Imbued with innate magic, learn how to play and optimise a sorcerer in D&D 2024.
Gifted (or possibly cursed) with innate magical powers, sorcerers are some of the most powerful magic-wielders around. They are able to enhance their spells with metamagic and innate sorcery allowing them to strike additional targets, increase damage, turn misses into hits and reduce an enemy’s capacity to resist their spells. This arguably makes them the most destructive spellcaster in the game.
Sorcerers do not develop their magical skills through education (like wizards and bards), but from innate sources. This may be genetic, but might also be from some magical event in their past. These sources of innate magic are made manifest in the sorcerer’s subclass which provides them with additional powers.
Balancing spells, metamagic and your general lack of durability are the biggest challenges for a sorcerer. My guide below will not only help you manage all of this with tactics and optimal builds, but will also take you through the changes that have come into play for the sorcerer in D&D 2024.
At a glance
Choose a sorcerer if you want…
- To play a full spellcaster
- The most powerful spells around
- Want to focus on face skills
A sorcerer might not be for you if…
- You don’t want to cast spells
- You want to be fairly durable
- You really don’t want to be the party face
What’s changing for sorcerers in D&D 2024?
Largely, sorcerers work in a similar way in D&D 2024, continuing to empower their spells with metamagic. However, we do see some nice quality of life improvements that allow players to restore sorcery points more easily, grant additional buffs to spells and let you use multiple metamagic options on the same spell.
The main changes include:
- Spellcasting – Get more spells known and more opportunities to change spells.
- Innate sorcery – A new level 1 feature that lets you enhance all your spells temporarily.
- Meta magic – Occurs at level 2 now instead of level 3. You also get more metamagic options available as you hit higher levels and the metamagic options have had some improvements which you can read in my sorcerer changes guide.
- Sorcerous restoration – You can sometimes restore sorcery points on a short rest now.
- 2 metamagic options at a time – At level 7, you can start combining metamagic options allowing you to use 2 at a time.
- Arcane apotheosis – At level 20, you can now use one metamagic option once every turn without expending sorcery points.
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Tactics
Sorcerers are obviously big on casting spells and trying to do the most damage as possible. They also make great disruptors, causing problems like conditions on enemies to make the fight easier on your allies.
I’d suggest using the tactics below when payin a sorcerer:
- Enhanced spells – There’s a lot you can do to enhance your spells with a sorcerer. For example, if you want to be able to blast nasty AoE spells among your martials, you can use something like careful spell to protect your allies. If you want to target additional enemies with a spell, you can use twinned spell (my personal favourite). Once you hit level 7, you could try combining this with heightened spell to make enemies less likely to resist your spell. Want to cast fireball, but taking a trip down to the Nine Hells? Why not grab transmuted spell so you can turn that fire damage into thunder damage. There are loads of options to enhance your spells here. You can read my guide to metamagic to learn more about this potent ability.
- Picking the right spells – Of course, getting the most out of a sorcerer means making sure you have the right spells chosen. In particular with a sorcerer, you’ll want to consider how your spells interact with each other and your metamagic options making these choices particularly challenging. To help you choose, I’ve also written a guide to the best sorcerer spells.
- Stay out of danger – Sorcerers aren’t blessed with much in the way of defensive or melee capabilities. Staying out of danger is best for them. Things like flight, teleportation and just good positioning can all come into play when it comes to surviving for a sorcerer. You might also want to consider grabbing the mage armor spell or the lightly armoured feat to boost your AC by 3-4 points.
- Innate sorcery for tricky encounters – You don’t have a lot of innate sorcery to use, so make sure it’s retained for tricky encounters when you’ll really need to make those spells hit.
- Face skills – Sorcerers aren’t big on skills, but they are big on charisma and have a few face skills to pick from at level 1 meaning they can make solid party faces if you’re lacking a bard.
How to optimise a sorcerer
Below are my recommendations for creating an optimised sorcerer.
Ability scores
Recommended options
- Charisma: Your most important ability score. You’ll need this for casting spells. It also enhances some of your metamagic options and can be used for face skills too.
- Dexterity: You’re light on AC with no armor options available as standard so a decent dexterity is handy for ensuring you can’t be tickled to death by a pixie. Even if you go the mage armor route, this is a good option.
- Constitution: With the lowest hit dice in the game, you’ll need all the hit points you can grab. Constitution will help here. It’ll also help when you need to maintain concentration on spells.
Options to avoid
- Strength: Dump, you’ve got no use for strength.
- Wisdom: Only useful for some skills and saving throws, otherwise, not worth investing in.
- Intelligence: You don’t need intelligence, you cast spells with your social magnetism!
| Ability score | Point Buy | Standard Array |
|---|---|---|
| Strength | 8 | 8 |
| Dexterity | 15 | 14 |
| Constitution | 15 | 13 |
| Intelligence | 8 | 10 |
| Wisdom | 8 | 12 |
| Charisma | 15 | 15 |
Skills
Recommended options
- Deception: Important face skill as adventurers inevitably get into sticky situations they need to lie about.
- Insight: Your intelligence may not be high, but you will likely be the one doing a lot of the talking so you may want to invest in this.
- Intimidation: Less important than your other face skills, but still a decent option.
- Persuasion: Your most important face skill.
Options to avoid
- Arcana: Not a bad option, but you won’t be investing in intelligence. Only go for this if you have another party face and no one else to take this in the party.
- Religion: Also a decent option, but not as important as face skills and you don’t have the ability scores to support this so only take if you’re the only option for religion proficiency.
Species/race
As a dedicated spellcasting class, I’d focus on the following traits:
- Resilience: This could come in the form of more hit points, but also in being more evasive like through flight or teleportation.
- Damage dealing: Often, you’ll be tasked with dealing big damage with enhanced spells. Anything that can aid this will be handy.
- Innate spellcasting: Unlike wizards, sorcerers aren’t blessed with loads of spells known (even if this has increased in D&D 2024). Innate spellcasting will give you more spells you can use and some free uses too so worth grabbing.
Recommended options
- Aasimar (2024): Damage resistances as well as some light healing for recovering allies are solid. But you’re mainly here for temporary flight which will keep you a lot safer in nasty battles.
- Elf (2024): An extra skill and darkvision are both helpful. You’re mainly here for the innate spellcasting though. High Elf is a good option for misty step and an extra cantrip (toll the dead is a great choice you don’t get naturally). Drow is good for buffs and debuffs with the likes of faerie fire and darkness. I’d tend to avoid the Wood Elf though. They’re more geared towards stealth.
- Gnome (2024): Extra magic resilience is great as you’ll undoubtedly be the target of some spells. Minor illusion and speak with animals are better options than the Rock Gnome has, especially as a charisma-focused character (you may need to get persuasive with some beasts).
- Human (2024): If you need to boost your skill proficiencies to become even more of a party face, Human’s a good option. The consistent supply of heroic inspiration is useful too. However, the extra origin feat is probably the trait you want most, especially if you want to grab something like the tough origin feat, which is normally only available with backgrounds that don’t work for the sorcerer.
- Tiefling (2024): 4 extra spells known is mainly what you’re after here. I’d favour the infernal legacy.
Backgrounds
Backgrounds are much more important now with D&D 2024 with ability score increases, origin feats and skills all now linked to your background.
For a sorcerer, I’d prioritise charisma and then one of dexterity or constitution with the below being your best options:
| Name | Ability scores | Origin feat | Skill proficiencies | Tool proficiency |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Charlatan | Dexterity, constitution, charisma | Skilled | Deception, sleight of hand | Forgery kit |
| Entertainer | Strength, dexterity, charisma | Musician | Acrobatics, performance | One kind of musical instrument |
| Merchant | Constitution, intelligence, charisma | Lucky | Animal handling, persuasion | Navigator’s tools |
| Wayfarer | Dexterity, wisdom, charisma | Lucky | Insight, stealth | Thieves’ tools |
I’d probably lean towards merchant or wayfarer with their very useful skills and the lucky origin feat.
Choosing your subclass
Like all classes in D&D 2024, sorcerers get their subclass at level 3. I’ve created a guide to help you choose the right subclass for your sorcerer and have summarised the 2024 subclasses below (you can still take subclasses from 2014 though as well).
Aberrant sorcery
Sorcerers imbued with the power of aberrations and Far Realm influences. Their powers come from beings like mind flayers, granting psionic abilities.
Clockwork sorcery
With magic influenced by beings of order, such as those originating from Mechanus, you bring balance and order through magic. These sorcerers focus on buffs and debuffs.
Draconic sorcery
With the power of dragons coursing through your veins, you are tougher and deal more damage than most other sorcerers.
Spellfire sorcery
With magic that originates from the weave itself, they specialise in defensive and protective magic.
Wild magic sorcery
Infused with the powers of chaos, these sorcerers attempt to harness wild magic, though this often leads to unpredictable events.
Feats
Origin feats
I’d say the below are your best origin feats for a sorcerer:
- Alert: Unless you’re using careful spell, you may find it useful to take your turn early in combat before those pesky martials get in the way of your AoE spells. It also gives you a chance to thin the herd early on.
- Lucky: Advantage on d20 tests and disadvantage on your aggressors is universally useful. Especially as avoiding getting hit is one of the best ways to not lose concentration.
- Magic initiate: Grab some extra spells known from another spell list. Something like toll the dead is handy.
- Musician: A generally excellent origin feat for helping your allies out with some heroic inspiration (kind of like a slightly better lucky, you give to your friends).
- Tough: Really valuable extra hit points for a class lacking so much in durability.
General feats
At level 4, you can start picking up general feats. These are some of the better options for a sorcerer:
- Actor: Can be a good option for a party face if you want to do a lot of impersonations.
- Fey touched: Misty step is great for staying safe. Plus you get more spells known. You can read my fey-touched guide for more advice.
- Inspiring leader: Temporary hit points after every rest for your whole party is very handy. Just make sure you’re boosting your charisma for this feat.
- Lightly armored: If you don’t want to keep spending spell slots on Mage armor, then you could invest in this, especially as studded leather and a shield will give you better AC than mage armor.
- Mage slayer: Great for disrupting mages and gives you something similar to legendary resistance.
- Ritual caster: If you’re lacking a wizard, you might want to consider this for a bunch of utility spells you often can’t afford to invest in otherwise (like find familiar or detect magic). You can check out my full guide to ritual casting for more tips.
- Shadow touched: Invisibility and an illusion spell are great for a caster class.
- Spell sniper: Great for bypassing cover and getting some extra range on your spells.
- War caster: Great for better concentration and it stacks with constitution proficiency.
Epic boon feats
At level 19, you can choose an epic boon which will grant you a super feat and an ability score increase that also allows your ability scores to go above the usual maximum of 20!
Recommended options
- Boon of the night spirit: Great for keeping safe with invisibility and resistances.
- Boon of fate: Universally useful for ensuring crucial d20 rolls are passed or failed.
- Boon of dimensional travel: Free uses of misty step every turn keeps you safe or allows you to move easily between targets.
- Boon of truesight: Never let invisibility or illusions trouble you again.
Weapons
If you’ve got a decent dexterity, a light crossbow may do more damage than your cantrips early on. Once you hit level 5 though, cantrips will certainly be outperforming weapon attacks. You should also consider your innate sorcery and metamagic here too which can enhance your cantrips further and may make a light crossbow redundant even sooner.
Really, the only reason to go with weapons over spells is if you happen to be caught in an anti magic field, a silence spell or something similar. Grab a light crossbow and dagger just in case.
Armor
You don’t have any armor proficiency, but if you do want to buff your AC, the mage armor spell is a great option. You can also grab the lightly armoured feat for light armor and shield proficiency.
Sorcerer quick builds
If you’re looking for an easy, optimised build, I’ve got a couple of examples for you below with options for a level 3 sorcerer:
Damage dealer
Good for
Dealing lots of damage from spells.
Creating a damage dealer
Ability Scores (Point Buy/Standard Array)
- Strength: 8/8
- Dexterity: 15/14
- Constitution: 15/13
- Intelligence: 8/10
- Wisdom: 8/12
- Charisma: 15/15
Skills: Persuasion, deception, perception (High Elf), insight (wayfarer), stealth (wayfarer)
Species: High Elf – Take toll the dead as your cantrip and perception as your skill
Background: Wayfarer – If using point buy, add +2 to charisma and +1 to dexterity. If using standard array, add +2 to dexterity and +1 to charisma (to get them both up to 16).
Subclass: Draconic sorcery
Spells known
- Cantrips: Minor illusion, mind sliver, sorcerous burst, acid splash, toll the dead (High Elf)
- Level 1: Chromatic orb (draconic sorcery), command (draconic sorcery), mage armor, sleep, thunderwave
- Level 2: Alter self (draconic sorcery), dragon’s breath (draconic sorcery), scorching ray, shatter, web
Weapons: Light crossbow, dagger
Armor: None
Disruptor
Good for
Managing combat by debuffing enemies and causing obstacles for enemies.
Creating a disruptor
Ability Scores (Point Buy/Standard Array)
- Strength: 8/8
- Dexterity: 15/14
- Constitution: 15/13
- Intelligence: 8/10
- Wisdom: 8/12
- Charisma: 15/15
Skills: Persuasion (expertise), deception (expertise), intimidation, insight (wayfarer), stealth (wayfarer)
Species: Aasimar
Background: Wayfarer – If using point buy, add +2 to charisma and +1 to dexterity. If using standard array, add +2 to dexterity and +1 to charisma (to get them both up to 16).
Subclass: Clockwork sorcery
Spells known
- Cantrips: Minor illusion, mind sliver, sorcerous burst, acid splash
- Level 1: Alarm (clockwork sorcery), chromatic orb, grease, protection from evil and good (clockwork sorcery), sleep
- Level 2: Aid (clockwork sorcery), blindness/deafness, lesser restoration (clockwork sorcery), shatter, web
Weapons: Light crossbow, dagger
Armor: None
Other classes guides
Not sure a sorcerer is for you. Not to worry. Why not check out one of our other D&D 2024 class and subclass guides.
