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The Storm Sorcery sorcerer inDungeons & Dragonsis a subclass that embodies the influence of storms such as hurricanes, typhoons, and monsoons. Your bloodline might have been visited by a powerful air genie known as a djinn or perhaps your pregnant mother sailed through a storm created by an elder tempest serpent.
Whatever the case, the power of storms has passed down to you and affects every ounce of magic you can muster. Storm Sorcery focuses on flight, area of effect damage, and the ability to control wind. Consequently, this is a stellar subclass for any seaborne campaign.
Best Storm Sorcery Sorcerer Features
Wind Speaker And Tempestuous Magic
At first level, you gain theWind SpeakerandTempestuous Magicabilities. Wind Speaker gives you completemastery of the Primordial languagewhich allows you to communicate with Elementals including creatures who speak Primordial dialects such as Auran, Ignan, Terran, and Aquan. This is largely a flavor feature unless you know you’re in a campaign that heavily features Elementals.
On the other hand,Tempestuous Magic is the backbone of this subclass.Every time you cast a spell of 1st level or higher,this ability allows you to fly 10 feet, and this movement doesn’t provoke opportunity attacks.
Because this feature makes no mention of your speed, it works in tandem with your character’s base movement speed.
In other words, Tempestuous Magic increases your speed by ten feet every time you cast a leveled spell and allows you to float out of danger’s reach. This is a hugely useful skill: so much so thatour spell selection should reflect our ability to use this feature and look to amplify its power.
Storm Guide And Heart Of The Storm
At sixth level, you’ll gain these two abilities. Storm Guide is yet another mostly flavor feature, however,it might have some neat use cases alongside spells that manipulate wind assuming your Dungeon Master’s (DM’s) ruling allows for it.The first thing this ability does is let you use an action to stop rain from falling in a 20-foot radius sphere around you.
Unless your party runs into acid rain, hail, or a heavy precipitation that restricts sight, you’ll probably never find this feature useful aside from making your character look cool. That being said, the part of this ability that allows you touse a bonus action to change the direction the wind is blowing within a 100-foot radius sphere around you can work quite nicely with spells like Gust of Wind.
Typically, Gust of Wind would only allow you to fire wind in a line emanating from your character. In concert with this ability and a favorable DM ruling though, you could divert the wind to blast from other directions. This also goes for spells includingControl Winds, Warding Wind, Whirlwind, Wind Wall, Dust Devil,andother spells that summon wind.
As always, the DM has the final say on combining abilities as mentioned in the example above as well as all matters dealing with the rules. Make sure to talk with your DM about your interest in playing a Storm Sorcery Sorcerer and how you plan to interpret its abilities with other rules. Otherwise, you could run into a very awkward moment for the both of you.
You might even be able to use this ability alongside the cantrip Gust tomanipulate gaseous spells like Fog Cloud, Stinking Cloud, and Cloudkill.However, these spells say they are dispersed by wind in their descriptions, so this might be a bit of a reach.
Meanwhile, Heart of the Storm provides you withresistance to lightningandthunder damage.On top of that,creatures of your choice within 10 feet of you take lightning or thunder damage equal to half your sorcerer levelevery time you cast a leveled spell. This is a great ability that requires no rules interpretation to be powerful.
Heart of the Storm rewards you for casting spells whilst near multiple enemies. Remember, you’re able to use your Tempestuous Magic to easily fly out of the reach of your foes after hitting them with your choice of lightning or thunder damage from Heart of the Storm.
Storm’s Fury
At the 14th level, you gaina reaction that allows you to deal lightning damage equal to your sorcerer level when hit by a melee attack.In addition, the attacker must make a Strength save against your spell save Difficulty Class (DC) or be knocked up to 20 feet away in a straight line.Forced movement is always powerfulespecially when you can move creatures as far away as 20 feet.
Wind Soul
Finally, at 18th levelyour resistance to lightning and thunder damage is upgraded to immunity.You also gaina permanent flying speed of 60 feet.You can use an action to reduce this flying speed to 30 feet and grant a number of allies equal to your Charisma modifier +3 the same flying speed for an hour.
Immunity is hard to come by in Dungeons & Dragons which makes this a powerful capstone feature on its own seeing as you receive two damage immunities. Add an impressive flying speed that can be bestowed on your entire party and more, and we’re really cooking with gas. In a lot of ways,the ability to give your entire party flight is a DM’s worst nightmare even at this high of a level.
Best Species For A Storm Sorcery Sorcerer
Charisma based spellcasters like the Sorcerer will want to maximize their Charisma score as quickly as possible. Consequently, species from the Player’s Handbook that provide a +2 to Charisma will be your best choices. These include thehalf-elfandtiefling. However, many DMs usethe optional rules from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything for customizing your origin.
Variant Human and Custom Lineage are always the best species thanks to their access to a free feat. If your DM gives every species a free feat, bans these options, or you want to lean into flavor, continue reading this section.
If you can customize your origin, choose to maximize your Charisma and consider the following species as well:aarakocra, sea elf, lizardfolk, tabaxi, tortle,andtriton. Below is a table with each species' benefits.
Triton
The Mark of Storm Half-Elf variant is an especially great choice if you’re interested in playing a Half-Elf: both flavorwise and mechanically.
Best Ability Scores For A Storm Sorcery Sorcerer
As mentioned previously, you’ll want tomaximize your Charismaas quickly as possible. This score decides the efficacy of your spell attack rolls, spell save DC, and Charisma based skills: all of which are monumentally important to your character.
Second up isConstitution.A high hit point pool is important for all characters, butthe Storm Sorcery sorcerer in particular wants to get close to opponents in order to utilize its Heart of the Storm area of effect ability.Even though you have ways to escape melee, this still puts you at greater risk than other characters.
The sorcerer’s proficiency in Constitution saving throws and better checks to maintain concentration are also good reasons why Constitution is more important than Dexterity.
Third most important isDexterity.This score affects your AC as well as your initiative rolls. The stealth skill and Dexterity saving throws are also incredibly common rolls that will come up in a campaign again and again. Consequently, you’ll want a decent Dexterity.
There’s an argument for focusing on Intelligence over Dexterity in a party that doesn’t have an Intelligence based character. Knowledge skill checks can sometimes be the difference between life and death in a difficult campaign.
IntelligenceandWisdomcompete for fourth most important. If you’re in a party that doesn’t havean Intelligence based character, go for Intelligence as you’ll want to take proficiencies in Intelligence based skills. If not, focus on Wisdom to give yourself better luck against Wisdom saving throws. This is another incredibly common roll that can have devastating effects if you fail against it.
Last of all isStrength.Sorcerers simply aren’t made to be strong characters as none of their features have anything to do with it. Even if you choose a species that has a Strength based unarmed attack, it’s just not worth taking Strength over the other ability scores.
Best Feats For A Storm Sorcery Sorcerer
Feats that are typicallygood for all Sorcerersare similarygood for Storm Sorcery sorcerers.The one exception would be Telekinetic as your bonus action will likely be occupied by your Storm Guide feature so that you can manipulate the winds summoned with your spellcasting. Here’s a table of the best options:
Aberrant dragonmark
Fey touched
Inspiring leader
War caster
Ritual caster
Skill expert
Shadow touched
Metamagic adept
The Best Spells For A Storm Sorcery Sorcerer
As mentioned above,spells that summon wind are especially good hereas your bonus action allows you to manipulate wind. As a Sorcerer, the Storm Sorcery subclass also benefits from taking spells that work well with Sorcerer metamagics for all Sorcerers.
In case you’re unaware,the best metamagic optionsare almost alwaysTwinned SpellandHeightened Spell.Both of these metamagics have wide applications to a variety of spells that will unlock a level of spellcasting unattainable by other spellcasting classes. For your ease of use, below is a table containing all of the spells you may want to consider.
Metamagic or Heart of the Storm
1st
Twinned spell
Flavor and Twinned spell
2nd
Twinned spell or Heightened spell
Heart of the Storm
3rd
4th
5th
6th
7th
Yes
The Storm Sorcery sorcerer is one of the most flavorful subclass options in the game if a tad bit underpowered in comparison to someother sorcerer subclass options.That being said,this subclass will excel in any campaign where sea travel is a consistent theme.This is also a great choice for anyone who just loves force lightning. Live a little, you know Witch Bolt is cool.
