Sorcerers in Dungeons & Dragons are great for players who want to have the reality-shaping cosmic power of a wizard but aren’t too keen on the whole “books” thing. Sorcerers come with innate powers and the potential for a dramatic backstory that might include a divine ancestor or a traumatic childhood experience.

Related: Dungeons & Dragons: Tips For Playing A Wild Magic Sorcerer

You'll have a Sorcerous Origin that is the source of your magical powers, with perks and shortcomings influencing your playstyle. The best Sorcerer subclass depends on several factors, including the kind of Sorcerer you want to build and the Skills and Feats you choose to complement your overall talent base.

Updated June 12, 2023 by Jerel Levy: With Dungeons & Dragons subclasses constantly expanding, it can be difficult to find a complete list of all the subclasses for a single class. When it comes to sorcerers, however, you'll have to contend with sorcerer origins. This guide lists all the sorcerer origins, and luckily for you, we rank the subclasses to show you which is the best sorcerer subclass. We've updated this guide to help you access them all. We've added better formatting and readability to this guide so you can easily access all the 5E sorcerer subclasses.

Wild Magic

A human Sorcerer is surrounded by a spiral of flames as flames shoot from his eyes.
Human Sorcerer From The Player's Handbook via Wizards of the Coast

Wild Magic

Source

D&D Player's Handbook

Main Benefits

Wild Magic Surge – effects are unpredictable and range from comedic to catastrophic.

Ideal Feat

Elemental Adept

Party Role:

Damage

Make no mistake; Wild Magic is fun. It’s unexpected, and the Wild Magic Surge effects will bring some levity to the table, making it a good choice for a lighthearted campaign. There’s also a small chance that you can kill your entire party in a fiery explosion at level one through no fault of your own.

Other than Wild Magic Surge, which can have good, bad, or neutral effects, most of your effects involve manipulating luck, which in this case means gaining occasional advantage on rolls and spending sorcery points to lower your enemies’ rolls and boost those of your allies.

The highest-level ability, Spell Bombardment, is fairly unimpressive for an 18th-level ability, only giving extra damage die to spell damage once per turn. Still, it adds up, and this subclass is charming enough that you might want to choose it anyway.

Storm Sorcerer

Storm Sorcerer holding an electrified staff From Xanathar's Guide To Everything Via Wizards of the Coast
Storm Sorcerer From Xanathar's Guide To Everything Via Wizards of the Coast

Storm Sorcerer

Source

Xanathar's Guide to Everything

Main Benefits

Heart of the Storm – start casting a spell of 1st level or higher that deals lightning or thunder damage, and stormy magic erupts from you.

Ideal Feats

Elemental Adept

Party Role

Damage

Storm Sorcery lets you embody the tempest, which means you get to do a lot of thunder and lightning damage.

This Sorcerer subclass begins with Tempestuous Magic, allowing you to fly into the sky after an attack as a bonus action without provoking an attack of opportunity. It's disengage as a bonus action for a spell caster, which can come in handy more often than you'd think.

At higher levels, you get resistance and eventually immunity to both thunder and lightning damage, as well as the ability to deal guaranteed thunder or lightning damage in a small radius around you whenever you cast a thunder or lightning spell – great for forcing concentration checks on enemy casters.

At level 18, you even get the ability to fly twice as fast as some other Sorcerous Origins and even let your friends come along with you. Overall, it's a very niche but still effective subclass.

You don't know whether you'll get to the higher levels and be able to utilize the subclass for damage and its niche abilities, but if your backstory revolves around storm or tempest, this is your best choice to embody that ideal.

Related: Dungeons & Dragons: All Cleric Subclasses, Ranked

Lunar Sorcery

A Human Sorcerer Draws On The Magic Of Krynn's Moons
A Human Sorcerer Draws On The Magic Of Krynn's Moons via Wizards of the Coast

Lunar Sorcery

Source

Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen

Main Benefits

Lunar Empowerment – gives you advantage on different skill checks, resistances, and debuffs to attacks against you.

Ideal Feats

Magic Initiate

Party Role

Damage, Defense

This class is more defensive and crowd-control oriented than some of the other Sorcerer subclasses.

While most subclasses focus on one type of magic, Luanr Sorcerer allows you to all six types of magic – abjuration, divination, evocation, necromancy, divination, and transmutation.

While the mechanic is tied to the changing of the moon phases, this is the only subclass that will allow you to access spells outside of your prepared list and change them between leveling up.

As the Sorcerer class only allows you to replace spells when leveling up.

Most of your skills will revolve around making the enemy perform saving throws against your natural moon effects to their detriment.

You can switch between the types of saves the enemy will need to make as a bonus action, making you versatile on the fly to adjust to giving the enemy disadvantages that will be relevant to them.

You'll gain the ability to reduce the number of sorcery points used. Of the lunar cycle spells you learn, you'll also be able to cast one of the first-level spells without expending a spell slot.

The spells provided also revolve around forms of crowd control for the group. While handy, it may leave you in a position of playing passively.

Divine Soul

A divine soul sorcerer elf floats as he's surrounding by golden energy, ready to cast a spell
Divine Soul via Wizards of the Coast

Divine Soul

Source

Xanathar's Guide to Everything

Main Benefits

Divine Magic – which gives you access to Cleric spells.

Ideal Feat

Ritual Caster

Party Role

Damage, Healing

Divine Soul lets you be a Sorcerer in Cleric’s clothing. Whenever you gain spells, you can choose them from the Sorcerer or Cleric spell lists, effectively giving you potential access to almost twice as many spells.

Plus, you get one extra Cleric spell that doesn’t count against the number of spells you know based on your deity’s alignment.

Although the access to Cleric spells that can be cast using Sorcerer Metamagic is the main draw of the class, the other abilities aren’t worthless.

The ability to add 2d4 to attack rolls or saving throws in tough situations, the ability to boost your and your allies’ healing, and the spectral wings that grant you the power of flight all come in handy.

At level 18, you can even massively heal yourself if you are under half of your max HP. If your party is looking for a versatile secondary healer, Divine Soul is a good choice.

Clockwork Soul

A Clockwork Sorcerer human with glowing eyes and arm markings begins to cast a spell
Human Clockwork Soul by Kieran Yanner

Clockwork Soul

Source

Tasha's Cauldron of Everything

Main Benefits

Clockwork Magic – giving access to additional spells. The ability to restore allies' hitpoints and end spells on creatures you choose.

Ideal Feat

Healer

Party Role

Damage, Defense

Clockwork Soul is a unique blend of machinations, defense, and healing. Aside from the flavor of how this subclass presents itself visually, you've got a few different options when it comes to your position in the party.

Access to extra spells is always a boon, and the Clockwork spells from the sorcerer, wizard, or warlock spell lists have a variety of purposes, from healing to resourceful such as dispel magic.

On top of extra spells, you get the unique opportunity to shield yourself or an ally from damage, similar to granting temporary hit points, reducing the damage taken for the shielded creature.

You can also summon spirits to both heal your party and end spells affecting others.

This mixture of versatility and the completely unique aspect of clockwork manifestations that you can put into your character, from floating geometric shapes to clock symbols all over your body and more, is a fun subclass with lots of mechanical and roleplay potential.

Draconic Bloodline

A dragonborn Sorcerer Uses a Transmuted Spell
Dragonborn Sorcerer via Wizards of the Coast

Draconic Bloodline

Source

D&D Player's Handbook

Main Benefits

Draconic Ancestry – determines the energy type of the Elemental Affinity ability (acid, cold, fire, lightning, or poison).

Ideal Feat

Elemental Adept

Party Role

Damage

Draconic Bloodline works well with the classic blaster sorcerer build. It lets you deal extra damage and temporarily resist a damage type associated with your bloodline.

You get to choose the type, giving you more build options than the lightning and thunder of Storm Sorcery.

You get more armor and HP than your usual arcane caster would normally get, which lets you avoid getting taken out of the fight by a lucky goblin archer.

Your Draconic Presence gives a mass AoE crowd control ability that lasts for a whole minute, effectively changing the entire course of an encounter.

The only drawback is that your flight is slightly less effective than the flight of Divine Soul or Storm Sorcery since it will literally tear off your clothes when you use it.

Choosing Elemental Adept as a feat will give you even more resistance options and extra damage.

Aberrant Mind

A Tiefling in red flowing clothing with glowing blue eyes activates her aberrant mind powers.
Tiefling Aberrant Mind via Wizards of the Coast

Aberrant Mind

Source

Tasha's Cauldron of Everything

Main Benefits

Psionic spells – pure versatility allows for a diverse playstyle

Ideal Feat

Actor

Party Role

Damage, Defense

This is the Sorcerer subclass for you if you like having lots of options for gameplay.

If you enjoy the versatility of a Druid and being able to adapt to multiple situations, Aberrant Mind provides all the necessary components to create a character that'll be useful no matter the situation you find yourself in.

Starting at first level, you can choose to cast spells using sorcery points instead of spell slots, requiring no verbal or somatic components.

Further along, you'll be able to telepathically communicate with party members and even adapt to any situation by magically transforming your body using a bonus action.

Actor may seem like an odd choice for a feat, but the increase in your Charisma and the ability to mimic and impersonate others will work well with the adaptability of this subclass.

Couple this with an expanded spell list, changing your spells to reflect the role you wish to play, and you've got one of the most versatile subclasses useful for roleplay and gameplay alike.

Eventually, you can teleport yourself out of harm's way. With so many adaptable options, you can successfully insert yourself into any situation and help the party one way or another.

Shadow Magic

A shadow sorcerer Tiefling stands at the ready with her dagger sheathed and a black cat on her shoulder
Shadow Sorcerer via Wizards of the Coast

Shadow Magic

Source

Xanathar's Guide to Everything

Main Benefits

Hound of Ill Omen – impose disadvantage on your targets' saving throws.

Ideal Feat

Magic Initiate

Party Role

Damage, Defense

As a Sorcerer imbued with the unholy magic of the Shadowfell, your sorcerous powers are linked with darkness and undeath. You get Darkvision to 120 feet from level one.

At third level, you get the spell Darkness, which you can cast using sorcery points instead of a spell slot, and since you can see through it, you have advantage against most enemies in the area.

You can also call on necromantic energies to prevent your own death, summon a hound that can walk through walls to pursue a nearby enemy, and teleport at will from shadow to shadow.

At level 18, you can even turn into a shadowy form immune to most types of damage.

Overall, this class is very powerful fairly early on and only gains more utility as you level up. With a free pet, teleportation, and resistance, it's easy to see how this class has the potential to be a strong damage dealer with survivability.

Next: Dungeons & Dragons: Classes We Miss From Older Editions