Have you ever seen a dragon in an encounter and just… Wanted to be like that? Just once? Well, we haven’t gotten a legitimate full-blooded Dragon race yet, but we’ve got something pretty close! The Player’s Handbook allowed the Sorcerer to get a representation of dragonkind through the Draconic Origin. When you’re imbued with this power, it implies your ancestors either consumed dragons, made a pact with dragons, or might have just been dragonborn. You might be the first of this origin, implying that your parents either did arcane rituals to connect with dragons… Or one of them might have been one! Let’s see what this lizard blood might represent with our Draconic Sorcerer 5E Guide!
Table of Contents
Hear Your Roar: Draconic Sorcerer 5E
Unsurprisingly, having been injected by the blood of one of the most impressive creatures in Dungeons & Dragons history gives you some great strength. This 5E Sorcerer archetype’s abilities are quite impressive for the early game, focusing on a single element and making all their spells more effective. You also get some great versatility through your late-game abilities. It’s one of the best generic Origins, if you want to be good at a little bit of everything… But especially murder.
Dragon Ancestor
At the 1st level, you get to choose what flavor of dragon you belong to! There are 10 dragons on the list, with 5 possible options for the damage type you affiliate with. While the color of the dragon is important for roleplay reasons… You really only care about damage types – You can choose from Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, or Poison. Your character also gains one other benefit;
You can speak, read, and write Draconic. Additionally, whenever you make a Charisma check when interacting with dragons, your proficiency bonus is doubled if it applies to the check.
Okay, this is quite a bit!
The Damage Type you get only affects your Elemental Affinity ability. This boosts your damage when you hit with that element, and allows you to gain resistance to it. Since the resistance element costs a resource, we’re going to focus on the damage aspect.
Acid is a pretty great element. According to the Monster Manual, Acid is the least resisted of the elements, and the damage is dealt by a good number of creatures. You won’t find it hard to make use of both the damage increase, nor the resistance of Elemental Affinity. However, your spell selection is exceedingly small, so you won’t have many ways to deal damage in big areas of effect. There are a few decent spells to choose from – especially for Single Target effects – but… Consider avoiding Acid if you’re going to be the group’s Area of Effect blaster.
Cold? Now we’re getting somewhere! With giant areas of effect like Cone of Cold in the late game, Ice Storm in the midgame, and a competent cantrip in Frostbite, you’ll get good mileage out of this. Cold damage is resisted much, much more than Acid – and there’s precious few frosty creatures, so you’ll be wasting the resistance! – so that’s a bit of a downside. Consider getting Elemental Adept with this.
Fire… What to say about fire… You might know the spell Fireball, one of the most popular spells of all time? Well, Fireball is one of many. Fire has a massive, massive spell selection at every level that completely outdoes any other element. You can get line attacks, single-target effects, massive radiuses, damage over time… Things that Acid only wishes it could do! The main problem is that Fire is resisted the second-most out of the options on this list… And it also is second-place on immunities! Definitely take Elemental Adept for this!
Lightning is actually pretty great. Lightning Bolt is pretty similar to fireball, Chain Lightning is a really efficient multi-target attack, and they got a cantrip in Lightning Lure – a decent attack that has a pull-in effect! Great options, but unlike Cold, it’s completely incomparable to Fire. At least this has the least immunities in our list, making it a pretty consistent option, if not great for versatility.
Poison… Wow. Not only is this the shortest spell list of the group, it is also the most likely to be completely negated by immunities. If that wasn’t enough, it can’t even be used with Elemental Adept without GM aid. This is just… Incorrect. You can’t take this and be effective.
If you know you’re going to be fighting a specific enemy type – for example, an anti-Celestial campaign – then build your archetype accordingly. In most cases, however, Fire is just too good.
On the other half of this ability, the language and Charisma check buffs are fun. Draconic is one of the more useful languages in 5e, so you’ll get more hints to puzzles and get secret information for free. Fun, but overall insubstantial.
The doubled proficiency bonus gives you an eventual +12 to Deception, Intimidation, and Persuasion. Not bad! Considering you’re a sorcerer, you’re probably gonna be tossing dice at dragons with +19 or more to talk them out of killing you. I like your odds! Consider picking up at least one social skill when you take this origin.
Draconic Resilience
As magic flows through your body, it causes physical traits of your dragon ancestors to emerge. At 1st level, your hit point maximum increases by 1 and increases by 1 again whenever you gain a level in this class.
Additionally, parts of your skin are covered by a thin sheen of dragon-like scales. When you aren’t wearing armor, your AC equals 13 + your Dexterity modifier.
Precious! You can almost pretend to be near the frontline without dying to a breeze!
But seriously, this does not mean you have to go on the frontlines. At all. Instead, you should consider the fact that you basically gained +2 Constitution. At level 1. That’s really good! It offsets your d6 hit dice significantly; every sorcerer level is closer to a d8 now! 20 HP at level 20 might not seem like much, but that’s 20 HP farther from dying. Early on, 1 health might seem insubstantial… But trust me, every hitpoint in the early game is essential. This prevents higher damage rolls from being a death sentence, which means you have more time to deal damage – your new favorite hobby!
13 AC by base is fantastic. You don’t need natural armor, Light Armor proficiency, or Mage Armor. That’s huge for saving spell slots early on, since Mage Armor is usually a fairly worthwhile spell to cast. It’s such a great resource saver, since AC is really, really important for your otherwise pitiful survivability.
Both of these are great for survival, and support a melee build… Though don’t worry about enforcing that! AC and health is great for any role.
Elemental Affinity
This is the only effect used with your Dragon Ancestry. It’s incredibly sad that that’s the case, but… Hey, at least this ability is stupid strong!
Starting at 6th level, when you cast a spell that deals damage of the type associated with your draconic ancestry, add your Charisma modifier to that damage. At the same time, you can spend 1 sorcery point to gain resistance to that damage type for 1 hour.
Okay, stupid strong might have been stretching things.
Any sorcerer wants to get to 20 Charisma as soon as possible, so we’ll pretend you have it already. +5 damage to all of your spells. That might sound small; Fireball – a level 3 spell – deals 28 damage by average, so this would boost that to 33. Relatively small bump, right? Well, when you add that damage to the effect of every target, that’s a pretty massive increase. And since Cantrips are technically spells, you’ll add your Charisma to cantrips. That’s a bit larger boost to the damage of your average cantrip, and gives you more consistency with them. It also turns low-level spells like Burning Hands or Ice Storm into competent damage dealers. Really cool!
The second benefit is a resistance boost. Spending a sorcery point to cast Resistance from Energy without concentration is worthwhile. The problem is… You don’t get to choose the element. It’s the element that your ancestor granted you. Once again, Fire is the most common damage type dealt by enemies (other than the Physical types), so you should find your sorcery points well-used there. Your points are pretty important, though, so make sure you use them wisely. If you’re about to fight a Red Dragon, or a Fire Elemental… It’s probably worthwhile.
Dragon Wings
You gain quite a useful ability at this point… Although this is more like another spell slot save than a significant ability.
At 14th level, you gain the ability to sprout a pair of dragon wings from your back, gaining a flying speed equal to your current speed. You can create these wings as a bonus action on your turn. They last until you dismiss them as a bonus action on your turn.
You can’t manifest your wings while wearing armor unless the armor is made to accommodate them, and clothing not made to accommodate your wings might be destroyed when you manifest them.
This is both cool looking, and really useful! I wish more non-magic users got something like this.
This gives you (usually) half the flight speed of the Fly spell. That’s probably enough to stop knowing Fly – a spell Sorcerers have access to – because 30 ft is usually enough to do what you want. This is a permanent effect; increasing your flight speed by 30 with Fly isn’t worth it. It also doesn’t use your Concentration, which is a nice upside. If your melee allies haven’t gotten a fly speed item yet, then your Concentration can be spent on them just fine.
Flight is a cornerstone of late-game 5e combat. Staying high above the battlefield is super useful for offense and defense; Offensively, you get better angles for your spells and better ability to chase enemies down, since you ignore most obstacles. Defensively, Flight’s great for making your party less prone to area of effect, let’s you ignore melee-only enemies, and can prevent a few spells from even working. As you practice Flight, you’ll understand when it’s useful, and when it makes you get targeted by all the bows on the battlefield.
The armor and clothes effect is a fun touch. Most of the time, all it would take are two little slits in your robes, or have your Paladin drill holes in your leather. Because you don’t wear armor, this likely won’t come up often… Unless you’re wearing a tuxedo at a social event. That might be a weird way to burst out of your shirt!
Draconic Presence
Beginning at 18th level, you can channel the dread presence of your dragon ancestor, causing those around you to become awestruck or frightened. As an action, you can spend 5 sorcery points to draw on this power and exude an aura of awe or fear (your choice) to a distance of 60 feet. For 1 minute or until you lose your concentration (as if you were casting a concentration spell), each hostile creature that starts its turn in this aura must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or be charmed (if you chose awe) or frightened (if you chose fear) until the aura ends. A creature that succeeds on this saving throw is immune to your aura for 24 hours.
An amazing, flavorful ability! But wow is this expensive! This is a massive Charm or Frighten effect that can really mess up a battlefield; 60 ft radius on you, especially while you fly, can be easily positioned to make an encounter problematic for your foes. Frighten is really good against melee encounters, or against ranged foes. If you have no chance of talking with the enemies, you should probably use that. Charm is a bit better for any sort of social encounter where you think you might have a chance to talk things out… Or, if your enemies only want to kill you, Charm can keep you safe. If you’re low on health, then you can make sure you won’t get hit by a lucky roll with awe.
The problem with this ability is quite simple; You’ve got a lot of spells. So many spells. And you only get 20 Sorcery points. Some of the spells you could learn, such as Charm Monster or Fear, solves a similar problem that this does without spending your Metamagic resource.
The only, sole reason this ability is mediocre is the Point cost. It’s just too expensive to be worth losing all that metamagic opportunity.
Best Race for Draconic Sorcerers
As expected for a class focusing on casting, you want your Charisma to be as high as possible. Not only does it increase the effectiveness of your spells – it also boosts the damage of spells of your element! After that, you’ll want some Dexterity and Constitution to let you survive a bit easier; while Draconic Resilience does that job well, being harder to kill has never hurt you.
Dragonborn
This may not be the strictly best choice for Draconic Sorcerers, but… C’mon. This is just too thematic. Our Dragonborn gains +2 Strength, +1 Charisma. The Charisma boost is more important than Strength here, but we can still boost our Dexterity and Constitution through points. By taking a different Draconic Ancestry than our Draconic Ancestor, we can have good options for our Breath Weapon, and a different source of damage resistance. Your party composition usually decides whether a line or cone is more useful.
If your DM lets you use the Explorer’s Guide to Wildemont, you can try this with the Draconblood Dragonborn. Intelligence is about as useful as Strength, but you gain Darkvision and the useful Forceful Presence ability, solidifying yourself as the party’s face.
Human
Surprise, surprise. Humans are ridiculously strong in any class you take. In this class, Humans become completely busted. You should be a Variant Human if your DM allows the Feat optional rule… Which they should really consider using. Your +1s should be in Charisma, and then either Dexterity or Constitution; those two should be about equal. Your feat is probably gonna be Elemental Adept for your new role as a single-element blaster. Getting Elemental Adept early on means you’re gonna be really ready for level 6, where your entire existence is using that single element.
Realistically, Human is significantly stronger than Dragonborn for this class, but… Dragon dragon.
Best Feats for Draconic Sorcerer
Like many casters, the feats for Draconic Sorcerer should focus on improving their casting. Due to their tight spell list, improving utility is a fantastic idea.
Elemental Adept
Since the Draconic Sorcerer is so reliant on specializing with a single element, Elemental Adept works very well for them. By ignoring Resistance and improving damage dice, Adept provides a much-needed damage boost for you. Draconic Sorcerer is a natural blaster caster, so improving your damage is critical.
However, this does depend on what campaign you are in. For instance, if you are a Fire Draconic Sorcerer and you’re fighting demons, Elemental Adept might come in handy. However, a Cold Draconic Sorcerer in the same situation might not need it as much. It’s all about that resistance ignoring aspect!
Fey Touched
Sorcerers have very, very tight spell lists. Getting spells that you know you will want to cast at low levels is very important. Fey Touched and Shadow Touched, its sister feat, come in clutch there! Fey Touched is our preferred option due to the spell selection, though.
Misty Step alone is a stellar spell, and being able to cast it for free once per day is a godsend. Learning it permanently isn’t insane, since it is on the Sorcerer list, but it’s a great spell to have for the ride! Also important is the 1st level spell slot from divination or enchantment. Silvery Barbs is a fantastic support and emergency spell, similar to Shield but with even more utility! Hex can help your blasting in some specific situations, but is normally just a bit too situational.
Inspiring Leader
The Sorcerer doesn’t offer much support for your party, which is often a problem as you approach the lategame. By taking Inspiring Leader later on in your career, you’ll be offering an overshield that becomes quite strong. 25 HP by endgame means you’re handing out 100 HP to your party. Eating a Fireball for free every short rest? That’s… Quite absurd.
Metamagic Adept
While this feat is traditionally used to scoop up some metamagic outside of the Sorcerer class, the Draconic Sorcerer benefits from it, too! Since you are so magic dependent, having 2 additional sorcery points comes in handy. You can use it to reclaim spells or to cast more metamagic to have more explosive turns! Very nice.
The two bonus metamagics are also good. Collecting options like Careful Spell or Distant Spell is a good idea, but can’t always be done when killers exist, such as Quickened or Twinned. So, getting more choices is far from a bad thing!
War Caster
War Caster focuses on Concentration checks, giving you advantage on a saving throw that you’ll make often. Then, you can cast with your hands full which… Probably will never matter. Finally, if anyone tries to run from you, you can cast a single-target spell on them. Whether that’s something like Hold Monster or Scorching Ray, that’s a devastating option if you plan on getting into trouble. Or, just if a random monster thinks you can just run away from them.
Best Backgrounds for Draconic Sorcerer
While your Sorcerer can benefit from any number of backgrounds, we personally like to focus on Skill Proficiencies when choosing ours. Specifically, anything that gives us a very valid, out-of-combat use.
Criminal/Spy
Criminal or Spy are both very strong, basically identical options for your background. You get Deception and Stealth, two proficiencies that are handy to have out of fights, but not exactly outside of a Sorcerer’s reach. However, Thieves’ Tools are inarguably the best tool proficiency in the game – although the gaming set isn’t exactly superb. Your equipment is also just okay.
But that Feature is so much fun! Having a contact that you can call on reliably is a great resource and offers a lot of opportunity for intrigue. Your DM will either love you or hate you for bringing your friend up. So… Be sure to bring them up often!
Far Traveler
The Far Traveler, from the Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide, is a useful background to always keep in mind when making characters. Exceptionally versatile, it comes in with Insight and Perception – A skill used in social situations and the most-rolled skill in the game. You then get a tool that makes you money, a language, and quite fun gear.
Your feature isn’t the most flat-out positive thing, but you can always spin it in a good way. Especially with good Deception and Persuasion, you should be able to make friends quickly by mentioning your relatively exotic placement in the world. How fun!
Sailor
Sailor is ol’ reliable from the Player’s Handbook. It comes with Athletics – a great movement skill – and Perception – the best skill. Your tool options are bad, your equipment is just fine, and your feature is a bit situational. But, if you are restricted to the PHB and you want some very high-quality skills that the Sorcerer can’t reach? The Sailor is always there for you.
Best Multiclass Options for Draconic Sorcerer
While the Sorcerer’s 20th level ability to regain sorcery points is helpful, it is sometimes not exactly what you need. Here are some valid multiclasses for a particularly spicy caster.
Fighter
Action Surge for Double Fireball is one of the most exhilarating things that you can do in Dungeons & Dragons 5E. By level 7, you can layer a battlefield with 16d6+8 damage in a 20 ft radius… Theoretically, as 2 quick actions. Fighting Style for Defense is great, with your new Medium Armor Proficiency. And Shield proficiency certainly won’t go amiss!
Paladin
Like a Fighter, the Paladin offers great defensive options in armor proficiency, shield proficiency, and a Fighting style. However, the Paladin replaces the Fighter’s Action Surge with healing options, spell slots, Shield of Faith, and Smites. Smiting will usually be for emergencies, but emergencies do happen!
Is Draconic Bloodline Sorcerer Good?
The Draconic Sorcerer does something that the Sorcerer really likes to do: Damage. As long as you can choose an element and consistently find spells that hit hard using that element, the Draconic Bloodline can put out damage!
What is the Difference between Dragonborn and Draconic Bloodline?
Dragonborn are a race of beings that descended directly from dragons, while the Draconic Bloodline implies that you have had dragons meddling in your blood sometime in your past. Many Dragonborn become Draconic Bloodline sorcerers, but don’t necessarily need to. Vice versa, any race can have dragon blood, from rituals or relationships or even through blessings.
FAQ for the Draconic Sorcerer
How Often can you use Elemental Affinity?
Elemental Affinity lists that it can be used for one damage roll of a particular spell. For instance, a spell like Flaming Sphere would only apply the 2d6 damage to one target, since it does damage over the course of several rounds and several damage rolls. However, for a spell like Fireball, since the damage is rolled once immediately, all targets would take the extra damage.
Does Draconic Resilience work with Unarmored Defense?
No, Draconic Resilience does not stack with Unarmored Defense. You choose the best version of Unarmored Defense and apply it. For instance, if your Unarmored Defense for Monk was 14 + Dexterity, you would use that instead of Draconic Resilience.
What is the Best Draconic Ancestry for a Draconic Sorcerer?
By a decent margin, the Fire Dragons – Brass and Red – offer the most spells with the highest quality. Enemies are fairly likely to deal Fire damage, too, so this makes the Resistance feature very useful. You do suffer quite a lot from Fire Resistance, however, so get Elemental Adept if you plan on making good use of this.
Example Draconic Sorcerer Build
For the purposes of our Draconic Sorcerer, our DM has asked us to use traditional 5E race rules, so no Lineage. However, we can use any official book that we want. We are asked to use Standard Array to keep things simple and to use standard Starting Equipment rules when possible.
Our Draconic Sorcerer will be built to fill in the standard role of Blaster Caster for our party. Their goal is to deal a lot of damage with their spells in order to control crowds.
To begin, we sadly must choose a race with a +2 in Charisma. We need as much as possible. 16 Charisma is non-negotiable, and 17 Charisma allows us to take a nice utility feat, like Fey Touched. We’ll go with the Levistus Tiefling, providing us a small boost to our Constitution and a large one to Charisma. The Tiefling’s natural resistances, darkvision, and spell list are further aids to our survival ability.
We’ll pull from the Sword Coast Adventure Guide for the Far Traveler background. Anything for Perception proficiency! The choice of instrument means almost nothing, but our choice in language can matter! Talk with your DM about what you should take. We’re gonna go for Elven for now.
Our skill ranks represent our out-of-combat abilities when we don’t want to spend spell slots. For our sake, we’ll focus on Persuasion and Deception, and pray we can talk our way out of most things.
| 5E Draconic Sorcerer Build |
| Race: Tiefling (Levistus)Ability Scores: STR 10, DEX 14, CON 14 (13 + 1), INT 8, WIS 12, CHA 17 (15 + 2)Proficiencies: Deception, Persuasion, Insight, Perception, CitarStarting Equipment: Light Crossbow, 20 Bolts, Component Pouch, Explorer’s Pack, two Daggers, Citar, Maps, 10 gp of Jewelry, 5 gpLanguages: Common, Infernal, Elven |
| Level | Class Benefits | Choices |
| 1 | -1st Level Spells-Dragon Ancestor-Draconic Resilience | Even though we’ve chosen our gear, our race, our background, and our archetype, we still have more choices to make! Magic is the essence of the Sorcerer, so we have to start strong.Dragon Ancestor. Our Ancestor will determine a lot of what our class does. We don’t want Fire so we can access resistance later on. So, what is the best Dragon Ancestor type? We’ll say Cold, or Silver, for now, since it will let us use Ray of Frost and deal extra damage later. Lightning is another reasonable option, but we’ll focus more on dealing consistent, long-ranged damage with cantrips than exactly Lightning Bolt.Cantrips. We have 4 Cantrips to work with. The Levistus Tiefling gets Ray of Frost for free, so we only need to concern ourselves with utility. We’ll take Frostbite, Mage Hand, Mending, and Prestidigitation. Frostbite is here to cover our Cold Damage grounds with a big debuff added on. The other spells have a ton of utility!Spells. As a Sorcerer, we know 2 spells to begin. We’ll go with Ice Knife for our damaging spell and Shield for emergencies. Ice Knife deals an average of 12.5 damage, which is kinda nuts. Shield keeps us alive… Which is also kinda nuts. Even though Dragon Resilience gives us 15 AC and 9 HP to begin, having an emergency option is too good to pass up. |
| 2 | -Font of Magic | Now we can call back spells, which is legitimately nice.We aren’t replacing spells yet. We’ll add Color Spray to our repertoire. It’s just about to run out of usefulness, but we can squeeze it for a few levels yet!Sleep is also worth considering, but we’re durable enough to walk close and shotgun a blind! |
| 3 | -2nd Level Spells-Metamagic | Two things to consider here.Spells. As we get to 2nd level spells, we’re already going to drop Color Spray. I know! But we want 2 2nd level options. Rime’s Binding Ice does a solid amount of damage and stops creatures from moving. We’ll also take Blindness/Deafness for annoying bosses that a Blind could prevent from fighting effectively. (Depending on the campaign, Hold Person might be worthwhile, too!)Metamagic. We also get two metamagic options. As a Blaster Caster with Cone of Cold, we’re going to want Careful Spell to avoid killing our friends. We’ll also want Quickened Spell for times when we need to do a million damage. It’s very expensive, but even this early on, a Cantrip + an Ice Knife can ruin someone’s day.If your DM lets you take the Transmuted Spell metamagic, take it 1000% of the time. You really want to be able to swap spells like Fireball into Cold damage. Really badly. |
| 4 | -Ability Score Improvements | We’re going to take Fey Touched. It gets our Charisma to 18, a great milestone, while also giving us Misty Step, Silvery Barbs, and two spell slots to cast them with. That’s way too much value to ignore!As for our spell this level, we might have noticed that our damage could be better. A Concentration spell might help with that! Dragon’s Breath will be our choice, since we can eventually use it with Elemental Affinity and target weaknesses when necessary. Gives the Fighter something to do during swarm fights, too!Our 5th cantrip will be Message. Communicating silently is nice to do, and Message makes it easy. |
| 5 | -3rd Level Spells | Sadly for us, the 3rd level offers nothing for our Cold dragon build. That’s a shame, but we can maneuver around it without much of a problem. Fireball still hits for 8d6. That’s… Even without Elemental Affinity next level, that’s a crazy amount of damage in a huge radius. It’s hard to ignore. |
| 6 | -Elemental Affinity | Now, Ray of Frost, Frostbite, and all of our cold-damaging spells do another 4 damage. That’s significant! It’s like if you got an extra d8 on each of them.While Fireball is a great spell, our 3rd level pool does feel like it’s missing something, right? It might be time to swap Ice Knife, since it doesn’t really hit that hard anymore. Let’s trade it for Counterspell and learn Dispel Magic. Those are two great defensive spells and Dispel Magic can bypass puzzles entirely. |
| 7 | -4th Level Spells | Ice Storm is a fairly obvious choice for this level. Big area, provides a huge amount of area control, and even hits fliers. It doesn’t hit as hard as Fireball, but can be great for situations where you have to pinch enemies. And that 4 extra damage actually makes it close to Fireball! |
| 8 | -Ability Score Improvement | This time, we’re gonna be nice and boring. +2 Charisma. That puts us to 20, the highest we can get without magical item support.As for another 4th level spell, to add diversity, we can stick with Banishment. During big fights, Banishment can let you remove a threat from the field and deal with another. We also don’t have many things to Concentrate on, so having something impactful is smart.Quick Recap: At this point, our spell list is as follows: Shield, Rime’s Binding Ice, Blindness/Deafness, Dragon’s Breath, Fireball, Counter Spell, Dispel Magic, Ice Storm, and Banishment. We also know Misty Step and Silvery Barbs from our feat. |
| 9 | -5th Level Spells | Welcome to your 5th level spells! Cone of Cold is a must get here. A massive AoE, hits harder than Fireball, and applies our +5 to damage. We’ll also lose Dragon’s Breath for Mirror Image. Fights can get scary if you get targeted now, so giving yourself a huge chance to dodge that damage or spell effect is too nice to miss out on. Dragon’s Breath isn’t putting in the work that it used to anymore, so a trade is worthwhile. |
| 10 | -New Metamagic | We’re going to take Heightened Spell. While most of our magic is gigantic AoEs that hit hard, we do have a few options that we want people to fail the save against. Ensuring that Banishment or Blindness/Deafness lasts a round is probably good. And hell, even making sure that the full 8d8+5 from Cone of Cold lands on a priority target is worth the points.As for our spell, we don’t actually have many 5th level spells to our name yet. So, let’s head back to our 2nd level spell slots and grab Web. Slightly stronger entangle is very, very nice to have.We’ll also tuck Blindness/Deafness away for now. We will instead get Greater Invisibility. Our 2nd level spell slots are now essentially only for Rime’s and Web. That’s not as bad as it might sound. |
| 11 | -6th Level Spells | Otiluke’s Freezing Sphere is our choice and it isn’t particularly close. A titanic area of effect with huge damage and some action economy when cast outside of combat. Turns a sling into a scary thing, too! |
| 12 | -Ability Score Improvement | Thankfully, we don’t have to worry about spells this level. However, we do have to worry about our feat. Since our Charisma is at 20 and our defensive stats are at even numbers, we can either improve our AC by 1 with Dex, improve our health by 12 with Constitution, or go another direction. I love feats, so let’s talk shop.Elemental Adept boosts our damage by quite a lot, since many creatures do resist our damage type. Tough gives us the HP to survive, while War Caster would let us get advantage on Concentration saving throws and make us more threatening close-by.We’re going to live up to our Blaster Caster origin and go for Elemental Adept for Cold. Our allies must keep us safe for just a bit longer. |
| 13 | -7th Level Spells | At this point, Cold Damage no longer has any spells. We can heighten Cone of Cold to 7th level for our 10d8 blasting. So, our 7th level choice can either be utility or a different type of blasting. Draconic Transformation is just a bit too fun to pass up, so we’ll grab it. Force Damage in a 60 ft cone is crazy, and it lasts for a full fight. |
| 14 | -Dragon Wings | This is the point where we no longer get a new spell per level, though we can still tag spells out for one another. Dragon Wings are awesome, since you now never have to worry about standard melee combat again. This does lessen the impact of Draconic Transformation, but the blindsense and extra fly speed, as well as the cones, make up for it.We’ll also finally unlearn Rime’s Binding Ice. We want another level 5 spell. Hold Monster will replace Rime’s, so we can end fights if they fail our saving throw. |
| 15 | -8th Level Spells | So many high impact spells are at this level… We’ll go with Sunburst. Just a high damage option with Blinding. That’s a great way to end a fight quickly and effectively, assuming many of the creatures botch their saving throw. |
| 16 | -Ability Score Improvement | We’ll take War Caster here. No need to be picky! Advantage on Concentration and the ability to snipe people who are running away from you is nice to have.Quick Reminder: At this point, our spell list is as follows: Shield, Web, Mirror Image, Fireball, Counter Spell, Dispel Magic, Greater Invisibility, Ice Storm, Banishment, Cone of Cold, Hold Monster, Otiluke’s, Draconic Transformation, and Sunburst. We also know Misty Step and Silvery Barbs from our 4th level Feat. |
| 17 | -9th Level Spells | Wish. No more questions!Seriously, Wish is everything. This is the reason to play an endgame Arcane caster! Take this spell and have an excellent time with it.Our Metamagic choice will be Empowered Spell. Dealing your maximum damage is far too critical in the endgame. Rolling 5 1s on your Cone of Cold might kill your party.I’m very happy with our spell list. It might be good to change it based on campaign – we have a lot of generic options that are good for a Cold Caster, but nothing that targets the larger threats that a campaign might have. Work with your party and determine if your spell list is the most viable thing to take! |
| 18 | -Draconic Presence | No choices here. Draconic Presence is a choice you can make in combat, but a fairly obvious one. 5 Sorcery Points for a 60 foot Area of Effect that Charms everyone? That’s a really good use of a resource that you have plenty of! |
| 19 | -Ability Score Improvement | Our final feat! We can take something like Tough to stay alive or Metamagic Adept if you want to sling spells more effectively. Our sorcerer will take Tough to survive. |
| 20 | -Sorcerous Restoration | Short Rests are good for you now. Excellent! Use them often. |
Conclusion – Our Take on the Draconic Sorcerer 5E
That’s it for our Draconic Sorcerer 5E Guide! Not many Sorcerer Origins are bad, but the Draconic Sorcerer has a bit of everything. It increases survivability, damage, utility, and combat control… And none of them are bad or underpowered! This is an essential addition to the sorcerer class. If you want to try a really effective generalist Sorcerer build, this is the one for you!
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Thank you for providing tһis info.
I actually made a wood elf dragon blood (bronze) sorcerer. Made the dex 16 using the +2 racial bonus for a huge starting ac.