Shattered Kingdoms

Thanks for the tips so far! A few followup questions:

1) So flight has a long casting time now that makes it awkward/worse for all but Sprite?
2) When you polymorph do you keep your "real" aura?
3) How does a sprite manage having tiny equipment when he polymorphs into medium size? I assume nothing fits?

I don't remember exactly how much concentration I had with human, but I put quite a few trains into mana and could hold two charms and still cast, for example, magic missile.

Mana trains do not allow you to cast more spells, except in so far as they provide you more mana to do so with. Your concentration limit is determined by your INT score, and INT score alone, and your concentration limit is what limits the number and type of spells you can cast/hold at the same time.

Polymorph changes only your race and adj. In fact, you can polymorph into non-PC races as well. Since your aura is determined by your alignment, and that is not changed by polymorph, no, you won't appear to be a light aura if you poly to an elf from a deep-elf.

Polymorph doesn't change your eq sizes. However, as a sorc, you have enlarge/shrink spells which will accomplish the task with very little time or effort required.

It's not the casting time of flight that's the problem. It's the fact that being under the affect magical flight raises the casting time of all your other spells. It also makes you take a penalty to your evasion. For example:

Oh, interesting! I must have stopped playing before that flight change went in. Definitely makes sense now.

I want to make the argument for griffon as a good race for an explorer/PvE sorcerer. Natural flight, infravision, toughness, large size, and endurance are all great for exploration. Their resistance to disease, poison, and acid are all very useful in PvE. The main handicap of griffons, their inability to wear equipment in every slot, which makes them far less viable in PvP against tough opponents, is mitigated in PvE, because the opponents there use no strategy to exploit this weakness. If you wanted, you could keep a set of tiny gear around that weighs almost nothing and polymorph into a sprite for those times against a few specific NPCs that you absolutely do need to wear equipment.

The extra stat trains that griffons get, and the lack of need to max out art as an explorer (art is really only necessary in PvP; you can get by with a 6 or 9 art just fine in PvE) means that you'll be able to have a lot of choice in how to allot your stats. For a pure explorer, I personally would max out mana and hp.

The downside to griffon is the same as the downside to deep-elf: alignment. Going grey aura is best for an exploration-oriented character, because you are more likely to have people to team up with at any given time.

Griffons are mechanically a terrible race for sorc, even for pure PvE.

Going to disagree. They're good for PvE. Their INT is good enough and their lack of equipment doesn't matter that much.

Due to the fact that you lose two ring slots and seven armor slots for potential enchantments mods etc, Im gonna have to disagree with you. They can certainly take hits better, and have certain immunities 'poison, plague, gas', but how often do you run into those? In the event that you get poisoned/plagued, any other race can polymorph into a griffon and just wait it out.
If you want to be an explorer, just enchant for magic resistance and stay in the ethereal realm 24/7, that seems to work.

Their int is not good enough and their resistances/immunities don't balance their lack of saves/enchantable slots. Physical dmg resistance through toughness is not a consideration for A sorc. Any race sorc getting hit is going to die, toughness or not. And again their int is not good enough. Disagree if you like, it's not my concern if you want to be wrong. Just don't suggest what is the absolute worst possible sorc race to a newbie as a good idea; it isn't one.

OA is completely correct and styles is wrong. Griffon is a terrible choice for sorc, even for pure pve. Their int is just too low.

You permanewbs are too caught up on stuff that doesn't matter for PvE. The equipment doesn't matter in PvE. For 99% of PvE as a sorcerer you can go around with no equipment at all and be successful. The toughness and endurance and griffon resistances/immunities are relevant, not to mention the infravision and natural flight. Consider that a GM griffon sorcerer can still beat up most NPCs with zero equipment, no charm, and no offensive spells. It just takes a while, but in a defensive stance their toughness is great and with GS, haste and griffon claws they put out good damage. If you have a situation where you need more than griffon INT (which will be rare), you have ways to handle that. All this and extra trains. There are also a lot of tricks open to griffons that aren't open to other races (even with polymorph), some of which require faction membership but some of which do not.

If I were doing a pure PvE sorcerer and I could tolerate having to be light aura, I would choose griffon. It's not even close, really. But grey aura may still be the more practical choice for pure PvE, in which case I'm choosing human or sprite.