Editing Sorcerer (Dungeons & Dragons) (section)

== Comparison to Third Edition Wizards ==

Normally, comparing a spontaneous caster like a sorcerer to a vancian caster like a cleric or druid is like comparing superman to batman. If Batman knows ahead of time that Mr Freeze is stealing diamonds from an ice skating rink, then he can bring his bat-hockey stick, his special bat-boots with ice skates built into them, and a bat-blowdryer for defrosting Robin when he inevitably gets frozen. If there's some ''long-term, non-emergency'' situation that Batman doesn't have the right tools for, he can just spend a few hours in the batcave and invent shark repellent or an anti-banana ray or whatever the situation requires. Batman's weakness, however, is that he has to decide ahead of time what gadgets he's going to bring in his utility belt, and if he ends up in a situation where he really needs a fourth batarang, but doesn't have it because he only brought 3 batarangs and a grappling gun, he's fucked. Superman, by contrast, has a relatively small selection of powers that he can use all day long. He never has to predict how many times in a day he'll need to use flight versus how many times he'll need to use super strength; he just does whatever the fuck he wants, whenever he wants. His weakness is that if he ever comes across a problem that he can't see through, fly over, melt with his laser vision, freeze with his breath, or yeet into the fucking sun, then he's screwed. He can't just run back to his fortress of solitude and pull new powers out of his ass to deal with the problem (only the writers can do that for him). In other words, Superman sacrifices long-term flexibility to gain a huge amount of short-term flexibility, while batman does the opposite. Likewise, sorcerers sacrifice long-term flexibility to gain a huge amount of short-term flexibility, while most vancian casters do the opposite.

The key word here is "most". Wizards are unique among Vancian casters in that, not only must they choose what spells to prepare from their spellbook every day, they must ALSO, like a sorcerer, choose what spells to "learn" (meaning add to their spellbook) every time they level up. Wizards combine a sorcerer's lack of long-term flexibility with a cleric's or druid's lack of short-term flexibility.

In practical terms, what this means is that sorcerers are best used as turrets for spamming fireballs and magic missiles, while Wizards are better suited for specializing in single-use spells like Comprehend Languages and being their group's designated Swiss army knife. It also means that Wizards are much more difficult for players to understand and utilize effectively.

There are a few differences between wizards and sorcerers other than spontaneous versus prepared casting. For example...

:- Perhaps the biggest difference is the spellbook: a Wizard who loses his or her spellbook is pretty thoroughly fucked, whereas sorcerers and other Vancian casters have no such weakness. The spellbook also provides a way for Wizards to "learn" spells from sources other than leveling up, which sorcerers lack (and which is irrelevant for other Vancian casters, who "know" their whole spell lists).
:- Wizards get bonus feats every five levels and sorcerers don't.
:- Sorcerers have only two skills on their class skill list (Bluff and Concentration) that benefit from their god stats (con + cha), while Wizards have quite a few class skills (concentration, craft, decipher script, spellcraft, and ALL the knowledge skills) that key off of their god stats (con + int).
:- Sorcerers cast more spells per day, but wizards gain access to higher-level spells (and therefore certain prestige classes) slightly earlier.
:- Wizards can ''theoretically'' "know" more spells: a 20th-level sorcerer will know 9 cantrips and 34 spells of level 1 or higher, while the spellbook of a level 20 Wizard could contain ''all'' cantrips, a number of level 1 spells equal to 3 plus whatever their intelligence modifier was during character-creation, and 38 spells of level 1 or higher from leveling. However, this is only realistically attainable using low-level spells because each spell consumes a number of pages equal to its level and each spellbook is limited to 100 pages. Cantrips also take up 1 page each, which poses a bit of a problem, because if a least 100 cantrips were published by the time 3.5e ended, then there's literally no room left for any level 1 or higher spells and Wizards are ''really'' screwed. Even the publication of 57+ cantrips would leave Wizards unable to ever learn level 9 spells, since they'd be forced to burn through at least 5 pages on level 1 spells during character-creation (you need to start with 15 int if you want to have 19 int by level 17) and then another 30 pages leveling up to 16, so by the time they hit level 17 and can finally learn level 9 spells, they'd only have 8 blank pages left.

In general, whether the sorcerer or wizard is "better" depends a lot on the DM, and especially on whether the DM enforces spellbook page limits or not, and how many opportunities the DM provides for a Wizard to learn spells from sources other than leveling up. Among basement-dwelling virgins with nothing better to do with their time than edit 1d4chan pages, Wizards are generally believed to be superior.

===Zakharan Sorcerers===
You read that bit at the top about sorcerers being a class added by [[Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition]]? That's... not entirely the whole story. Oh, the sorcerer as we know it today was basically a 3e invention, but it wasn't without precedent. The name "Sorcerer" first appeared as a variant [[Wizard]] in the [[Al-Qadim]] subsetting of the [[Forgotten Realms]] in [[Advanced Dungeons & Dragons]]. Described in the Al-Qadim corebook, "Arabian Adventures", the Zakharan Sorcerer is a specialist wizard that improves upon the standard [[Elementalist]]; in exchange for dropping their increased chance to learn "allowed" magic to a mere +20%, they can learn spells from ''two'' of the four elemental styles, at the cost of being unable to learn any other spell that isn't Universal or one of their two chosen elemental schools.