Wild Magic Sorcerer 5e Guide

Wild Magic 5e Guide Rating Scheme

This guide is meant as a deep dive into the Wild Magic Sorcerer subclass. For a full overview of the Sorcerer class, check out our sorcerer 5e Guide.

For our full class guides, we use the following color rating scheme:

• Red isn’t going to contribute to the effectiveness of your character build at all
• Orange Situationally good, but a below-average option otherwise
• Green is a good option
• Blue is a great option, you should strongly consider this option for your character
• Sky Blue is an amazing option. If you do not take this option your character would not be optimized

For our subclass guides, we focus mainly on the Blue and Sky Blue options, because the other options are discussed in the parent guide or other subclass guides. We also discuss options that normally would be good for a typical build, but underperform when used in a subclass.

What is the Wild Magic Sorcerer in 5e?

Wild Magic sorcerers draw their power from the chaotic magics that created the universe. The Wild Magic sorcerer is one of the original fifth edition sorcerer subclasses, appearing the Player’s Handbook.

The Wild Magic sorcerer’s features revolve around unleashing surges of untamed magic when they cast spells. This is easily the most random subclass in the fifth edition, making play unpredictable (but hilariously fun.)

Strengths

Beyond its Wild Magic Surge ability, the Wild Magic Sorcerer’s features work to manipulate your and other creature’s luck. You have features that can give you advantage and add or subtract bonuses from other creature’s rolls, which can be a clutch resource.

While it unfortunately comes up infrequently, the majority of the results on the Wild Magic Surge table are positive or at least neutral, making the randomness of the ability skewed in your favor.

Weaknesses

Having unpredictable class features in a game that already features a decent amount of chance can cause uncertainty. Beyond this, the Wild Magic sorcerers features just aren’t all that powerful and don’t offer a distinct difference in play from the base sorcerer class.

There’s also a weird stipulation where the DM is the one to ask for rolls on the Wild Magic Surge table after spellcasting or to recharge the Tides of Chaos feature, which puts extra work on the DM if you don’t homebrew a way around it (which we suggest below). While Wild Magic sorcerers are anything but boring, they’re for the most part at the mercy of the sorcerer’s limited Metamagic, spellcasting, and sorcery points.

Best Races for Wild Magic Sorcerers 5e

As with most sorcerers, CHA is the biggest priority. Beyond that, DEX can be useful to boost your AC and CON is useful for hitpoints and concentration checks.

In a race, you’re looking for synergistic ASIs (which can be mitigated if you’re using the Customize Your Origin optional rule from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything) and racial features that compliment the sorcerer playstyle. Because Wild Magic sorcerers only learn a total of 15 spells, races that provide access to more spells that you can use with Wild Magic and Metamagic are beneficial.

Below are some races we recommend for Wild Magic sorcerers. Keep in mind that we exclude setting-exclusive races like the ones found in Eberron: Rising from the Last War.

Standard Races

Non-Standard Races

Best Backgrounds for Wild Magic Sorcerer

As most backgrounds are setting specific, we’ll cover a couple setting-agnostic backgrounds that can provide some value to your Wild Magic sorcerer build.

Urchin: Great way to get Stealth and Sleight of Hand, two proficiencies you normally wouldn’t as a sorcerer.

Charlatan: A free social skill, Sleight of Hand, and useful tool proficiencies make this background a good start.

Noble: The free proficiency in Persuasion will go well with your sorcerers pumped CHA.

Wild Magic Sorcerer 5e Ability Scores

You receive Ability Score Increases at 4th, 8th, 12th, 16th, and 19th level.

The biggest priority is CHA, as that’s what effects your spellcasting modifier. Next, you’ll want to pump CON to help mitigate your low hit die. Finally, DEX will boost your AC, help with Stealth, and improve your DEX saving throws.

STR: You want no part in STR.

DEX: Pump this after you’ve got your CON to a respectable level.

CON: Important for not only staying alive but also for maintaining concentration on our spells.

INT: Dump. Wizards are the smart ones.

WIS: Beyond Perception, there’s nothing here for our Wild Magic Sorcerer.

CHA: Your first stat to pump. Get this as high as possible in character creation and use your ASIs to get this to 20 ASAP.

Wild Magic Sorcerer 5e Class Progression

1st Level

Hit Dice: d6 hit dice, which is the lowest one out there.

Saves: CON saves are excellent because they can boost your concentration checks. CHA save don’t come up particularly often, but when they do they tend to be nasty.

Proficiencies: No armor proficiencies which hurts your dismal survivability. No weapons proficiencies either, but that won’t matter much.

Skills: A couple face skills which go well with your CHA. Don’t bother with the INT skills as that will be your dump stat.

Spellcasting: Sorcerers struggle by only getting 15 spells known of the course of their level ups, you’ll want to choose your race and feats accordingly to help mitigate this.

Best Spells for Wild Magic Sorcerers 5e

We cover the best spells for sorcerers in our sorcerer guide so, in this section, we’ll discuss some spells that only apply specifically to Wild Magic sorcerers.

The most important things to remember when considering spells for Wild Magic sorcerers are:

• Bend Luck can turn a enemy’s save against your spell into a fail if they’re within 4 of your spell save DC. Reserve using this for when they only save by 1, so they’re guaranteed to fail, or for really potent debuffs.
• Spells that have attack rolls, like chromatic orb, can be given advantage with Tides of Chaos. Keep in mind, RAW this must be used before the roll.

Cantrip

• Fire Bolt: Your best damage dealing option. It's an attack roll, so you can gain advantage on the roll with Tides of Chaos and it's a d10 damage dice which makes it the best cantrip to use with Spell Bombardment.

1st level

• Absorb Elements: While this is normally a good defensive option, this is extremely important for Wild Magic sorcerers to stock because of the off chance they cast fireball centered on themselves with a Wild Magic Surge.
• Silvery Barbs: While normally an overpowered spell, silvery barbs is even better for Wild Magic sorcerers because they have access to Bend Luck, which can further hamper an enemy's ability to succeed on a saving throw or attack roll.

2nd level

• Scorching Ray: While this is still a great spell for Wild Magic sorcerers, it's important to note that, when using Tides of Chaos with this spell, you only gain advantage on the first attack.

3rd level

• Counterspell: While counterspell is normally a must-take for sorcerers, it's even more imperative to take this with Wild Magic sorcerers. There are quite a few spells that can be cast centered on yourself on the Wild Magic Surge table which can be devastating, fireball and polymorph specifically. Grabbing counterspell will give you a chance to avoid these consequences if they arise at in inopportune time.
• Dispel Magic: Always make sure at least one of your party members has this.

Best Feats for Wild Magic Sorcerers 5e

• Fey Touched: Free misty step, an ASI to CHA, and an extremely potent 1st-level spell. What's not to love? Due to their lack of known spells, sorcerers will doubly appreciate the additional spells gained by this feat. The best option would probably be silvery barbs, a ridiculously powerful reaction spell that sorcerers don't normally get access to.

• Eldritch Adept: Great option to pick up Armor of Shadows for free mage armor or Mask of Many Faces of a free disguise self whenever you want it.

• Metamagic Adept: Naturally, sorcerers will benefit the most from this feat, giving them more than the measly 3 metamagic options they get with their class feature. While sorcerers can only use the added sorcery points for metamagic, it does allow them to have more than the cap of 20.

• Shadow Touched: Invisibility is a great spell for casters that need to get out of dodge. The free casting of invisibility and another 1st-level spell goes a long way because of the sorcerer’s reduced spell list. Plus, you get to increase your CHA. This is a go-to option if you end up with an odd CHA score after character creation.

• War Caster: You already have proficiency in Constitution, which helps concentration checks, but if you want even better chances of maintaining concentration, getting advantage on your checks is a good way to do it.

Wild Magic Sorcerer 5e Build Example

For our Wild Magic sorcerer, we’re going to lean very heavily into a thematic, yet powerful, Feywild theme. Choosing the fairy race will give us access to a couple of potent spells, plus free flight that won’t be impeded because we don’t plan on wearing armor. With our first ASI, we’ll pick up Fey Touched for misty step and silvery barbs, two extremely potent spells.

Between these two options we’ll have access to 5 more spells than we normally would as a sorcerer, plus a number of free castings. Unfortunately, casting these spells for free using racial and feat abilities doesn’t trigger Wild Magic Surge, but we’re not going to worry too much about that.

We’ll be choosing the Hermit background mainly as flavor, but you can choose any that fit your Wild Magic Sorcerer.