Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="CapnZapp" data-source="post: 6704904" data-attributes="member: 12731">I skimmed your guide so I could have missed it, but...Why play a Wild Mage? Is there any mechanical benefits aside from wacky role-playing to be had? Why would you give up on all those juicy features a Draconic Sorcerer gets - or an Evoker Wizard, for that matter?What is the draw of the Wild Mage specifically?How do you play a Wild Mage well? I would claim it is one of the hardest subclasses to do well! (Lots of players - and their DMs - haven't even reached the basic conclusion, that surges must come early and often for the class to have any charop value at all)This must be the central issue. And, frankly, all the standard talk about races and builds and spells only serve to obscure this. (Indeed, I began this post by saying I didn't find it if it is even there...)What I mean is that Wild Mage does almost nothing to enhance the spells that are available to every kind of Sorcerer. Meaning, most of the guide becomes a general guide on "what spells should a sorcerer choose" or even "a guide to arcane spells". But what's the specific edge the Wild Mage subclass gives you? There's precious little "force multiplier" stuff going on.I would claim that Wild Surges is not what you're looking for. Wild Surges is a dazzling distraction. Wild Surges is what makes you miss the point of the class. Why? You can't build strategies around pure randomness. Your guide is splattered with color, but I would argue that any color-coded evaluation needs to see the whole picture to be truly useful. And the charop value of Wild Surges should be solidly black.The thing Wild Mages got going for them, the only thing you gain from choosing the Wild Mage subclass (apart from randomness and all the stuff all sorcerers get) is advantage.What every Wild Mage guide should start off with, is telling the reader it's all about the advantage.You correctly identify how you must get your DM on board before choosing this class, and I thank you for it. But you could be much more brutally honest in that you should simply refuse to play a Wild Mage as an optimizer unless your DM is fully okay with giving you Wild Surges on every spell you cast, and the advantage you gain from that. Also, any Wild Mage guide needs to be upfront with how few spells that you can actually use to leverage that advantage.There are pitifully few spells where you get to make attack rolls yourself (so you can make your attacks with advantage).Sure, getting advantage on defense and checks is nice. But could it be that the charop advice to give is "Wild Mage is currently underpowered, and you should hold off playing one until we see more spells that are directly useful to the subclass"...?In that light, just gushing on the class' virtues is not helpful.For instance, there are no spells with a "wild" theme. Meaning: are there any spells you would not cast as a generic sorcerer but you love to cast as a Wild Mage?The end analysis I need to see from any Wild Mage guide is: do the subclass features (mainly getting advantage after every spell) make the subclass mechanically competitive with the alternatives (i.e. dracsorc and evokwiz)? Why... or why not?Discuss.</blockquote>

Verification