Welcome back to the weekly Tabletop Games thread! This thread is where we can talk about all kinds of RPGs, card games, board games, etc. Whether you gather around a physical table in the real world, or use a virtual space to play with friends who may live far away from you, this is where you can discuss your favorites, ask for and/or receive recommendations, recap your recent adventures, or even find some people to play games with!

Discussion Prompt: This week I’m taking a look at the 5.5e Sorcerer class.

If you want to be a full spellcaster, but don’t want to play a book-loving nerd, then the Sorcerer might be the class for you. Whether they have a powerful magical being for an ancestor or just happened to be born under the right alignment of stars, Sorcerers possess an innate magical ability.

The base class got a couple of new features in the 5.5e PHB. At first level, you can power-up your spellcasting in a way similar to how the Barbarian’s Rage feature empowers their attacks. When you use Innate Sorcery, you get advantage on spell attacks and increase the save DC for your spells by 1. At later levels, you can regain some of your expended sorcery points with a short rest, and activating Innate Sorcery will also give you the ability to use two Metamagic options on a spell instead of just one.

Speaking of Metamagic (the ability that really sets Sorcerers apart from other spellcasters), some of the available options have been tweaked a bit to make them more user friendly. For instance Careful Spell can now fully prevent damage to your allies from your spells, and Heightened Spell now imposes on all saving throws made against a spell, not just the first save. The biggest change, however, was to Twinned Spell, which had it’s functionality drastically changed. It now only effects spell that can be upcast to include additional targets, such as Charm Person or Invisibility, and spending the sorcery point for Twinned Spell lets you increase the effective level of the spell by 1. So Twinning a 2nd-level Invisibility spell would essentially let you cast the spell at 3rd level while only using a 2nd-level spell slot.

Sorcerer subclasses, like all other classes, now are chosen at 3rd level instead of 1st, and there are four to choose from in the PHB. Aberrant Sorcery is for those who want to play a psionic-themed caster with connections to the Astral Sea or the Far Realm beyond. Clockwork Sorcery channels the power of the pure Order. Draconic Sorcery lets you channel the elemental energy of powerful dragons. And, of course, Wild Magic is there to tap into the unbridled Chaos (with a revamped Wild Magic Surge table that’s a bit more heavily weighted toward helpful or neutral effects as opposed to accidentally-Fireball-your-friends effects).

Share your thoughts about Sorcerers in any edition of D&D, or similar characters from other games, in the comments!

If you would like to suggest a prompt or contribute a write-up or discussion topic of your own, let me know in the comments!