They have no gods. They work magic, and think they are gods themselves. - Secrets of the Schools (GLOG Sorcerer extrapost)

Writing sorcerer stuff is just too fun, so here's a grab-bag of half formed ideas.

Alternatives to Iron-Doom

Thanks to Sylvanas_iii for making me think about this topic.

Iron-Doom is pretty weird as a mechanic and ties the class heavily to the implied late bronze/early iron age setting I intended it for. The logic behind it though is pretty transferable; give the otherwise near-omnipotent magic man something mundane that he simply cannot overcome through direct means. Said something should be common, but not ubiquitous. In the intended setting I had in mind, bronze is still the metal of choice in most places but iron is beginning to proliferate.

The idea is to give the DM a mundane way of restraining a character with transmundane capabilities, without having to resort to completely hamstringing them with antimagic fields or other such bullshit. It also serves to provide some niche protection: why does the mage need a thief, when he can command a lock to open and eyes to see him not? Because the treasure is in an iron box. Why does he need a fighting man when he can rain down glorious annihilating incandescences upon his foes? To protect him from iron-wielders.

Keeping this philosophy some transferable ideas are;

Silver, the other anti-supernatural metal, as easy to come by without being absolutely everywhere in most settings as iron is in a bronze age setting. Has the slight twist of making sorcerers incapable of handling the OSR-standard coin, which can be fun or annoying depending on how you handle it.

Rowan Wood, is a possible candidate, in British folklore it's basically a universal anti-magic. So is the Colour Red, which is both easy to use as a DM and an amusing thought. Red-clad inquisitors whacking suspected sorcerers with their rowan staves is pretty fun. Do sorcerers have red blood? Perhaps their blood changing colour would replace the 5 Hubris step as a clear marker of their true nature.

Consecrated Items is another good choice, especially if you want to play up the "treading on the toes of G_d" aspect in a more explicit way. You do have to answer the question of why priests wouldn't just consecrate everything they could, but maybe there's some kind of conservation of holiness in effect, or only certain things can be consecrated, or not just any old oil will do for the anointing and it costs a few hundred silvers of myrrh, cinnamon, casia and galangal to make the good stuff.

Alternatively, I would recommend just using your favourite Doom track and ditching the Hubris count if you want to disentangle the class entirely from having an elemental weakness. I think that would be less fun though.

NEW SCHOOLS

Thanks to Spwack for the idea of including [hubris] as a variable in spell mechanics.

The Ammunat

Yea it is said that the Black Pyramid are the most reviled of all Schools, and it is spoken rightly, but only because so few know the existence of the Ammunat and their plans for the world. If they did, they would hammer day and night on the Black Pyramid's door for deliverance from such evil. An ancient conspiracy and mystery cult, the Ammunat - a Cthondine word meaning "circle", "orb" or "complete" - are followers of the philosophy of Horkalas the Red, one of the greatest - and the most hated - of the Cthondine Autarchs, the central precept of which was the embrace of Hubris (what Horkalas called "Evanescence") as a path to divinity, not something to be feared and shunned like a leprosy. To be apart from the world, so it followed, was to enter a state not unlike that of the divine, where only will and knowledge defined the borders of one's personal reality. The core of the Ammunat are a tiny cabal of sorcerers whose Hubris has long exceeded the point where creation itself rejects them, yet who have amassed control over enough Names that they are able to maintain a fingerhold on the world regardless. These horrifically potent liches are each on a perilous personal quest for divinity and several of them are terrifyingly close, only the fact that their Hubris is so high that a single iron arrow could wink them out of existence keeps them from acting in the open. Needless to say, much of the School's activities involves tracing any possible lead that might bring them to apprehending the truename of iron.

Robes: Maroon, gold trim. Worn only at secret meetings.

Skill: Disguise

Bonus Equipment: A set of common travel clothes with d3+1 hidden pockets, an iron-headed dart sheathed in cork, a secret handshake.

Perk: You know the secret of Sinworking. The Ammunat can fabricate you a false identity in any major city in d3 weeks, providing you make the arrangements ahead of your arrival.

Drawback: You add your number of sorcerer templates to any damage you take from iron, even if your current Hubris is 0.

Names: 1. Air 2. Water 3. Fire 4. Earth 5. Light 6. Image 7. Flesh 8. Wine 9. Tree 10. Silk 11. Darkness 12. Silver

New Secret: Sinworking

There is power in audacity, for those with the will to damn the consequences and grasp it. Whenever you roll a double or triple on your SD, you may either replace [sum] in your Evocation with [hubris] or add the hubris gained as a bonus to the [dice].

Sorcerous Items

Just like wizards - which technically don't exist in my default setting - sorcerers can benefit from a number of magical artifacts to enhance their art. Such items are coveted treasures often wrested from the tombs of sorcerer-kings of old;

Rings store the resonance of a sorcerer's enlightened voice. Any sorcerer can transfer a SD from their pool to a ring, and regenerate it later through rest as normal. The ring stores the SD until it is added to an Evocation. SD from rings have a chance of being returned to their receptacle on a 1-3 just like normal SD but they do not regenerate on their own once expended.

Lyres modulate the sorcerer's song, tempering it with the mathematical precision of the note. This permits the sorcerer who casts an Evocation in conjunction with a lyre to change the [sum] of one of their rolled SD up or down one point.

Koans are riddles, poems and thought experiments on the subject of a particular Name, that help the reader to shake their thought patterns free of the muddied meanings of the mundane world and achieve the clarity of thought and intent that is prized by sorcerers. By providing a meditative focus that deepens and clarifies the sorcerer's connection with its subject, koans provide the sorcerer with +1SD to an Evocation that involves its Name. Once read, the koan sublimes in a flash of coloured light.