Hey folks. New to these forums, first post, so please don't kill me if I'm asking about an old topic or just asking the wrong way in general. :3
So, I just started looking at 5e about a week ago, and I was looking at creating a Sorcerer character cause that's what I used to play in 3.0. I actually like how they made clear distinctions between all the Spellcaster classes (though as always, disappointed with Bard). Looking at the description though, and being much more story minded than the metagame.. does it seem to anyone else like Sorcerer's could be a race as well as a class?
I know from the description that yeah, the Sorcerous Origin could come from an event just as well as being born. If it is something inherited from birth though.. I mean, it's not unrealstic to think that someone with no interest in either studying magic or looking inward and "discovering themselves" still has that Font of Magic inside of them and uses it because they got it, even while they're fully embracing another class.
I know this would be easy enough to represent by dropping one lone Sorcerer level on a character, and maybe having the other class attributes override the Sorcerer ones where they don't overlap (e.g., Sorc is the starting class, but the Ability Saves that wouldn't stack with a multi-class character get overwritten by the other class ones) especially if it's for story and not min-maxing.
But would there be any merit to, alternatively, just listing Sorcerer as the character's race? Would that be too awkward to shift over, or does it sound like it would be easily game-breaking? And any ideas on how it might be done?
Thanks
The Sorcerer is not an awful class to start as for the spellcasters as it is the only one to grant proficiency in con saves.
Zardnaar wrote:
(though as always, disappointed with Bard)
To me, the difference between drow/dragonborn/elves/etc, is that only a drow can be born a drow, but anybody can be born a sorceror. Goblin, orc, human, aasimar, whatever. Like in the old Greek myths, anyone could be a demigod if Zeus or whoever got freaky with their ancestor.
EDIT: Also, drow will always produce drow children with the exact same magical abilities, but the fluff implies that it's unlikely for sorcerors to produce a sorcerous child (even if two managed to meet and then end up together).
Clutchbone wrote:
DeDraconis wrote:
DeDraconis wrote:
There's nothing specifically in the rules to allow it but you could do a 1e style "wild talent" psionics thing and say a non-Sorcerer class being with a sorcerous origin could get 1 ability tied to that origin but it only develops when they take a feat/ability score improvement. Sorcerers are a bit like Marvel mutants where their powers lie dormant until a certain point then activate. Once/if they activate (it'd be possible that they never uncover their sorcerous origin) they can then choose whether to use and develop those abilities or take a different path in life and leave their innate talens pretty much undeveloped and therefore useless in combat.
Maybe a storm sorcerer origin who doesn't develop their powers just has winds around them all the time, or discharges harmless static electricty when they touch metal objects. The sorcerer class represents those with a sorcerous origin who have taken the time to develop their innate gifts into a form that's useful in combat. The proposed mystic/psionics class is the same way.
Grazel wrote:
From a strictly story point of view, yes and no. Any character could justify any class as needing special origins to achieve. Paladin/cleric = blessed at birth or divine heritage. Wizard = innate magical talent that takes training to unlock. Druid = fey ancestry. Fighter = divine heritage (herculese, etc) or other special heritage.
Sorcerer is the only one that straight up points to a bloodline though. So it could be argued that it does have the flavor built right in. But it doesn't have to. Wild magic = character was exposed to something. Draconic = Drank the blood of a dragon. Etc.
DeDraconis wrote:
Ahrimon wrote:
DeDraconis wrote:
lawrencehoy wrote:
DeDraconis wrote:
strider13x wrote:
Let it go, let it go
I am one with the wind and sky
Let it go, let it go
You'll never see me cry!
Here I stand
And here I'll stay
Let the storm rage on!
Ups! 
sorry. I was thinking about another thing.
The wizard symbolize the power by study and knowledge, like the scientists, and the sorcerer the innate talent improved by training, like artists and elite althletes.
Elsa of Arendelle (from Disney's Frozen) is a good example to try describing a D&D sorceress.... but maybe they have something like recessive allele and almost nobody from the rest of family is like them.
* Spellcales was a PC race.. and there were some monster template in the 3.5 Draconomicon.
The sorcerous origin is like any sort of fluff. It's a suggested story hook for explaining how they can cast magic spells without a god (cleric), oath (paladin), book learning (wizard), performance skills (bard), ties to nature (druid), wilderness skills (ranger), or picked up as a side skill (eldritch knight, arcane trickster). Nothing mechanically says they have to explain how they got their powers but if you're focused on story they should come up with an explanation, especially if they multiclass into sorcerer.
in my custom campaign all sorcerers will have to have the storyline that they were either born with a draconic bloodline (dragons are going to be handled a bit different in my game and this bloodline is closer to a demigod thing), born under certain conditions (storm and wild magic origin), or have something occur later that infuses them with the raw magical font of their origin (ritual, chance mishap, etc.).
From a purely mechanical standpoint though there is no pre-requisite to be a sorcerer. Look at barbarian, it's got a strong storyline pre-requisite because it's centered around the fluff of a cultural origin. You wouldn't expect some Waterdeep noble to take up the barbarian class because of the fluff around the class but there's really mechanically no reason they can't decide to become the hide armor wearing anger management issues fighter.
Monks have a fluff reason as well, they're tied to traditions and usually assumed to have spent years in training to hone their ki, whether a monastery or a ninja lair or shugenja temple.
Mystic's are assumed to have always had their power and with training they honed their ability to channel them into a discipline.
A paladin has an oath. They had to choose an oath to get any abilities and they pay a price for breaking that oath. 5e just removed the alignment restriction (sort of, the oath pushes towards lawful if not good) and a direct tie to a god. If you multiclass into paladin you have to take an oath and that's really a strong story push that's probably more closely tied to the class mechanics than anything the sorcerer gets since they don't have the flexibility of "latent born with it" or "just hadn't developed it yet" or "something happened to trigger it".
The sorcerer could be like the muggle-born from Harry Potter's saga, or like the "awaken ones" from Mage: the sorcerer's crusade by White Wolf rpg.
But sorcereres aren´t mutants, because the mutants with psionic powers don't need verbal and somatic components.
* Mmmmm could sorcerer class to be allowed to cast once a day a catrip (level 0 spell) without verbal nor somatic component?
* Could sorcerers to be allowed to spend spell slots to recharge single-use magic item (scroll, potion, talisman, tatoo, rune..).
DeDraconis wrote:
LuisCarlos17f wrote:
"Yeah, one day I was huntin in da woods and I found dis magic rock. After I picked it up there was this big ol' flash of light and now I can shoot fire from my hands and fell the flow of magic all around me."
Quck, non bloodline or hereditary background.
rampant wrote:
Captain_Kobold wrote:
Well a druid isn't so much casting as channeling a spell. All divine casters could be more precisely labled as channelers.
The classes are the addition of background and the class features for gameplay. Maybe there isn´t yet special game mechanics for the shama, but in a future we could see a new class with special powers about totem incarnum soumelds, or totem vestige pacts, or auras like ones by dragon shaman..... or maybe something the eidolon and the summoner class from Pathfinder rpg.
For me it is a bad idea for marketing to say " this has to be only a subclass". Even the "types" of classe too close to a previous standard one could be a variant class (and it would sell more than only a subclass). For example the urban druid for Dragon Magazine #317 could be a variant class, changing some main class features, and maybe with another name, for example Augur (or auspice). Other variant class could be the warmage (sorcerer with a shorter list of powers, but wearing armour) and the favored soul (armour and divine magic).
* You are losing a lot of fun if you can´t use the fiction like allegories of real life matters. For me the wizards are the closest to D&D version of scientist or science investigators...(and artificiers would be the equivalent to engineers and arcanepunk mechanics, the warlocks would be the power by astuteness, social skills and trading favors, like businessmen). In my settings there is a conflict between arcane and divine spellcasters, like allegory about businessmen and states. The clerics want to controll the magic and the nodos (zones with magic power, lands of magic maná), like the state wants to controll the economy, and the wizards are like the high bourgeoisie, envidied and feared by the masses of people.
* Why socereres aren't like psions, why do they need verbal and somatic components to cast spells?
Because sorcerors and wizards are futzing with similar forces, it's just that thw wizards have to brow beat the universe and the sorcs have a natural instinct of how to finesse it.
If you already know that you are going to multiclass, then you can create a backstory explaining that you have the innate ability, but for some reason you have chosen not to perfect it, and therefore you cannot cast any spells. I would allow that as a DM.
"My father was a great sorcerer, but sadly my family was killed by orcs. etc..."
Alternatively the book exlains that you can become a sorcerer later in life by striking a deal with a dragon or by some "extraordinary event". Perhaps you can convince the DM to write this in to the plot.
The problem with sorc as a race is that races don't have the design space needed to make a really satisfying magic user, also since they pop up in normal populations of mltiple race syou'd either need to make the sorc traits dominate every other consideration, or make a sorc varient for each other race. A background that represents sorcerous potential is certainly possible however.
strider13x wrote: