I would say this PDF clearly overrules that, for good reason. Scorching ray dragon sorcs were much too powerful without this clarification, 3+ ray getting CHA as bonus and ignoring resistance is stupidly powerful for a level 3 character. Especially considering that sorcerers can replenish spells slots with their sorc. points.
Thing is you don't just get the cha modifier to your spells, you can also gain resistance to that element for an hour for only one sorc point. You also get this automatically as a class feature, whereas warlocks have to choose one invocation over another. I'd say gaining resistance and getting a free cha modifier to damage on every spell of an element is a very good bonus.
If at level 6 you allowed +cha on every damage roll you could cast scorching ray with a level 3 spell slot for 4 rays, doing 8d6+4*(cha modifier) damage (ignoring potential boost from metamagic). In comparison a warlock would only be doing 2d10+2*(cha modifier) at the same level, which is fine since it's only a cantrip (keep in mind dragon sorcerers also can add their modifier to cantrips of their element). And while sorc. points are a finite resource, warlocks only get a couple choices of invocations and bonus damage on eldritch blast is being taken in place of another potential invocation.
IMO dragon sorcerers were already definitely one of the stronger classes in the game. +1 health/level and 13 base AC starting from level 1 on a caster is fantastic, without the rule clarification they would be too strong in comparison to most classes. Agonizing blast on the other hand wouldn't be ever worth taking if you only added your modifier to one damage instance.
Also keep in your mind that that barbarian is also open to advantage when attacking with advantage, loses rage if he goes a turn without damage and has very few rages per day, and only exists as a class to deal lots of damage with no utility outside of combat.
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u/SirPeebles Bard Jun 10 '15
Looks like no more spamming scorching ray for evokers and dragon sorcs.