The Sorcerer in the 2024 Player’s Handbook is a master spellcaster, manipulating magic on a whim and brimming with new arcane power. The class now benefits from additional spells, features that allow you to unleash your inner magic, and a revamped capstone. And you didn’t even have to memorize incantations or dedicate your soul to a higher power to get it!
Let’s take a look at the key changes for the Sorcerer in the new Player's Handbook. If we don’t cover a feature, such as Font of Magic, that means that it remains unchanged.
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2024 Sorcerer Class Features Overview
Spellcasting — Level 1
The Sorcerer’s Spellcasting feature grants you more spells and flexibility, and has seen some slight tweaks to nomenclature.
First, everybody "prepares" spells now. But this change is a stylistic one for the Sorcerer. You still edit your spell list when you level up and can only change one spell on your list at a time.
The most significant change to Spellcasting for Sorcerers in the 2024 Player’s Handbook is they can prepare more spells than their 2014 counterparts could learn. In fact, once they reach level 3, Sorcerers now prepare just as many spells as the Druid, Bard, Cleric, and Wizard! (The Wizard, as Mystra’s favorite, pulls ahead of the pack at level 14.)
Lastly, Sorcerers can now change one cantrip when you level up. This is in addition to swapping one spell from your prepared spell list.
Innate Sorcery — Level 1
Magic is in your blood; and some of your enemies may have to learn that the hard way.
With Innate Sorcery, you can use your Bonus Action to surge in magical power for 1 minute. During that time, your spell save DC for Sorcerer spells increases by 1, and you have Advantage on attack rolls for Sorcerer spells. You can use this feature twice per Long Rest.
Metamagic — Level 2
Metamagic, the Sorcerer’s trademark feature, has seen some upgrades: You now get this feature at level 2 instead of level 3, and you learn two additional Metamagic options at level 10 and 17 instead of one. You can also change one Metamagic option when you level up. Additionally, the two optional Metamagic options introduced in Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything have now been incorporated into the core class.
Six of the ten Metamagic options were tweaked. If you don’t see a Metamagic option in the list below, it remains unchanged from the 2014 Player’s Handbook.
- Careful Spell: Now protects your allies from taking half damage on a successful save. Next time your Barbarian is surrounded, throw a Fireball at their feet without fear of harming your friend.
- Extended Spell: You now also have Advantage on saving throws made to maintain Concentration on spells affected by this Metamagic.
- Heightened Spell: Costs 2 Sorcery Points instead of 3. Now also affects all subsequent saves a target makes against the heightened spell. (Hello, my old friends: Hold Person and Slow.)
- Seeking Spell: Costs 1 Sorcery Point instead of 2. You can still use this Metamagic option even if you are using another one on that same spell.
- Subtle Spell: Now allows you to ignore Material components as well, as long as those Material components do not have a cost specification and are not consumed by the spell.
- Twinned Spell: This Metamagic option has been reconfigured. Now, Twinned Spell applies to spells that can be upcast to target an additional creature, such as Banishment, increasing the spell’s effective level by 1. It also only costs 1 Sorcery Point. So, for example, if you are level 7, you can’t yet cast Banishment at the 5th level slot necessary to target another creature, but you can cast it at 4th level and spend 1 Sorcery Point to twin it!
Sorcerer Subclass — Level 3
Sorcerers now get their subclass at level 3 instead of level 1, just like all the other classes in the 2024 Player’s Handbook.
Aberrant Mind and Clockwork Sorcery were largely unchanged from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, Wild Magic was only slightly altered, and Draconic Sorcery was given a … breath of new life. (Get it? Because dragons breathe—oh, never mind.)
- Aberrant Mind: Aberrant Mind saw some minor changes. Psionic Spells can no longer be replaced with Divination or Enchantment spells from the Sorcerer, Warlock, or Wizard spell list. Psionic Sorcery no longer affects Material components that have a specified cost.
- Clockwork Sorcery: Clockwork Sorcery underwent only two changes from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything. Clockwork Spells can no longer be replaced with Abjuration or Transmutation spells from the Sorcerer, Warlock, or Wizard spell list. Restore Balance is now tied to your Charisma modifier instead of your Proficiency Bonus.
- Draconic Sorcery: This iconic sorcerer subclass has significantly improved, granting you new spells and stronger, more dragon-like features. You gain ten additional spells as you level up, including Command, Fear, Charm Monster, and Legend Lore. Draconic Resilience’s new AC calculation includes your Charisma modifier (10 + DEX + CHA), and the new capstone feature, Dragon Companion, allows you to cast the new Summon Dragon spell once per day without using a spell slot, Material components, or Concentration.
- Wild Magic Sorcery: Wild Magic surges now trigger on a 20 instead of a 1, and the Wild Magic Surge table has been reorganized, but its effects are all familiar. The Wild Magic Surge table itself has undergone quite the makeover, organizing similar effects into their own mini-rollable tables. (Don’t worry, you can still be transformed into a potted plant!) Casting a spell after using Tides of Chaos now automatically triggers a Wild Magic Surge. Bend Luck costs 1 Sorcery Point instead of 2. The subclass’ new capstone feature, Tamed Surges, allows you to trigger a Wild Magic Surge effect of your choice once per day.
Sorcerous Restoration — Level 5
Once per day, you can regain expended Sorcery Points (equal to half your Sorcerer level, rounded down) on a Short Rest. Now when the party Warlock asks for a Short Rest, you’ll get a little something out of it too!
Consider when to use this feature and how to strategically manage your Sorcery Points. For example, let’s say you are level 10, and you have 8 Sorcery Points remaining. If your party is taking a Short Rest before confronting a boss, you can regain up to 5 using Sorcerous Restoration. Before taking that Short Rest and using this feature, consider using Font of Magic to convert 3 Sorcery Points into a level 2 spell slot. This way, you’ll still be able to face the boss with all 10 of your Sorcery Points, but you’ll also have an extra level 2 slot.
Sorcery Incarnate — Level 7
Innate Sorcery wasn’t even your final form. With Sorcery Incarnate, you can regain a use of Innate Sorcery by spending 2 Sorcery Points. In addition, Innate Sorcery now allows you to use up to two Metamagic options on each spell.
Fighting two powerful foes? Cast a Twinned and Heightened Hold Monster to set your Paladins and Rogues up for Critical Hits. Sticking to long range? Reach for a Quickened and Distant Blindness/Deafness on an enemy 60 feet away, then follow it up with a Fire Bolt.
Epic Boon — Level 19
Time to select an Epic Boon feat, a new type of feat that is reserved for characters of level 19 or higher. Take a look through your twelve options and choose whichever you like best. You can also take a regular feat if that suits your build better. The 2024 Player’s Handbook recommends:
- Boon of Dimensional Travel: Increase one ability score by 1 (up to a maximum of 30), and immediately after you take the Attack or Magic action, you can teleport up to 30 feet.
Arcane Apotheosis — Level 20
Your Innate Sorcery feature is taken to new heights.
When Innate Sorcery is active, you can use one Metamagic option per turn without expending Sorcery Points. If you’re using multiple Metamagics on a turn, be sure to make the most expensive one free! (In the 2024 Player’s Handbook, Quickened Spell and Heightened Spell cost 2 Sorcery Points each, while the rest of the Metamagic options only cost 1.)
This feature also grants you more strategic flexibility. For example, if you are headed into an important battle low on spell slots, you might normally hesitate to spend Sorcery Points to create new slots because you also want to use Metamagic during the upcoming fight. But if you know that Arcane Apotheosis will allow you to use some Metamagic for free, you have more freedom to use your Sorcery Points to enable you to cast spells.
Fated for Greatness
The 2024 Player's Handbook is now available on the D&D Beyond marketplace, which means it's time to set out on new adventures with fresh or familiar characters!
The 2024 Player’s Handbook better delivers on the vision of the Sorcerer as an arcane powerhouse: someone destined to twist magic to suit your needs, to make it do tricks for your amusement. New Sorcerers who take off on an adventure will be bringing along extra spells, more (and improved) Metamagic options, and the ability to temporarily surge with magical power via Innate Sorcery—so start thinking of clever Metamagic combinations!
We’re delighted to share with you the changes to fifth edition D&D that appear in the 2024 Player’s Handbook. Make sure to keep an eye out on D&D Beyond for more useful guides on using the wealth of new options, rules, and mechanics found in the 2024 Player's Handbook!
Damen Cook (@damen_joseph) is a lifelong fantasy reader, writer, and gamer. If he woke up tomorrow in Faerûn, he would bolt through the nearest fey crossing and drink from every stream and eat fruit from every tree in the Feywild until he found that sweet, sweet wild magic.
This article was updated on August 13, 2024, to issue corrections or expand coverage for the following features and subclasses:
- Sorcerer Subclass (Aberrant Mind): Removed inaccuracy surrounding the conditions causing Telepathic Speech to drop.
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Posted Jul 18, 2024Thats the whole point of Twin spell being so good, any class can upcast spells to target more, but only sorcerer had the ability to twin spells that very normally limited to one person
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Posted Jul 18, 2024Agree. The new twin spell is not terribly exciting even if it provides an efficiency and has niche applications (cast higher level spell when no slot available). The problem is that too many of the sorcerer's metamagic options provide niche utility instead of having obvious, meaningful applications.
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Posted Jul 18, 2024the complain i personally have with the new "twin" spell meta is:
its not a twin spell ability .... if they believe the old twin was too powerful, ok i can get that, but then remove the twin spell mechanic all together and give this new function a new name, that says what i does, because its nothing even close to twinning a spell
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Posted Jul 18, 2024"ruling on summon aberration might vary from table to table, the games i play in the spell consumes the component ..."
Interesting. That's not RAW as spells specifically say when they consume the component. I can definitely see how that would make it a much less attractive spell.
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Posted Jul 18, 2024This is exactly my fear. People overvalue the ability to swap spells and how often it's used, and rituals are purely an out of combat utility - in this combat-focused game. It just seems that Wizard got eaten from two sides, from one Sorcerer as a far superior blaster and from the other Bard as a more versatile caster that can pick from three lists and still has many other combat-related support options.
The thing I really hope going forward is that we'll get stronger Wizard subclasses - have each of them grant at least two extra prepared spells like 2024 Abjurer, and some metamagic-like abilities like Illusionist's silent casting that's limited to their specific specialty school. It was a mistake imo that they didn't boost Evoker anyhow - they're going to feel consistently worse than Sorcerers. Diviner grants you predictability but statistically, Sorcerer's higher DC and advantage on attack roles combined with Hightened Spell gives them an overwhelming advantage. So Diviner should've been boosted too, imo, if only with something as simple as an extra prepared spell.
2024 Abjurer and Illusionists are probably OK for their niche, but granted, those are very specific niches.
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Posted Jul 19, 2024The level 2 feature says …
So if the standard adventure days stays the same as before a sorcerer just does this every encounter bc they know that they will have a long rest after the second encounter? 2 per Long Rest is the same as 1 per short rest
Also 1 minute is forever in a game where combat is designed for 3-4 rounds (less than 30 seconds).
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Posted Jul 19, 2024I feel like there still should have been an expanded spell list for the Wild Magic Sorcerer.
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Posted Jul 19, 2024How does advantage on attack rolls for spells interact with Summon spells (for the subclasses that gain acess to it)? Does it grant advantage to the summon as well? Since it's not advantage for spell attacks (attack rolls for your Sorcerer spell is a very interesting wording).
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Posted Jul 19, 2024Generally I agree- depending on how good the Wild Magic Table ends up being, it might not feel TOO bad. And there is maybe an argument to be made that for this particular flavor of sorcerer, it doesn't make sense for them to be able to have control of a higher number of actual spells? Not sure how I feel about that but again- it will all depend on the table.
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Posted Jul 20, 2024No, just the sorcerer's attacks
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Posted Jul 20, 2024That is the old definition that was used when the "lock" was taken literally due to using warlock slots. But for many years now warlock slots were ruled to no longer be usable for Sorcerer features. But now the coffeelock term just refers to any mechanism where a Sorcerer can regain sorcery points without taking a long rest, and also remove the exhaustion gained from skipping long rests, to have many spell slots. Even something as simple as owning multiple Pearls of Power (and cycling attunement between them) + an ally casts Greater Restoration on you every day (and you pay them handsomely for it).
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Posted Jul 20, 2024What a way to shore up a flaw in the design of SP regeneration... Cycle through magic items. Sounds like a trick used in BG3 by sorcerers.
BTW, who ruled warlock slots can't be converted to SP? According to JC/Sage Advice, "flexible casting is omnivorous."
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Posted Jul 21, 2024My friends and I used to joke that a certain nameless someone on the WotC senior staff team was absolutely bodied by a sorcerer player back in 3.5, and as a result of their burning hatred for the class, used their position to render the class as subpar as they could get away with. The joke went on to say that the only way the sorcerer would get any improvements worth noting would be if WotC tied up said staff member and threw them into the basement.
Now, looking at all the great changes the class is getting, I can only hope that they're feeding said tied-up staff member every once in a while.
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Posted Jul 21, 2024I don’t know how anyone can read this and think Sorcerer > Wizard now. In reality the 2024 Sorcerer is finally a worth while chose compared to the Wizard the Wizards versatility is still supreme. Someone said we over value the Wizards ability to swap spells. I think they undervalue it. Only the Wizard can prepare all combat focused spells and then use rituals for OOC situations or say give me hour and I’ll have the perfect spell for the job. Only a Wizard can show up to a combat with Damage, Debuffs, and Buffs all prepared and not really worry about having OCC spells prepared. Wizards will be fine in combat. Sorcerers are just improved in combat, but will still have less versatility for OOC spells compared to the Wizard even when that Wizard is prepared for combat.
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Posted Jul 21, 2024Reworked as a qoute
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Posted Jul 21, 2024Heya! Sorry for the delay in replying.
I was expecting any retools of existing subclasses to be relocated to an appendix or designated chapter, or even uploaded as an errata on here. I did not expect every class to lack more new subclasses. I did not expect this book to be mostly full of Tasha content, which I already own. I expected at this price point to get a book full of new content, even if it wasn't great.
We shouldn't be paying this much for content we already mostly own. The races being there is guess is fine; it's not trying to reinvent the wheel, even if it would be cool to introduce a few new races here too. But the subclasses is honestly a bit of a lazy way to pad the book. These should be full of reworks and a single new one. It should be full of new ones with the updated mentions in an errata document for people to use as this should be backwards compatible with 5e content. Or even as a cheap $10 Subclass update digital book. You KNOW they would have made a killing on that. My issue is this book currently has no reason to have been made as it currently stands. It's not fresh, it's just pages of older books in a fresh cover.
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Posted Jul 21, 2024THANK YOU! From a narrative stand point these should never have been altered in that way. Warlocks directly get power given as a deal from a particular source, and sorcerers are born with magic in their blood. Wizards make sense as they study to hone and perfect their specific sphere of magic. This? This is silly. For a game that is all about narrative, even if that narrative is to drive combat, this was one of the worst calls. Right up there with making smite a spell.
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Posted Jul 21, 2024They said this was done to make it easier for new players. I personally suspect it was done to make Warlocks, Sorcerers and Clerics less powerful for a single level multiclass dip. Considering how OP a 1 level Hex Blade dip is I'm all for this change.
You can easily justify this through roleplay by simply stating it takes a while for your subclass specific powers to develop... In addition they already stated that they recommend experienced players start off their characters at level 3.
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Posted Jul 21, 2024the way they implemented the new warlock, who needs hexblade patron ?
pact of the blade is granting +chr to hit / dmg now as an invocation and warlocks get 2 invocations at 1st level .......
so a lot of 2 lvl splashes are now only needing 1 lvl spalsh ( at least if the splash warlock )
in UA the feat lightly armored was granting light,medium armor + shield and it was a lvl 1 feat with no preq. = you should be able to take the with a custom background
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Posted Jul 21, 2024It’s fine from a narrative stand point. It’s probably better from a narrative stand point from warlocks. You could spend the first to levels talking to angel and role playing that because you believe you are going to go Celestial, but then decide you would rather play fiend or old on and at 3rd your character has to deal with the fact that they didn’t understand the deal they made. There are many narrative ways to describe why you pick subclass at 3rd. Even more if you know exactly what you are going to pick at 3rd.
Also smites have been spells. Divine smite functioned similarly as a spell by expending spell slots anyway. The problem is the action economy they decided to make all the smite spells now including divine smite use. The fact that it eats bonus action kills TWF and pole arm mastery Paladin builds. The better fix would to make the smite spells be an action to cast and include a melee weapon attack like green flame blade or booming blade. Then change the Paladins 5th level Extra attack to be similar to bladesinger and new Eldritch Knight but instead of replacing an attack with a cantrip Paladins could replace an attack with a Smite Spell. Even this fix kills my Paladin 2/Sword Bard X “oath of Hedonism” who used two longswords, but at least with something like this I could recreate him as a Paladin 5/Bard X going forward. Because of the new action economy I can’t remake moving forward. It’s not because it’s a spell, it’s because it’s a bonus action spell. I understand their goal was to stop the Nova aspect of it which I will admit was crazy with 3 attacks per round and plenty of spell slots.