The Sandstorm Sorceror Vs. The Vanilla Wizard

[User3]

Mod Edit: Split off from the sandstorm thread, as the topic had taken on a life of its own. - fbmf

If you get a reasonable amount of diversity within those spells that is quite nice. Whether it is worth a caster level for the already lagging behind sorcerer is another matter - depends on the group makeup I guess. It is nice to see a decent prestige class for sorcerers though.

And yet, a plain vanilla Wizard can still cast more spells and with more variety than the Sorceror with an expanded spell list and the 1 level drawback.

Pathetic.

[Sma]

Pathetic.

As soon as you reach a certain amount of spells, having them spontaneously actually would be better then having access to all spells after preparation IMO, being down two levels for casting is still a bummer though

[Username17]

As soon as you reach a certain amount of spells, having them spontaneously actually would be better then having access to all spells after preparation IMO

And that amount is "more spells than you get spell slots per day". Barring, of course, the existence of "downtime" spells like Identify, Planar Binding, Fabricate, and Glyph of Warding. These spells give a nudge to the preparation caster since they don't really have a cost except the "known spell" slot.

At the limit of infinite publications, Divine Prep casters are by definition the best - they automatically know all the spells and so they automatically benefit from all the downtime spells. Eventually that's going to add up to cheese.

I don't know whether being a 9th level character with what is apparently 12 known 4th level spells is worth it or not - I haven't seen the book.

I am willing to state that a real wizard would be caster level 9 and have 2 5th level spells and 3 4th level spells every day. The Sorcerer in this example has just 3 4th level spells - so he's obviously going to have to do something really cool to justify the degree to which he just isn't a 9th level Wizard in the ways that count (namely, having Cloudkill and Wall of Force prepared).

-Username17

[Sma]

Agreed, Frank.
I was talking more about a theoretical, not the D&D as published scenario of spontaneous vs. prepared casters.
IIRC the spells gained through Sandshaper are a leg up, but still don´t go the long way to amke a sorceror a viable choice.

There´s also a PrC that makes you a differently flavoured lich in there which either is nice if you don´t have to to pay the LA, or makes you stop advancing as soon as you reach 10 th level. Obvioulsy it´s not adressed which way it is supposed to be.

[User3]

I've played Wizards and I've played Sorcerers, and can say that in actual play Sorcerers tend to be better even with being one level behind.

I mean, the average wizard with six slots will tend to have two each of three spells, or three of two, or four of one and one of two, or some other combo of the same two or three spells. Like a Sorcerer, sometimes he doesn't have the spell for the situation, but he can flee the battle and come back in ten minutes with the spells he needs(if he kept some slots open).

In an unplanned encounter or untelegraphed adventure, thats often not enough. Four castings of one spell will often dominate an encounter where two castings will not. As long as you avoid choosing ass spells like Guards and Wards as Spells Known and instead choose spells like Polymorph, you tend to have enough versitility(past level 6ish, actually) that you tnd to grab the spotlight far more than the Wizard. The Sorcerer's one weakness is that with so few Spells Known he sometimes doesn't have a spell that useful for the situation, and he can't do a damned thing about that. Sandshaper fixes that.

Of course, I'll agree that Wizards rule when they know whats coming next. If you know that tomorrow you are fighting the gnoll army you can load up on the Cloudkills, or if you know that you are entering the crypt filled with undead you can load up on the Control Undead spells. As a wizard, you constantly run the danger that you did the opposite and your Cloudkills are useless vs the undead and the [/I]Control Undead[/I]s are pointless vs the gnolls.

[fbmf]

1112150760[/unixtime]]
In an unplanned encounter or untelegraphed adventure, thats often not enough. Four castings of one spell will often dominate an encounter where two castings will not. As long as you avoid choosing ass spells like Guards and Wards as Spells Known and instead choose spells like Polymorph, you tend to have enough versitility(past level 6ish, actually) that you tnd to grab the spotlight far more than the Wizard. The Sorcerer's one weakness is that with so few Spells Known he sometimes doesn't have a spell that useful for the situation, and he can't do a damned thing about that. Sandshaper fixes that.

Of course, I'll agree that Wizards rule when they know whats coming next. If you know that tomorrow you are fighting the gnoll army you can load up on the Cloudkills, or if you know that you are entering the crypt filled with undead you can load up on the Control Undead spells. As a wizard, you constantly run the danger that you did the opposite and your Cloudkills are useless vs the undead and the [/I]Control Undead[/I]s are pointless vs the gnolls.

I've played a sorceror all the way to 20th level twice now (Okay, the second time I PrCed a lot, but it was based on a sorceror!) and this was my experience as well.

Game On,
fbmf

[Oberoni]

I'll throw in my own experiences with the Sorcerer--they were fun.

I loved having versatility, and being the heavy hitter of the group.

Could the sorcerer class be improved? Sure. Is it weak? No.

[Lago_AM3P]

In an unplanned encounter or untelegraphed adventure, thats often not enough. Four castings of one spell will often dominate an encounter where two castings will not. As long as you avoid choosing ass spells like Guards and Wards as Spells Known and instead choose spells like Polymorph, you tend to have enough versitility(past level 6ish, actually) that you tnd to grab the spotlight far more than the Wizard. The Sorcerer's one weakness is that with so few Spells Known he sometimes doesn't have a spell that useful for the situation, and he can't do a damned thing about that. Sandshaper fixes that.

This is a huge pet peeve of mine when people claim this.

Due to the way the staggered spellcasting system (esp. with bonus spell slots) and the specialization system works, oftentimes sorcerors HAVE JUST AS MANY SPELL SLOTS as wizards do. I am dead frickin' serious.

Okay, this isn't totally true. Sorcerors eventually pull ahead in absolute spell slots available for the shitty spells. You know, when specialist wizards finally gain their fifth spell slot for a spell level three behind.

Forgive me for not going 'whoooooo!' in my most sarcastic voice possible.

Oh, and sorcerors also pull ahead in spells known at character level frickin' 20. Big. Whoop.

Seriously, the staggered spellcasting system hurts if wizards devoted themselves to casting spells the exact same way sorcerors do (as in, fill up all of their highest level spell slots with the copy of the exact same spell), they'd STILL be ahead of sorcerors, since they'd have a grip of buffs and non-combat spells.

ARGH.

[Oberoni]

The thing is, though, that when you fill your higher slots with the same really cool combat spell (as a wizard), you will probably hit the situation where you wish you had either another combat spell or a utility spell prepared instead.

Sorcerers, of course, get that on-the-fly versatility that wizards lack. Conversely, though, wizards just have more options, total.

At higher levels, both of these advantages mean less. The sorcerer finally has a large enough variety of spells that he should have an answer for every situation. Conversely, the wizard can combine the versatility from lower-level slots and consumable magic items (like scrolls and wands) so that he, too, should always have an answer.

So, the power level difference is often not as large as people say it is.

[Lago_AM3P]

The thing is, though, that when you fill your higher slots with the same really cool combat spell (as a wizard), you will probably hit the situation where you wish you had either another combat spell or a utility spell prepared instead.

Like... how?

I really don't understand this. Sorcerors are super, super screwed when it comes to keeping up.

For example, an 8th level specialist wizard who started with an intelligence score of 16 automatically has 4 4th level spell slots and 5 3rd level spell slots to play with.

An 8th level sorceror who started with a charisma score of 16 automatically has 3 4th level spell slots to play with and 5 3rd level spell slots to play with. But he only knows one fourth level spell and 2 3rd level spells.

So. The wizard could devote 3 spell slots to the exact same sorceror spell and 2 spell slots to each of the two spells. This would give him equal versatility of a sorceror, unless you find yourself in a situation where you will not be able to advance the plot unless you cast this EXACT spell 4 times in a row. Do you know of any 4th or 3rd level spell combo that will do this? And to pour salt into the wound the wizard still gets a spell slot for his highest level left over he can fill it with anything else, giving additional versality. So much for the sorceror's fake 'you won't get caught with your pants down!' ability. Yeah, right. Hope you didn't pick fireball when fighting salamanders or polymorph when fighting archers; if the wizard got caught in this situation he can just go home and pick something else the next day.

We advance a level and it becomes even worse for the sorceror. He gets an additional spell per day in both categories and gets an additional spell known. But the wizard gets THREE whoppin' spell slots for a level the sorceror doesn't even have yet. There is no freakin' way the sorceror can hope to match that. When both characters gain another level, they are back to step one.

I don't know about you, but I think having sweet, sweet swag like teleport 1-3 levels early (depending on your party's needs; I think I would kick my sorceror in the balls if he picked teleport as his first fifth level spell) and then being able to swap it out completely beats out the slight advantage a sorceror has when a sorceror needs to cast the same spell 4 times. Or cast spell X and spell Y an M and N number of times for a total of 5 times.

This isn't even getting into out of combat versatility. The wizard completely puts the clown shoes sorceror to shame, as he can do things with his higher level spells the sorceror can't even dream of. Like extend-a buffs with Greater Magic Weapon and Greater Mage Armor which get swapped out for real spells or the comfort of having Gylph of Warding and Identify when you need it.


The sorceror blows balls. Almost any possible advantage you think he might have over the wizard is WotC Board overhype we haven't beat out of you yet.

[Murtak]

Well, let's see. Whenever a wizard gains a new spell level his spells per day of his highest two levels look like this:
n: 1
n -1: 2
While the sorcerer's look like this:
n: none
n-1: 4
Assuming both of them get one bonus spell per spell level that becomes:
n: 2 vs none
n-1: 3 vs 5

At these levels a sorcerer knows 2 spells of level n-1. A wizard can not match the "5 or 5" spells the sorcerer is capable of, but the sorcerer does not even have access to two fifths of the spells the wizard is casting. Both of them cast 5 spells per day of these 2 ranks. At best this is a tie for the sorcerer as far as versatility goes and clearly a loss in raw power.

That is at odd levels. At even levels the situation is a little different. The spell slots look like this:
n: 3 vs 4
n-1: 4 vs 6
However the sorcerer knows only 1 spell of level n and still only 2 of level n-1. The wizard has one less spell per day of level n, but can prepare 3 different ones. That is a 25% loss in raw power but a big jump in versatility. I would call that one a draw or even a slight advantage for the wizard. It does look better when looking at spell level n-1 however. The sorcerer can cast 2 spells more of that level and the wizard can at best prepare 2 spells the sorcerer can not cast. That is a small advantage for the sorcerer.

Conclusions:
Looking at the highest 2 available spell levels only and totally disregarding the ability of the wizard to learn new spells each day the wizard comes out ahead in both versatility and power. The sorcerer only begins to compete if he has useful applications for spells three spell levels below the highest level spells the wizard can cast.

So, disregarding the ability to tailor spells for a specific encounter and disregarding scrolls and wands the sorcerer starts to outdo the wizard in some small areas somewhere after character level 8, after the wizard has already cast his highest three levels of spells. Figuring in scrolls and the like he will probably never catch up to the wizard without outside help (say, getting more spells known).

The problem lies pretty much in not knowing more then 2 level n spells until the wizard can already cast level n+2 spells. Simply adding another spell known at each level, even from a predermined list akin to domains, would go a long way towards fixing this problem though.

[Username17]

You're actually disregarding the bonus spells that Wizards get for "specializing" - which is the thing that Wizards do because they aren't morons. That makes it even more one sided.

But regardless, there is a substantial advantage that Sorcerers have. It's not that they are versatile. As Murtak points out, the Sorcerer has less power and less versatility than the Wizard has. The advantage of the Sorcerer is... that he can only do an extremely limited and well defined thing.

Yes. Really. The advantage of the Sorcerer is that they can't do anything except a very limited thing. That means that the DM can sculpt adventures in advance to tailor make things to the specific strengths of the party sorcerer. That means that a sorcerer is going to shine virtually regardless of their spell composition, because the DM knows in advance what that composition is and can plan on making that composition of spells important.

But if you are playing a prepackaged adventure, or with an inexperienced DM, that advantage goes away. In the abstract, the Sorcerer's knowledge of "Fireball" is going to be useless as often as it is going to be helpful.

-Username17

[Murtak]

Oh, right, specialisation. I knew I forgot to put something in that list. Oh well, add another nail to the sorcerer's coffin. Basically the only way for a straight sorcerer to shine over a straight wizard is some kind of campaign where the players know in advance they will face two or three radically different types of enemies and nothing else - and even then you need to get to around level 10 and have enough encounters per day to run the wizard dry. Oh, and of course those 3 creature types need to be picked in such a way that the best spells to counter them are spread out among all the schools.

The next time one of my players wants to play a sorcerer I am going to tell him to pick one spell of each level with some underlying theme and add them to his spells known. I am not sure if that will balance the wizard and the sorcerer but at least he will get to use his spontaneous casting on something else then the spells the wizard used 4 levels ago.

The funny thing is, on top of all of the wizard advantages he also gets a better skill list, bonus feats, more skill points and far easier access to prestige classes. About the only thing the sorcerer has going for him is on-the-fly application of metamagic feats. Of course he gets no bonus feats, most metamagic feats are rather weak and he can not use one of the best of them - quicken spell. It's a shame really, because I really like the concept of the class.

It does make a nice class for the occasional newbie who wants to play a caster though. It is much easier to sit down with them at character creation and when leveling up then to do it every time they memorize spells.

[Josh_Kablack]

And then there that whole design philosophy of "we should penalize spontaneous metamagic because it's more useful than prepared metamagic". Which is a complete and utter crock.

Now, for the purpose of this argument, I am willing to grant that spontaneuos metamagic is more useful than prepared metamagic (although I may argue otherwise later), however the conclusion that spontaneus metamagic should be nerfed does not follow from that premise.

Characters who need to prepare spells benefit more from item creation feats (which let them store backup copies of spells) than character who cast spells spontaneusly. And yet there is no restriction on preparation casters taking Scribe Scroll or Brew Potion.

[Wrenfield]

In my various gaming locales over the years, I've noticed most of the satisfied pro-Sorceror players have been people who have had the luxury of creating their Sorceror character with some limited metagame knowledge of the upcoming game or campaign.

For example, the DM informs the players they would be playing in a 7th level game heavy in an urban/city environment in an area where there are large conflicts between expansionist giant clans and the entrenched human populace.

Now - knowing this, the Sorceror player can build a pretty decent Sorceror and avoid choosing useless spells (like Hold Person and Fireball).

Had the DM told them to build a 7th level character with absolutely no knowledge whatsoever of the upcoming game ... I can pretty much guarantee you that the Sorceror player will be kicking himself for choosing totally useless spells and muttering phrases like "Sorcerors suck!" with Yosemite Sam vitriol.

I'm betting that a lot of you can relate to this kind of occurence as well. I also bet a lot of you have overheard conversations between DM's and Sorceror-to-be players where the player is querying the DM on stuff like "Will I get maximum use out of Cone of Cold spell?" ... and the DM "helping" the poor guy out by giving him and aye or a nay.

[PhoneLobster]

My own play experience with sorcerers is a little interesting.

I relatively recently ran an "all wizard" campaign from level one to about 14. (yes that in itself is a big pile of trouble, but it was lotsa fun).

I did however allow one member of the party to be a sorcerer. And that was the one big on going problem with the game.

She simply never, ever, ever, measured up to the wizards.

Right from the start she had access to ALL the spell lists in the game, outright, I gave that out thinking it might at least give here a little distinction in flavour (since between the other wizards pretty much the entire wizard spell list was going to be pretty down pat secure). It certainly did not help with the power discrepency.

The only power up from standard that the wizards got was actual usable metamagic, but I dropped the sorcerers meta magic nerfing so she got it too. It did not help.

Later I gave her better hit points, (increasing her hit die to an eventual D8), I gave her better BAB for her ray and touch attacks (rogue BAB). Those small contributions didn't help.

She had a charisma equal to that of the best intelligence among the wizards, and that didn't help.

I gave her extra spells known (but in retrospect far too few). That did not help.

Time and time again encounter after encounter she failed to shine. It wasn't so much that she was dropping dead all the time, she just didn't seem to manage to effect the outcome of anything, the wizards always pulled out something stronger, better and faster, every damn time.

I'll admit I wasn't throwing in challenges deliberately sculpted to her strengths, but I sure as hell made certain I never threw anything at her that was resistant or immune to her limited tricks.

Does the sorcerer work out fine "in play". Not if a wizard is in play with them.

So you want to fix the sorcerer? I say advance their spell casting progression TWO LEVELS UP from standard (yes they would then get spells levels BEFORE the wizard) that could do it, maybe.

[User3]

If we were playing some perfect Core world, then the Wizard would be better most of the time. But we don't. Not even the RPGA is Core anymore. The pro-Sorcerer tactics are:

1. The slots where he has 3 or more spells to choose from. In this arena, he really is more versatile than the wizard. For example, Fly spells tend to be needed in groups of 1, 4, and 0. Either there are no monsters and sitations where you can use it(0), or you need to get one character into position to grab something or lower a rope or see something (1 use), or you need to move the whole party(4+). Other common and good spells that are often useless: Charm Person, Hold Person, Tongues, Command Undead, Levitate, Detect Thoughts, Knock, Rope Trick, Darkvision, See Invisibility, Protection from Evil, Identify, Feather Fall,and Locate Object to name a few.

However, there are a lot of spells that serve a dual purpose. For example, you don't need Detect Invis if you have Glitterdust. You don't need Fly if you have Polymorph. You don't need Hold Person if you have Hold Monster.
Why Knock when you can Shatter? Why Feather Fall when you can use Web to create a cushion for everyone to jump down the cliff?

A lot of the new spells in the Complete books are also made for Sorcerers, as well as the feats. Who cares about resistances when you have spells that do untyped damage or can be changed to Sonic? Several classes and feats also add spells to your list, which just makes it easier to match the versitality of a Wizard.

Basically, the Sorcerer who chooses his spells well is never in the situation where he doesn't have something useful. As long as he avoids doubling up on similiar spells (like Charm Person and Suggestion, or Burning Hands and Fireball) and avoids ass NPC spells (like Obscure Object or Arcane Lock), a well built Sorcerer will be able to use every slot. Wizards often run into the situation where they only have 2 Fly's and so have to wait for the next day before the party can cross the chasm, or they have to rest before they can cast a spell to interrogate the prisoner. In "DnD time," suspension of disbelief waits for the next day and new spells to be memorized. Not so with the Sorcerer.

2. Being being a level in spells hurts, but only before 4th level spells. The jump in power between 1st and 2nd, 2nd and 3rd, and 3rd and 4th is huge. The other jumps are small and hard to notice (except for 8th to 9th, which is noticable but not crippling). That means that for a long time you won't notice being a half a spell level behind.

3. There is no good metamagic in the DMG other than Quicken. Sorcerers excel with feats like Energy Substitution, Transdimensional spell, Explosive spell, Sculpt Spell, and other feats that add useful abilities to existing spells, but may not be needed every time you cast the spell.

--------------
So if you are a Sorcerer and you pick Arcane Lock as your first 2nd level spell, then yes, you suck hard. Wizards never make bad choices that last longer than a day, since tomorrow can be a whole new spell list. Sorcerers are harder to play well; they require a lot of planning and forethought.... the exact opposite of what people believe. Only master players should play them. A newbie wizard can always be changed by a DM dropping a spellbook with decent spells in it onto their lap. A bad Sorcerer is uncorrectable.

In this instance, you can blame the player and not the game.

[Oberoni]

Phonelobster, at that point, I'm really tempted to say that the person playing the Sorcerer just wasn't that hot.

I agree that the Sorcerer has shortcomings. I really do.

However, these shortcomings should not be so horribly bad that the sorcerer, with the same spells, actually does much less in combat.

The sorcerer and wizard are more alike than people care to admit. They're using the same spell list (or, in your case, the sorcerer was using a better spell list). Really, a Baleful Polymorph is a Baleful Polymorph, no matter who's slinging it.

[User3]

Right from the start she had access to ALL the spell lists in the game, outright, I gave that out thinking it might at least give here a little distinction in flavour (since between the other wizards pretty much the entire wizard spell list was going to be pretty down pat secure). It certainly did not help with the power discrepency.

Bad idea. The other lists lead down terrible paths. With a few exceptions, the Wizard list is always better both in utility and raw power.

For example, if she had ANY Cure spells then she was screwed, since she was most likely blowing limited Known spells and slots at a prohibitive rate.

If she was buffing then its much of the same. Few buff spells are as good as just killing or neutralizing an enemy.

Did she use illusions? Shadow Magic? Charms or Planar Binding that took advantage of her high Cha? Untyped damage or Energy substition(Sonic or acid)? No-save spells like Solid Fog? Did she get Teleport or Planeshift or other "once a campaign" spells?

Can you post her character sheet, or just her feat and spell list? I'd be mighty curious to see what she picked.

[PhoneLobster]

Well we did end that campaign about 8 months ago (or something like that). I don't bother much with the book keeping, so if I DO have the character sheet, well... scraping the dust/mud off would be a near literal part of digging it up.

So lets just go from rumour and hearsay here.

From what I recall, yes she wasn't (and still isn't) the most crash hot player around, so her character was to some extent not optimized.

(though one of the first things I did when it became evident she was a little behind the others was to give her the option to change some poor early choices, which in a few key cases she did, for instance she COULD have started with Charisma right out the window, but didn't, and for no good reason at that. That was fixed pretty quick smart.)

But I really can't blame the player rather than the character for here long term failure, because the player was no less skilled than the ALL the other players in that campaign. Who, to put it simply, all kinda suck in the optimization department.

This was, for many many levels the campaign of the fireball and the lightning bolt, there was a specialist evoker, one of the wizards even spent a great deal of time and character resources being a reduced archer.

If anything the player with the sorceress was slightly more rules savy than the others (slightly) and recieved more assistance from me in attempting to guide her to some better choices.

From what I recall of her character's construction...

Her feat selection was pretty reasonable, I was using a reckless house rule that made metamagic quite usable (perhaps too much so) so pretty much everyone was investing at least most of their feats in metamagic. She had less feats what with no wizard bonus feats so she invested all her feats in metamagic, good choices too. The wizards just had more feats, and more and better spells to apply them to.

Her spell selection started out not so hot. Despite every encouragement to the contrary she DID start out the game with a cure spell. Quickly realising that wasn't such a hot idea she soon reformed and did her damn best to make optimal spell choices there after. (since it was a very low level slot it shouldn't have been THAT big a deal beyond the earlier levels, I offered the chance to swap it out for another but... well, yeah).

Anyway her choices there after were still not all that great, remember this entire group of players still thinking that magic missile is the bees knees. But she chose some fairly reasonable ones among them. Sure she didn't take the adaptable multipurpose spells like illusions and so forth, despite encouragement, but then NONE of the group did.

And if she had, sure then she might have been able to outshine the wizards. But only until the wizards took some of those adaptable multi purpose, and higher level, spells themselves.

The actual strategies she used in game were far from exceptional, for instance even a simple thing like that advantage in touch and ray attacks was never really seriously exploited. But, yet again this group wasn't the most cunning bunch around.

The pretty much uniform strategy in the group being "whack it with big fat spells till its dead" (which as far as I can determine is WOTCs intended tactic with both these classes anyway, and what sorcerers especially were supposedly intended for).

I'll admit that the hit point and BAB boost to cleric like was mediocre in its effect because it came a bit late in the piece to be notable, and frankly doesn't synergize as well without the free use of armour, better weapons and unlimited known spell slots for plenty of (well, all) buffs. So though a fair number of the boosts might make her look a lot like a cleric, she wasn't sufficiently like one for that to actually work and the BAB and Hit points alone really weren't going to be a huge impact unless she had them in the early levels where they really would have counted, which she sadly didn't.


Anyway in a game where in the same round you let off a level 4 spell EVERYONE else in the party lets off a level 5... the sorcerer quickly pales into insignificance.

Maybe, just maybe, it wasn't a failing of character or player, but of campaign. An all wizard game is a bit atypical. But then again I strongly suspect if the characters were all sorcerers and she had had a wizard she would have been sticking out as the most rather than the least successful of the group.

[Username17]

In my various gaming locales over the years, I've noticed most of the satisfied pro-Sorceror players have been people who have had the luxury of creating their Sorceror character with some limited metagame knowledge of the upcoming game or campaign.

You can get much the same effect by having the DM use the metagame knowledge of what the Sorcerer has to sculpt encounters to fit.

When it all comes down to it, the Sorcerer is just like a Wizard who has to choose spells at the beginning of her character level instead of at the beginning of her day. That's a big nerf from the start.

The fact that the Sorcerer also gets less feats, a slower spell progression, metamagic nerfage, and a severe lack of synergy with her core attribute certainly doesn't help.

The sorcerer and wizard are more alike than people care to admit.

Sure. The basic concept is the same. And really everything is the same. Or worse. And that's the problem. The Sorcerer is slightly to significantly worse than the Wizard in absolutely every way. Am I surprised by Phone Lobster's observations? Absolutely not.

Phonelobster's alterations don't actually help. At all. Consider what they actually were:

[*] Extra Hit Points: The character is suffering ASF and is never ever going to be a front liner. Her problems are offensive in nature, so this doesn't change the basic situation at all.

[*] Extra BAB: Rays suck my ass. They hit just about all the time anyway, they just don't do anything good when that happens. Extra BAB really just encourages the use of crap tactics, so raising the BAB of an Arcane Spellcaster is kind of a nerf - in that the player is superior in a way that doesn't matter and more likely to use spells that are not good.

[*] Expanded Spell List: As previously noted, this really doesn't make a great deal of difference.

[*] Extra Spells Known: Certainly a step in the right direction, but the character is still coming up slightly short.

So... all of the changes don't actually make the Sorcerer as good as the Wizard. She's just like the Wizard except that she is slightly inferior. And she's inferior in a way that really matters.

And the most important way she's inferior is that she doesn't have one weird quirky spell prepared at every level the way the Wizards do. And that means that in the all wizards campaign, some spelljockey is going to whip out an appropriate quirky spell for every occassion. And the Sorcerer is never going to be that character.

In the all Wizard campaign, people pull their weight by periodically pulling out "the perfect spell". The Sorcerer is never ever going to be that person, because she probably doesn't have any spells that noone else does.

---

Could she have pulled her weight with those rules? Oh heck yes. She could have filled her spell list with stuff like Entangle that is awesome and not normally found on the Wizard list. Then she could have wandered around being actually useless a lot of the time and periodically Saving the DayTM. And that would have made her a star player in their line up.

But she didn't. She "played it safe" and grabbed a handful of spells that people thought were going to be used often, which means that her character couldn't ever do anything that another character in the same party couldn't do at least as well.

---

And yeah, without heavy house rules, that's what it usually looks like when there's a Wizard and a Sorcerer in the same party. Most of the time the Wizard and the Sorcerer are interchangeable, but sometimes the Wizard "Saves the Day", and the Sorcerer never does.

-Username17

[Murtak]

The pro-Sorcerer tactics are:
1. The slots where he has 3 or more spells to choose from. In this arena, he really is more versatile than the wizard.

Unfortunately these are the spells that are two entire spell levels lower then the best the wizard can cast. And even then, as you point out yourself, it applies only to certain spells.

However, there are a lot of spells that serve a dual purpose. For example, you don't need Detect Invis if you have Glitterdust. You don't need Fly if you have Polymorph. You don't need Hold Person if you have Hold Monster.
Why Knock when you can Shatter? Why Feather Fall when you can use Web to create a cushion for everyone to jump down the cliff?

You know, wizards gain just as much benefit from choosing versatile spells. They merely have the added option of also being able to prepare specialized spells.

Basically, the Sorcerer who chooses his spells well is never in the situation where he doesn't have something useful.

Unless of course he does not have enough spells known to pick a broad enough selection of spells. Which is pretty much always the case when he can not use his low level spells.

Wizards often run into the situation where they only have 2 Fly's and so have to wait for the next day before the party can cross the chasm, or they have to rest before they can cast a spell to interrogate the prisoner.

1. Conversely sorcerer's run into the problem of not being able to cast the required spell at all.
2. Scrolls.

Being being a level in spells hurts, but only before 4th level spells. The jump in power between 1st and 2nd, 2nd and 3rd, and 3rd and 4th is huge. The other jumps are small and hard to notice (except for 8th to 9th, which is noticable but not crippling). That means that for a long time you won't notice being a half a spell level behind.

Not being able to cast spells as powerful as the wizard's is not the entire problem. Having less available solutions is just as bad, if not more so. And I would argue that lagging severely behind the wizard in power for 7 levels is actually a big deal.

3. There is no good metamagic in the DMG other than Quicken. Sorcerers excel with feats like Energy Substitution, Transdimensional spell, Explosive spell, Sculpt Spell, and other feats that add useful abilities to existing spells, but may not be needed every time you cast the spell.

Let's look at these.
Quicken: Sorcerers can not use them at all. Advantage wizard

Energy Substitution: There is two ways to use this. 1 - Pick sonic to get around resistances. In that case pretty much any damage spell you cast will be sonic, so no advantage for the sorcerer here. 2 - Alter spells to get extra damage on certain creatures. In that case you want to pick up at least 2 of these feats, which the wizard can do much easier. I would call this one a tie.

Transdimensional Spell: The sorcerer can use a feat and an extra spell level to affect ghosts. The wizard can have a specialized anti-ghost spell memorized. Or just use one of his higher-then-the-sorcerer-can-cast slots to have the one or two such spells that might ever be needed memorized. Or he could just lug around one or two scrolls of transdimensional web.

Explosive Spell: One of the few instances where the sorcerer actually has an advantage. Mind you, given the usual number of damage spells most wizards prepare per day this advantage is tiny.

Sculpt Spell: The sorcerer can go fireball, fire line, fire cone. The wizard can go fireball, explosive cascade, firebrand. Being able to choose which area to affect is pretty much a nonability as far as damage spells go, seeing as it is no problem at all to affect whichever squares you want to affect. It gets a little better if you use it on a spell like glitterdust though. Small advantage sorcerer.

It seems to me that the advantage the sorcerer has is tiny to begin with. When you factor in the wizard's free metamagic feats, class features like mastery of shaping and metamagic rods it is hard to tell who is actually better at using metamagic. Most of the time higher level spells are simply better then low level metamagiced spells. And thus using metamagic becomes a band-aid for the sorcerer's limited spell selection, not an advantage. Still, given enough new books sorcerers will eventually pull ahead of wizards I guess. Barely.

Sorcerers are harder to play well; they require a lot of planning and forethought.... the exact opposite of what people believe. Only master players should play them. A newbie wizard can always be changed by a DM dropping a spellbook with decent spells in it onto their lap. A bad Sorcerer is uncorrectable.

I would not say that. Sorcerer's require a lot of planning when leveling up. Wizards require some planning every day. And if you can give a wizard extra spells known you can just as well allow a sorcerer to change his spells around.

[PhoneLobster]

Phonelobster's alterations don't actually help. At all.

Dang right they didn't.

Which of course was part of the point of pointing them out.

Even at the time I basically knew they weren't going to help in any significant way.

They were second rate consolation prizes because I was, for reasons so very poor I can't even recall them, too damn chicken to get my hands dirty and actually do something that might fix it.

The options for actually making them work are limited. This is one reason why I suggested advancing them two levels higher on spell progession, putting them ahead of the wizard on highest spell levels.

Because thats one of the few things just crazy enough it may (I stress the may part) work, give up the farce of the sorcerer mechanics "versatility" and give the sorcerer the raw "oomph" of the higher level spell one level sooner and call THAT their schtick which they pay for with their spells known and missing bonus feats.

Ah heck, its probably an idea plagued with problems, why even bother trying to save the sorcerer, its not like "spontaneous" spell casting really means anything.

[Murtak]

Since the math to determine versatility is damn hard to do this is only educated guessing, but simply shifting the spell progression downwards one level from level 4 on (so the sorcerer gets new spells at the same levels) and adding an extzra spell known to each level would go a long way towards solving the problem I think.

That and add some skills to the sorcerer's list, and maybe a charisma-dependant class ability every now and then.

[Josh_Kablack]

Heh.

Here're the sorcerer houserules I've been using for the past year or so

>(Josh’s crazy sorcerer powerups) Sorcerers receive Gather Information and the player’s choice of Diplomacy or Intimidate as a class skill (either one). Sorcerers receive Eschew Materials as a bonus feat at first level. Sorcerers do not take extra time to cast spells enhanced by metamagic feats. On tables 3-16 and 3-17, delete the spells known and spells per day entries for 2nd level sorcerers and shift levels 3 through 20 each up one level. At 20th level, sorcerers know 9/5/5/5/4/4/4/3/3/3 spells and cast the same number of spells per day that they did at 19th level.

> Specialist Sorcerers: A sorcerer may choose to specialize as a wizard. If they do so, they choose a specialty school and one or more prohibited schools, as does a wizard. As they do not need to make checks to scribe spells into spellbooks, they do not receive a bonus to spellcraft rolls to scribe spells of their chosen schools. Like a wizard, a specialist sorcerer cannot cast spells or use spell devices of his prohibited schools. A specialist sorcer does not receive extra spells per level per day, but instead receives one extra spell known within his chosen school for each level of spells which he can normally cast.

I shifted the spell progression down, added Cha-based skills, and gave the option to have one more known spell/level. Then I removed the metamagic hose.

Combined with some houserule metamagic power-ups, It's worked out pretty well in actual play.