Best Sorcerer Origin So Far?

[Anderlith]

So with the Favored Soul & the Storm Origins added to the Sorcerer what is the strongest mechanically & is one better at a certain thing than the others?

[Wartex1]

Storm Sorcerer is probably the strongest mechanically from a pure damage standpoint. However, Favored Soul definitely has the edge in terms of variety, since it can choose a domain to gain spells from. This allows for some interesting healing options due to metamagic. Plus, Favored Soul gets weapon and armor proficiencies, allowing it to have a higher AC for a lower cost.

[Steampunkette]

The Strongest is Wild Mage.

The Weakest is Wild Mage.

>.>

[Gnomes2169]

Likely Storm for their feature's raw power. However, Favored Soul is by far the most varied and flexible. Whichever is more appealing to you, I suppose.

[asorel]

Storm Sorcerer is probably the strongest mechanically from a pure damage standpoint. However, Favored Soul definitely has the edge in terms of variety, since it can choose a domain to gain spells from. This allows for some interesting healing options due to metamagic. Plus, Favored Soul gets weapon and armor proficiencies, allowing it to have a higher AC for a lower cost.

For purely DPR, Draconic (fire) is pretty strong. More so if you ignore the erratum that alters how Elemental Affinity works. Storm Sorcerer is still excellent from a mobility/crowd control standpoint, and has the potential to be better than Draconic in overall combat.

[SharkForce]

depends what you're trying to do. favoured soul and storm are certainly stronger (although wild is not without perks if your DM makes extensive use of the wild surge table).

storm is definitely the strongest for combining with a melee class (by which I mostly mean paladin). both have their advantages as a single-classed character, though I'm inclined to say favoured soul is stronger up until level 18, at which point the storm sorcerer's vastly superior flight ability kicks in while the favoured soul gets a teensy bit of healing every round. right up until that point, I'd say the favoured soul has the better end of the deal.

draconic is alright, but I'm not a fan of damage-focused casters; damage is nice and all, but you don't need spells for it. other classes pretty much revolve around it, and you're really not hugely better than anyone else at AoE damage.

[ImSAMazing]

So with the Favored Soul & the Storm Origins added to the Sorcerer what is the strongest mechanically & is one better at a certain thing than the others?

Chaos origin is the most fun to play. But you'll need a good DM for it, because it only comes into play at the DM's descretion.

[Giant2005]

Draconic was my favourite until the recent nerf but now Storm has taken the top spot.

[noce]

Wild sorcerer is quite strong for single target CC in my opinion, with the ability to cut enemy save by 1d4.
It is also good with ray spells, with the ability to gain advantage on attack rolls.

Those features can also be used defensively, gaining advantage on saving throws or lowering enemy attack roll by 1d4.

If your DM lets you use the table as often as he can, this origin is also really really fun, and at level 14 this feature is pure cheese: with "advantage" on the table roll you're quite likely going to pop out something good.



Yes, this is my favourite origin.

[Battlebooze]

Wild sorcerer is quite strong for single target CC in my opinion, with the ability to cut enemy save by 1d4.
It is also good with ray spells, with the ability to gain advantage on attack rolls.

Those features can also be used defensively, gaining advantage on saving throws or lowering enemy attack roll by 1d4.

If your DM lets you use the table as often as he can, this origin is also really really fun, and at level 14 this feature is pure cheese: with "advantage" on the table roll you're quite likely going to pop out something good.



Yes, this is my favourite origin.

Pick up the Luck feat at 4 and you're almost set.

[SharkForce]

Pick up the Luck feat at 4 and you're almost set.

lucky doesn't do much for a wild sorcerer. the wild magic table is a d100 roll, not a d20.

now if the 2nd edition luckstone was still around... that would be a whol different story (if you could get your hands on one) :)

[Dralnu]

I'd only consider Wild Sorcerer if the DM is willing to let you roll a d20 for wild surge after every spell, not on the DM's whim/when he remembers.

Even so, I played Wild for levels 1-4 with that ruling and I'd still only get to roll on the table once, sometimes twice a session. (I was allowed to change to Draconic after we agreed Wild was sucking.)

Tides of Chaos is where the real meat of the class is in terms of raw power. It depends how often the DM lets you recharge. My DM almost never did, because he'd often forget (since he's already juggling enough things) and I felt like an ass nagging about it. I've heard of DMs allowing Tides to auto-recharge after every non-cantrip spell -- that's fantastic, puts Wild up there in my book.


I'll also give the point to Stormborn. Draconic is still the king of damage, despite the recent nerfs. Stormborn's AOE thing is not as good as good ol' +CHA to Fire Bolt / Burning Hands / Fireball. Also permanent Mage Armor is essentially one bonus 1st level spell slot in my eyes if you're not multiclassing, and your D6 HP gets bumped to D8 values.

But Stormborn has a lot of other things going for it. The biggest is undoubtedly the bonus spells. It's not just that you have bonus spells known to greatly increase your utility, but those spells are always prepared -- you've effectively caught up (and exceeded?) to the amount of spells a wizard can prepare each day.

Sure, you don't get to pick what your bonus spells are, but honestly any spell you get is a huge boon. As a sorcerer, I'd never take Fog Cloud, or Gust of Wind (spells known is too precious and they are too situational) -- but if I always have those spells prepared in my pocket, then I'm certain there will be situations where those spells actually are wonderful in my arsenal. Call Lightning is also amazing. Basically any bonus spells are godsend to Sorcerers in my eyes.

Favored Soul bonus spells are similarly great, especially Life Domain (bless, cure wounds, lesser restoration, spiritual weapon?? yes please!) but the rest of its abilities are kinda meh in my eyes. But maybe the bonus spells are good enough that the rest doesn't even matter.


Sooooo...

Best Overall: Stormborn
Best Damage: Draconic
Best Spells: Favored Soul
Potentially great if DM is super lenient: Wild

[SharkForce]

the stormborn AoE ability is hilarious on a paladin 6/sorcerer 14 build.

and imo, the best feature of the wild sorcerer is the level 6 ability. -1d4 after the roll to enemy saves? huge bonus.

[ImperiousLeader]

Sooooo...

Best Overall: Stormborn
Best Damage: Draconic
Best Spells: Favored Soul
Potentially great if DM is super lenient: Wild

Agreed. I quite like the new options. And I don't think they are really superior to the Draconic and Wild. The Wild is well, wildly variable depending on how often you can recharge your dice manipulation abilities, and the Draconic gets some solid passive buffs.

I'm glad the new options exist though, Sorcerers are one of my favourite classes.

[Steampunkette]

The Wild Mage I'm playing, so far, was weak as heck for a while. The DM was nervous about giving me back Tides of Chaos by letting me Wild Surge, because Advantage is powerful. Meanwhile the Barbarian next to me was Recklessly Attacking everything and ignoring half of the incoming damage...

So I wound up getting a magic item that allows me to force a wild surge to recover the Tides of Chaos.

The character is super awesome fun to play and I seriously have to decide if a surge is worthwhile since I don't have Surgevantage, yet.

[Chaosvii7]

Regardless of what Storm is capable of, I'd still vote Favored Soul. Their flight is inferior to Storm origin in that it's not as fast and they can't share it with friends(not like anybody does), but Favored Soul gets it far sooner. Bare bones comparatively, but it's enough that Favored Soul has a strict advantage from an earlier point. Besides that, the ability to heal every time you cast a spell is an amazing feature and IMO incredibly powerful. With a 20 Charisma it's guaranteed to at least heal the maximum result of your hit die every time, and you can certainly cast more spells with the help of Sorcery Points. If you're a good sorcerer you won't be taking that much damage as-is, but the ability to become so self-sufficient is a big deal.

The extra attack isn't the best feature if you're not grabbing combat tricks and such with spells and feats, and the expanded equipment selection is kind of a poor showing, but the vastly improved spell list combined with mid-game at-will flight and late-game healing makes the origin relevant through basically every stage of gameplay.

I hate Draconic because it's superfluous as an origin, especially so if they insist on including Dragonborn, and Wild Magic is great for core-only, but I see no reason not to play a Favored Soul otherwise. Their strengths have nowhere to go but up as they level.

[Anderlith]

This is good feedback. I was asking because I had a character concept I wanted to use but didn't know if I would be taking a bad option. It seems Storm is the most recommended & I didn't know if Storm or Tempest Favored Soul would be better.

Just to share, the character is the son of an old fisherman & a sea elf that he fell in love with. It was tragic though because while they loved each other & got married & lived together, every time they conceived, the baby miscarried. This happened several times, then the mother got pregnant again & was bringing it to term & they were so happy. As she was giving birth it was a difficult labor & there was a huge storm brewing off the sea, the worst in living memory. During the night the child was born but was a stillborn, the mother clutched the baby & cried, but suddenly the roof of their dwelling was torn asunder by a bolt of lightning struck the child. It brought him to life & the storm disappeared, surging into the infant. Half Elf Storm Sorcerer, who will use a fishing rod as a staff/arcane focus, covered in scrimshaw to cleverly hide the arcane runes.

[Giant2005]

Draconic is still the king of damage, despite the recent nerfs.

I don't really see how you could come to that conclusion.
Storm's bonus damage scales up to +10, and they can inflict up to 10 damage as a reaction (Which is notably the only ability of that nature which is infinite in use).
The Draconic Sorcerer only gets scaling bonus damage up to +5. I don't really know how that can compare.

[iTreeby]

What I really like about the stormborn sorcerer is the concentration spells. sorcerer's don't normally get many concentration spells that do damage but, stormborn get call lightning and summons.

[Dralnu]

I don't really see how you could come to that conclusion.
Storm's bonus damage scales up to +10, and they can inflict up to 10 damage as a reaction (Which is notably the only ability of that nature which is infinite in use).
The Draconic Sorcerer only gets scaling bonus damage up to +5. I don't really know how that can compare.

1) The damage has a 10 foot range so it's going to be more difficult to apply it, wheres anyone hit by your 20 foot radius, long range Fireball is eating that +5 damage.

2) With D6 health, dealing reactionary damage when hit by melee is probably a situation you'd rather avoid entirely

3) Fire spells are generally better than Lightning/Thunder. I'd rather cast Fire Bolt than Shocking Grasp or that new thunder cantrip; same goes for Fireball over Lightning Bolt.

Finally, and this is personal preference so I'm not counting it as a real point; I care much more about a class' level 1-10 abilities than I do 11+, simply because I rarely get to play at high levels. So what a class gets at 14+ doesn't interest me as much.

[SharkForce]

storm sorcerer gets call lightning, don't they? fireball may be better than lightning bolt, but call lightning is pretty amazing and is probably better... when it can be used, at least.

[Dralnu]

Call Lightning is indeed amazing, and a big reason why I like SB in the first place. I still like Fireball more though. You need 2 rounds to catch up / pass fireball's damage and it's a 5ft radius compared to fireball's 20 so fireball could easily be doing much more. Also each bolt doesn't proc heart of the storm, just the initial casting.

I guess a spell more comparable to Call Lightning is Melf's Minute Meteors. A draconic sorc casting Meteors and following up with a meteor + fire bolt each subsequent turn is doing about the same damage as Call Lightning.

[Battlebooze]

lucky doesn't do much for a wild sorcerer. the wild magic table is a d100 roll, not a d20.

now if the 2nd edition luckstone was still around... that would be a whol different story (if you could get your hands on one) :)

Woops, you are quite correct. For some reason I thought luck was three rerolls of any dice, not just attack, save, and ability checks. Still an awesome feat, but of no special value to a wild Sorcerer.

[iTreeby]

Call Lightning is indeed amazing, and a big reason why I like SB in the first place. I still like Fireball more though. You need 2 rounds to catch up / pass fireball's damage and it's a 5ft radius compared to fireball's 20 so fireball could easily be doing much more. Also each bolt doesn't proc heart of the storm, just the initial casting.

I guess a spell more comparable to Call Lightning is Melf's Minute Meteors. A draconic sorc casting Meteors and following up with a meteor + fire bolt each subsequent turn is doing about the same damage as Call Lightning.

So the only thing that minute meteors has over call lightning is that you can use it in doors or small areas and is mobile. In a higher slot the meteors only give you more strikes whereas call lightning has infinite strikes durring its duration and gets more powerful in higher slots and can hijack a real storm for even more d10, not trying to debate which is better here because its somewhat immaterial to my real point about these maintained concentration damage spells is that you can still quicken spells that do not need to be cantrips and maintain the damage from the other spell.
turn one, a cantrip and a quickened call lightning/ meteor, round two maintain call lightning/ meteor and quicken a fireball is brutal.

[Dralnu]

Minute Meteors expend the meteors as a bonus action, so you don't need to quicken anything. Fireball bonus action meteor on the survivors. CL does scale better though!

Sorry, minor quibble. I love to quibble. I like the word too. Quibble quibble quibble! :smallbiggrin: