neither is careful, though depending on how your DM feels about the dev clarification, you may have been avoiding it like the plague anyways. Meanwhile, many of their other tricks are likely to not be useful, because the sorcerer in order to be plausible should not be hyperfocused on dueling (really the only one that can plausibly do that is the wizard, and even then only if they know in advance they'll have a spell duel today).įor example, twin spell. you're going to need to be extremely careful about when you use it. quicken is nice, but i wouldn't expect to get a ton of use out of it in a mage duel. I certainly don't see the outcome as a forgone conclusion.what action economy? the sorcerer uses quicken and gets an extra cantrip out, but can't counterspell on their turn (and can't subtle a quickened spell, so you've kindly told your opponent which spell is the big one that needs counterspelling while leaving it possible to be counterspelled :P ). Personally on average I doubt either of those beats the action economy and metamagic tricks of an optimised hexblade 3/sorcerer 17.
However wizard will likely have contingency in place. Bard gets jack of all trades bonus to init.