“We need some way to communicate so we can get to the tent in the back without getting caught.” Your companion, Don, whispers as you scan the guards on their patrol. There’s another murmur of conversation as you take a breath and glance back at your companions as they begin arguing again.

“There is no way that four of us are going to be able to communicate if we split up. Let alone be able to sneak past everyone.” Serish hisses back.

“I can fix that.” You reply. The group goes quiet, watching you. “I can help with resisting Mordret’s spells, too. The resistance won’t be all that high, but should stop some of the minor spells from effecting everyone.” You turn your attention from the patrols to your three companions. Two of them are slack-jawed. Your closest friend, Temora, smirks at you. This isn’t the first time she’s experienced this level of your magic. You were apprenticed to a sorcerer when you two were just children and would often practice sharing the spells with her until it became a seamless effort. “I can give us telepathy so we can speak. It will only last about fifteen minutes, however. That’s all I can manage for the four of us.”

“I knew you were powerful, Rohare, but I didn’t realize you could hold so many spells.” Don replied. You smirk at him and wink.

“Trade secrets.” You answer. “I need about ten minutes to prepare, so it’s easier to cast and hold.” Your companions nod and begin watching the camp and patrols as you focus and begin to mutter under your breath. It takes the correct invocation to speak mind to mind and much in the way of manipulation to give both that and the protection at a distance to your companions. You lift yourself up from a crouch and rest a hand on each of your companions first before placing a hand against your own chest to complete the spell.

‘Just like old times, Roh.’ Temora thinks to you. You smile and bob your head back and forth.

‘I made it a four-way street, Tem. It will mean all our reactions are faster in the end.’ You answer, matching her in thought.

“Okay, that’s very, very strange.” Serish whispers, staring wide eyed at the pair of you. “You’re sure we’re protected, too?” You nod before suggesting Serish use her folk magic to shock you like she does when she’s annoyed. Serish blinks. “I don’t think I’ll get used to you thinking to me.” She says before following suit. You smile as nothing happens with her touch.

‘Shall we get moving?’ Temora asks in thought and stands from her crouch to creep the opposite way of the patrol.

‘Cling to the edge of camp. This will only last if you stay within 75 metres of me!’ you think quickly, following a few steps behind.

While magic in all forms is considered potent, Sorcery is one of the most powerful for a few reasons. It’s because of the sheer volume and variety of spells you can cast, and manipulate while doing so, that makes sorcerers a powerful ally or enemy. Sorcery is all about shaping our reality into something that we want it to be through the combination of hard study and practice. You learn in a variety of ways, be it self-study, apprenticeship, or attending a school. Each has its own benefits for the sorcerer. And while learning and practice create a powerful sorcerer, Magic Point management in this discipline is as crucial as in any other magical discipline.

Heyo, I’m Kat! I’ve been a game master (GM) for a little over a decade and I’m here to help you learn the ins and outs of Sorcery from Mythras Core Rules and what it compares to in Dungeons and Dragons (D&D). Sorcery is a way to manipulate the world around you via book learning, but this discipline isn’t all about flashy spells like the wizard of D&D. Here, Sorcery equates to a multiclass build of Wizard/Sorcerer because of how they learn and what they can do with, and to, the spells they cast. And while you can’t cast your ultimate problem solver, Fireball, there are still some very cool manipulations and combinations that you can create with Sorcery.

Let’s start things off with what skills you have as a sorcerer.

Invocation and Shaping

Have you ever thought about those Sorcerer Supremes that study books and manipulate the multiverse? They are so powerful and often use hand gestures and magical items to help with their spells. They all have one thing in common. They found a teacher of some kind and trained hard to become as good as they are. All of these principles and foundations are encompassed within the Invocation skill. Invocation gives you the Intensity of your spells–or the potency of them.

For those of you contemplating a path of Sorcery the thing you need to remember about Invocation is that the highest Intensity of a spell you can cast is 1/10th of your Invocation skill. This is the skill you make your check against to be able to cast your spells. Rohare, as an example, has the Invocation skill of 69%, so any of his spells can have a default Intensity of 7 (remember: in Mythras, you always round up). The higher the Intensity, the more potent the spell is.

Now we talked about the Sorcerer Supremes and their Invocation styles, but what about the manipulation side? Manipulations play with time, people’s minds, their physical being, make portals. You name it and they can do it 9 times out of 10. Shaping is why I claim that the Mythras Sorcerer runs more like a multiclass than a true wizard of D&D.

Shaping takes your ability to cast spells and makes it so you can combine, increase the duration, increase the range, the number of targets, and the magnitude (how hard a spell hits). All Sorcerers in Mythras can manipulate spells to make them affect more targets, reach further, last longer, or be harder to dispel. But, here’s the catch: every Sorcery spell is cast at a Magnitude of 1 and the Range of touch. Much like Folk Magic, though, your spells only cost 1 Magic Point per spell. So, to make things more effective, you must use some level of Shaping to make anything effective beyond keeping contact with a target.

Where Invocation is your check to make sure your spell succeeds, Shaping gives you the limit on how many ways you can manipulate your spell. This level of Manipulation matches the 1/10th taken from your Invocation and applies it to your Shaping skill instead. The difference here is that you don’t roll against your Shaping skill. Take Rohare for instance. His shaping skill is 80%. This means he can shape his spells up to 8 points worth of change.

Now you can see why I said this equates to a Wizard/Sorcerer multiclass. Let’s talk a little more about how you can manipulate your spells to greater effect.

Shaping Your Spells

While playing something like D&D, you cast meta magic Twinned Infestation (a swarm of insects attacks a target causing damage), found in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything. Twinning a spell means you can cast it on two targets now instead of one, but that’s all you can do with it. No extra spell effects or anything until next turn. Seems like a powerful and cool thing to do. If you were a wizard/sorcerer multiclass, you could twin the Shocking Grasp spell and stop two enemies from taking reactions… now if only there were two in touch distance instead of safely 30 ft away. Here’s where the perks of the Mythras Sorcerer come in.

We mentioned before that you’re able to modify your spells’ distance, duration, and the number of targets. We also noted that you could increase the magnitude and combine spells. Rohare, in the story, says that his skills are a trade secret and that’s because he had to learn how to do it first from his master. Sorcery’s Shaping skills are by far the most effective trade secret that the discipline has. Let’s do a quick run through on what changing the distance, duration, number of targets, and magnitude looks like before we get into the fun part of combining spells.

When you look at the duration of spells, they typically last a short amount of time, a number of turns or rounds. In Sorcery, one perk is that the spell lasts as long as your Power attribute has for points. In Rohare’s case, that’s 15 minutes since his Power is a 15. The next thing we need to mote is that every spell in the sorcerer’s arsenal is limited to 1 target as a default, be it animate or not, or living or not. (Yes, there are some undead raising spells on the sorcerer’s spell list!)

One ability for Sorcery is that you can select any number of targets so long as you have the Shaping points (and range abilities) to do so. If Rohare had wanted or needed, he would have been able to connect up to 7 people via telepathy while maintaining that 75 metre distance. That caps his shaping points at the full 8, however, so there isn’t much else he could accomplish. What he did was make all four of his group be able to communicate together, which increased the number of targets to 4 instead of 1.

I bet you’re wondering where the number 75 keeps coming from, though. When I mentioned the distance being touch only, you can use your shaping points, as Rohare did, to increase the distance. He used 2 points of his shaping skill towards increasing the distance of his spell by 5 metres times his Power of 15, (5m X POW). This gives that 75 metre range for his spell’s effect. Let me explain a bit more about range before we move on to the last aspect of Shaping. While range starts as touch and can be generously increased to well over hundreds of kilometers by the right sorcerer, the spell has the potential to become inactive if the target leaves that range. Take Rohare’s warning of 75 metres and let’s drop that to 15 metres for a moment. If Temora moved out of that 15 metre distance, the spell would become inactive, effectively cutting her off from the benefits of Rohare’s spell: she’d lose Telepathy and protection from enemy spells. This lasts as long as she is out of range while the spell is active. If she reenters the allotted distance, the spell reactivates so long as Rohare hasn’t dismissed the spell.

Now to another fun part, combining spells. The closest thing you can get to this in D&D is using a Sorcerer class’s Quicken Spell. This makes it so you can cast a spell one step faster than its stated cast time. I.e.: Casting Time, 1 action becomes 1 bonus action. The Mythras discipline Sorcery goes one better. So long as you have the Shaping points available, you can combine spells.

Here’s Rohare’s example: Rohare’s magic is actually two spells combined, cast at a distance, on four different targets. The two spells are Telepathy and Spell Resistance. Rohare combined these two spells using his Shaping ability, which cost him an additional Magic Point to cast because of the presence of two spells. Each additional spell costs both Magic Points and Shaping Points. He only has to make one casting roll to make sure the two spells succeed, too, so this is an efficient way of getting more bang for your mana. He could combine up to 9 spells, but it would use all his shaping points to do so if the target of said 9 spells was within touch range. There is a table within Mythras Core Rules on page 162 that gives you all the varying costs of shaping you could dream of.

Now, how do you create a sorcerer? Let’s talk about that next.

Schools, Spells, and the GM

I don’t think I stress enough the point that you should always check with your GM to make sure that their campaign setting actually allows this level of magic. There are plenty that would rather put the sorcery portion of sword and sorcery by the wayside because it becomes a headache for them. Which is completely acceptable in any terms. So before building your character to match that of the sorcerer supreme of other multiverse, talk to your GM to make sure that there is a way that your character can fit the genre they wish to run.

With that said, starting a Sorcerer is actually rather difficult because you need to make sure your character has adequate time to learn everything they need to become as effective as Rohare. The second biggest thing when talking to your GM about building your character is to have them or you two discuss the different variations of learning that your sorcerer can go through. In the beginning, your sorcerer has access to only one form of this learning. Schools within cities are the most common variant of this learning. Others are the wandering master, recluse sorcerers who only take 1 apprentice per however many years, demons, or even just picking up a grimoire and studying it until it becomes a deft skill.

Within Mythras Core Rules there are two example Sorcery Paths lined out. They are the Stygian path and the Masters of Metamorphosis. As you can glean, the Stygian Path is more like that recluse master, while Master of Metamorphosis is more likely a guild or school offering their teachings. Learning spells and invoking them, though, takes time to learn. You have to study them and commit them to memory and practice for days, weeks, and years to cast the spell, let alone shape it.

Here’s the flexibility though, all of this hard work that you put into learning to become a sorcerer has an added advantage. Unlike Animism or Theism that relies on outside forces to be able to cast your magic, Sorcerers dedicate time and are able to cast indefinitely… so long as they have the Magic Points to do so.

Like all of the magical disciplines and the classes within Mythras and D&D, there are both vast chasms and mild overlaps between them. Let’s talk about those next.

How It Compares with D&D

Throughout this blog, you’ve read that I equate Sorcery with a multiclass between Wizard and the D&D Sorcerers. You’ve read all the quirks and cool skills and abilities that the Mythras Sorcerers have. How do you think it does? You have the arcane arts that require study to be able to accomplish any degree of spell like the wizard with the flexibility and moldability of the Sorcerers meta magic.

Mythras’s magical discipline, Sorcery, rises high above even the combination of wizard and sorcerer because of how many things you can change. D&D’s meta magic allows you the following:

• Careful spell: lets you pick to avoid hitting your allies.
• Distant spell: lets you extend your spell’s distance from touch to a distance
• Empowered spell: lets you reroll 1s on your damage rolls
• Extended spell: lets you double the spells’ duration
• Heightened spell: makes your target roll at disadvantage on savings throws
• Quickened spell: shortens you cast time from 1 action to 1 bonus action
• Seeking spell: lets you reroll your spell attack
• Subtle spell: lets you cast without needing any components.
• Transmuted spell: lets you change the damage type of your spell
• Twinned spell: lets you have a spell attack an additional target if it is a single target spell

While there are a lot of different options on this list, you only get to pick one per spell cast. That being said, you do get a total (if you hit 17th level) of 4 options off this list, which is very similar to the Shaping skills you have as a Mythras Sorcerer. The sheer fact that you can combine different spells to work in concert, however, has me lean my preference towards the Mythras Sorcerer over the D&D combination of Wizard/Sorcerer.

Conclusion

What I can tell you is if you like to be highly creative in how you build your spell list and in creating combinations, I think you will love playing a character of the Sorcery discipline. It can be most rewarding to the creative individual. The flexibility of a sorcerer is based on how creative the player is with the spells that they learn. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box.

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