adoption and that there might even be a requirement that the character then maintained a sizable number of character levels with prescribed constitution saving throw proficiency to maintain proficiency in these saves.
I deeply appreciate a makes sense from fiction and respect the validity and the potential of such stories in d&d.
The trouble is, that if a player's plan is for say a fighter wizard build, they are never going to start with Harry Potter going to Hogwarts. It's also worth noting that d&d doesn't require this kind of background or any specific type of background for any particular class. Sure it could be fantastic to even build a Harry Potter type character with a cloistered scholar or sage background but can, game wise, be equally valid to start with anything else. My example was of a guild artisan who built up the raw ability scores relevant for a future as a wizard-fighter / fighter-wizard and then, when troubles came, worked to develop the abilities of either one class or the other. These are the things that are possible (though always at a DMs discretion) in d&d. Similarly, the character may have built up the raw ability scores relevant for a future as a sorcerer-warlock / warlock-sorcerer or barbarian-druid / druid-barbarian. However, with rules as they stand, one of the stories, in each case, would never be adopted by any sensibly metagaming player. You would never have a druid who, when faced with troubles, decided to toughen up and seize their inner barbarian. The character would always start with barbarian just because of game mechanics. You would never get a character starting with a warlock encounter with an otherworldly patron who later had that x-men moment to find their inner sorcerer. The character would always start with sorcerer just because of game mechanics. As for Harry, if the player had in mind a character with levels in artificer or fighter type backgrounds before he'd even had a chance of being conceived, Harry would be dead.
There is no channeling of choice because there is an actual choice with tradeoffs (which is obviously and compellingly true, otherwise you wouldn't be railing so hard against just taking the barbarian level before the druid level). Your own argument hurts you here: you keep saying that it hurts the story of your character to take artificer first. That is a consequence of taking artificer first with impacts to your character. That is good game design.
Channeling of choice would occur when there is a clear best path and taking any other is the wrong answer. Like if you simply got to choose from a list of 6 options where 1 is clearly best. That is bad game design.
Impacts to your character that will affect the performance of the character for the rest of their lives. The constitution throw proficiency given to aritificers will be one of the reasons for a character, from whatever background, to choose to take on the artificer class first. They are channelled this way by game mechanics.
You continue to argue that mechanical power boosts with no consequences are better than choices with tradeoffs. Forget it. Lay off, you're not going to find support here.
That's the best argument presented so far so thank you. Leaving aside issues of sorcerer/warlocks for a moment, even in the case of the wizard/fighter it would not always apply.
Your character is devoted to their background as a guild artisan or something. You are keen on fitness but have less interest in philosophy. Troubles come and in one incarnation you find an opportunity to learn wizardry while in another incarnation you train to fight.
As a wizard you realise that you need to toughen up and train as a fighter while as a fighter you think that you could really take advantage of spells like sleep.
Despite the similarities here, the option with the most mechanical strength to which player will be channelled is to start with fighter. You can't toughen up later except for the cost of a feat.
In the case of the guild artisan who was destined to become a sorcerer/warlock. Storywise it might really fit in to start with that encounter with your influential otherworldly patron but mechanically you are channelled towards a start as a sorcerer.
Another interpretation could be of not wanting to lose a mechanical boost for a prospective fighter/wizard because you made a roleplaying decision to start as a wizard.
Thank you. That's how it is. There are choices that are taken for mechanical advantage. Indeed they can be terrible and a player's roleplaying choices can be superseded by such mechanical influences. I personally think that's a shame.
I personally think that begging for someone to justify free con saves for a wizard for any other reason than mechanical advantage is a shame and shameful.
Doesn't seem paranoid to me. If I could choose saving throw proficiencies, I would almost always just choose CON for a caster and DEX for a non-caster.
I don't know why this is DMs only, this is clearly about player benefits, the OP is not discussing this as something they're doing or considering at their table. This seems like something for a Rules and Mechanics debate, a Homebrew discussion, or general discussion.
OP is free to re-orient, but the focus is on a single character build for the most part, and DMs Only is supposed to be a discussion about running the game, not providing someone with random online DM validation to take back to their DM with a "see! the Internet says" even though in this instance the internet you're arguing with is by and large not on your side.
Just going to concur that this is a weird hill to put your flag on. My curiosity of the "why" of this thread makes me think it's not just weird, but sorta uncool and weird.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
You may never see, in your games, a fighter/wizard starting as a wizard, a druid/barbarian starting as a druid, or a warlock/sorcerer starting as a warlock.
Either you would set a player who chose those roleplaying options at a mechanical disadvantage or, more likely, you would prevent players from taking these role-playing options.
I have no personal axe in this. I currently run a druid/barbarian and that's fine. I started, as anyone would, with the barbarian class. It would be unthinkable mechanically to start otherwise. However, if it wasn't for the mechanical penalties there would have been strong rationales, characterwise, for starting with druid but these are the kind of character arcs that will be denied for your players.
Yes, I see that, at whatever time a character got into their first adventuring class, this would be a formative experience and that's why I suggest holding off taking on saving throw proficiencies until attaining a class with the saving throw proficiencies that suit.
I don't appreciate the continual assumption by some respondents here of bad faith.
I shared views with genuine intention to encourage greater freedom in regard to player options in various games. That's all.
Thanks also for various insights presented which have helped me modify my views.
Not using the optional multiclass rule would get rid of all these shinanigans.
In my experiance multiclass is either done by new players who want to try a bit of everything or power-gamers who want a character as strong as they can get and theyn try to force a backstory into that character. Subclasses allow pretty much any character concept without multiclassing
If you want ot be a wizard who can wield a sword go bladesinger.
Again just dismissal an issue I raised with honest intent.
However, I agree that not using the optional multiclass rule would make elegant gaming sense.
As it is I think that the RAW situation in which a warlock/sorcerer can only directly gain constitution saving throw proficiency by starting with sorcerer is weirdly restrictive. If you are going to let people multiclass then why not leave some practicality for characters to get there by their various available routes?
I said as much in an earlier post.
I think most of the game design was around single classes. Sorcerers got con save proficiency to balance them with other full casters. It is difficult enough to balance 13 single classes turn that into the hundreds of multiclass possibilities and it is just about impossible to consider the impact of every possible combination of features.
There have been several referances to every experanced player will take a level of sorcerer first when planning a sorlock. This is probably true of those players that want to maximise the power of their character but is this necessarily a good thing? There is a thread about the min-max arms race and if one player is making super powerful build the others fell they have ot do the same to be relevent. Planning your character's level progression is a form of metagaming. If you start with a level 1 sorcerer how do you know they are going to have an opportunity to make a pact with an otherworldly being (and usually in such crcumstances you are deciding before the start of the campaign exactly when that offer from an otherworldly being is going to be made and what sort of otherworldly being it will be)
I was a bit flippant about banning multiclass but I think it is a good rule to say that multiclass can only be made for legitimate story reasons and the DM can choose to enable players to multiclass within the story, for example if a player wants their sorcerer to take levels in fieldlock, the DM might put the party against a field who is willing to parley with them and offer a pact with their master. The player might not get what they want, the rest of the party might kill the fiend.
If the group want free choice of multiclassing without feeling they have to take classes in a particular order I would have no problem with a house rule that if the class which you have most levels in you change your features as is you had taken that level first. This would also mean that things like armour proficiency would depend on the class you have most levels in. (you would probably need to think about what would happen is a character already has a proficency through a feat, for example a warloch taking resiliant con and then getting more levels in sorcerer than warlock)
Why does this seem strange? Saving throw proficiency appears to be assigned on the basis of class training (if there is any design parameter at all). A hardy dwarf might have a high con but if they go off and study magic, their training naturally makes them better at resisting wisdom based effects. They will also be better than average at con based effects due to their high con but haven't (yet) received the training needed to maximize their ability to resist constitution based effects. By level 4, they may have done additional training and study and become proficient with resisting con based effects (represented by the resilient con feat).
If you want to decouple the saving throws from the training the character receives from their class, you are free to do so but in theory the class training is probably the largest part of the character background contributing to their abilities. Their background and race just give the starting point - a dwarf with the soldier background might have a solid constitution but they don't really learn how to properly resist effects until they start their class training. At that point, each class tends to give the character the ability to be better at resisting effects based on certain stats.
Makes sense to me from a "fiction" viewpoint and also works more or less from a design viewpoint. However, there is nothing wrong with you home brewing it if you want to and leaving out the benefits from the intensive class training and say the character picked up the ability to resist effects based on another stat through some sort of alternate intensive training in their backstory.
D&D is a class-based role-playing game. Lots of things are linked to the class of your character.
There are many other RPGs around which aren't class-based which allow you to mix-and-match all abilities to your heart's content.
Thank you again for your consideration. Absolutely, this would give a savvy player a potential opportunity to always retain a story arc for their character that they preferred.
Thank you. In my defence, these are comments that I made four days ago since when several more constructive criticism respondees have pointed me in similar directions. I'd also like to say that the dwarf mentioned was a character from a game I was playing six months ago. It's not a current character and I am not raising the issue for the sake of trying to buff this character.
I appreciate the question as it prompts me to work through my previous and present thoughts on the matter. I agree with you that "Saving throw proficiency appears to be assigned on the basis of class training" and this seems to certainly show the gaming dynamic.
Part of my thinking was to consider which classes might have a reason or a natural tendency, beyond a desire for health for hit points, to work on their constitution saving throws. The classes that came to my mind were: rogue due to a potential to dabble in poisons; druid and artificer because of an affinity with sometimes harmful substances of various kinds; and wizard simply for having reason to work on their system shock endurance. What I failed to consider was that the training of fighters would naturally bring them through even ptsd type situations with the potential to develop the constitution saving throw proficiency even though an improvement in the saving throw side of constitution may not be a fighter's greatest need.
Outside of game mechanics it does seem strange to me that dwarves, with their resistances and iconography in hardiness do not get this save proficiency but I also appreciate the current system of game mechanics in the way it works.
I also agree at least with the possibility, for wizards, that "their training naturally makes them better at resisting wisdom based effects" but think that may be reading into the material to justify their currently applied proficiencies. For many wizard characters, wisdom is a significantly neglected part of their build with constitution typically being more of their focus. If desire was a factor then wizards might certainly see value in working on their system shock resistance at least to the same extent as their wisdom based shock resistance. Again I see the possibility of your interpretation and can certainly respect your "Makes sense to me from a "fiction" viewpoint".
"It [still] seems strange to me, if you have a build plan for a wizard [or warlock or druid] that utilises some levels in a class like fighter [or artificer or sorcerer or barbarian], that you have to start with fighter [or artificer or sorcerer or barbarian] in your wizard[/warlock/druid] build for the sake of the saving proficiency."
However, I'm certainly persuaded that it would make sense if a wizard or other build, at least, gained an equal number of levels in a class with constitution saving throws before adopting these saving throws, that the character might be required to forego the benefits of any saving throw proficiencies up to the point of adoption and that there might even be a requirement that the character then maintained a sizable number of character levels with prescribed constitution saving throw proficiency to maintain proficiency in these saves.
I deeply appreciate a makes sense from fiction and respect the validity and the potential of such stories in d&d.
The trouble is, that if a player's plan is for say a fighter wizard build, they are never going to start with Harry Potter going to Hogwarts. It's also worth noting that d&d doesn't require this kind of background or any specific type of background for any particular class. Sure it could be fantastic to even build a Harry Potter type character with a cloistered scholar or sage background but can, game wise, be equally valid to start with anything else. My example was of a guild artisan who built up the raw ability scores relevant for a future as a wizard-fighter / fighter-wizard and then, when troubles came, worked to develop the abilities of either one class or the other. These are the things that are possible (though always at a DMs discretion) in d&d. Similarly, the character may have built up the raw ability scores relevant for a future as a sorcerer-warlock / warlock-sorcerer or barbarian-druid / druid-barbarian. However, with rules as they stand, one of the stories, in each case, would never be adopted by any sensibly metagaming player. You would never have a druid who, when faced with troubles, decided to toughen up and seize their inner barbarian. The character would always start with barbarian just because of game mechanics. You would never get a character starting with a warlock encounter with an otherworldly patron who later had that x-men moment to find their inner sorcerer. The character would always start with sorcerer just because of game mechanics. As for Harry, if the player had in mind a character with levels in artificer or fighter type backgrounds before he'd even had a chance of being conceived, Harry would be dead.