On solid advice that I should have known myself, I downgraded my armor (and added the Havel ring equivalent) to get to medium-roll, then went back to Allant and got him on the first try. I weirdly felt like I was taking less damage even from the hits I did eat. I guess it's true, Fashion Souls is all that matters, at least when it comes to picking apart few-point gains to min-max. Once I got in the rhythm it was pretty straightforward but I came close to getting squished a couple times. Good fight, I see how it established the mold for the standard future souls boss template.
Not sure what to try for the NG+ run I got unceremoniously dumped into (Talk about mean, making you fight through a stage and a boss holding all of your endgame soul rewards! I mean, it was easy enough, I did die once when I derped off the side of a fall but that's it, but talk about stressful. All just to get back the three levels I lost to Allant in the first place!
Speaking of Fashion Souls, I have the monk's headwrap from another successful "invasion" for the Monk where the player died well before they ever entered the room, and I'm torn. It's got the magical sharpness feature - more damage, less defense - and the headpiece I'm wearing otherwise is just the silver circlet for more max MP. So I should totally be wearing it, but... Jesus. It's huge and bulky and...ugh. It's not even like, fun-ugly, it's just ugly.
The Kris blade I realized doesn't have that much of an effect at its unleveled state, so I don't have to worry about switching off my crescent falchion until I find like, 2 or 3 colorless demon souls, wherever I'm supposed to get those.
Sorcerer is fun in this game because MP building is a thing - you can increase your max, you can spec for mana regen (I appreciate the same about health regen too, I love that it's a thing you can reliably do. It's technically there in the intervening games, but even in Elden Ring where there are a lot of sources of MP regen, only a few stack, but at least you can do it) and you have the classic offense-for-defense tradeoff (also vice-versa, which is an option that disappeared later on, sadly).
That said, I'm feeling the need for more spells. I did just get poison cloud and I'm rocking soul ray now, which is pretty sweet, but I'm wondering how much other variety there'll be. If there isn't much, I'll likely get distracted and move on to replaying DS1 again before finishing the magic run.