D&D General Bizuids and Clercerocks

[jmartkdr2]

Yes, but there is a snag here. I've got a bit of a talent for writing and I'm pretty good at math, but many times when I was acting as a tutor or as a teacher... I couldn't explain what I was doing to other people. Think of sorcerers like people with Synesthesia, a sorcerer might be an excellent chef with a great plating aesthetic, but even if they study they can't really explain to people why the blue plate sings a C sharp and that means it pairs really well with the steak that smells like the number 54392. Those things don't make sense to other people. So even when sorcerers do study magic, their experience of magic is so vastly different from what a Wizard experiences, that it doesn't translate. A Wizard will never understand that you have to make the magic angry and shift it to the shade of goldenrod to make it work, they don't interact with magic in that way.

The inverse of this is: because they have such a great feel for it, study doesn't add much. Some people just "naturally" have a great ear for pitch, rhythm and harmony, and can play the heck out of a guitar, but after a couple years of trying just gave up on trying to read sheet music. They just can't make the connection. Study is wasting time that could be used for practice.

On the other hand, there's probably a fair number of multiclass sorcerer/wizards in the world. The game just doesn't really reward the combination compared to picking one lane and sticking to it, though non--adventuring casters would probably benefit more from having a lot of lower-level options.

 

[Voadam]

I agree that druids are normally more categorized with clerics and warlocks as being cultists who get external power, not magical technicians who in default flavor are just manipulating existing forces on their own.

In my own campaign I have cleric and druid all be different traditions of spellcasting magic that simply taps divine magic and not be god granted power (even though their dogma may say that is the source of their power) so a druid could be weather mage or a Norse Vanir tradition spellcaster and it is fine to think of them as different flavored wizards, but most editions of D&D druids are flat out religious cultists that gain their power from divine nature, nature gods, or that revere aspects of nature as deities.

 

[Chaosmancer]

The inverse of this is: because they have such a great feel for it, study doesn't add much. Some people just "naturally" have a great ear for pitch, rhythm and harmony, and can play the heck out of a guitar, but after a couple years of trying just gave up on trying to read sheet music. They just can't make the connection. Study is wasting time that could be used for practice.

On the other hand, there's probably a fair number of multiclass sorcerer/wizards in the world. The game just doesn't really reward the combination compared to picking one lane and sticking to it, though non--adventuring casters would probably benefit more from having a lot of lower-level options.

Agreed, one of the things I regret about the design of DnD is that there are logical pairings, like Sorcerer/Wizard that make a lot of sense thematically, that are terrible mechanically and offer little to no actual benefit. And there isn't a good way to bridge that gap mechanically, so it has to all be down by aesthetics and story.

 

[Minigiant]

I haven't read the rest of the thread yet, but I wanted to go ahead and tackle these two questions.

Yes, but there is a snag here. I've got a bit of a talent for writing and I'm pretty good at math, but many times when I was acting as a tutor or as a teacher... I couldn't explain what I was doing to other people. Think of sorcerers like people with Synesthesia, a sorcerer might be an excellent chef with a great plating aesthetic, but even if they study they can't really explain to people why the blue plate sings a C sharp and that means it pairs really well with the steak that smells like the number 54392. Those things don't make sense to other people. So even when sorcerers do study magic, their experience of magic is so vastly different from what a Wizard experiences, that it doesn't translate. A Wizard will never understand that you have to make the magic angry and shift it to the shade of goldenrod to make it work, they don't interact with magic in that way.

I always saw it as each sorcerer's magic origin is so individual that there is nothing to study in the outside world.

This is especially true since identify another casters magic on the fly has been lowered in importance.

So a sorcerer's verbal or somatic component of a spell is different from a wizard's or cleric's. The sorcerer is using his 3rd and 4th finger instead of their 1st and 5th.

This means if your setting is not one of high academic magic, there might not even BE any books on sorcerers except for the ones Sorclocks, sorcerer/wizards, and sorcerer with ritual caster write about themselves.

Likely the only people who know how a dragon sorcerer magic works are dragons and other dragon sorcerers. And I doubt anyone studied wild magic long enough to write much down before turning into a potted plant.

 

[Fifinjir]

If I have any real point to this, it's that a setting with only bizuids or only clercerocks would be interesting, and say something more concrete about the metaphysics of the world. That, and it's another reason warlocks should be intelligence-based casters - you can harness magic through any of the mental ability scores if it's natural, and you can harness magic through any of the mental ability scores if it isn't.

I’ve been thinking about something similar to this, like for instance “coererocks” would be the ones casting spells as we normally think of it while “bizuid” magic is instead about alchemy and enchanting.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Agreed, one of the things I regret about the design of DnD is that there are logical pairings, like Sorcerer/Wizard that make a lot of sense thematically, that are terrible mechanically and offer little to no actual benefit. And there isn't a good way to bridge that gap mechanically, so it has to all be down by aesthetics and story.

Indeed - I suppose you could find a way to make all three mental stats useful/usable to all casters the way all three physical stats are useful/usable to all martials, but that's a pretty deep rewrite of the entire casting system which will probably have some significant additional effects.

 

[Alzrius]

Agreed, one of the things I regret about the design of DnD is that there are logical pairings, like Sorcerer/Wizard that make a lot of sense thematically, that are terrible mechanically and offer little to no actual benefit. And there isn't a good way to bridge that gap mechanically, so it has to all be down by aesthetics and story.

I wouldn't say that there aren't any ways to bridge that gap, but (depending on the edition) you have to perform at least some tweaking of the basics (i.e. the Core Rules). I think a large part of it is that things which synergize together, such as wizardry and sorcery, are expected to dovetail in a way that's better/strong/more effective than either are alone, but at the same time game balance tends to discourage that from happening.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I wouldn't say that there aren't any ways to bridge that gap, but (depending on the edition) you have to perform at least some tweaking of the basics (i.e. the Core Rules). I think a large part of it is that things which synergize together, such as wizardry and sorcery, are expected to dovetail in a way that's better/strong/more effective than either are alone, but at the same time game balance tends to discourage that from happening.

Yeah, but I think the only thing you really get out of a Sorcerer/Wizard mixture if you start sorcerer is access to the Wizard spells.... which are generally high level, and multi-class casters means you get more low-level spells, which are less useful.

If you start as a wizard you get Metamagic... but daily metamagic use is tied to sorcererp points which are a very small amount at low levels, so you would want to have more sorcerer levels...

So it feels like the thing you really want in both cases, is to take more levels of the secondary class than your primary, which defeats the purpose in my mind.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

For 5e (with a little 4e flair), you would probably want to create a custom subclass (the 4e part is that the subclass could work off a different stat than the base class). Warlock (you grab invocations) and druid (you get wildshape) are probably the easiest mechanically, and since you won't get as many invocations as the base warlock and your wildshape can be slower than the base druid, you are less likely to annoy players of the base classes than an out-and-out power grab (usually what happens when someone tries to make a sorcerer subclass for a wizard). For cleric, I would be more interested in getting channel divinities (even if you have to make some new ones to best fit the base class) and divine intervention than getting cleric spells (maybe an exception for planar ally). If you wanted a wizard-themed sorcerer subclass, I could see some kind of tattoo'd sorcerer who can study a spellbook, and tattoo the spell on him/herself if he/she can "will themself (charisma) through the pain" of the magical tattoo process....