I think Diablo 1 is much more punishing than Diablo 2. I don’t think you can get away with not chugging potions. The sorceror is even worse than the warrior because he’s completely dependent on mana. So until you get the mana shield spell you’ll need to have both mana and healing potions ready on him.

The best you can do is try to get as high resistance and armour values as you can so you don’t take as much damage when you get hit.

For example, if you find a high lightning res ring that you don’t have much use for now you might want to keep it and put it on when on a later level has enemies dealing lightning damage. Stuff like that.