I have been playing D&D for a number of years now, and I cannot seem to wrap my head around the benefits of the sorcerer. Most of what I have seen or tried to build the class just feels.... limited. I can see the utility of a warlock or wizard as a caster, but when I think of the sorcerer the only thing I can think of that they excel at is burst damage and they can only do that a few times before being nearly useless. They seem to have some versatility with cantrips, but no cantrip can match the range or damage of Eldritch Blast with some Invocations.
What am I missing? If this class was as useless as my brain is discounting it as, it would not exist, and certainly would not be popular. Please help me see the light!
This post probably sums it up the best I have seen. A sorcerer is only as strong as your ability to figure out how to flex and bend the same spell with metamagic or convert sorcery points to dump a lot of damage/defense at clutch moments. I am currently playing my first sorcerer because the flavor text of a sorcerer sounds really cool and it felt like a much better fit with my background story than the other spellcasters. I am finding that I really had to choose a single play style (blaster, controller, etc.) and focus on very narrow spell choices that offers as much malleability in conjunction with the metamagic I find interesting. Having charisma as the casting stat means that the sorcerer is great in social interactions for RP which is is nice if you are in a campaign and not just a dungeon crawl.
Sorcerer's can be the best version of most playstyle's in the game, when they need to be clutch. Blaster, Controller, healer/buffer/de-buffer etc and also add Face alongside one of those skill-sets. They were powerful pre-tasha's, post-tasha's, wow. I'd say Sorcerers, more than most other class, have the power to unravel a DM's plans for exactly the reason you stated, they can 'Burst'.
Real game example:
My party were in a battle where the enemy blew through a castle wall, two enemy wizards leading things flying 100ft in the air. I killed them both in one round with my Blaster Dragon Sorc (sub lvl 10, something like lvl 8, it was some time ago), removed two enemy wizards from the action economy, permanently. How? I quickened+empowered Fireball as a bonus action at them, rolled meh on the damage (something like 32 with the +5) so re-rolled the low numbers and ended up doing around 50 dmg. Killed one, the other made its save. I smiled and with my action cast empowered Firebolt, doing 20 something dmg, killed the 2nd wizard.
Cost me 4 sorc points total to do something no wizard or warlock could do, burst. A wizard build would have been left standing there after casting Fireball, waiting for the enemy wizards to cast their spells. The DM gave me a look, then preceded to chase me with most of what else he had left on the field. I ran, or should I say flew, by doing something no wizard or warlock could do, I quickened Fly (60ft movement) as a bonus and took the dodge action. When he did roll high enough with disadvantage I threw up shield. He wasted a lot of action economy chasing me, doing a little damage, giving my party time to do stuff.
Wizards and Warlocks jog along with their steady utility, Sorcerers burst. They also require more planning than most builds and the problem some players have is they try to burst every round then blame the class for being weak when they run outta meta. If you are casting just one regular cantrip or spell a round with no meta, well then your just a wizard for that encounter, save your bursts for when you can change the game.
(PS. A Sorcerer Face when played right can sooooo break the game when it comes to roleplay/charisma checks)
Thematically, I just love sorcerers more than wizards. I see it like this: Wizards are masters of using magic to control everything around them, but sorcerers are masters of controlling the magic itself. To me, that feels more powerful, and it just cooler.
You play sorcerer when you want to exchange general all-aroundness for being able to do things nobody else can. This has to be a conscious choice at the start because you will be very limited. My toon at LVL 13 now is picking 7th level spell (the only one he will know at this level and probably only one that he will know up to 20) and it is quite a pain to choose.
On the other hand, I walked with Hat of disguise dressed as Big Bad of the particular campaign arc into the prison and talk my way into releasing a friendly general and then cast a subtle spell Dominate person to turn an enemy high-level lieutenant against his own soldiers until nobody was standing. Then I proceeded to liberate rest of the general's entourage basically all by myself. Or you can cast twinned Disintegrate. Or haste/greater invisibility (to break some rules about concentration). Or you can quicken Hold person and follow with advantage autocritical if hit Shocking Grasp. Or have cantrip almost as good as the eldritch blast is in case you are a draconic sorcerer.
The subtle spell metamagic is OP, so is quickened and twinned. But you are VERY limited regarding what spells you know and what spells you can use in combat. If you want to make that tradeoff then you will play a sorcerer.
If you were just looking at the PHB subclasses, I'd agree with you. Metamagic is really strong but it doesn't make up for the shortcoming of the PHB sorcs.
If you look at the Tasha's and Xanathar's sorcs, those are way stronger subclasses. If you look at what a sorc can do with a 2 level warlock dip, it gets kind of nasty.
Consider these: Empowered fireball: Fireball is the biggest baddest spell for the level and is a big reason why wizards are so good. Sorcs can spend just 1 point and make it, (or any AoE), consistently better, every cast.
Twin spell effects on action economy: Especially on divine soul heals, or lower level spells that do not scale well, but casting them 2x at base level is still a great way of dealing damage. For example a twinned guiding bolt can do 8 d6 damage, you would need to cast it with a 5th level slot to do that. Or something like chromatic orb would need to cast at 4th level.
Quicken spell eldritch blast on a sorlock with hex, agonizing blast, and hex blades curse. at level 11 that's 6 bolts, and 6x the damage from all those modifiers.
Sorc also get the more out of feats (imo), the metamagic adept, and the ritualist feats do so much for the class, where caster feats in general tend to be a bit lackluster.
I've never regretted playing a sorcerer and never wished I had picked a different class. I have played other classes but for me they just aren't as much fun. It's not because of the power, it's just the amount of creativity you need. You really have to think out of the box because you don't have a lot of spells. You have to figure out how to use them in unexpected ways. Also, it's fun to break the action economy. It's fun to be able to talk your way out of situation the rest of your party thought would be a TPK (yes, I talked us out of becoming a dragon's lunch). You can play with your magic in a way other casters can't. With the new options in Tasha's you can create something pretty powerful even without multi classing. For fun I gave an old character of mine - a divine soul - the metamagic adept feat so she had more options, a barrier tattoo to bring her AC up and a Bloodwell Vial so she could get sorcery points back. Even I was shocked at how OP she suddenly became just with those few things.
Sorcerer shines in games where you have 1-2 big battles a day that you can go full ham on. Using metamagic on every cast feels amazing if you have the right combos.
The big downside to sorcerer is that there are several "trap" options that go from mostly ok to downright garbage.
If you do not pick the "right" combos you are a worse wizard.....if you pick the right ones and are in the right dynamics you are going to have a lot of fun.
What it does is makes most sorcerers feel the same as there is generally better uses of your limited resources.
My major gripe with sorcerer: Lack of short rest abilities. ALL of your resources are long rest based and its hell if you have a dungeon crawl or long day. For the life of me I cannot fathom why they did not give them anything that comes back on a short rest.
Another place where the burst capability of a sorcerer works well even below level 3 is as a multiclass dip for something else I was playing a Ranger2/Sorcerer 1 last night and and creative use of cantrips and spells worked wonders. we were in a boat that was being rocked by the passage of a school of very large fish - as a ranger I could do nothing but as a sorceror laying in the bow casting ray of frost on the water right in front chilling it I was able to force a significant portion of the school to break to the sides reducing the rocking significantly. that night foes were attacking and dumped oil in our building then were trying to toss torches in, another ray of frost snuffed out the first torch giving us time to better deal with the foes. later foes were chopping through a door to attack us and when i could see one of them through the holes they made I used the bonus action to cast hunters mark and then stepped up to just behind the door and away from the party and cast Thunderwave doing 2D8 to 3 foes and the hunters mark 1D6 to one of them taking them all out of the fight. no metamagic, no sorcery points but good spell selection and creative use of the spells available. As others have said the trick to sorcerers is creativity - your known spells are limited so you have to find creative ways to use them like the cold water or cooling the torch enough to put out the flame.
Here's the reality... Wizards are your ADD riddled impulse shoppers of Arcane Magic. They have a little bit of everything and are almost always unfocused as to what exactly they are doing. Their subclasses don't realy do much of anything to solve this. their spell selection is actually the primary thing that makes them fill one role or another or an overall generalist role.
The Warlock is your bargain shopper, one trick pony in many respects. it does one or two things. It pours it's limited resources into doing those things well and so they look really nice. But you ask it to do something fancy or wide ranging and it usually has trouble. Magically speaking these are the ones mostly sitting on their butts and saying "what I do is good enough and if I give it this little tweak it's a bit more" and kind of coasts through.
The Sorcerer on the Other Hand. This is your enthusiast in a way. It's got an idea of what it wants to do, It has tools to do things, And all you got to do is pick spells to go with those tools and figure out how to make them to work within that range of that theme in mind. Where they tend to fall down is people want to pick from a list of spells they think is good regardless of how well it fits in their subclass or their Meta Magics. And then pick their metamagics without much thought about their spells. And then expect it to stick all together. Where what really needs to be done is to pick a theme and thus a subclass. Pick the metamagics that you will find useful within that theme. Then pick spells that work with that theme and with those metamagics. Then using your spells in the world doesn't become a hodge podge of not having the right spells so much as A puzzle game of how do i fit what I have into this problem that I'm dealing with in the world by combining the theme, the metamagics, and the spells that work with those metamagics to use against the problem. You can take one or two spells that are for emergencies but don't go crazy on this with what-if's. just pick a couple that deal with your biggest problems. if your primarily lightning damage for example. Pick a different element to have a spell of just in case that is relatively easy to cast. Or solve the problem before you pick the spells by picking Transmute Spells. Then the damage spells you pick don't quite matter as much. Because they'll be different if you don't change them. Work into your theme if you do change them. And you have both covered. Any spells that you happen to get that do lightning damage is just one more that you don't need to change unless you really want to or need to use it against something that doesn't like lightning damage. If your doing controller STuff. Consider picking up something like Twinned Spell and heightened spell. So you can catch more than one person in single target control spells, or Force disadvantage on saves against your aoe spells. if your doing support stuff. Then distanced and Quickened can often be useful in that regard.
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I have been playing D&D for a number of years now, and I cannot seem to wrap my head around the benefits of the sorcerer. Most of what I have seen or tried to build the class just feels.... limited. I can see the utility of a warlock or wizard as a caster, but when I think of the sorcerer the only thing I can think of that they excel at is burst damage and they can only do that a few times before being nearly useless. They seem to have some versatility with cantrips, but no cantrip can match the range or damage of Eldritch Blast with some Invocations.
What am I missing? If this class was as useless as my brain is discounting it as, it would not exist, and certainly would not be popular. Please help me see the light!
Thank you,
Sigma
This post probably sums it up the best I have seen. A sorcerer is only as strong as your ability to figure out how to flex and bend the same spell with metamagic or convert sorcery points to dump a lot of damage/defense at clutch moments. I am currently playing my first sorcerer because the flavor text of a sorcerer sounds really cool and it felt like a much better fit with my background story than the other spellcasters. I am finding that I really had to choose a single play style (blaster, controller, etc.) and focus on very narrow spell choices that offers as much malleability in conjunction with the metamagic I find interesting. Having charisma as the casting stat means that the sorcerer is great in social interactions for RP which is is nice if you are in a campaign and not just a dungeon crawl.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DnD/comments/5prnq9/5e_what_are_the_advantages_of_playing_sorcerers/
IMHO, Earthdawn is still the best fantasy realm, Shadowrun is the best Sci-Fi realm, and Dark Sun is the best D&D realm.
I've had a few drinks but here goes . .
Sorcerer's can be the best version of most playstyle's in the game, when they need to be clutch. Blaster, Controller, healer/buffer/de-buffer etc and also add Face alongside one of those skill-sets. They were powerful pre-tasha's, post-tasha's, wow. I'd say Sorcerers, more than most other class, have the power to unravel a DM's plans for exactly the reason you stated, they can 'Burst'.
Real game example:
My party were in a battle where the enemy blew through a castle wall, two enemy wizards leading things flying 100ft in the air. I killed them both in one round with my Blaster Dragon Sorc (sub lvl 10, something like lvl 8, it was some time ago), removed two enemy wizards from the action economy, permanently. How? I quickened+empowered Fireball as a bonus action at them, rolled meh on the damage (something like 32 with the +5) so re-rolled the low numbers and ended up doing around 50 dmg. Killed one, the other made its save. I smiled and with my action cast empowered Firebolt, doing 20 something dmg, killed the 2nd wizard.
Cost me 4 sorc points total to do something no wizard or warlock could do, burst. A wizard build would have been left standing there after casting Fireball, waiting for the enemy wizards to cast their spells. The DM gave me a look, then preceded to chase me with most of what else he had left on the field. I ran, or should I say flew, by doing something no wizard or warlock could do, I quickened Fly (60ft movement) as a bonus and took the dodge action. When he did roll high enough with disadvantage I threw up shield. He wasted a lot of action economy chasing me, doing a little damage, giving my party time to do stuff.
Wizards and Warlocks jog along with their steady utility, Sorcerers burst. They also require more planning than most builds and the problem some players have is they try to burst every round then blame the class for being weak when they run outta meta. If you are casting just one regular cantrip or spell a round with no meta, well then your just a wizard for that encounter, save your bursts for when you can change the game.
(PS. A Sorcerer Face when played right can sooooo break the game when it comes to roleplay/charisma checks)
Thematically, I just love sorcerers more than wizards. I see it like this: Wizards are masters of using magic to control everything around them, but sorcerers are masters of controlling the magic itself. To me, that feels more powerful, and it just cooler.
You play sorcerer when you want to exchange general all-aroundness for being able to do things nobody else can. This has to be a conscious choice at the start because you will be very limited. My toon at LVL 13 now is picking 7th level spell (the only one he will know at this level and probably only one that he will know up to 20) and it is quite a pain to choose.
On the other hand, I walked with Hat of disguise dressed as Big Bad of the particular campaign arc into the prison and talk my way into releasing a friendly general and then cast a subtle spell Dominate person to turn an enemy high-level lieutenant against his own soldiers until nobody was standing. Then I proceeded to liberate rest of the general's entourage basically all by myself. Or you can cast twinned Disintegrate. Or haste/greater invisibility (to break some rules about concentration). Or you can quicken Hold person and follow with advantage autocritical if hit Shocking Grasp. Or have cantrip almost as good as the eldritch blast is in case you are a draconic sorcerer.
The subtle spell metamagic is OP, so is quickened and twinned. But you are VERY limited regarding what spells you know and what spells you can use in combat. If you want to make that tradeoff then you will play a sorcerer.
And you can play Face of the group.
If you were just looking at the PHB subclasses, I'd agree with you. Metamagic is really strong but it doesn't make up for the shortcoming of the PHB sorcs.
If you look at the Tasha's and Xanathar's sorcs, those are way stronger subclasses.
If you look at what a sorc can do with a 2 level warlock dip, it gets kind of nasty.
Consider these:
Empowered fireball: Fireball is the biggest baddest spell for the level and is a big reason why wizards are so good. Sorcs can spend just 1 point and make it, (or any AoE), consistently better, every cast.
Twin spell effects on action economy: Especially on divine soul heals, or lower level spells that do not scale well, but casting them 2x at base level is still a great way of dealing damage. For example a twinned guiding bolt can do 8 d6 damage, you would need to cast it with a 5th level slot to do that. Or something like chromatic orb would need to cast at 4th level.
Quicken spell eldritch blast on a sorlock with hex, agonizing blast, and hex blades curse. at level 11 that's 6 bolts, and 6x the damage from all those modifiers.
Sorc also get the more out of feats (imo), the metamagic adept, and the ritualist feats do so much for the class, where caster feats in general tend to be a bit lackluster.
I've never regretted playing a sorcerer and never wished I had picked a different class. I have played other classes but for me they just aren't as much fun. It's not because of the power, it's just the amount of creativity you need. You really have to think out of the box because you don't have a lot of spells. You have to figure out how to use them in unexpected ways. Also, it's fun to break the action economy. It's fun to be able to talk your way out of situation the rest of your party thought would be a TPK (yes, I talked us out of becoming a dragon's lunch). You can play with your magic in a way other casters can't. With the new options in Tasha's you can create something pretty powerful even without multi classing. For fun I gave an old character of mine - a divine soul - the metamagic adept feat so she had more options, a barrier tattoo to bring her AC up and a Bloodwell Vial so she could get sorcery points back. Even I was shocked at how OP she suddenly became just with those few things.
Sorcerer shines in games where you have 1-2 big battles a day that you can go full ham on. Using metamagic on every cast feels amazing if you have the right combos.
The big downside to sorcerer is that there are several "trap" options that go from mostly ok to downright garbage.
If you do not pick the "right" combos you are a worse wizard.....if you pick the right ones and are in the right dynamics you are going to have a lot of fun.
What it does is makes most sorcerers feel the same as there is generally better uses of your limited resources.
My major gripe with sorcerer: Lack of short rest abilities. ALL of your resources are long rest based and its hell if you have a dungeon crawl or long day. For the life of me I cannot fathom why they did not give them anything that comes back on a short rest.
Another place where the burst capability of a sorcerer works well even below level 3 is as a multiclass dip for something else I was playing a Ranger2/Sorcerer 1 last night and and creative use of cantrips and spells worked wonders. we were in a boat that was being rocked by the passage of a school of very large fish - as a ranger I could do nothing but as a sorceror laying in the bow casting ray of frost on the water right in front chilling it I was able to force a significant portion of the school to break to the sides reducing the rocking significantly. that night foes were attacking and dumped oil in our building then were trying to toss torches in, another ray of frost snuffed out the first torch giving us time to better deal with the foes. later foes were chopping through a door to attack us and when i could see one of them through the holes they made I used the bonus action to cast hunters mark and then stepped up to just behind the door and away from the party and cast Thunderwave doing 2D8 to 3 foes and the hunters mark 1D6 to one of them taking them all out of the fight. no metamagic, no sorcery points but good spell selection and creative use of the spells available. As others have said the trick to sorcerers is creativity - your known spells are limited so you have to find creative ways to use them like the cold water or cooling the torch enough to put out the flame.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Here's the reality... Wizards are your ADD riddled impulse shoppers of Arcane Magic. They have a little bit of everything and are almost always unfocused as to what exactly they are doing. Their subclasses don't realy do much of anything to solve this. their spell selection is actually the primary thing that makes them fill one role or another or an overall generalist role.
The Warlock is your bargain shopper, one trick pony in many respects. it does one or two things. It pours it's limited resources into doing those things well and so they look really nice. But you ask it to do something fancy or wide ranging and it usually has trouble. Magically speaking these are the ones mostly sitting on their butts and saying "what I do is good enough and if I give it this little tweak it's a bit more" and kind of coasts through.
The Sorcerer on the Other Hand. This is your enthusiast in a way. It's got an idea of what it wants to do, It has tools to do things, And all you got to do is pick spells to go with those tools and figure out how to make them to work within that range of that theme in mind. Where they tend to fall down is people want to pick from a list of spells they think is good regardless of how well it fits in their subclass or their Meta Magics. And then pick their metamagics without much thought about their spells. And then expect it to stick all together. Where what really needs to be done is to pick a theme and thus a subclass. Pick the metamagics that you will find useful within that theme. Then pick spells that work with that theme and with those metamagics. Then using your spells in the world doesn't become a hodge podge of not having the right spells so much as A puzzle game of how do i fit what I have into this problem that I'm dealing with in the world by combining the theme, the metamagics, and the spells that work with those metamagics to use against the problem. You can take one or two spells that are for emergencies but don't go crazy on this with what-if's. just pick a couple that deal with your biggest problems. if your primarily lightning damage for example. Pick a different element to have a spell of just in case that is relatively easy to cast. Or solve the problem before you pick the spells by picking Transmute Spells. Then the damage spells you pick don't quite matter as much. Because they'll be different if you don't change them. Work into your theme if you do change them. And you have both covered. Any spells that you happen to get that do lightning damage is just one more that you don't need to change unless you really want to or need to use it against something that doesn't like lightning damage. If your doing controller STuff. Consider picking up something like Twinned Spell and heightened spell. So you can catch more than one person in single target control spells, or Force disadvantage on saves against your aoe spells. if your doing support stuff. Then distanced and Quickened can often be useful in that regard.