D&D SORCERER RANKING 

I want to see a pair of half-sibling sorcerers. One's a dragonborn with a divine soul and one's an Aasimar with a draconic bloodline

4:20 Spell casting 9:32 Draconic 15:09 Wild magic 21:23 Divine soul 25:32 Shadow magic 29:43 Storm 33:51 Rating

NPC: "how did you get your magic?" low Int & lower Wis Shadow Sorcerer: "once I turned left at a bend of the road & got lost in the Shadowfell" NPC: "but how did you get to the Shadowfell???" Sorcerer: "idk, it just happened"

"I always let my Wild Magic Sorcerer players roll on the Wild Magic Surge table after casting a spell of 1st level or higher." A DM after my own heart!

Wild Magic Sorcerer: I woke up one day as a potted plant. Then the town's crazy person told me the magic leylines farted in my general direction.

When it comes to storm sorcery, there was an unearthed arcana that had a meta magic possibility that let you spend sorcery points to alter the elemental damage type of the spells you’re casting. Then you actually can cast thunderball or lightning ball

This Sunday, i will enter my first Campain ever with Qin Scuri, my Level 1 Shadow-Sorcerer-Changeling! How great to see i made a good choice with this. I only really chose the Shadow-Sorcerer because of the Flaws Quirks he can have, and i found them so fitting for a Changeling. 1 You are always icy cold to the touch. 2 When you are asleep, you don’t appear to breathe (though you must still breathe to survive). 3 You barely bleed, even when badly injured. 4 Your heart beats once per minute. This event sometimes surprises you. 5 You have trouble remembering that living creatures and corpses should be treated differently. 6 You blinked. Once. Last week. Especially that last one. These are just perfect for a Changeling. "Everything looks normal, but the longer you observe, you notice Vermund's Eyes never blink. When Prosperia janked her Comrade back to savety, the touch was colder than ice. And when Mule stumbled into your Room at Night that the Tavern-Owner was sleeping and she wasn't able to wake him up, you knew. No matter how precise the Imitation, how perfect the Mimic, the movement of the Feet, this is no ordinary Creature. Even among the Faceless Freaks, Qin Scuri is just that bit more frightening."

The storm sorcerer also lifts 10ft into the air when casting lightning/thunder spells. This action doess not provoke opportunity attacks.

I love the roleplay potential with Divine Soul, especially from Favored by the Gods. >PC fails a saving throw >PC looks up at the heavens and yells out “Really?! Come on man!” >the gods sigh. 2d4 is added to your roll, effectively fudging the outcome to a success.

I remember when my Divine Soul Sorcerer was hit was a really bad Disintegrate spell where half his face was disintegrated and then having that badass moment of using Unearthly Recovery and immediately undoing all that damage!

My first ever character in D&D was a Draconic Bloodline Sorcerer, and to this day he is my all time favorite character. He had so many opportunities to role-play, and the class led wonderfully into the story beats. I don't care if the class is mechanically flawed, I can't help but love all the narrative opportunities it gives you.

8:24 "nor can you heal like a cleric..." Divine Soul Sorcerer: "Allow me to introduce myself."

I had a friend guest-star on my ongoing 5e game, and he made "the Great Bruceini", a washed-up stage magician (rabbit out of the hat, and all that) who was totally unaware of his own power, and was hilariously delusional. He used a Wild Magic sorcerer, and the way I had him roll on the wild magic table was that he had to beat a Performance check of 10 + spell level. (since he was only there for one game, and I wanted it to come up more than once) It was perfect and hilarious.

Divine Soul Sorcerer is just insanely good, especially if you min/max with 2 levels of Warlock, Paladin, or honestly almost anything front loaded.

Actually I make some modifications to the draconic sorcerers and just by some minor changes everything is better The initial stays mostly the same The resistance to the type of damage is passive not requiring sorcery points Wings stay the same The draconic presence is passive but with a lower DC What changes is that you get draconic presence at the same level as your wings At 18 level you get a breath attack expending 6 sorcery points and making the same damage as an adult chromatic dragon (obviously of your line) I think by just giving the player that option (you can use it once per Long rest) it makes this sub-class miles better

All that I've learnt is that wild magic is cooler than I thought

Something a lot of people miss is how good many Cleric spells are with metamagic. Twinned Spell is *fantastic* on spells like Healing Word and Guiding Bolt.

Wild magic is the only one that matters, and to anyone who disagrees, I will personally *rolls wild magic table*...turn into a potted plant.

I was running my players through Lance Rock the other night where a mighty level 3 spellcasting necromancer named the Lord of Lance Rock awaited them. He rolled highest initiative and then used 6 of 7 charges on his wand of magic missile on a already heavily wounded party and things were looking like a flee or die situation... Then my mountain dwarf wild magic sorcerer who survived with 1 hp, rolled a freaking 1 on his wild surge table after casting a spell and managed to land a 9... a 9 is like a 5th level magic missile. Needless to say the Lord of Lance Rock became the Lord of Lance Cooked after that encounter and I’ll never disrespect this subtype again regardless of what players say xD

I feel like Divine Souls make for good priest and priestess characters. I love the cleric class but as a whole it’s built so well for combat that it ends up feeling more like a paladin than the support characters you see in a lot of fantasy stories.

Sorcerer is legitimately my favorite class. You may not get to know as many spells, but at the end of the day you only have so many spell slots anyway. Plus you get WAY more cantrips than any other class to help compensate. Been playing a Draconic Half Elf Sorcerer in a campaign for awhile now and have a ton of fun with her.

I'm sad you didn't cover the Sorcerer spell list, as I find it to be the class's biggest drawback. For instance, consider a Shadow Sorcerer - what spells do you pick? It's VERY hard to stay on theme, as great options like Evard's Black Tentacles aren't available to you. You're just another Fireball flinging blaster that has weird shadowy tricks that don't really match your spell options.

Therapy for a wild sorcerer "Now show us on this doll where the bad fey touched you"

this is why I as a DM changed the rules of a sorcerer, where you get your font of restoration at tenth level and a true form at 20th level.

Spell bombardment was so close to being amazing if they dropped the once per turn. By 18th level and the nature of the subclass you deserve to have your 9th level wild magic bolt have the 1812 overture play when you cast it if you get lucky enough to roll max on more than one die more than once. Just make it once per long rest; I'd say making a spell have no upper limit on the damage it can do is worth a high level feature especially one that depends on your faith in RNJesus.

Tempest cleric and storm sorcerer have very good synergy with each other. Though you won't get any capstone abilities, a well placed lightning bolt cast with a high level spell slot and amped with the tempest cleric's Destructive Wrath channel divinity option can be absolutely devastating.

"STRIKE THERE!!! AT THE BUTTON OF SUBSCRIPTION!!!" LMAO. I almost fell out of my chair after hearing that. I was wondering where that bit was going to be honest I probably should have guessed that's what it was. XD

The reason Xanathar's Guide reprinted stuff was for the Adventurers League and their "Player's Handbook + 1" Rule

Put 2 levels of Tempest Domain cleric on that Storm Sorcerer and get maximized damage lightning spells.

Jafar, the perfect incarnation of the plotting evil sorcerer. not sure why I didn't go this rout in my first campaign since the DM wanted us all to be noble lord rulers of a small kingdom. Perfect opportunity for some magic fuckery.

Sorcerer are my favorite class in 5e, tbh. I just love the idea.

I've seen DMs add +1 to the wild table chance each time it fails. Ie you will a 2-20 the first time, next time a surge happens on a 1 or 2, time after that, 1, 2 or 3 and s on.

Honestly, it makes me so happy to see all the mtg artwork. Keep it going, love these videos

I would like a storm sorcerer so much more if it wasn't in three separate books

Thanks Esper!

YES!!! My favorite class by far.

Ah, the benefits of homebrews and chill af DMs. We have a group that have been playing various editions of D&D, including some 3rd party alternatives for 3.whatever. We've totally kit-bashed the heck outta our play style and rules at our table. Love the content Esper. Good gaming, my dude.

In 3.5 the Sorcerer didnt have a fixed spell list rule. But in that edition gms usually allow a preparation time to swap out spells if need be like clerics.

Here's a fun little idea for Spell bombardment. Whenever you cast a spell, your DM can choose for you to roll a d20. Before doing so, call out a number. If you roll the number that you called out, then you cast the same spell or a different spell of equal level, for free. Now, this sounds a bit more like a bombardment of spells. Just picture this working when you cast Fireball or something, and boom! A second Fireball for free.

I created a more narrative friendly combat system you might want to try. Instead of a grit, I use abstract ~30ft areas with split into melee and range. (Basically a 6 inch card with artwork printed on it. For example a mid brawl tavern) You enter an area in „ranged“ and can engage an enemy into melee by matching their speed. this way you have absolute freedom to have the character narratively move, be pushed aside, jump over tables, while keeping track of all the thing important for the rules. Distances, speed and disengaging, opportunity attacks become a bit muddled. And area effects often hit way more often. But even this disadvantages often turn out even better than before. also i came up with using conditions instead of extra damage for double damage for crits. Depending on damage type. Cold damage petrifies you in ice, fire puts you on fire, radiant blinds and so on.

Very cool! Esper, your ranking videos are my favorites.

For wild magic I too let them always roll if they're using a spell slot. I also let the group choose whether to use my optional rule at creation- you roll surge, then subtract the spell level from the roll as a modifier. 1 or lower and you surge. You're unlikely to mess up a detection spell you've had most of your life, you're much more likely to when you're gathering enough energy to stop time. The way I see it, if you're playing a wild magic sorcerer it's to have some chaotic fun. I also made a full table with 100 options instead of 50. many of which being more situational or neutral things like animal ears or 'a baby creature appears, thinking you are its parent.' My favorite is 'the strongest monster within 2 miles knows of you, and you of it.' Cut to a day later, the party benefactor contacts the rouge in a dream to ask WHY they suddenly left Waterdeep hours before the thieves guilds started a city wide bloodbath invasion trying to find them. She had no idea other than 'The sorcerer went crazy yesterday and made us leave, blabbering something about seeing an eyeball monster?"

Currently in a game as a wild magic sorcerer. So far I have teleported randomly into a pile of wolves and made it so I can only shout for an hour. Both were fun little things (wolves downed me lvl2) and the shouting made me upset a liked NPC that I had to apologize for later. Fun stuff.

Some of the most entertaining DnD videos on RU-vid, keep it up!

We're playing with a Wild Magic sorcerer and we do it differently than described. We have her role on the chart every time she uses her spells. I modified the more severe ones to be more mild, but she loves it. And every time she levels up and she gains more control of her newly acquired powers and I role a percentile die to see if the player needs to role on the list. The player finds it really fun and loves role playing it since it's mostly silly things that suit the character, like changing her skin to blue or growing antlers and shedding them away after 24 hours.

I’m really glad that tier lists didn’t get as overdone and overexposed as countdowns.

My group has a rule with the wild magic thing; you want to gain advantage on the roll? Sure, go for it, heck, take 10; but after EACH one, you roll on the Wild magic chart the turn after you used the tides of chaos I absolutely LOVE the chaos I cause as a wild magic sorcerer; color changing skin, a angry dwarven sheep, killing an ancient gold dragon as a jar BY COMPLETE ACCIDENT

Imagine playing a shadow sorcerer and being the happy-go-lucky, chipper kinda guy. Like you greet the day with a genuine smile and are super friendly, only to blast your does with darkness and then release a Hellhound.

that was real cool. thanks so much for making this video. I really enjoyed watching it!

Here’s some inspiration for you. All classes should have their capstone abilities moved to lvl 20. What abilities? A legendary action. A single action tailored to the class, useable once per long rest or once per day. i.e. the fighter can choose to take 0 damage from any source for 1 round (I could debate 1 minute) or do a ridiculous amount of damage per attack. I am open to debate on this. A wiz kid could cast a spell higher than lvl 9 etc. use your imagination on the different classes but if you actually reach epic levels of play then you should be able to , briefly, do something truly epic.

Casting spells as a bonus action is insane, it makes melee sorc a real thing. Think of this, Shadow blade, green flame blade, quicken spell and dragon origins bonus to fire damage. At level 6 you'd do 3d8+ dex with shadow blade (upcast) with +1d8+spell mod green flame blade and dragon origin fire damage. And an additional 1d8+spell mod + spell mod again for fire to an additional target within 5ft. Thats a total of 5d8+dex+(3x spell mod) and you can do that twice with quicken spell.

I had a DM that lets me roll for Wild Magic every spellcast. It made every fight so much fun, like causing a poison cloud beside the dex based character, summoning a Unicorn in the middle of an almost tpk, to glowing like the sun in the middle of an ambush, to aging up and down multiple times in an hour, or seeing the dex based character dance around when he uses Dimension Door because i can see through the Ethereal Plane.

It looks like there needs to be an official campaign for 20th lvl characters.

That quote at the beginning, words to live by.

The new varient rules have a meta-magic option to change the element damage of a spell. A storm sorceror could change a fire-ball into a lightning or thunderball to trigger it's class features.

For the wild magic sorcerer's 18th level ability it would have been cooler if it was just another wild magic table that's even more powerful and crazy that activates if you roll a 20 on the die instead of a 1, maybe it could be more skewed towards good effects too.

This certainly made me rethink the class, outside o it's lack luster spell choices! makes me feel far less apprehensive about playing a divine sorc in an upcoming game!

As a DM I increase the chances of wild magic surge as the character gains levels (capping out at 4 at lvl 9) or comes into contact with even more raw magic that fuels their power even further, or experiences that would feasibly increase their wild magic, such as extreme emotional trauma or something thematic relating to the character. (capping out at 10) this is all optional for my players, obviously.

Really awesome video, so much information. I guess we'll never see a better version of the draconic bloodline sorecer

font of magic and metamagic is s tier, it makes a sorcerer what a sorcerer is

Dude I completely agree with your 20th level sorcerer ability

Some common house rules/buffs to the base Sorc are bonus spells (like Domain spells) 2 per level at 1,3,5,7,9 and "Sorcerous recovery" regain half your level (rounding up) of sorcery points on a short rest, usable once per long rest.

I know you're just postponing the Cleric, as no one wants to do 11 archetypes, but it'd be so cool to see that one next!

18th level wild sorc replacement: Forced Chaos: Whenever you cast a sorcerer spell of first level or higher, you may spend 3 sorcery points to roll three times on the wild surge table, and choose one of the resultant rolls. You may expend these sorcery points more than once per spell, but may only choose one result. Additionally, whenever the DM has you roll a d20 to check for a wild surge, you regain 1 sorcery point when you roll a 20.

I forgot how much I love your content

I'd love a Sorcerer subclass that blends the Wizard akin to how Divine Soul blends the Cleric. Why wouldn't someone born with magic powers NOT try to study it? The DS makes sorcerers better healers, like Clerics, so this one makes sorcerers more versatile like wizards. Give us (spitballing ideas): - *Meta Magic - Mirrored Spell:* spend sorcery points equal to half the level of a wizard/sorcerer spells we see getting used. Use that same spell next turn. Imagine mirroring Geas mixed with Heightened Spell. Or nuking the field with Fireball and Empowered/Quickened. The power and versatility is there, but are you prepared to spend the points on it? > Maybe add an Arcana Check on the end of this wherein a Success means you permanently learn what you mirrored. - *a spellbook for Wizard spells up to level 3* - don't count against spells known (past level 3 would be insane) - *Arcane Recovery* using the INT modifier instead of half of wizard level - *Capstone ability:* Meta magic costs are reduced by half your INT modifier (rounded up but must still cost minimum of 1).

Fun fact: Sorcerer is an excellent class for a one-level dip on your Bard! Bards get a terrible capstone feature and having some extra Sorcerer cantrips, first level spells, and class features are well worth the investment!

The sorcerer subclasses boil down to 1/32 dragon, Scarlet Witch, Storm, Jesus, Nightshade, Wilbur Whateley, and Booster Gold.

Ehh. See, I like Wild Magic, my problem is that it's not nearly chaotic enough. Okay, so, every time you cast a leveled spell, there's a 5% chance something might happen. Meaning you can easily clean the racks and not have any chaos at all - this is as rare as a crit. except you have fewer swings. When you finally do get a little chaos, there's still a chance nothing in particular will happen. Adding up all the "immune to getting drunk", "grow a beard of feathers" and "gain or lose a negligible amount of age" sort of results, there's about a 20% chance that even when you crit, nothing of any real consequence will happen.

I have a player who is playing a Dragonborn Dragon Sorcerer. His background is that he was human, but the two split aspects of a ancient dragon God chose him as its champion to reunite them. One aspect is that of a silver dragon, and the other is that of a red dragon. They gave him the body of a silver Dragonborn infused with the magical power of a red dragon sorcerer.

I just rolled up a Divine sorcerer. Will eventually multiclass with hexblade

I so like to see the storm sorcerer and the sorcerer in general being given the love it deserves

Art @25:09 is awesome

I think the current capstone should be moved to about level 11 and a real capstone should be added for each bloodline. For example Wildmagic could let you make someone else roll on the table when they cast a spell in your line of sight for a reaction, Draconic could give you a full dragonbreath once a long rest, and Shadow could temporarily animate other living creatures shadows into creatures under your controle for sorcery points equal to thier CR.

Both before and after my group switched to Pathfinder 1E (cause as much as I love 5e, I learned it is FAAAAAR superior) we took the wild magic thing and turned it into a thing that happens to EVERYONE. If you cast a spell in any of our games you roll a d100, and if you roll low enough (depends on the spell level) you a roll on a table of TEN THOUSAND wild magic effects. No I did not stutter. I don't remember were we found it but to this day 4 years later we have yet to roll everything on that table. It's effects have ranged from anyone who wields an axe becomes invulnerable for 4 rounds, to a dozen cows appear and try to kill you, to 20d20 skeletons show up and begin to build a pyramind, and these are all things we have rolled within the last three sessions of our current campaign alone. Surges have always been a delight, so much so it has become a stable of our setting for all spellcasters, and I can confidently say me and my group can't think of a game without them.

When all the classes are done I'd love to see a comparison of all subclasses in the game, and to compare the average of each class' subclasses against each other. Great video.

I really enjoy the way you did the ranking on this video!

We had a wild magic sorcerer and our DM would make him roll on the table every chance he could. He caused the wizard to start flying, he flowed blindingly bright, he turned a zombie into butterflies, and he shrank himself into a small size creature for a week

Well done! Thanks for sharing.

At 2:55, I would like to point out that that is a half-Elf Wizard (Abjuration I think)/Geometer, and not a Sorcerer. But still a great video.

Tieflings also gain the ability to polymorph wings at 3rd level, if I am not mistaken.

Im playing a wild magic sorcerer. Recently had a fight against a dragon and my wild magic triggered twice in combat. Extra attack (got permission from DM to cast another lvled spell) then hit wild magic again, this healed me 5hp at start of every turn. I was barely harmed at the end of the fight, but 2 of my party members were lying rolling death saves. In this case Wild Magic Surge felt S tier, but it could also had transformed my character into a potted plant or done something else thats bad

I love the wild magic chart. I have a player who played a draconic bloodline sorcerer who was insane. We talked it out and I occasionally have him roll on the wild magic chart.

I'm so hyped for your Bard analysis!

This is the only class where i would ever play a human, pretty much. I think of playing several sorcerer builds though. Wild magic, divine soul and dragon particularly tempt me. If they ever put them on baldur's gate that'd be awesome. 😋

Well I'm proud of myself. My first DnD character ever and I pick shadow sorcerer despite not knowing much about mechanics yet. It honestly just fit the character I had in mind and seemed like it had some really cool features. She's awesome. She died recently in my last session. Wasn't due to lack of skill. There is an evil insta kill sentient lightsaber thing. She decided to be good and not kill her friend with the lightsaber which strayed from her motives as a chaotic neutral character who sought to become ultra powerful and seek vengeance on the one who took everything from her. She chose to seek to destroy or purify the lightsaber and ignore it's evil will. So it killed her. But then I just surprised the hell out if my party by bringing her back through part time possession of a new character I created. That's how we ended the last session. Edit: Forgot to mention that the character she possesses is a barbarian of the wild soul. My ghost shadow sorcerer is that barbarians wild soul and they are now fused. Both would likely die without the other because of reasons. Yes our campaign went a bit derailed from the traditopnal campaign we were originally headed on but my DM loves it and has let us all become a little overpowered and nuts and it's just a great story.

I would´t give Font of Magic a Legendary Tier, mostly for the amount of Sorcery Points at early levels, it´s really hard to do anything with that but one or two affected spells I wouldn´t have it so they replenish on a short rest, because you can spam spell slots that way, however, you could have so that the amount of Sorcery Points is equal to your Sorcerer Level + Charisma Modifier. Let´s say you have a +5 modifier, at 20th level, you would have 25 Sorcery Points instead of 20. It´s good, but it doesn´t change a lot. Now, let´s say you have a +3 modifier at 4th level, that´s 7 Sorcery Points instead of 4. That´s better, way better, and it would really help early level sorcerer

My first character was an LG drow Draconic sorcerer who fled the Underdark long ago and used her magical abilities to help her as a detective in Waterdeep

Wizards: No, you can’t use spells without any arcane knowledge or higher being bestowing it upon you! Sorcerer: Ha Ha, fireball go boom.

Watching this again makes me miss my draconic sorcerer. She was fun..

My friends and I took the Wild Magic Surge and tweaked it a bit You still roll a d20 but it's a Charisma Savings throw now If you succeed on the the DC, no Surge happens, fail and shit happens The DC starts at 10 and increases by 5 with every success and resets back to 10 on a failure

How come getting touched by a demon or Eldritch horror tends to give you powers but being touched by a priest just gives you a traumatic childhood?

For 18th lvl wild magic, the ability could instead cause you to do max damage X 2 for the spell being cast (would have to come up with a new trigger for the ability though). Or if the first is too strong, then just max damage for all damage dice. That would be far more substantial and much more in line with what a near max level sorcerer should be capable of dishing out. 20th level clerics get automatic success on castings of divine intervention - and yet near 20th lvl wild magic sorcerers just get to roll an additional damage die on a spell attack. Yes, it is every turn and so over an extended combat encounter the current ability could result in a moderate amount of additional damage. But again, not enough to correspond with being 18th level.

I personally hate the scarcity of the wild magic surge, when I played one, I asked my dm to make it to where if I roll a five or below, or if you can get them to just let you use the table whenever you cast a spell.

Honestly, wild magic always sounds boring and a pain for you and your DM. But i really recommend giving it a try! It’s so fun and always spices up a session!

About of get two draconic origins because rase and class, the sage advise of dungeons and dragons said that was made in that way

If Hound of Ill Omen sounds underwhelming because of how badly its HP scales at high levels, consider this: it costs 3 sorcery points, it's a bonus action, and there's nothing that stops you from plopping it right next to an enemy. You know what else costs 3 sorcery points? Heightened Fucking Spell. Which gives your target disadvantage on its first save against that spell. Something Hound of Ill Omen also does. So if you're using your doggo correctly, you're plopping it right by the target (preferably so that it and your main melee fighter have the target in a pincer hold), and then let loose with your meanest single-target spell. Unless you're casting from over 120 feet away for some reason, or need your bonus action really badly on every turn (you probably don't), this is already just as good as Heightened Spell, saving a tasty metamagic slot for something else. And then, on its turn, your enemy (unless it has AoE up the wazoo) has to decide whether to kill the enemies it actually wants to kill, or waste at least one, likely more attacks on the annoying yapping pup that keeps nibbling at its buttocks and making your spells much deadlier. Either way, you win. And by the time your enemies can easily kill the hound, you have enough sorcery points and spell points to burn to throw the damn things around like candy.

I love sorcerers. I like many of the origins. and even made some myself. I played sorcerers a lot since 3.5 came out and like 5th ed Sorcerers. I looked at the UA psionic tradition for wizard and reworked it to be a psionic origin where the Sorcerer Can use intelligence instead.

I dont get why so many people say, bards get their magic just somehow. 1) They go to a magic bard collage, as stated in their subclasses, similar to the wizard. 2) Flavor wise, the weave should be able to be manipulated by sound waves from song, instruments or the traditional verbal component. Anyway, nice video

Deep gnomes (Svirfneblin) from the SCAG also have 120 ft darkvision. Plus they lack the light sensitivity of the drow.