Wild Magic Sorcery taps into the chaotic nature of the arcane, trading the risk of unpredictable surges of magic with the power to twist fate in your favor. In the 2024 Player’s Handbook, the Wild Magic Sorcerer’s features have become more affordable and easier to use, and Wild Magic Surges themselves can be more easily triggered. There’s also a brand new capstone feature, Tamed Surge, that grants limited but powerful control over these bursts of power.
There is a pure, undiluted joy that can only come from causing a little chaos—just ask your cat after they knock something off your table. Below, we explore the unexpected as we divulge what’s new for the Wild Magic Sorcerer in the 2024 Player’s Handbook!
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Wild Magic Sorcerer: Chaos is Power
The Sorcerer class embraces the odder side of magic, the twists and turns. If you want to lean into this further and add a little “who knows where it came from and who knows what it’ll do” to your sorcery, then Wild Magic is calling!
The Wild Magic Sorcerer is well-suited to players who enjoy unpredictability and randomness. There’s something tantalizing about knowing you have the perfect spell for a situation but not knowing whether casting it will cause you to Levitate. I have played in social scenes where I thought I was extremely clever by Subtle-casting an Enchantment spell, only to sprout a beard of feathers. Though they may manifest at inopportune times, these surges can often be helpful, allowing you to teleport, regain Hit Points, or cast defensive spells like Mirror Image on yourself!
Wild Magic can also be utilized to twist fate in your favor, with features like Tides of Chaos, Bend Luck, and the new Tamed Surge. In the 2024 Player’s Handbook, Bend Luck is easier to use, Tides of Chaos is more rewarding, and Tamed Surge ensures you can experience your favorite parts of the updated Wild Magic Surge table!
Wild Origins
The Wild Magic Sorcerer is a chaotic, unpredictable spellcaster imbued with the raw and uncontrolled power of the cosmos. While the Wizards studied, the Warlocks negotiated their pacts, and the Bards spun performance into magic, you were … well, what were you doing? Wild Magic can come from anywhere: Did you drink from a Fey stream? Did you visit Limbo in your dreams and wake up with chaos in your blood?
So, what kind of Wild Magic Sorcerer are you? Are you at the whims of chance, or are you the master of your fate?
Subclasses at Level 3
All classes in the 2024 Player’s Handbook now receive their subclass at level 3. Don’t worry. Each class whose subclass features have been moved around now receives new abilities at earlier levels. So while your Wild Magic Sorcerer won’t be able to roll on the Wild Magic Surge table at level 1 anymore, they will be able to use their Innate Sorcery feature.
Before playing at levels 1 and 2, work with your DM to determine if your Sorcerer knows where their magic comes from yet or if they are on a journey of discovery.
Wild Magic Sorcerer Features

Wild Magic Surge — Level 3
This subclass’s trademark Wild Magic Surge feature is nearly identical to the 2014 Player’s Handbook. However, there were two notable tweaks:
- In the 2014 Player’s Handbook, the DM decided whether you rolled the 1d20 to see if you’ve triggered a surge of wild magic. In the 2024 Player’s Handbook, you (the player) can roll 1d20 after casting a Sorcerer spell with a spell slot.
- Now, when rolling the 1d20 to determine whether you must roll on the Wild Magic Surge table, a 20 triggers a surge. Formerly, it was triggered by a 1. This doesn’t change your odds of rolling on the table, but it does reframe the table’s relationship with wild magic.
Reorganized Wild Magic Surge Table
The new Wild Magic Surge table has been streamlined, making it easier to navigate without sacrificing variety.
At first glance, the new table looks like it’s shed half its size. However, upon closer glance, you’ll see that many surges from the old table have been condensed into fewer entries on the new table, which triggers a die roll to determine a more specific effect. The new table takes up less space on the page but contains practically the same number of possible effects as the old table (49 vs 50).
Why do this? Well, under the prior table, there was an 18% chance that wild magic would cause you to cast a spell, a 6% chance that creatures were summoned in your immediate vicinity, and a 12% chance of a harmless but obvious effect like blue skin or illusory butterflies that follow you around. The new table, with individual “cast a spell” or “goofy visible effect” entries, is balanced so that each unique flavor of Wild Magic Surge has an equal chance of occurring.
Tides of Chaos — Level 3
Tides of Chaos allows you to grant yourself Advantage on one D20 Test of your choice. This feature is now less dependent on your DM’s memory and discretion. In the 2024 Player’s Handbook, casting a spell after spending Tides of Chaos automatically triggers a Wild Magic Surge and recharges your use of this ability.
Previously, the DM could decide whether casting a spell triggered this surge. Having run games for and played as Wild Magic Sorcerers, I personally am grateful for this switch. The previous structure took a fact that the player is most likely to remember—“Did the Sorcerer use Tides of Chaos recently?”—and made it the DM’s responsibility to remember every time the Sorcerer cast a spell. The DM has enough going on! This new arrangement is much easier to run.
Bend Luck — Level 6
Whenever anybody you can see rolls a d20 for a D20 Test, you can use your Reaction to spend 1 Sorcery Point to roll 1d4 and add or subtract it to the roll. Previously, this ability cost 2 Sorcery Points.
Use your innate power to manipulate chance and fate—this time, for half the cost!
Controlled Chaos — Level 14
Controlled Chaos is unchanged from the 2014 Player’s Handbook. When you roll a Wild Magic Surge, roll twice and pick your preferred result.
So, which will it be? Turned into a potted plant, or Polymorphed into a Goat?
Tamed Surge — Level 18
Tamed Surge is an entirely new feature, replacing the 2014 Player’s Handbook’s Spell Bombardment. With Tamed Surge, you can choose to trigger a Wild Magic Surge effect of your choice once per day. If you choose an effect that requires a die roll (e.g., to determine what type of creature is summoned or what spell you cast), you must roll it as normal. So if you wanted a free Fireball, you would also be risking a casting Grease or Levitate instead. I like this because it preserves some degree of chaos, even at higher levels.
If you find yourself low on health and surrounded by enemies, trigger a Wild Magic Surge when you cast Shield and the surge effect that damages nearby enemies and heals you for the amount of damage they take. If you need to escape an ambush, choose the surge effect that grants you and three allies the Invisible condition, or choose the effect that instantly allows you to teleport 60 feet.
Friend of Fate
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 Wild Magic Sorcerer from the 2024 Player’s Handbook gets a sleeker Wild Magic Surge table, a more affordable Bend Luck feature, and a bit more control over the powers of chaos. Tweaks like allowing the player to decide when to risk a Wild Magic Surge and reorganizing the Wild Magic Surge table have made the subclass easier to run for both the DM and player.
However you stumbled across your wild magic—whether you stepped into the wrong magic circle or made a deal with the right archfey—power over fate is a part of you now. When the moment counts, with the Lich nearly defeated and the fate of the world on the line, will the unpredictable forces of the cosmos lend you an extra action… or will they give you a beard made of feathers?
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.
You're just an empowered noble/charlatan/criminal/soldier/entertainer/etc. until then!
But considering how effective wild magic can be and how frequently you are now (officially) able to use it, that's a LOT of power, especially with the other changes to sorceror.
I mean you can always pick your origin at character creation and declare it/include it in backstory. And you can build your first levels of kit around it. I don't think it breaks anything in that regard. Plus you can almost treat it as a mystery even to the player, you start manifesting minor magical abilities and then at level 3, BOOM. Dragon magic manifests, or whatever.
You can even build it into world lore, innate magic users (sorcerors) arent always able to right away determine what kind of magic they have, almost like Naruto-style ki element determination.
We have no idea how powerful complete reliance on the table will be until the table is revealed.
Doing any of that now requires just ignoring the rules and homebrewing it. While before it allowed the DM to use their judgement. That's sad. It is supposed to represent chaos, wild uncontrollable magic. Making it predictable and. In the hands of the player character defeats the whole purpose.
I don't see what's changed regarding how house rules are implemented. Wild surge is now guaranteed to go off in certain very specific circumstances that is not an always present condition. Choosing, as a DM, how and when it activates at any other time has not changed: that's literally DM's prerogative. It's not 'ignoring rules' and what exactly is a house-rule or GM decision other than homebrew ruling anyway? Nothing in the new rules stops a DM from saying a sorceror gets a wild surge, it just adds a little reliability to the player getting one the rest of the time, when, as I said, they fulfil specific criteria.
If your issue is that you don't like wild surges happening as a DM and you want to limit them, then just ban players picking the subclass, otherwise, the new rules just mean MORE wild surges that you, as DM do not have to micromanage and remember to activate. It allows the player to benefit from the abilities they've invested in and takes nothing away from the DM, except a little but of workload.
And nothing about it defeats the purpose, seeing as it's still a roll of the die to see what happens, it is just guaranteed to happen, under specific circumstances.
I fully agree. They could have done things so much better if they'd taken a page from the original Tome of Magic wild mage. That wizard specialization had a mechanic that their casting level (DC in 5e terms) varied with each cast. They also had a surge table and additional spells that only they could cast. Those wild magic spells could have served as the basis for developing an additional spell list for the wild magic sorcerer.
From YouTuber reviews (since a few of them got advance copies), Dungeon Dudes covered World Tree Barbarian, and it is 99% unchanged from UA. The only thing that got changed was the capstone, and that was for the teleport. Instead of bringing your allies 500 feet when you do the group teleport, you only get to travel 150 feet instead. Outside of that World Tree is basically unchanged outside of clarification with weapon masteries when it comes to Battering Roots, which by the by can stack with your current weapon, so you can Graze and Push/Topple someone in addition to having 10 feets worth of range for attacking.
So if you want some subclass reviews in addition to species (Pointy Hat covered Tieflings over on his channel), you're gonna want to start looking at dnd youtubers. And no I don't know who they are sorry.
Yup... In in less than two months now. LOL Can't give all then new toys out early.
Wild Magic was already one of the weaker subclasses, now with Innate Sorcery being a thing and Tides of Chaos not being available until level three, what use does this subclass even still have? I genuinely didn't think Wild Magic could be made weaker, but WOTC managed to surprise me.
It doesn't make sense to me the sorcerer chooses subclass as level 3
Put it back at 1
Yikes. Removing origins (WHERE YOU GET YOUR POWERS) from being level 1 and shifting to level 3 makes no narrative sense. It makes no role-playing sense. You build that into your backstory, let it shape how you interact and view magic. Sorcerers are born with magic, suffused with it. They aren't a wizard that must study and perfect their mastery over a specific sphere of magic. Warlocks and sorcerers should stay instant origins because they get it directly from a source. They don't train into it.
I'm disappointed there's only one new subclass. All the classes are mostly Tashas classes. All I'm really only seeing a few truly new things here and there, and since it SHOULD be backwards compatible, it should be focusing more on new subclasses with the existing entry changes either in the appendix or as a free errata on DDB to help allow for a more accessible change log for players who just want to play old content. This isn't new content, which is what we have been hoping for; this is just a book made from the pages of better, older entries.
If you own the 5e players handbook, Tasha's, and Volo's, you pretty much already own the new PBH.
So since tides of choas auto triggers wild magic surge on next spell cast automatically doesn't that mean sorcs have advantage on checks as long as they have spell slots.
I want to be Mel Gibson, not Joe Peschi. I don't want to be the funny sidekick who's there to lighten the mood with his crazy antics but doesn't serve any important role in the story other than to screw up and empower the antagonist or get saved begrudgingly by the hero. I'd prefer to be the crazy guy who busts a** and blows things up. The more I see and hear, the more I fear WotC has chosen to recraft the wild mage to fill a Peschi role. The subclass will have no bonus spells and no ability to cast a set spell from the surge table other than 1/LR at level 18+. Even then, it seems likely that the wild mage will be compelled to roll for a precise outcome.
While randomness can be fun, there needs to be a measure of power afforded by going down this path. That was the theme of the original ToM wild mage where the subclass had bonus spells that did things other spells could not. While the 2024 wild mage may improve upon its 2014 version, that's a mighty low bar. The draconic subclass has been greatly improved and may be better than we currently perceive it to be depending on the remaining bonus spells to be revealed. The clockwork and aberrant mind subclasses can no longer trade their bonus spells, but each still has its merits, and there may be further changes to these subclasses to be revealed after the NDA is lifted.
I wait not so patiently to see specifics for the wild mage subclass abilities and surge table. I really hope WotC did not mess this up but fear comments from influencers who playtested the wild mage may damn us all to being Daffy Duck.
"Playe:r I'm gonna trigger surge. Hope I get a full spell slot refund D100 sounds. DM: *glances at table* you summon 30 tarrasques 10ft above you player: ( explicit deleted). DM: they land on you instantly killing you and then proceed to destroy the world.
Imagine if summon tarrasques is on the new one.
(Fyi Ive never heard of this subclass just thought about taking a look and this popped into my head)
I don't think it's nearly as wild as people think. You could be completely aware of your Pact and Patron and still not have any subclass abilities.
Your Patron may not think you're ready for their specific abilities until you prove yourself by not dying day one of adventuring. Your Patron could give you a quest to complete before they grant you more (their specific) powers.
Same goes for Sorcerers. You may or may not know what your magic origin is. If you don't, flavor your magic to give yourself/the other players a hint (why is your Fire bolt spell Blue? Why is your skin always ice cold, etc.) until some events occurs (prophetic dream, meeting an ancestor, etc.) and it all clicks.
Jesus ******* Christ, not this shit again...
The first few sessions with my Wild Magic Sorcerer were torture because of the old rule, until I made a deal with my DM to homebrew this rule basically to the word.
Edit: Blegh. I forgot how replies work.
The first few sessions with my Wild Magic Sorcerer were torture because of the old rule, until I made a deal with my DM to homebrew this rule basically to the word.
Same