Sorcerous Talent points (3.5, PEACH)

[cheezewizz2000]

While this has mainly been adressed by pathfinder, a long long (not very long) time ago, Sorcerers didn't have much to look forward to when levelling. A friend of mine addressed this with Talent points, you may know him as Sneakabout if you've ever spoken to him online, and he's never posted this for some reason, so I thought I'd overstep my bounds and post his creation here, without any permission from him what so ever.

Hell, I may even claim it as my own, if I'm going that far.

Anyway, here's how this thing that I came up with, on my own without so much as a word of help from Sneakabout, works. I'm posting it as I plan on using it in an upcoming game. It has been play tested, and the results have been generally positive from people that have played it.

WALL OF TEXT

Slight (relevant) changes to the sorcerer class

Class skills: Bluff (Cha), Concentration (Con), Diplomacy (Cha), Craft (Int) and Profession (Wis)

Spellcraft (int) is also a class skill, but can only be used to identify spells from schools that the sorcerer has the Awareness rank or higher in.

Requirments: Must either be taking your first character level, or able to cast spells spontaneously. Sorcerery is rare and not anyone can become one.

Bonus Feat: The sorcerer gets craft wonderous item as a bonus feat at level 1.

Natural Talent: At level 1 a Sorcerer starts with 6 Talent points. He must spend at least one of these, though they can be saved for spending later.

Improved Talent: At level 5 and every 5th level thereafter (10, 15 etc) the Sorcerer gains another 2 Talent Points.

Talent points and ranks

Talent points represent a Sorcerer’s ability to cast magic, however some school take more talent to master than others. With this in mind, a Sorcerer can place talent points into each of the 8 schools of magic.

Buying ranks in Conjuration, Illusion or Transmutation cost 3 Talent Points per rank. When buying the 0th rank, Ability, a Sorcerer can spend 1, 2 or 3 Talent points. Each point gives him the ability to cast spells of levels 1-3, 4-6 and 7-9 respectively. The Sorcerer cannot advance onto awareness before he has bought the whole of the ability rank for that school. He may not buy partial ranks in any rank apart from the 0th.

In the same way, Necromancy, Abjuration and Divination cost 2 Talent Points per rank. Each point buys spell levels 1-4 and 5-9 respectively.

Evocation and Enchantment cost 1 Talent Point per rank.

All Sorcerers may select all spells from the Universal School and the pool of 0th level spells of any school from the Sorcerer/Wizard spell list. For the sake of filling requirements, a Universal spell counts as being from all schools, however when casting a spell from the Universal school his caster level is considered equal to his Sorcerer level. This includes all spells cast using Wish and Lesser Wish (but not Miracle, for you Evokers, all spells cast using Miracle count as having come from the school of Evocation.)

ranks
The Sorcerer gains a +1 to his caster level for spells of that school per rank (+0 at ability, +1 at awareness, to a maximum of +5 at Transcendence).

0. Ability: This grants the Sorcerer the ability to know and cast spells of that school.

1. Awareness: This allows the Sorcerer to make Spellcraft checks relating to spells of that school, as well as giving a +2 competence bonus to all saves against that school and spellcraft rolls relating to that school. You also gain a skill as a class skill according to this list: Abjuration – Spellcraft (all schools); Conjuration – Knowledge (The Planes); Divination – Knowledge (Local); Enchantment - Sense Motive; Evocation – Intimidate; Illusion – Hide; Necromancy – Knowledge (Religion); Transmutation – Disguise.

Requirements: Charisma 11 and at least one spell of that school known.

2. Knowledge: This gives the Sorcerer one more spell known per level in which he can cast spells in each school in which he has this rank. These must be noted separately, can be drawn from a spell the Sorcerer already knows (in which case, choose another spell to fill the now empty slot) and can be changed each level if necessary. If there are not enough spells of a school, Sorcerers do not need a lab to research new spells.

Requirements: Charisma 13 and four spells of that school already known.

3. Power: The spells marked out from the Knowledge Rank may be cast as a spell-like ability 1/day, with one of the maximise spell, enlarge spell or empower spell metamagic feats added with no level cost, caster's choice which. Knowledge of the relevant metamagic feat is not required.

Requirements: Charisma 15 and a minor magical item personally constructed (see the DMG about what items count as minor).

4. Mastery: Grants the ability to use other spell lists when choosing spells, except spells from the Universal school. One spell per level can be "swapped" in this way when the Sorcerer levels up. Gaps left over (if any) can be filled with a new spell of the appropriate school and level from the Sorcerer/Wizard spell list. He also gains another spell per level which may be used with the Power ability, though the ability can still only be used 1/day; you just have two spells to chose from when using it.

Requirements: Charisma 17 and at least one medium magical item personally constructed (see the DMG about what items count as medium). Your DM may require additional steps before you may master some schools.

5. Transcendence: The Sorcerer gains spell resistance 20 + his caster level in this school against all spells from this school, even those that don’t allow for spell resistance (a caster must pass spell resistance to affect the Sorcerer, though the spell is still cast). Metamagic feats cost one less to apply (minimum of +1 per metamagic feat applied).

Requirements: Charisma 19, at least one major magical item personally constructed (see the DMG about what items count as major) and any DM's Requirement for the school.

New Feats

Tainted Birth
You were born under exceptional circumstances. Perhaps an ancestor was a celestial or dragon, or you were the 7th son of a 7th son, or were born at the stroke of midnight on the night of a full moon.
Prerequisites: The character must be a sorcerer and must be character level 1st (cannot be taken at any other time)
Benefit: The character starts with an extra 2 talent points
Normal: A sorcerer starts with 6 Talent Points.

Tainted Blood
You feel a stronger connection to the Arcane.
Prerequisites: The character must have tainted his blood in some way, for instance; ingesting the raw meat from a magical beast; powdering and inhaling the dust left over from a Spectre or infecting his blood with that of a Dragon's.
Benefit: The character gains an extra 2 talent points if a Sorcerer. If not a Sorcerer, the character counts as being able to cast spells spontaneously for the sake of meeting prerequisites. If the character takes this feat to become a sorcerer, he does not get any extra talent points for doing so. He only starts with the 6 that a Sorcerer starts with at level 1. He must take this feat again if he wants another 2.
Normal: A Sorcerer must reach level 5, 10, 15, etc before gaining any more talent points. A Fighter must have levels in Sorcerer or Bard before taking the Dragon Deciple prestige class.
Special: A Character may take this feat multiple times. Its effects stack. A fighter may select this as one of his fighter bonus feats.

There is no appreciable difference between the above two feats, except in terms of fluff. A sorcerer could quite happily take tainted blood at level 1 if he wanted, but then he wouldn't have a feat to prove that he ws born under a blue moon while his mother was being sacrificed to the god of cliched backstories.

[Krazddndfreek]

You have illusion listed twice. Once as requiring two talent points per rank, and another at three. Your list also lacks Divination.

That aside, this whole thing essentially makes sorcerers far weaker than they were. You can do one of two things, focus on one school or spread your talents out to four. Either way, you lose at least have the original spell list, but it looks like generally more. The benefits don't outweigh the loss of spells.

Though, of course, the sorcerer IS broken, right? And of course as we all know is much more powerful than the wizard.

[cheezewizz2000]

You have illusion listed twice. Once as requiring two talent points per rank, and another at three. Your list also lacks Divination.

That aside, this whole thing essentially makes sorcerers far weaker than they were. You can do one of two things, focus on one school or spread your talents out to four. Either way, you lose at least have the original spell list, but it looks like generally more. The benefits don't outweigh the loss of spells.

Though, of course, the sorcerer IS broken, right? And of course as we all know is much more powerful than the wizard.

Your snarky tone aside, I am fully aware of the wizard being more powerful than the sorcerer. I am also aware that this takes the sorcerer's one major weakness, and makes it worse.

I estimate that this probably makes sorcerer tier 3, low tier 2 if he focuses exclusively on the 3TP schools. The main idea of this was to give sorcerers something to look forward to in their development. A sorc who has taken evocation all the way up can voluntarily fail to pass his own spell resistance and ground zero a meteorite swarm on himself. A sorcerer who has taken abjuration all the way up laughs in the face of MDJs and casts freely in an antimagic-field.

At mid-levels, you have more spells known. Granted they are all from one school, but no one school does only one thing and sorcerers will still be able to contribute.

Even at low levels, your spells have a caster level higher than your class level, making them that much more potent. What you lose in utility, you gain in power. Granted, brute force isn't always the best route, but your buffs last longer, affect more people and you roll more damage.

[Dante & Vergil]

This is kinda neat, but I wanted to ask what your spells known are with this variant? Are they the same?
And if you are going with only knowing a select group(s) of spells, why not include a specialist variant. I think these are pretty good ideas.

[Odynoneeye]

Wow. This is awesome. You un-broke the broken. Very cool.

This reminds me of what I just finished doing to the wizard class:

Spoiler

Show

Wizards gain spell points per level equal to: 5+INT modifier + WIS Modifier x 2
A wizard with +4 INT and +4 WIS would gain eighteen points per level.

A wizard starts knowing all Cantrip spells.

In order to learn spells from a certain school a wizard would have to spend his accumulated spell points to learn a spell level in a certain area of magic. I.E. A wizard would have to spend 25 of his spell points to open up the possibility of learning 4th level evocation spells.

The goal of this point system is to force the wizard to be more specialized if he ever wants to gain access to all of the high level spells, but allows a wizard to also choose to become more generalized and get to only medium level spells in several different spell areas.

Evocation, Transmutation, Conjuration, Abjuration, Divination, Illusion, Death
Spell Level
1.) 5
2.) 12
3.) 20
4.) 30
5.) 45
6.) 75
7.) 100
8.) 140
9.) 200

This is not effected, nor does it have any effect, upon the wizards spells per day list. The spells per day list only shows how many spells a wizard could cast 'if' he had access to that level of spells. If he does not have access to that level of spells then he can not cast that level of spells. And of course a wizard who reaches 9th level spells in Divination would have access to all the spells per day up to 9th for divination spells, but would be unable to cast 9th level Transmutation spells unless he also had reached 9th level in that field as well.

A wizard may bypass this by finding an alternate means of learning spells, (other then the traditional method of studying).

For instance a wizard could be taught a spell from a different field of magic by another wizard who was willing to teach that spell. Or the Wizard might learn a new spell from an ancient spell book if he takes the time to sit down and figure it out. Of course even if he is taught a spell he must be able to cast that spell on his spells per day chart.

Also a wizard may not automatically learn spells just because he gains access to that field of magic. When a wizard learns a new field of magic, he gains one 'free' spell, from the field of magic which he has just learned, which he may place in his spellbook. A wizard must find a source of learning to actually learn new spells. (I.E. Another wizard, a library, ancient scrolls etc.) This means that to learn all possible spells a wizard must actually spend time seeking out all possible sources of magic. Some fellow wizards might be unwilling to teach certain spells that they themselves spent much time learning, dragons are unlikely to part with the ancient tomes of knowledge and priests are sure to have hidden the secrets of the 'unnatural' Arcane magic away in secret vaults. The search for magic will not be easy.

I like the fact that it allows for more customization, and makes the Sorcerer a playable class once again. (I took it out of my campaign setting becuase it was simply too broken and i didn't know how to fix it.)

All in all I have to say excellent work and... can I use this idea in my campaign setting if I credit you?

[cheezewizz2000]

Wow. This is awesome. You un-broke the broken. Very cool.

I wouldn't say the sorcerer is broken, and this is actually a significant power down. The aim is to make it less boring.

can I use this idea in my campaign setting if I credit you?

You should certainly credit me. What ever you do, don't credit sneakabout, who merely "came up" with the whole idea.

This is kinda neat, but I wanted to ask what your spells known are with this variant? Are they the same?

Spells known are the same, but the knowledge rank adds one more per spell-level (e.g.: 9 more spells known, eventually). Having knowledge in more than one school nets more spells known.

[Krazddndfreek]

Sorry about the snide tone, glad you didn't respond violently. In my defense, it was about 3AM and I don't think too clearly about the consequences of my actions at 3AM.

That said, I actually didn't notice the CL increase. And with the sorcerer's already limited repertoire of spells per level, it makes it okay I guess, as they won't ever run into the problem of looking for spells to add to their list anyway.

I'm sure you probably also made a wizard fix, or don't even use it in your games, so I suppose the comparison shouldn't really be an issue.

Also, I love the flavor of sorcerers being able to attain stronger magics through devouring the heart of a dragon or something. It makes magic more... magical.

[cheezewizz2000]

That said, I actually didn't notice the CL increase. And with the sorcerer's already limited repertoire of spells per level, it makes it okay I guess, as they won't ever run into the problem of looking for spells to add to their list anyway.

Do you think the CL increase isn't enough? Would an increase in spell's save DCs also be appropriate, say +1/2 ranks (max +2 at Mastery)? It would be appropriate as I sort of feel that sorcerers' spells should hit harder than wizards' anyway.

[Sneakabout]

Some random notes to put in on this version of me rules...

Firstly, I put the schools with the 3/2/1 costing from 2nd edition (Evoc, Trans, Conj 3 point, Ill, Ench, Abj 2 point and Div & Nec 1 point). Not necessarily for balance, but because I wanted sorcerors to be much more commonly seers and necromancers.

Secondly, Awareness gives a +2 to DCs of spells for me. Fairly beefy at all levels. Stacks with the focus feats.

As for the problem with casters in general.... they're still the best thing outside combat (short of skilly things) but due to various other changes too long to go into, in combat they get comprehensively owned. In fact, I'm considering beefing up the sorceror rules in to make them more competitive with fighter classes at high levels (mainly casting speed issues). That said, it'll wait until I've done some more serious playtesting.

Fundamentally, it's based on the idea of strong role balance rather than mechanical balance.

[Dante & Vergil]

I think one should be allowed to specialize with a group of magic, by doubling the talent point cost (the initial cost, most likely) and lowering the prerequisites for each degree. I will again post the specialization ideas that I put up earlier here, because I think that they are really good, and for posterities sake.