D&D 5E [GUIDE] Playing Dice with the Universe: A Slant Guide to Wild-Magic Sorcerer

Miladoon said:

Also, I thought about Blade Ward working with falling damage and I think there is a RAW argument against it. But I would leave it in the DM's hands.

Click to expand...

"Falling" on PHB 183 is quite explicit that it is bludgeoning damage. That's bad news for skeletons, good news for werewolves and Blade Warded sorcerers--if you can cast Blade Ward in time that is. (Primary scenario I'm thinking of is falling out of a spelljamming ship from several thousand feet up--for a little 10d6 drop there is no way unless you had a readied action.)

You are right, however, Blade Ward specifically halves weapon attacks. Falling is not a weapon attack.

I'll slip this over to the character builds forum. It'll still show up in the 5E forum.

Miladoon said:

You are right, however, Blade Ward specifically halves weapon attacks. Falling is not a weapon attack.

Click to expand...

You've persuaded me. RAW and apparent RAI it will not protect against falling damage--which makes sense with the fluff too. (Blade Ward, not Ground Ward. )

The Advantage thing is important - a wild mage loves to make spell attacks. My particular wild mage makes more use of Heighten Spell + Bend Luck to make his DC's for save-or-suck spells something worth respecting, but Advantage on spell attacks is earlier and more common, so it's a little more defining.

That'd bump a lot of your spells up by a category or so, I'd think. For ex, at 1st level, Thunderwave is weak sauce for a class that's not going to be up in melee much. Chromatic Orb, with advantage, is the shining star there.

Plus, it looks like a lot of CharOp ignores the potential of disguise self + friends in terms of making enemies for other people.

And while it's hardly CharOp stuff, one can't ignore the awesome potential of polymorphing yourself into a whale as a very expensive and very messy alternative to feather fall (thanks, max falling damage!).

I'm A Banana said:

And while it's hardly CharOp stuff, one can't ignore the awesome potential of polymorphing yourself into a whale as a very expensive and very messy alternative to feather fall (thanks, max falling damage!).

Click to expand...

The CharOp way would be to polymorph yourself into a giant eagle. But the Hitchhiker's way is funnier, I'll give you that.

Hemlock said:

Wild Mages are better at save-or-die spells. Heighten Spell + Bend Luck = Hasta la vista, baby.

IMO, Bend Luck is the core of the class and when I make a wild mage, that is why I made him wild instead of dragon. Tides of Chaos doesn't hurt but I use it defensively.

Click to expand...

Bend Luck has an awful opportunity cost, however. Those two sorcery points could have been used for something else. In effect, the Wild Magic might have Bend Luck, but at the price of not having as many sorcery points as other sorcerers.

Not saying it isn't useful, but it's not free. The only real free thing about the Wild Mage is its advantages.

The Wild Mage would come across as much more fun if
a) there were just a few more spells with attack rolls. Just two or three more would make a huge difference, if spaced over those vital spell levels 3-5. In particular a 3rd level version of Scorching Ray that gets some of the same power boost Fireball has over all spells of lower level, so you would have a standard combat spell that you could use throughout your career to leverage your main advantage over other sorcerers (namely, advantage!)
b) there were just some examples of "wild spells". That is, spells with randomness built in. That would be a huge boost in the theme of a Wild Mage if you could actually select spells that act whacky and unpredictably just like you do. I guess Confusion kind of counts, but I want more - and I want spells with a pronounced "wild" feel. Just two or three of these (one manstay at first level spell, and one more at perhaps fourth level) would make a huge difference!

CapnZapp said:

Bend Luck has an awful opportunity cost, however. Those two sorcery points could have been used for something else. In effect, the Wild Magic might have Bend Luck, but at the price of not having as many sorcery points as other sorcerers.

Not saying it isn't useful, but it's not free. The only real free thing about the Wild Mage is its advantages.

Click to expand...

Sure, obviously it's not free, but it's not that expensive either. Think of it like giving everyone in your party +5 on their casting stat (+2.5 DC) in exchange for 1 sorcery point per four spells they cast (more precisely, for every four targets they cast a spell on). The reason it's cheap is because you get to see the die roll before you decide to Bend Luck. Say your buddy casts Hold Monster with DC 16 and you believe the enemy has Wisdom +5. Obviously if the enemy rolls a 1 or a 5 you're not going to use it; if he rolls a 18 or 19 he beats the spell DC already; but if he rolls a 12 or 13 he is on the edge of making his save, so you Bend Luck, and it is like your buddy had DC 18-19 all along. It's a capability which you don't pay for unless you use it.

Wormwood said:

This is the most entertaining guide I've read in...ever. Do more. Do them all.

Click to expand...

Hemlock said:

I love the flavor! You had me at St. Augustine.

Click to expand...

Miladoon said:

Your explanation of Blade Ward needs to be copy/pasted to each guide.

Click to expand...

Wik said:

This is the type of CharOp I can get behind. Enjoyable read, not finding some ridiculous power combos, and it's about one of my favourite classes in 5e to boot! Yeah, works for me.

Click to expand...

D'aw shucks, I think I'm blushing. Thanks for all the support.

Hemlock, thanks for going into depth with blade ward vs. dodge. I didn't want to take up too much space with the comparison, but it's great to have it in the comments. Though blade ward doesn't reduce falling damage, investiture of stone does. It is restricted to nonmagical B/P/S damage, so neither one of them works against the likes of insect plague and erupting earth.

You've also got me reconsidering bend luck. I hadn't thought of it in the concentration context, mostly because the other caster in my group is a warlock mainly concerned with blasting everything with eldritch lasers. Stacking with heightened spell would be very potent on a save-or-die but also very expensive. I'll mull it over and probably adjust bend luck.

CapnZapp said:

Why play a Wild Mage? Is there any mechanical benefits aside from wacky role-playing to be had?

Click to expand...

I touched on a lot of the things you bring up, but I might go back and put more emphasis on them following your suggestions. For this thesis question, I'll give you three answers, starting with the one I think you are least likely to accept.
1) Dungeons and Dragons is a role-playing game. Role-playing opportunities are mechanical benefits.
2) If your DM likes the inspiration system, RP and combat are not entirely discrete.
3) With respect, if class and sub-class are to you nothing but a lever by which to gain "mechanical benefits" and "force multipliers", it is a gross reduction to call either WMS as a whole or wild-magic surges "wacky role-playing". Think of surges more as wacky combat effects, and the positive far outweighs the negative (and the RP) on the table.

I'm not familiar enough with evocation wizard to make that comparison, but as far as dragon sorc . . . I think that there is a common pitfall with the min/maxing mindset where people think that as long as they have fiddly little decisions to make for easily calcuated marginal gains, they're maximizing their output. Thus, they look at the elemental affinity sub-class feature, see it as an opportunity to optimize, and think that that makes it a good feature. My thinking is that elemental affinity pales in comparison to spell bombardment, because the former can only apply to spells of one type, with a limited pool of types. This leads to dragon sorcerers choosing spells by damage type, effectively maximizing one of the sorcerer class's greatest weaknesses, the limited spell selection. With spell bombardment, the WMS prefers spells with lots of large dice, spells with multiple opportunities to trigger spell bombardment, and AoE spells which multiply the added damage over many targets. The range of spells which play nicely with spell bombardment is much greater than for any draconic type, leading to fewer sub-optimal decisions made in the name of optimization. It's just a damn shame we get spell bombardment so late.

For the other dragon perks, a little bit of HP and welfare armor are nice but not game-changing; no-concentration slow flight is great outside but of limited use indoors; and the dragon aura is powerful against a horde but comes at a big cost. Compare that to wild-magic surges (again, strongly combat positive on the whole and even better with controlled chaos); and tides of chaos and bend luck, both of which have a direct combat effect and can be used offensively or defensively. I honestly do not understand where the supposed big disparity between the two sub-classes is. . . . assuming the DM plays along with WMS.

Thanks for following up, Cognomen's Cassowary. Quick comment:

Cognomen's Cassowary said:

My thinking is that elemental affinity pales in comparison to spell bombardment, because the former can only apply to spells of one type, with a limited pool of types. This leads to dragon sorcerers choosing spells by damage type, effectively maximizing one of the sorcerer class's greatest weaknesses, the limited spell selection. With spell bombardment, the WMS prefers spells with lots of large dice, spells with multiple opportunities to trigger spell bombardment, and AoE spells which multiply the added damage over many targets. The range of spells which play nicely with spell bombardment is much greater than for any draconic type, leading to fewer sub-optimal decisions made in the name of optimization. It's just a ---- shame we get spell bombardment so late.

Click to expand...

The bolded above is spot-on, very insightful. But you touch on one of my gut reactions to the tactical advice in the guide, which is: the analysis on spell bombardment preferring big dice is good, but it only applies at 18th level. It is even less relevant than advising a sorcerer what to do with Wish.

I kind of felt like you had this great insight into how to best exploit Spell Bombardment and maybe got carried away with generalizing it to lower levels where the insight doesn't apply.