Sorcerers have magic in their bloodline, they can naturally shape the forces of magic almost at will. Druids attune themselves to the ancient forces of nature. Paladins and Clerics pray to their gods to grant them power. Warlocks make pacts with otherworldly beings for their abilities.
Wizards don't do any of that. They take the long way round and discover that, if you speak the right words with just the right pronunciation while making exactly the right gestures with precise amounts of specific items, you can get the universe to do things yourself. They have to memorise their spells, because everything has to be recalled perfectly, and casting in a couple of seconds while under fire in a combat situation doesn't leave much room to consult your spell book. When they have time to read up, they can cast at their leisure, which is why you don't need to have a spell memorised to ritual cast it in 5e. The number of spells a wizard can have memorised is determined by their mental acuity (INT score) and their familiarity with the spells they're casting (their Wizard level).
Does this mean that the best wizards would be the autistic Rainman-types who are generally retarded but can reel off incantations and actions absolutely perfectly from memory for every spell they've ever seen done?
Are the greatest wizards a bunch of socially-crippled super autists?
>>46457592
>They take the long way round and discover that, if you speak the right words with just the right pronunciation while making exactly the right gestures with precise amounts of specific items, you can get the universe to do things yourself.
...Who was the first person to figure this out?
Legitimately. Who thought it would be a good idea to carry around a bag of random shit and practice hand-waving until the universe started to do their laundry?
Seriously, the whole idea of Vancian casting is absolutely ridiculous unless you want to interpret the Weave of Magic as some sort of computer console anyone with enough INT can read and write to, and then you have to deal with people who don't actually 'know' magic figuring out commands that makes things happen the way they want.
>>46457592
>Are the greatest wizards a bunch of socially-crippled super autists?
Was this ever in question?
>>46457758
Probably somebody who was really jealous of a sorcerer.
>>46457758
>>46458156
Keep in mind, in most renditions of D&D, Sorcerers cast spells the same WAY wizards do, with all the same components, they just know how to do it innately.
So standing around studying sorcerers is a legitimate path. "Okay, he waggled his fingers like... THIS. or maybe like THIS?"
>>46457758
The same type of people who did things like figure out if you mix saltpeter, ground up charcoal and brimstone it goes BOOM!
>>46457758
Vancian magic as a literal "you forget the spells you have prepared" is pretty silly.
Vancian magic as only being able to prepare so many pickled Pygmy femurs a day makes more sense.
Personally, I like the weave of magic being basically a universal command console, but requires a module that keeps a wizard's code in order. IE, a spell book. Reciting a spell command without the proper declarations built in to something attuned to you results in, at worst, a command error the user doesn't even know they triggered.
Sorcerers are like the kids that get good grade because they are naturally smart.
Wizards are like the kids that get good grade because they study really hard.
Warlocks are like the kids that get good grade because they're sucking the teacher's cock after school.
I love, LOVE the idea of wizards having just "figured it out" on a handful of useful spells.
In the setting I've got right now, wizards came about because of a pissing contest between the god of [Trickery, Manipulation, Prophesy, Physical Excellence] and the god of [Celestial Bodies, Life-After-Death, Travel]. It boiled down to the Trickster God (Albumel) telling some bumfuck peasants to "CHECK THIS RAD SHIT OUT" and taught them how throw fireballs.
Needless to say, Rentuin (Zoom-zoom Space Man) was livid, and he granted a bunch of other peons the power of inherent magical ability.
Meanwhile, Albumel's disciples were throwing shit (and fireballs) at the wall to see what sticks. Their descendants became WIZARDS.
Rentuin's disciples are the SORCERERS.
Both of them hate each other passionately, because each one believes the other has it easier. SORCERERS can't learn much more than what they're born with, and WIZARDS have to study for years to master things SORCERERS innately understand.
For their part, the WIZARDS still don't really know how magic works. It's a lot like programming, in that once one person figures out how to do something, everyone else just copies their code and tweaks it as needed.
>>46457592
>>46458232
That's not how Vancian magic works.
Most people think it works like this:
>Cast a spell in 6 seconds
>Spell vanishes from your mind
The way it actually works is this:
>Spells take several minutes to cast
>Wake up in the morning, figure out what spells you'll probably need today
>Cast all those spells except for the final firing-off step
>Walk around buzzing with magical power, a dozen or more almost-complete spells straining within your mind
>Fight starts
>Say the final words of the fireball spell you cast this morning, firing it off and blowing up a bunch of goblins
>implying leaving thousands of shotguns lying around is somehow """wrong"""
>>46457758
>Who thought it would be a good idea to carry around a bag of random shit and practice hand-waving until the universe started to do their laundry?
I'd figure the first few times were an accident or something (i.e. 'I swear I was just screaming drunk while holding this bit of wool and suddenly I saw an image of my dead wife!'). Either that, or the devil was teaching people sorcery.
Also, they might have been trying to replicate processes observed in magical beasts. Like one of the proto-wizards might have seen a blink dog poofing around and thought 'Hmm, I wonder if I can do that for myself?'.
>>46458346
Fucking THANK you, Anon.
This is the way it was first explained to me, this is the way it's always made sense to me, and this is the way I've always explained it to new players. Yet every time I see Vancian magic brought up in a thread or conversation, fucking -nobody- seems to get it as anything but 'Lern Spel -> Cast Spel -> Wut Wuz Spel?' As if the casting of the spell somehow fucking erased the very existence of it from your mind, forcing you to re-discover it each time, and in the hundreds to thousands of years of Wizards Bein' Wizards, not one pointy-hatted reality-fucker ever sat down and figured out a shortcut around that little problem.
So yeah. Good to see someone else out there gets it too. Rant over.
>>46458346
Huh, never considered it that way, makes it a thousand times more awesome. I have always preferred sorcerers as they just feel innately more interesting than a crusty scholar. That, however, makes wizard's just sound awesome.
So... how does this apply to sorcerers? As they can cast anything they know, at a moments notice, are they just bubbling with the magic of every spell they know... just waiting to expend some of that built up energy? If you could write their process int he same way, I'd appreciate it. Your wording helped visualize the process far better than the Handbook does.
>>46463930
Since sorcerers know their spells by nature, their incantations are basically arcane expletives. Out of genetic memory inherited from draconic ancestors, a sorcerer yells FUCK YOU at the goblins in Draconic and they all light on fire.
I've never understood the how/why warlock magic works the way it does.
>>46464555
They sold their soul to get dat demonic powers.
>>46462174
>fucking -nobody- seems to get it
That's because we only heard about it through a dnd rulebook on our way to kill monsters, and we can't be assed to read some fantasy novel to figure out how a game is supposed to work.
>>46465157
Yes, but why does that work?
How do they differ from clerics of evil gods who operate on a similar level; sell soul and get oodles of divine power.
>>46465566
I'm pretty sure warlock patrons literally teach warlocks how to do magic or bestow permanent powers on them (kind of like witches are said to do), as opposed to cleric which are more directly powered by their deities.
Serious question here rather than making a new thread; how long, in narrative terms, does it take to delve into Wizardry?
One day you can accidentally an entire barn, and realise great-grandma fucked a dragon, and start taking levels in Sorcerer.
But... for a Wizard, it takes in-depth study and commitment. Is it realistic for a [Insert Class Here] to run through a dungeon and suddenly decide 'man, I think I want to be a Wizard?. And then be a Wizard, with cantrips avalable?
I'm asking more from a video game point of view, because plenty of people decide to multiclass Imoen into a Wizard. You have the mandatory xp, you can become whatever you want.
Is it really easy to delve into the basics of Wizardry? A case a of Basic Wizardry for Dummies?
Because my Wizard in Baldurs Gate never went near a place of learning. He just copied scrolls into his spellbook, apparently rather brutally as they were destroyed in the process, and killed shit.
>>46457592
Obviously.
>>46458346
Sounds pretty cool.
Thing is how spell preparing look?
Is that some sort of ritual? Is wizard scribing runes, singing some otherwordly songs?
>>46465566
>How do they differ from clerics of evil gods who operate on a similar level; sell soul and get oodles of divine power.
Clerics of Evil gods don't usually sell their souls though, it works the same as with Good and Neutral gods, if often a bit more bloody
>>46458236
order of the stick occasionally produces decent humor
>>46457592
Good wizards are socially crippled super autists.
The greatest wizard is the one that didn't dump social skills and took the time to convince the autists to share their secrets with him.
