Creation Note 2: For Sorcerers

Anyone who's ever read the PHB has probably quailed at the vast, barren landscape that is the sorcerer class. No class features except the familiar, utter crap for skill selection, very little ability-based flavor...there is very little incentive to take the Sorcerer any further than you absolutely must to get into a prestige class, if there's incentive to take it at all over the Wizard (or insert other arcane class here).

House-ruling the class to balance it and make it more worthwhile as something other than a base on which to build PrCs is popular, and something we contemplated for a long time (while making sure it was balanced and done right). So we came up with changes we believe balance the sorcerer while simultaneously adding flavor to the class--playing up the class's social abilities, the descent some claim from dragons, and the far greater flexibility sorcerers have with metamagic as compared to prepared casters.

The following are the changes we have made to the Sorcerer class:

• Class Skills: Add Diplomacy (Cha), Gather Information (Cha), and Intimidate (Cha) to the list of sorcerer class skills.
• Heighten Spell: At 1st level, a sorcerer gains Heighten Spell as a bonus feat. Sorcerers are masters of metamagic, and this feat reflects their natural aptitude for it.
• Bonus Feats: At 5th, 10th, 15th, and 20th level, a sorcerer gains a bonus feat. At each such opportunity, she can choose either a Metamagic feat or a Heritage feat (Draconic, Complete Arcane p.73, Fey, or Fiendish, Complete Mage p.43). The sorcerer must still meet all prerequisites for these bonus feats.