Sorcerous Changes
2023-06-11
When I would think of the fun playing D&D as I grew up never once in my life, even at my most tedious of personalities I wasn’t even at the level where I wanted to partake in the type of casting colloquialy known as “Vancian”. This definition has drifted of course but in the moment as a 10 year old kid I couldn’t stand what was known as Vancian then, selecting spells for specific slots and organizing a day’s worth of magic in the resting time at the end of an adventuring day. I’ll go into more specifics later but for now just now it was a way to micromanage the magic of a player character. A way in which that was not fun in any kind of way. So when the fifth edition of D&D had all the Classes which cast magic have the ability to select both the spells and the slot utilized for them at will and in the moment I was quite excited. However, as things progressed and I’ve played all the different classes I’ve found that this change has simply made some of the Classes far too similar, especially when certain aspects of their identity are directly reliant on being different, which gets us to my dissatisfaction with the Sorcerer.
The Sorc is a Class described in DnD as an arcane caster which draws their energy from within their soul, from the inherent power that they are born with, which they can barely understand and which manifests in ways that not even the character can expect. However in gameplay it’s basically just a wizard with less spells and without the ability to cast them ritually, and though they gain some ability to manipulate them there is not much to add, not much to denote their different abilities or anything like that. Certainly not enough to make the gameplay loop more satisfying than the wizard unless the player has a specific build or fantasy already in mind when selecting the class. So I have set out to change that, just like the Warlock the Sorcerer should feel like a variant from the bottom up and not just a lesser wizard who can talk to people without stumbling their way through it. But now it's time to talk specifics.
So this magic system is a fun one, at least in little doses and when compared to the annoyances of the aforementioned Vancian system especially so. Now to explain, I'm going to assume you have at least a passing knowledge of the rules of spellcasting in D&D and related games but I'll briefly recap for those unfamiliar. Magic is represented as specific use cases where a list of effects (such as lighting a campfire without supplies) can only be caused by certain causes (drawing a circle and changing magic words) and no other effects are allowed. This is extremely different compared to other media uses characters have a general ability, such as moving water, and all effects are extrapolated out from there. A great example of this is the classic “Avatar the Last Airbender” which of course if you haven’t seen please do something good with your life and do so. Regardless, the point is that when a person has a bending style you know their “magic” is to bend that elements and all use cases are just extrapolations from that power, you can easily predict what will happen. That makes the actual usage of magic in TTRPGs like D&D require much more explanation, as many players will just happen upon a particular instance where magic would be quite useful but there is no spell for (such as cooking) and you have to explain that it’s simply not an option. So in these games knowing your options and their sometimes very specific uses is critical to how the game plays out.
Now, all this information of magic has to be used to play the game of course. This is done by giving people with magic a certain amount of magical energy known as Spell Slots, ranked in discerete levels of power where each spell has a minimum tier to be used with. There are all kinds of rules on these but all that needs to be known is that each one is independent of the others and can only be used for a single spell at a time, upon which it is lost. Vancian casting is the method in which a Spell that a character knows is chosen (let’s say a spell called Light) and then a power level is chosen (1st in this scenario) and so when you want to use this Spell you say you’re using this Spell Slot, losing that energy while it activates. Now if you have multiple Spells and multiple Spell Slots of different tiers it can be imagined that organizing all of these at once can quickly becomes a system of micromanagement of little engagement. Maybe the first few are fun for you! Maybe the next ten are too! But I have never seen a player enjoy the next ten or the ten after that. So in the modern games this has been changed to a more lenient version where you just select your Spells and you can pick the associated Spell Slot whenever you choose to utilize one of these choices, granting a huge leap in adaptability for magic users. I think this was a great choice! Not one I’ll be going back on, but that doesn’t mean that I want all the casters to function this way, and so it’s time to explain my variant of the variant rule, Spell Points, which I’ll list here…
“Instead of gaining a number of spell slots to cast your spells from the Spellcasting feature, you gain a pool of spell points instead. You expend a number of spell points to create a spell slot of a given level, and then use that slot to cast a spell. You can't reduce your spell points total to less than 0, and you regain all spent spell points when you finish a long rest. Spells of 6th level and higher are particularly taxing to cast. You can use spell points to create one slot of each level of 6th or higher. You can't create another slot of the same level until you finish a long rest. The number of spell points you have to spend is based on your level as a spellcaster, as shown in the Spell Points by Level table. Your level also determines the maximum-level spell slot you can create. Even though you might have enough points to create a slot above this maximum, you can't do so…” - The Players Handbook; D&D 5e
Now, I haven’t listed all the rules but the main point is that there is clearly an intent to have options with spellcasting, and it is this freedom, this desire to manipulate the magic inherent in the world that makes (at least to me) the perfect method by which a sorcerer can utilize it. This Spell Point system just needed a slight twist however. While I enjoy having this variant rule there is something that the players I’ve had play test it which just pushes them over the hurdle of managing resources. They quite disliked having both Sorcery Points and Spell Points. Hated it actually. So my next step is to combine them. It was an ambition process of figuring out what the value of each Sorcery Point should be and though I’m not going to post a bunch of my nonsense math it did eventually come together with a few additional (such as reducing the cost of some Metamagic) changes I’ve found a good spot for a sorcerer which feels different while also beings a simple to operate package.
So now everything about the sorcerer revolves around Sorcery Points, the Metamagic and the Spells. Undoubtedly this means other changes had to be made to update these abilities, such as some subclass options utilizing sorcery points or utilizing them on regaining Spell Slots and those were taken care of one at a time
First thing to take care of was the fact that the newer subclasses introduced in the later books allowed their subclasses to have additional spells based on their connection to the magic within them, which is an amazing addition! However, this and other such improvements just solidified many of the core subclasses as suboptimal and less fun. So I of course led with adding these subclass spells to those which didn’t have it and slightly adjusting those which already did. Then I took some subclass abilities and updated them so their use-cases weren’t so extremely niche, such as the main ability for my favorite subclass the Storm Sorcerer. This will be a case I use to set the precedent because I’ve used different builds of this type in three different campaigns and so I have the most personal experience, plus the two different PCs which I’ve had in my games. Their first primary ability is to dash as a Bonus Action whenever they utilize their sorcerous magic (lighting or thunder damage) in a Spell. This is a great ability! It emphasizes the wind sub-theme to this class and it prompts the player to select spells which have these damage types. However it’s far to niche. So I’ve changed it to include cantrips of these damage types and can be used as a Reaction to move away from creatures. This doesn’t boost the power of it beyond the normal scope but it does allow for a PC to actually take their mobility to the max. I’ve expanded on this concept, increasing the abilities gained later while keeping the range low, all to increase the primary appeal (in my opinion) of the Storm Sorcerer, high damage while staying within the fray like a lightning fast blaster.
Of course, I could be totally wrong! This could all be too simplified and my Sorcerer is nothing but a boring mana bar. I don’t think so (clearly) but I can’t wait to find out what kind of opinions people have about my version, with my only hope being that they have fun. I say as if that’s not the whole point of this whole host of nonsense in the first place.
