Why limit Sorcery?

Why limit Sorcery?

By default, Sorcery allows the character to buy whatever spell he wants. The only limit can easily be overlooked if you are not reading the book thoroughly. It's in the bottom right corner of page 7.

"The GM is perfectly within rights to restrict sorcery to an approved grimoire for the campaign, declaring that only these spells can be learned or improvised. If he does allow sorcerers to improvise completely new spells, each such improvisation must make sense as a new, general spell for the setting. The key word here is “general”; the GM should shut down overly specific spells."

However, judging by some complaints I've read, a lot of people disregard this guideline. Indeed, this limit is necessary, otherwise you will probably encounter the same problems that most flexible magic systems have. Again, I will have to plug Mailanka's post on this topic, as it describes these problems in great detail.

In my experience, when you tell your players that you can only learn and improvise spells from a certain grimoire of pre-built spells, they usually are upset. My response usually is "Why weren't you upset when we were playing with GURPS Magic?" The assortment of spells in that book is more than enough to cover almost everything, and my own grimoire is much more extensive. And, typically, the player is satisfied after that.

However, even then I do not like allowing Sorcerous Empowerment without a scope limitation. When the grimoire is this big, unlimited sorcery is not that much less flexible than sorcery without the improvisational limit. Interestingly enough, the idea of forbidding unlimited sorcery came from my players, not from me. Limited Scope, Four Colleges, -10% may seem very limiting, but four entire colleges of magic is a lot, especially if it includes some very diverse colleges, such as Body Control or Mind Control. But this enforced limitation makes spellcasters more distinct and specialized much to everyone's enjoyment. In some cases I still do allow unlimited scope sorcery, but in this case I apply some extra limitation, such as required preparation time for improvisation.

So, that's the end of my little rant, I hope you understand my point of view better now.