One of the nice things about a sorcerer is that their spell-casting is based off of charisma. That means that you don’t end up being a spell book caster, like a wizard can often be played; instead, you can play a character whose magic is sourced from something bigger than life. My mental picture is similar to Shiny Chariot from Little Witch Academia — someone who is a showperson who wants to make people have a great time, so they put on big shows. Now, that isn’t the only way you can play it, but since you’re going to have a lot of charisma, there will always a slight element of showmanship, or of people deferring to you, but that might just be because you are a man or woman of the people and are easy to approach. Or maybe you cast wild magic and you are just the crazy uncle whom everyone loves and wants to spend time with but who they don’t take too seriously.

Another big thing for the sorcerer is the idea of meta magics. These are ways that you can focus your magic, and are one of the biggest mechanical parts of playing a sorcerer. Maybe you are a careful caster who has area of effect spells, but you can mold your spells around your allies so that they don’t end up being hurt by your magic. Or maybe you are all about letting the world burn, or at least all of the evil zombie horde burn, and you are casting twinned spells and covering the whole battlefield in fireballs.

There are many other directions you can take it, as well — let’s look at a few examples:

Growing up in the wild, there wasn’t that much to entertain yourself with, which was okay, because mainly you just needed to help around the house. But when you got a chance to go exploring, you did, and found that there were caves nearby to explore. One day, you found a glowing stone in one of the caves. Being a young kid, you didn’t think much about it, so you immediately went and touched it. It transported you somewhere — you really aren’t sure where, and you weren’t sure for how long, but when you came back to the cave, ten years had passed, and you now had powers that you didn’t have before. It was scary, and there were things happening that you couldn’t control.  You had to leave your village behind, and seek out answers and how to control your magic.

Class Archetype: Wild Magic
Background: Sage/Folkhero

There were legends in your society that there was some great power in the storm. The storms would come down over the mountains with the fury of the gods, and they always brought destruction. When one of these massive storms came through, it destroyed your family’s house and killed your parents. You were taken in by the church, and that is where you learned more about the storms. The storms became more frequent and more powerful as time went on. One day, when you knew a storm was coming, you slipped out of where all the other acolytes had hunkered down and walked into the face of the storm. It seemed like the storm was angry with you, or with someone. You spoke to it, and it spoke back to you. You asked what was wrong, it told you, and you offered to help. When the storm passed, most of your village had been destroyed, but you were still standing, and had new powers. You now have a quest from the storm that you’re going to need help completing.

Class Archetype: Storm Sorcerer
Background: Acolyte

As a young child, you were sent to the church by your parents, like all seventh children — with so many siblings, there wasn’t any way for your parents to support you. You joined the standing army of the church and were supposed to be trained to be a paladin. But the gods never spoke to you, and you never got the powers. But the church didn’t give up on you; they never let someone they had trained go. But you became a simple infantryman while watching others gain powers and become paladins. There was a horrible battle that you were forced to fight in, and the rest of your unit were killed. You weren’t sure how you survived, and as you sat among their corpses, you cried out to the gods to strike you down as well. Then, you heard it — an answer. The answer was no. You were called to be a scion of the gods, and you felt a strange power well up in you. When you returned to the army and told them what had happened, you were kicked out of the army as a heretic. Now you need to complete a mission for the gods and prove yourself to the church.

Class Archtype: Divine Soul
Background: Acolyte/Soldier

Have you played a sorcerer before? What type of sorcerer have you tried? Do you find the meta magics too confusing? What was your sorcerer character’s origin story?

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Now, as a Dungeon Master (DM), you can focus more on survival, tracking, and exploring if you have a Ranger in your party. And as a player, you can play a ranger who is interested in or focused on either combat or social interactions; it’s just a bit trickier to do than with some other classes that also have the capacity for adding survival skills. The team at Wizards of the Coast updated the ranger class so that this character type is a bit more effective, and have created a new version of the class that’s available online, as the version of the ranger class offered in the Player’s Hand Book (PHB) is weaker than basically any other class. Where you can really get some strength out of the ranger is when you are in a campaign in which you have a specific type of creature/villain that you fight a lot. For example, if you’re facing off against Goblins, you can become a ranger who is an expert at tracking, finding, and killing them.

My piece of caution for the ranger class is to not play the Lone Ranger. As a player, you have the responsibility to give your character a reason to be with the party. And as a DM, it’s my responsibility to keep that reason there — or, if it is removed in some way (say you needed help killing the Goblin King and that’s been accomplished), then as DM and player, we need to work together to create a new or re-worked reason for you to stay around. On the other hand, there’s always the option to retire the character once their purpose or arc is fulfilled — if the time comes, the DM can determine that it would be best to allow the player to retire their character and roll up a new one. Some people might find a character switch to be a lot of fun, which is what we’re about when playing.

Now that we’ve talked about the standard features of this character type, let’s look at some different backstory possibilities for a Ranger character:

You grew up in the wild country with your nomadic tribe. Compared to many of them, whom you’d consider barbarians, you were always interested in society, and whenever you went to a town, you’d converse with the people and learn about them. When you got older, you realized you knew something that most other people didn’t — you knew the wild country, and you could create maps to sell and help people find their way through the wilderness. There’s a ring of mountains you’ve seen in the distance, and you want to be able to map it as well. However, everyone tells you that it’s too dangerous, and that no one has ever mapped it before. But you’ve found a group to travel with, and maybe if you work with them long enough, you can get them to help you map out that area.

As a child growing up in the streets of a small town, playing with friends, you never expected your life to change too drastically. But then, goblins attacked your village, and you were barely able to escape. You went to the city for a while, but when you were older and heard of another goblin attack back in your home county, you needed to go back and take care of the goblins. You spent time visiting there and learning everything you could about the goblins. Now you’re ready to kill the Goblin King. You need help, though — if only you could find some others as strong as you are.

For decades, you’ve been the protector of the realms, keeping the planes of existence separate. It’s a solitary lifestyle, and you’d grown used to it. Then, more and more planar portals started opening, and creatures started showing up. This is something bigger than what you can handle. You’ve tried to stem the flow of creatures and monsters, but you’re going to need help. And that means that, after so long, you’re going to have to be around people again. You’re going to have to open yourself up again and pray that it doesn’t end up with you getting hurt like last time.

Life was great — you were a guide for big game hunters, and you loved it. You knew where creatures lived and how to hunt them. But one horrible day, you watched as all of the the members of a well-paying party were killed while hunting a monster. There wasn’t anything you could have done to save them, but it ruined your reputation, and what you saw haunts you to this day. Now you need to rebuild your reputation, and you need help tracking down that monster before more hapless big game hunters try and fail to conquer it.

Have you had a chance to play a Ranger before? What was your reason for staying with the party?

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