So I’ve played wild magic sorcerers before and enjoyed the class as a simplified caster. When playing other casters, having to manage which spells are prepared feels like a chore, doable, and perhaps needed for balance, but a chore. Having all spells you know prepared is awesome, just choose your spells and go!
Metamagic is dope turning a buff based sorcerer into a monster with twin spells, or a menace AoE caster with empower, or a long range freak with spell sniper.
Then there is tides of chaos. When I played sorcerer I was kinda of like, eh I’ll use it here and there on important rolls. But it’s true power is using the second part of the description which says “after it’s use, the DM can trigger a wild surge on the next leveled spell, and if does so, you regain the use of tides of chaos”
This puts us in a weird position. It’s a staple feature of the class that the other sorcerer classes don’t get and putting it in the DMs hands puts them in an impossible situation where they either greatly nerf its use by never triggering, and using it semi frequently takes a lot of agency away from the player as narratively it’s used at the dms discretion OR it gets triggered every time by default and now the wild Magic sorcerer basically has advantage on every roll as long as they ritually cast something out of combat, or have spell slots in combat.
the former seems to rob the class of any real benefit, and the latter is borderline broken.
Sorcerers in the 2014 PHB did not have ritual casting, though they do in the 2024 PHB. In the 2024 PHB, Tides of Chaos no longer needs DM permission. When you cast a spell of 1st level or higher, you roll on the table and it automatically refreshes the feature.
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I like the 2024 WM sorcerer. After playing with multiple wild magic casters dating back to 2e, they had landed on my blacklist. I simply chose to not play at a table where there's a WMS ever again. I don't like or enjoy the whole "random effect" playstyle, and I didn't want to be hit by other players choices that I didn't sign up for. That's a fun killer to me. I will won't play one, but I won't leave a table that has one anymore.
The new table is far less offensive. While there's still effects that can hit me and annoy me, they're much more minor in scope, and /should/ be more rare in occurance. I'll give them a try again. If this new WMS had retained the old wild magic surge table, with guaranteed checks, they'd have been even more on my blacklist.
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Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Does the 2024 ToC also mean you can chose to have advantage on all your sorcerer spells?
You can have it on all your leveled spell attack rolls, but that doesn't mean you'd want to.. The more times you throw the dice, the more chances that you will end up with something bad happening.
But this is presumably why WM sorcerers don't get the extra spells the other subclasses do.
The interaction between tides of chaos and wild magic surges is a bit subtle. To force a wild magic surge, a sorcerer needs to refresh tides of chaos by casting a leveled spell. This is after using advantage on one D20 test. In combat, the options to use advantage that are in the sorcerer's immediate control are making a spell attack roll and possibly an ability check (e.g., the latter with Mizzium Aparatus). Because innate sorcery can be used frequently to provide advantage to all sorcerer spells requiring an attack roll, tides of chaos is best (most efficiently) used with non-sorcerer spells obtained from one's race or through feats. In general, a sorcerer can force a wild magic surge every two turns assuming they cast a spell with an attack roll or otherwise use the advantage. Surging every turn can be accomplished via quicken spell metamagic assuming one of the cast spells requires an attack roll and does not benefit from innate sorcery.
The interaction between tides of chaos and wild magic surges is a bit subtle. To force a wild magic surge, a sorcerer needs to refresh tides of chaos by casting a leveled spell. This is after using advantage on one D20 test. In combat, the options to use advantage that are in the sorcerer's immediate control are making a spell attack roll and possibly an ability check (e.g., the latter with Mizzium Aparatus). Because innate sorcery can be used frequently to provide advantage to all sorcerer spells requiring an attack roll, tides of chaos is best (most efficiently) used with non-sorcerer spells obtained from one's race or through feats. In general, a sorcerer can force a wild magic surge every two turns assuming they cast a spell with an attack roll or otherwise use the advantage. Surging every turn can be accomplished via quicken spell metamagic assuming one of the cast spells requires an attack roll and does not benefit from innate sorcery.
I was actually wondering about that! My thoughts were that you could potentially surge every turn with consecutive 1+ attack spells, but that would require a reading that:
Casting a 1+ spell -> Wild Magic Surge & refresh on Tides of Chaos -> rolling the attack for the spell and using ToC again.
It starts to feel like phases of MtG at this point, but could you help me find the rules that specify why my reading is incorrect, if there are any?
So I’ve played wild magic sorcerers before and enjoyed the class as a simplified caster. When playing other casters, having to manage which spells are prepared feels like a chore, doable, and perhaps needed for balance, but a chore. Having all spells you know prepared is awesome, just choose your spells and go!
Metamagic is dope turning a buff based sorcerer into a monster with twin spells, or a menace AoE caster with empower, or a long range freak with spell sniper.
Then there is tides of chaos. When I played sorcerer I was kinda of like, eh I’ll use it here and there on important rolls. But it’s true power is using the second part of the description which says “after it’s use, the DM can trigger a wild surge on the next leveled spell, and if does so, you regain the use of tides of chaos”
This puts us in a weird position. It’s a staple feature of the class that the other sorcerer classes don’t get and putting it in the DMs hands puts them in an impossible situation where they either greatly nerf its use by never triggering, and using it semi frequently takes a lot of agency away from the player as narratively it’s used at the dms discretion OR it gets triggered every time by default and now the wild Magic sorcerer basically has advantage on every roll as long as they ritually cast something out of combat, or have spell slots in combat.
the former seems to rob the class of any real benefit, and the latter is borderline broken.
opinions?
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ModeratorSorcerers in the 2014 PHB did not have ritual casting, though they do in the 2024 PHB. In the 2024 PHB, Tides of Chaos no longer needs DM permission. When you cast a spell of 1st level or higher, you roll on the table and it automatically refreshes the feature.
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I like the 2024 WM sorcerer. After playing with multiple wild magic casters dating back to 2e, they had landed on my blacklist. I simply chose to not play at a table where there's a WMS ever again. I don't like or enjoy the whole "random effect" playstyle, and I didn't want to be hit by other players choices that I didn't sign up for. That's a fun killer to me. I will won't play one, but I won't leave a table that has one anymore.
The new table is far less offensive. While there's still effects that can hit me and annoy me, they're much more minor in scope, and /should/ be more rare in occurance. I'll give them a try again. If this new WMS had retained the old wild magic surge table, with guaranteed checks, they'd have been even more on my blacklist.
Any time an unfathomably powerful entity sweeps in and offers godlike rewards in return for just a few teensy favors, it’s a scam. Unless it’s me. I’d never lie to you, reader dearest.
Tasha
Does the 2024 ToC also mean you can chose to have advantage on all your sorcerer spells?
You can have it on all your leveled spell attack rolls, but that doesn't mean you'd want to.. The more times you throw the dice, the more chances that you will end up with something bad happening.
But this is presumably why WM sorcerers don't get the extra spells the other subclasses do.
The interaction between tides of chaos and wild magic surges is a bit subtle. To force a wild magic surge, a sorcerer needs to refresh tides of chaos by casting a leveled spell. This is after using advantage on one D20 test. In combat, the options to use advantage that are in the sorcerer's immediate control are making a spell attack roll and possibly an ability check (e.g., the latter with Mizzium Aparatus). Because innate sorcery can be used frequently to provide advantage to all sorcerer spells requiring an attack roll, tides of chaos is best (most efficiently) used with non-sorcerer spells obtained from one's race or through feats. In general, a sorcerer can force a wild magic surge every two turns assuming they cast a spell with an attack roll or otherwise use the advantage. Surging every turn can be accomplished via quicken spell metamagic assuming one of the cast spells requires an attack roll and does not benefit from innate sorcery.
I was actually wondering about that! My thoughts were that you could potentially surge every turn with consecutive 1+ attack spells, but that would require a reading that:
Casting a 1+ spell -> Wild Magic Surge & refresh on Tides of Chaos -> rolling the attack for the spell and using ToC again.
It starts to feel like phases of MtG at this point, but could you help me find the rules that specify why my reading is incorrect, if there are any?
That's not exactly true: "Immediately after you cast a Sorcerer spell with a spell slot before you regain the use of this feature"
You have to use a spell slot, so casting a ritual or a leveled spell from a magic wand or magic staff does not qualify for this feature.