Dungeons & Delvers: New Sorcerer Art

(I originally posted this article on the other blog, which has more stuff including mean words about people and products that deserve them if that sort of thing interests you.)

The sorcerer was one of a myriad of missed opportunities for the Groomers of the Coast.

In 3rd Edition it was basically a variant wizard (both classes shared the exactly same spell list), a spin on nonsense pseudo-Vancian spellcasting: instead of prepping x number of spells of varying levels, you could cast x number of spells per day (the number varied by spell level). This more flexible-yet-still-nonsensical twist was balanced to some degree by a slower spell progression, though you got more per day.

There was a bit about sorcerers deriving their inherent powers form a draconic bloodline, because in Dungeons & Dragons, while the former tended to merely fuck over the players the latter could—as evidenced by the half-dragon template being valid for “any living, corporeal" creature”—apparently fuck anything

This was reinforced slightly by an underwhelming prestige class in the Dungeon Master’s Guide (which, to be fair, most were), but I recall later splat books and Dragon Magazine articles adding enough bloodlines to satisfy the fetish of even the most degenerate Tumblrite.

4th Edition did it the best.

Technically.

It was still bad, but at least here you’d pick a bloodline right from the start, and while you could still pick any powers you wanted, concept be damned, certain powers got bonuses if you also had a given bloodline so there was an incentive. But sometimes these were minor, and sometimes the “appropriate” powers sucked regardless.

While 5th Edition is a hollowed out skin suit that merely bears a long since meaningless title, during the playtest they actually had a good idea. I forget exactly how it worked because it was like ten years ago, but there was something about how casting spells would transform your character based on your bloodline.

It was interesting and evocative and helped the sorcerer stand out from the wizard and warlock…which is probably why they abandoned it. Can’t innovative too much, or at all, lest you offend the hobby tourists who get their dopamine hits from essentially buying a game that they not only already own, but have several copies of gathering dust on a shelf.

But Dungeons & Delvers is geared towards the discerning gamer and so we had no problem innovating and discarding what didn’t work and/or made no sense.

For our take on the sorcerer, we created distinct spell lists, severely restricting choices based on what we felt a given bloodline should have access to. This way you couldn’t have a dragon sorcerer teleporting, summoning angels, firing magic missiles or acid arrows, conjuring walls of stone, etc.

Here’s the Talent list from 1st Edition:

And here are the options for frost giant and undead sorcerers:

Again, this is from 1st Edition, and as we’ve been doing with other classes we’ll likely add, remove and change things up. Might be because something sucks or is too powerful, or we think of a better way of handling it. Might also need to account for changes in how armor works (ie, DR only), as well as Wound Point progression.

But, speaking of changes between editions, here’s a side-by-side comparison of the original and new dragon sorcerer art (left is the original):