Yet another Wizard vs. Sorcerer Thread! I hope not. To be clear, i like both of these classes and think each of them are great choices for totally diferent character-concepts. This thread is not about power creep, because i'm not a power gamer, and i don't care. It's about the narrative feeling and the flavor of the abilities, that i have.
A little thing that bogs me lately, is that the class features of Wizards and sorcerers are set incorrectly. Especially Meta Magic and Schools of Magic. I guess Meta Magic was given to the Sorcerer to comprehend it's limited spell list and known spell pool. But other than gamemechanic, it makes no sense, that a sorcerer has access to metamagic instead of the wizard. Sorcerers are people, that are gifted with "innate" Spellcasting. I don't understand why a sorcerer is able to change the formula of any spell. A Sorcerer acts instinctively. Changing a magic formula looks more like something that a practitioner with academic knowledge would do. On the other way around, the schools of magic in the wizards subclasses often grant abilitis, that someone who cast spells innately should have. For example the second level evoker feature, that lets you cast evocation spells safely for your allies seems perfect for a dragonic bloodline sorcerer. For this sorcerer evocation and abjuration spells come so easily, that he have a truly mastery of these spells. A scenario which is more likely, than a scholar who ist very talented in a school of magic and then evolves innate abilities for a special school of magic. And this counts for every wizard feat that comes from the school. Abjuration ward, portent, shadowmagic, minor alchemy, minor conjuration, benign transposition, transmuter stone, durable summons, hypnotic gaze, instinctive charm, etc.. All these abilities seem to me, that thy would fit better to a sorcerer then a wizard. A sorcerer, to me, feels far mor like these master of a particular magical ability, who is maybe drawn to a specific spell school, while wizards should be these all around knowledge type of spellcaster.
That beeing said, i'm totally fine with the RAW for both classes, but i'm curious about the opinion of the community on this topic.
Sorcerers are people, that are gifted with "innate" Spellcasting. I don't understand why a sorcerer is able to change the formula of any spell. A Sorcerer acts instinctively.
This right here is why sorcerer can change things up. They have an innat eability and thus aren't restricted by the "rules". A Wizard learn magic by following a strict set of rules, written down and codified by centuries of arcane tradition. It's not in any of the course literature at magic college to twin spell or to quicken them, so Wizards don't develop the ability to do those kinds of things. But a sorcerer who can just *do* it? Well, why wouldn't they? No-one has ever told them they can't.
Think of it a bit as the first swordfight between Jack and Will in PotC. Will has most likely learned swordfighting by studying fencing manuals and perhaps sparring a bit. Jack on the other hand has grown up learning to fight in any way he can. That's why Will is so flabberghasted when Jack pulls a pistol on him. "NANI?! You can't do that, that's not in the books!" and Jack just goes "Sorcerer". *wink* Well, pirate, but you get my point. ;)
Yeah, maybe that's my problem with this point of view. In my mind arcane tradition is not as fixed in the world. It's more like a science. And scientist change the formula of the things they do. They test new posibilites to cast spells or even create them (Tasha's hideous laughter, leomund's tiny hut, Bigby's Fist, etc.). The "arcane tradition" and Wizards creating new spells don't fit together very well. And to me it seems not right, that the smartest and most scientific characters of the realms are also those who are most strongly tied to tradition.
And while i get your point. Jack is a naughty street fighter and has his witts in combat, but in other circumstances he's lost. He excels in one particular situation (or one School of magic) but can not turn every situation in his favor by breaking the rules.
But i guess this is a lot of point of view. And at the End of the day it depends on how you envision your characters or the art of magic in your world.
Lore-wise, the proposition makes quite a bit of sense to me, I'd leave the real spells to the wizards and give the weirdo powers to the sorcerers.
"Weirdo-powers" like portent, shadowmagic, minor conjuration or minor alchemy are not well explained this way. These are innate ablities, that cannot be good explained.
I understand the feats in terms of balance, and i am totaly fine with the way the rules are.
The difference between wizard and sorcerer is kinda like the difference between a classically trained pianist and someone who was gifted an old keyboard and just started wailing on it until they figured out how to make music. The wizard/classicist knows the 'rules' and how things are 'supposed' to be done. They know the forms/schools and the different techniques and can decide if they want to specialise in one of the eightninetentwelve thirteen schools of music/magic.
Sorcerers on the other hand don't know anything about schools and forms and whatnot, they just play the music that they feel inside of them. They come up with weird and wonderful stuff that no-one has seen before, just pulling it out of themselves. They're the jazz musicians of magic, changing things up on the fly and making it up as they go along.
This is why sorcerers have metamagic and wizards have schools. The former are improvisers and innovators, while the latter are experts and researchers.
In my opinion, musicians who have really learned their instrument can improvise much better and more versatile than the autodidact who follows his passion. In addition, most of the self-taught people I have met have at some point started studying music theory to understand what you can do, or simply understood what they are doing through practice. In my opinion, you have to understand what you are doing to adapt, improvise and alter it.
Music students often learn many different musical instruments on top of that, and learn new aspects of their passion through each instrument. The likelihood of specialization is also given here, but in my opinion significantly less pronounced than with a natural talent.
So, same argument with a different interpretation. So it's clearly here is no wrong or right. It depends on how you individually imagine and flavour your spellcasting.
It's a pretty common trope in storytelling to have the self-taught or instinctual prodigy that thinks outside the box and does things that others of the establishment had never thought possible. That's what 5e made sorcerers. I think in general the designers had a very strong idea of what wizards should be and sorcerer was kind of an afterthought. That's how it feels to me when I try to make one anyway.
Honestly, I find it really silly that, in 5e, the wizards who really study magic cannot change the spells by scrutinising how they work more than (or at least as much as) people who do this by instinct. Especially considering that it's not instinct, they do it repeatedly, on spells which are basically as rigid as the ones used by Wizards. Lore-wise, the proposition makes quite a bit of sense to me, I'd leave the real spells to the wizards and give the weirdo powers to the sorcerers. But honestly, the game is fairly balanced the way it is, and these are touchy classes, especially with the wizard getting spontaneous casting, adding metamagic in there might make them really powerful.
The new metamagic adept feats can take care of that...flavor it as the wizard figuring out how to access that connection to the weave that allows sorcerers to do what they do
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Yet another Wizard vs. Sorcerer Thread!
I hope not. To be clear, i like both of these classes and think each of them are great choices for totally diferent character-concepts. This thread is not about power creep, because i'm not a power gamer, and i don't care. It's about the narrative feeling and the flavor of the abilities, that i have.
A little thing that bogs me lately, is that the class features of Wizards and sorcerers are set incorrectly. Especially Meta Magic and Schools of Magic.
I guess Meta Magic was given to the Sorcerer to comprehend it's limited spell list and known spell pool. But other than gamemechanic, it makes no sense, that a sorcerer has access to metamagic instead of the wizard. Sorcerers are people, that are gifted with "innate" Spellcasting. I don't understand why a sorcerer is able to change the formula of any spell. A Sorcerer acts instinctively. Changing a magic formula looks more like something that a practitioner with academic knowledge would do. On the other way around, the schools of magic in the wizards subclasses often grant abilitis, that someone who cast spells innately should have. For example the second level evoker feature, that lets you cast evocation spells safely for your allies seems perfect for a dragonic bloodline sorcerer. For this sorcerer evocation and abjuration spells come so easily, that he have a truly mastery of these spells. A scenario which is more likely, than a scholar who ist very talented in a school of magic and then evolves innate abilities for a special school of magic. And this counts for every wizard feat that comes from the school. Abjuration ward, portent, shadowmagic, minor alchemy, minor conjuration, benign transposition, transmuter stone, durable summons, hypnotic gaze, instinctive charm, etc.. All these abilities seem to me, that thy would fit better to a sorcerer then a wizard.
A sorcerer, to me, feels far mor like these master of a particular magical ability, who is maybe drawn to a specific spell school, while wizards should be these all around knowledge type of spellcaster.
That beeing said, i'm totally fine with the RAW for both classes, but i'm curious about the opinion of the community on this topic.
This right here is why sorcerer can change things up. They have an innat eability and thus aren't restricted by the "rules". A Wizard learn magic by following a strict set of rules, written down and codified by centuries of arcane tradition. It's not in any of the course literature at magic college to twin spell or to quicken them, so Wizards don't develop the ability to do those kinds of things. But a sorcerer who can just *do* it? Well, why wouldn't they? No-one has ever told them they can't.
Think of it a bit as the first swordfight between Jack and Will in PotC. Will has most likely learned swordfighting by studying fencing manuals and perhaps sparring a bit. Jack on the other hand has grown up learning to fight in any way he can. That's why Will is so flabberghasted when Jack pulls a pistol on him. "NANI?! You can't do that, that's not in the books!" and Jack just goes "Sorcerer". *wink* Well, pirate, but you get my point. ;)
Yeah, maybe that's my problem with this point of view. In my mind arcane tradition is not as fixed in the world. It's more like a science. And scientist change the formula of the things they do. They test new posibilites to cast spells or even create them (Tasha's hideous laughter, leomund's tiny hut, Bigby's Fist, etc.). The "arcane tradition" and Wizards creating new spells don't fit together very well. And to me it seems not right, that the smartest and most scientific characters of the realms are also those who are most strongly tied to tradition.
And while i get your point. Jack is a naughty street fighter and has his witts in combat, but in other circumstances he's lost. He excels in one particular situation (or one School of magic) but can not turn every situation in his favor by breaking the rules.
But i guess this is a lot of point of view. And at the End of the day it depends on how you envision your characters or the art of magic in your world.
Sorcerers can instinctively personalize their spellcasting. Wizards study and specialize (major basically) in a specific type of magic.
It all fits nicely in the flavor of each class.
"Weirdo-powers" like portent, shadowmagic, minor conjuration or minor alchemy are not well explained this way. These are innate ablities, that cannot be good explained.
I understand the feats in terms of balance, and i am totaly fine with the way the rules are.
The difference between wizard and sorcerer is kinda like the difference between a classically trained pianist and someone who was gifted an old keyboard and just started wailing on it until they figured out how to make music. The wizard/classicist knows the 'rules' and how things are 'supposed' to be done. They know the forms/schools and the different techniques and can decide if they want to specialise in one of the
eightninetentwelvethirteen schools of music/magic.Sorcerers on the other hand don't know anything about schools and forms and whatnot, they just play the music that they feel inside of them. They come up with weird and wonderful stuff that no-one has seen before, just pulling it out of themselves. They're the jazz musicians of magic, changing things up on the fly and making it up as they go along.
This is why sorcerers have metamagic and wizards have schools. The former are improvisers and innovators, while the latter are experts and researchers.
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Shouldn't this be the Bards? ;)
In my opinion, musicians who have really learned their instrument can improvise much better and more versatile than the autodidact who follows his passion. In addition, most of the self-taught people I have met have at some point started studying music theory to understand what you can do, or simply understood what they are doing through practice. In my opinion, you have to understand what you are doing to adapt, improvise and alter it. Music students often learn many different musical instruments on top of that, and learn new aspects of their passion through each instrument. The likelihood of specialization is also given here, but in my opinion significantly less pronounced than with a natural talent.
So, same argument with a different interpretation. So it's clearly here is no wrong or right. It depends on how you individually imagine and flavour your spellcasting.
It's a pretty common trope in storytelling to have the self-taught or instinctual prodigy that thinks outside the box and does things that others of the establishment had never thought possible. That's what 5e made sorcerers. I think in general the designers had a very strong idea of what wizards should be and sorcerer was kind of an afterthought. That's how it feels to me when I try to make one anyway.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
The new metamagic adept feats can take care of that...flavor it as the wizard figuring out how to access that connection to the weave that allows sorcerers to do what they do