Adventure Song: Sorcerer/"Starter Builds"

One of 4E's design goals was to smooth out the curves when it came to the relative complexity of character classes. Spellcasters got simpler. Warriors got more complicated. I'm all in favor of the idea that the Fighter should have cool stuff to do and big guns to whip out, but I think making them the center of a lot of tactical rules cruft was probably a mistake. That's a topic I've already covered, though.

My goal isn't to make *every* class the same level of simple. Some concepts just don't lend themselves to simple interpretations. Trying to do that when it doesn't fit is how 4E ended up with powers that had descriptions like, "Reciting seventeen syllables of a dead god's name, you call upon the powers of the Abyss to make a deal with corrupted elemental beings who whip your foe with screaming chains forged from living rock." that were functionally indistinguishable from shooting your enemy with a crossbow.

But because not every class can be boiled down to a simple state, this makes it imperative to spot the opportunities for simplicity when they appear.

One of the things that 3rd Edition D&D did was lessen the grip of Vancian magic in the system by making Sorcerers (who replace prepared spells with essentially spell points) a core character class alongside Wizards. This made including Sorcerers in 4E a bit of a challenge, as "prepared spells" were a far less prominent part of the Wizard class and were not a native part of the system at all. Also, the idea of two classes sharing the same spells went against one of their most basic design decisions.

So they went the route of exploring the Sorcerer class's roots (3E materials suggested that things like draconic blood were an explanation for why some people could use magic without studying it) and thinking about what it meant to cast magic as a sort of natural expression. Pre-release materials talked about the sorcerer as having elemental power bursting out of them as they cast, with spells heavily featuring secondary effects.

The end results? Not bad. They give you a good set of tools to make a dragon-mage, or a wild mage, or a storm mage.

But I think I'm going to go in a different, more 3E-centric approach to the Sorcerer in Adventure Song... mainly because I think that rather than trying to make every class work at about the same level of complicated, it would be useful to have the Wizard with all the bells and whistles as an option alongside the Sorcerer, as a slimmed-down and newbie friendly class.

The Wizard starts with more powers than any other class I've even sketched out so far, and has the ability to switch between reserve spells and prepared spells. The Wizard specializes in spells, which have an extra step (casting) in using compared to other powers. The Wizard has a lot of incentive to take area effect/explosive spells. The Wizard in Adventure Song is meant to be something a newbie could approach with a little work, but there are quite a few moving parts there.

In contrast, the Sorcerer has the same number of powers to juggle as a Fighter or any other class. The Sorcerer doesn't have reserve spells to switch between. The Sorcerer has access to the same set of spells as the Wizard, but has bonuses with single-target spells in particular. Also, the Sorcerer's "natural caster" ability lets them skip the spellcasting step of spellcasting. If they have a spell that lets them shoot lightning or throw balls of acid, they just shoot lightning or throw balls of acid.

It's not that the Sorcerer is meant to be only for newbies, or to be "The Wizard For Beginners"... if an experienced player wanted to play a spellcaster as a pure striker (highly mobile, high damage to single targets), the Sorcerer would be a decent choice.

And you can add complexity to the Sorcerer, as you can with any character, through your choice of powers. For something more like the 4E Sorcerer, Sorcerers have access to a set of Utility Powers called Aspects. (Note: As with every category of powers I've devised so far, they are't just for Sorcerers, though as they interact with/alter Sorcerer class features, no one else will get as much out of them as Sorcerers do).

Aspects are basically toggleable buffs that make your character glowy with magical energy. Enter the Aspect of the Storm and you float in the air a few inches (you can do the Princess Peach float, but not fly freely) and crackle with electricity. Enter the Aspect of the Dragon and you get spectral scales, claws, and wings. And so on. You can have multiple Aspects, but only one can be active at a time. The Aspects essentially give you the explodey-with-raw-power type effects that 4E's Sorcerers get. They're also more complicated than a typical utility power, but that's because I'm essentially off-loading what would be the complicated parts of a Sorcerer into powers you can take or leave in order to keep the Sorcerer as a clean choice for newbies.

And here's the other thing about Aspects: if you don't take any at level 1, you can take one in a level or two and suddenly have what you were missing. So you can make a no-frills entry level sorcerer at level 1 and then at level 3 (when you're comfortable with your character and the system) suddenly come into your own. ("AVATAR STATE, YIP YIP!")

Or you can keep leveling up your character in ways that just make them better at the same few simple things. While I'm obviously focusing more on character creation than advancement right now, it's my intention that every time you have the opportunity to pick a new power, you can instead upgrade an existing one. So if you start out at level 1 with two attack spells, you can wind up at level 30 with two really powerful attack spells. That would be the extreme case, but the point is this: my model is your character starts out as simple as you want them to be (within constraints of the class), and you add complexity at the rate you're comfortable with.