Sorcerer 101: Wild Magic – Posts

Class is back in session. This week, the Weave trembles as a magical anomaly walks the face of the Material Plane. This person is a snarl in the Weave of Magic, and every time they pluck upon its strands, it sends strange vibrations throughout the tapestry, like a stone hurled into the ocean. These unexpected waves ripple outward for a time, causing bizarre effects upon the Material Plane, but causing no harm to the vastness of the Weave itself.

We’ve completed our first full rotation of the twelve classes, and exhausted all the content that the Basic Rules have to offer—as far as classes go, that is. This next wave of the Class 101 series will appraise every subclass within the Player’s Handbook and break down each subclass’s strengths, weaknesses, thematic elements, and everything else a player would want to know before playing that subclass. Because of this, you will need to own the Player’s Handbook (or purchase the subclass a la carte on the Marketplace) in order to make full use of this series.

Check out the other guides in the Class 101 series, like the broad overview of the sorcerer class in Sorcerer 101: A Beginner’s Guide to Innate Magic, and Sorcerer 101: Draconic Bloodline. If you’re interested in playing other classes, check out the entire Class 101 series.

Story of the Wild Magic Sorcerer

“You are reckless. Unwilling to learn control—vital control! I cannot teach you.”

“…Now two students are dead because of you. What do you have to say for yourself…?

“It’s a fireball! Run! It’s about to—!”

Voices of people long dead echoed through the sorcerer’s head. He walked alone, clad in simple traveler’s clothes and wearing a black cloak that had long since faded to gray. His hands twitched as memories raced through his head. Two mercenaries traveled behind him at a safe distance; he had asked them to give him a wide berth, even if they were traveling together. For their own safety.

The glint of a blade yanked the sorcerer from his thoughts. A hobgoblin—a deserter from her regiment, the sorcerer guessed, based on the tattered and ill-maintained armor she wore—held the sorcerer at swordpoint. The two mercenaries rushed forward, drawing their spears, but the sorcerer held up a hand and halted them. His gaze never left the hobgoblin’s, and his scowl never shifted beneath his unkempt beard.

“I’m about to charm you,” he said dully. “I’m about to tell you to lower the sword and let us on our way.”

The hobgoblin gave him a quizzical look. “What? Why are you—?” She shook her head and growled. With a voice like a whetstone sharpening steel, she said, “Doesn’t matter. Hand over your gold. Quick. I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

“I don’t either,” the sorcerer said. His voice was placid, and glinting sparks of magic gathered around his fingertips. “This charm won’t hurt you,” he paused dramatically, “But I can’t guarantee that what happens next won’t.”

He didn’t wait for a reply. With a snap of his fingers, a cloud of pink dust engulfed the hobgoblin bandit’s head, and her snarling countenance melted into a calm and friendly smile. “Oh, so sorry,” she said, the lilt of the charm audible in her voice. She tilted the blade so that the flat end pointed towards the sorcerer. “Can you see the inscription on it? My mother was a blacksmith, she—Hey, wait!”

The sorcerer strode past her. His face was calm, but his spellcasting hand twitched. Tiny sparks fell from his fingertips, and the hairs on the back of his arm sizzled like matchsticks. “Control. Only with control,” he muttered as he walked away.

Wild Magic Features

Sorcerers who feel the untamed chaos of magic flowing within their veins are prone to explosive outbursts of power when they draw upon their spellcasting powers. They can also manipulate fate to a small degree as they become attuned to the chaos that suffuses their being. The sorcerer gains four subclass features at 1st, 6th, 14th, and 18th level. You can read all of the Wild Magic features in the Player’s Handbook. In summary, your subclass features allow you to:

• Experience a Wild Magic Surge randomly when casting a spell
• Manipulate fate to gain advantage on a roll, which can lead to a Wild Magic Surge
• Use sorcery points to affect another creature’s roll
• Control the results of your Wild Magic Surges—to a degree
• Deal immense damage with your offensive spells

Benefits of Wild Magic

The Wild Magic sorcerous origin is all about the Wild Magic Surge. The Wild Magic Surge table is a d100 table that takes up a full two-page spread in the Player’s Handbook, and you have a 1-in-20 chance to get to roll on it whenever you cast a spell of 1st-level or higher. These Wild Magic effects are sometimes helpful, sometimes destructive, and sometimes just strange, but they are guaranteed to inject chaos into your campaign. Sometimes the chaos is as limited as turning your skin blue, but it can be as tremendous as causing a fireball to instantly detonate around you with no thought to who might be standing nearby.

While these effects aren’t always a benefit mechanically, they can make playing D&D very fun if you don’t take yourself too seriously and just want to blow where the winds of fate take you. In addition to the all-important Wild Magic Surge, you do gain a few benefits that make you more powerful in combat, such as the ability to gain advantage whenever you want (provided your DM is liberal with forcing you to make Wild Magic Surges when using your Tides of Chaos feature, which you can read more about below), as well as the ability to spend sorcery points to use Bend Luck and affect your allies’ or enemies’ rolls.

Drawbacks of Wild Magic

Unfortunately, the Wild Magic sorcerous origin doesn’t give the sorcerer enough straightforward benefits to make it competitive with other sorcerous origins. At the same time, it doesn’t capitalize enough on the chaos of the Wild Magic Surge. Wild Magic Surge only activating 5% of the time you cast a spell feels like rubbish, especially when you only have three or four spell slots per day at low levels. Bend Luck directly competes with making Wild Magic Surges, since its excessively high sorcery point cost keeps you from turning sorcery points into spell slots (and thus, more chances to surge).

The slight level of control that Controlled Chaos gives you over your surge results is fun, but more often than not slows down the game while granting you an inconsequential choice between turning your skin blue or aging two years. Finally, Spell Bombardment is fun and powerful, but its arrival at 18th level makes it too little, too late.

Most egregious of all, however, is Tides of Chaos. This is a very powerful ability, and it has the potential to negate both main complaints listed above. This feature allows you to gain advantage on an attack roll, saving throw, or ability whenever you wish—truly powerful!—but you can’t use it again until you complete a long rest. However, after you’ve used this feature, your DM can decide to require you to roll a Wild Magic Surge when you cast a spell. You roll the surge and instantly regain the ability to use Tides of Chaos. The main problem with this feature is that DMs tend to forget to force you to surge, and thus “lock down” your usage of this feature.

This feature instantly becomes better if you talk with your DM and ask them to pay close attention to your Tides of Chaos usage and asking them to frequently call upon Wild Magic Surges. Perhaps you can have a token that you pass back and forth to show the Tides of Chaos ebbing and flowing. Alternatively, you can make a house rule that causes your next spell to always proc a Wild Magic Surge and restore your Tides of Chaos feature. This house rule is best used at low levels, when your spell slots are limited, otherwise the number of Wild Magic Surges you make could get wildly out of hand and drag down the game.

Suggested Build

As a sorcerer, you get to choose your Sorcerous Origin at 1st level! While this means that you get to reap the benefits of your subclass from the very beginning, it also means that you don’t have any time to “settle in” to your role and figure out how you want to play your character before making this big decision. Consider your subclass carefully!

You should choose a race that improves your Charisma score and either your Dexterity or Constitution scores. As a sorcerer, Charisma is your most important ability. Your spells are powered by your own confidence, force of personality, and determination—rather than any sort of formal study—which is represented by your Charisma. Dexterity helps give you a vital boost to your Armor Class, since you won’t be wearing much armor. On the other hand, Constitution does double duty by making it easier to hang onto spells that require concentration in addition to improving your hit points. Either choice is useful!

Tieflings make excellent sorcerers, since they boost your Charisma and also give you a few extra spells that you can cast as a racial ability rather than learning through your class. Half-elves are also great, since they come with a big Charisma boost and let you boost two other ability scores of your choice. Lightfoot halflings are both dexterous and charismatic, and their other racial traits will serve you well. If you don’t mind hating the sun, playing as a drow is an attractive proposition, since they also give you a boost to both Charisma and Dexterity, as well as a few extra spells. And, as always, the variant human race is never a bad pick.

Note that the spells you cast innately through your race can’t activate your Wild Magic Surge, since they aren’t sorcerer spells.

As usual, your character’s background is up to you. Sorcerers can come from anywhere, since their magic spontaneously appears as a result of some arcane confluence. Unlike the Draconic Bloodline sorcerer, your magic powers aren’t necessarily related to your genealogy, though you may have another famous wild mage in your family tree. As such, any background suits you, and can make an equally interesting story. Consider how your wild magic improved or ruined your pre-adventuring life, and possibly set you on the path towards becoming a traveling adventurer.

Choose EQUIPMENT instead of GOLD at the end of character creation. Since you’ll probably be choosing at least one ranged damage-dealing cantrip, you can safely forgo choosing a light crossbow in favor of a simple weapon, like a quarterstaff or a dagger. Whether you choose an arcane focus or a component pouch is purely a flavor choice (do you like using a wand or a magical crystal to focus your arcane power into spells, or do you want to use eye of newt and toe of frog to make magic happen?). If you think you’ll be in dungeons a lot, take a dungeoneer’s pack. Otherwise, go explorer. Finally, you get two extra daggers. Nice!

Spells

Choosing spells is a big deal for any caster, but you need to be particularly choosey. Sorcerers don’t learn many spells over the course of their career, so you’ll want to get pretty familiar with your spells. You’ll be using them for a long time. Unless, of course, you take full advantage of spell swapping—that is, trading an old spell out for a new one when you gain a level.

You get four whole cantrips at 1st level, so you still have a handful to choose from! These are all the sorcerer cantrips from the Player’s Handbook that you can choose from. You should choose at least one long-range damage cantrip, one close-range damage cantrip, and two others of your choice that you can use for utility.

With your cantrips chosen, you now get to select two 1st-level spells that you know. You’ll learn one new spell every level until 10th level, and then one new spell every other level after that until 17th—at which point you’ll stop learning spells entirely. Choose wisely! You’ll want one spell marked OFFENSE, and one spell marked either DEFENSE or SOCIAL, depending on how you want to play your character. 

Note that this list only includes some spells from the Player’s Handbook, so if you want to choose more unusual spells, or have other sources like Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, you’ll have to do a little self-directed research. This list is just here to get you started if this is your first time playing a Wild Magic sorcerer.

Feats

At 4th level, you get to gain either an Ability Score Increase or a feat. Choosing an Ability Score Increase lets you increase one ability score by +2 (such as increasing your Charisma score from 16 to 18) or increase two ability scores by +1 (like increasing your Charisma from 15 to 16 and your Dexterity score from 13 to 14). Increasing your ability scores makes you better at a wide variety of things; for instance, increasing your Charisma score makes it easier to hit with your spell attacks and also make it harder for enemies to resist your spells that require saving throws.

Feats, on the other hand, give you a special ability that could be more helpful in a specific circumstance, as opposed to the broad improvement that an Ability Score Increase could give you. Dexterity is your most important ability score, since it governs your ability to hit with attacks. Once you’ve increased your Charisma score to 20 (its maximum value), or even just to 18 (a pretty good value), you may want to choose a feat. You can choose any feat you want to support your character concept, but there are some feats that may be more useful to your character than others.

Inspiring Leader. Your already-high Charisma makes you an excellent candidate to be the social face of your party. As your character becomes more confident in their own abilities, having them become a leader that inspires your allies to great deeds is an excellent story beat, with some good mechanics attached.

Ritual Caster. Unlike many other spellcasters, sorcerers can’t cast spells as rituals. They feel their spells intuitively, so the complexities of rituals are beyond them. This feat, however, lets you invest in a spellbook for ritual spells—perhaps as the result of wizards trying to tutor you in an attempt to control your wild magic. This precludes the need to spend your precious spell slots (and precious spells known) on ritual staples like detect magic and find familiar.

Spell Sniper. You want to be far away from combat—like, far away. You don’t have much in the way of defenses, so being able to snipe enemies from afar is an attractive option. Getting to choose a powerful off-class cantrip like eldritch blast is a nice side benefit.

If you want more advice for building a sorcerer, check out Sorcerer 101. Have you ever played a Wild Magic sorcerer? What advice would you give to players that want to play this subclass?

James Haeck is the lead writer for D&D Beyond, the co-author of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist, Baldur’s Gate: Descent into Avernus, and the Critical Role Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount, a member of the Guild Adepts, and a freelance writer for Wizards of the Coast, the D&D Adventurers League, and other RPG companies. He lives in Seattle, Washington with his fiancée Hannah and their animal companions Mei and Marzipan. You can find him wasting time on Twitter at @jamesjhaeck.