I don't know if I agree with that point of view; it is like suggesting that the presence of Mutants and the X-Men somehow cheapens Iron Man and Thor, since the former didn't have to 'do anything' for their powers. Not to mention, just because there are Storm Sorcerers in the book, doesn't mean that there are more than one or two in the whole world, whereas there can be loads of Wizards. PC classes are, in fact, pretty rare - and the 'core four' are much more common than the rest. So the possibility of loads of Sorcerous types doesn't undermine or cheapen the Wizards of the worlds any, since the latter are actually the most common, most likely to be important, and most influential of the various caster types.
I don't agree. I think the story of the campaign world gets all out of whack the more ways you introduce spontaneous methods of natural magic infusion in someone. Especially when that manipulation can put you on par with the people who have to work for their money.
If a dragon ancestor can give you spontaneous magic, and weather patterns can give you spontaneous magic, and being really close to a god can give you spontaneous magic, and being connected to the Feywild or Shadowfell can give you spontaneous magic, and the elemental planes can give you four different types of spontaneous magic, and some people manifest magic "just because" (and either can't control their wild magic, or actually can-- for those people who keep wishing for the generic Sorcerer archetype)... then basically you're saying that almost anything in your entire world just gives people magic.
And if that's true... then you wouldn't have it be so rare. You wouldn't have just one or two people who have it, because EVERYTHING in the world is creating these mutants. There would have to be quite a bit of people of each type. There would have to be
enough people in the world who manifest these various types of sorcerous spontaneous magics for there to have been an
in-world story discovery that distinguished the different phenomenon that granted them their magic in the first place.
If only one or two unique individuals in the entire world found themselves with spontaneous magic (and the PC just happened to be one), then fine. But there would have been no need to know or discover in the game world the type of magical infusion or being that gave them their power in the first place. There wouldn't be a discovery of "dragon ancestor!" or "Big storm!" or "Favoured Soul of a god!"... because they only reason that sort of knowledge would be looked for would be if you were trying to compare and contrast and categorize all these different types of Sorcerers running around. Instead, if only one or two existed, then the 'Sorcerer' would just BE the archetype. Would BE the subclass. "You can spontaneously create and manipulate magic! You are a special type of Wizard, one who doesn't have to study or use a spellbook! Ye gods!"
Now of course obviously everyone cares about Sorcerers and the story behind them in different ways... and the stuff that concerns me is no skin off another DMs nose. I understand that. But to me, it is just something to be cognizant of as people keep making wish lists for more and more things that can create Sorcerers. Because the more that do, pretty soon being a Sorcerer no longer *is* unique. You are one of a handful of people that has a green dragon ancestor, to go along with the handful of people who had a brass dragon ancestor, to go along with the handful of people who had a blue dragon ancestor, to go along with the handful of people who had an efreeti ancestor, to go along with the handful of people who had a marid ancestor, to go along with the handful of people who were a Favored of Lathander, to go along with the handful of people who were a Favored of Sune, to go along with the handful of people who were a Favored of Ilmater, to go along with the handful of people who were a Favored of Bane, to go along with the handful of people who got magic "just because" and now it flies out of them wildly, so on and so on and so on.
Doesn't really sound like a unique thing to me. So if you're going to have potentially that many people running around like that... not having them be equal in power to the folks who actually have to put the time in seems like a good compromise. But that's just me.
