Wizard vs Sorcerer?

[[Slayer]]

Which one is better?

[Insanity_184]

Well I prefer sorcerer. I mean bloodline traits where can you go wrong with a little black dragon in you lol.

[SertanDoom]

depends on the situation.
Wizard if large selection of spells, some idea of what's coming, and time to prepare for what's coming.
Sorceror if they happen to have the spells, time to rest, and are in a situation you just can't plan for.

[palathas]

TL:DR; Sorcerers get more spells a day but less to choose from, Wizards get greater flexibility and can learn more spells to cast from but cast fewer per day.

Sorcerers are better when built with a specific purpose in mind. Like a high damage Evoker. They have fewer spells to choose from and get them slower but can cast them more often.

Wizards have great flexibility, if you take a Universal Wizard you can learn all arcane spells in existence but you can't cast them as many times a day. Specialised Wizards can cast slightly more but are denied certain schools of magic.

[ojaiike]

Sylvan sorcerer is probably the best in game. In PnP wizards are by far the best of everything, but the general decrease spells variety and increase in railroading makes them a lot weaker. Having an animal companion is pretty invaluable early on.

[wulfster42]

I'll second Sylvan Sorc, as the animal companion is awesome. Sorcs get more spells, so more buffs, so if you just go with a few damage spells (burning hands/magic missle for level 1), no damage spell for level 2, fireball for level 3 etc), you end up with quite a few buff choices per level.

Meanwhile you can cast them more times per day...so you can buff everyone basically.

Still worth it, in my opinion, to have 2 sylvian sorcs....two more animal companions (who can be buffs) and enough buffs for a huge party of characters.

If you go with 2-3 crusader clerics (animal domain), that gives you 4-5 animal companions, but they all need buffs.....2 sorcs and 3 clerics handles that easily (can cast them on everyone multiple times (evne though they last a very long time eventually) before resting.

Anway, right now many sorc spell feats are not working but that should be patched soon. Even with the current problem I STILL like sorcs better. After that is fixed, they will be better in every way besides pure variety in spells. I personally prefer fewer spells that can be cast 50% more often.

[The Silver Santana]

Sylvan is the best. They didn't port enough spells, metamagic, crafting, or the various "screw you sorcerers" rules, so sorcerers are more viable. They also didn't port arcane discoveries. They did port what is pretty clearly the best sorcerer archetype though, and it shows.

(To clarify; in the rules, casting metamagic spontaneously screws you. Sorcerer magic items also cost more when crafting. There are lots of other little things that conspire to make sorcerers worse).

However Wizards are better on 3-5-7 etc., because spell level is incredibly important in this game.

(They also didn't port the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ broken Pact Wizard (HH) or Exploiter Wizard, bane of campaigns, so that's another boost).

[ojaiike]

Ahh the ultimate scion of balance a pact exploiter wizard. For when any trade offs for ridiculous power are considered unfair and unfun.

[BLKCandy]

I play sage sorcerer arcane trickster for nukes and universalist skill checks.

Sorcerers are much more viable in crpg with the game limited spell and tactics.

[a weird person]

neither actually.

only need haste spell/scroll for my damage dealers, so whichever can do that, its enuff.

[Sportacus]

I believe that the sorcerer can play its strengths more outside of a video game. As a charisma based character he/she can be the party face and in the tabletop play out all the strengthes high charisma brings (high charisma = high persuasion, high diplomacy etc.). That includes enraging your fellow players, because outside of combat they do not have much to do but listening to you chatting with the DM.

In a video game i would suggest the wizard due to its flexibility.

[ojaiike]

Originally posted by Sportacus:

I believe that the sorcerer can play its strengths more outside of a video game. As a charisma based character he/she can be the party face and in the tabletop play out all the strengthes high charisma brings (high charisma = high persuasion, high diplomacy etc.). That includes enraging your fellow players, because outside of combat they do not have much to do but listening to you chatting with the DM.

In a video game i would suggest the wizard due to its flexibility.

Wizard actually lacks most of its biggest PnP strengths in the video game. They lose the ability to create a ton of scrolls, don’t have arcane discoveries, and have a comparatively tiny pool of spells to choose from. Stuff like divination and teleportation doesn’t work in a video game either. As was stated earlier their strongest archetypes like exploiter wizard weren’t ported and there strongest school is far less powerful do to the decreased power of winning initiative. They also can’t abuse familiars. Sorcerers on the other hand have almost all of their strongest bloodlines besides cross blooded, and have sylvan which is imo the strongest besides maybe PnP arcane.

[suburban_gorilla_911]

The Wizard is always more powerful in the end cause he can defend and attack in more ways although he will never outblast the sorceror ever.

[The Silver Santana]

Originally posted by ojaiike:

Ahh the ultimate scion of balance a pact exploiter wizard. For when any trade offs for ridiculous power are considered unfair and unfun.

I made a DC 50 save twice finger of death pact exploiter once for a "let's break pathfinder" oneshot once. He beat Cthulu's initiative by 30 and hit him with two persistent Thanatopic fingers of death. Dead Cthulu. Fun times.

You can easily make pact exploiter work roleplay wise, all that nonewithstanding. Would not have survived porting into this though.

Anyway, without all that nonsense ported over, you end up with the original intended comparison-more spells versus higher level spells and flexibility. Given how few spells there are-although most are at least somewhat worth casting-I'd say Sorcerer wins.

[sztrzask]

Originally posted by The Silver Santana:

Originally posted by ojaiike:

Ahh the ultimate scion of balance a pact exploiter wizard. For when any trade offs for ridiculous power are considered unfair and unfun.

I made a DC 50 save twice finger of death pact exploiter

How? Arcane point can be used only once per spell.

[Winterclaw42]

Wizard = more tools with fewer uses
Sorceror = more uses of fewer tools
Charging Barbaring with Combat Mobility = smashed tools.