Best Feats for Draconic Sorcerer 5e

by Prince Phantom

I find it both strange and a bit saddening that this is seen by WotC as the standard, beginner friendly subclass for the Sorcerer, as it seems to have severely limited its potential. We could have had the perfect specialist blaster build, really rewarding for building for specific types of damage. Instead we have this weird mix of defensive and offensive features, compounded by the fact that the only damage type that has enough spells to build around it is fire, and fire damage has its own set of problems.

Getting permanent, non-magical, concentration free flight at level 14 is definitely the highlight here, making this a great option if your campaign or one shot starts at that level or higher. I’ll be recommending feats assuming you want to build a pyromaniac, as there really isn’t any support for other damage types, with a possible exception to cold damage, though there is no feat support for cold damage.

Best Feats for Draconic Sorcerer 5e

Flames of Phlegethos (Lv 4, Tiefling only): This feat almost reads like a fixed Elemental Adept that only works with fire damage. It allows us to reroll any 1s on damage dice for fire damage spells, meaningfully increasing our expected damage output while also allowing us to increase our Charisma or Constitution. This plus our 6th level ability will have us slinging some incredibly powerful Fireballs. To demonstrate, our 3rd level Fireball would deal 36.36 damage on average on a failed save, where a normal Fireball would deal 28. To be clear, our 6th level subclass ability is adding 5 of that damage, meaning this feat only added about 3 damage to the total, but it is really hard to effectively increase the damage output of spells in this game, so that might be the best you get. Finally, no, you should not take this and Elemental Adept as taking both would only yield a .02 damage increase over just taking this feat.
War Caster (Lv 4): Hey, that was a lot of math right? If that’s all too much for you, I don’t blame you. Just grab ol’ faithful here and never fail a concentration check again if that’s what you prefer. This is also basically mandatory for many multiclass builds that want to hold a weapon and shield (I’m looking at you Hexblade dips wanting to make use of Green Flame Blade, keep doing your thing).
Fey Touched (Lv 4): This subclass does not give us extra spells (please give these subclasses expanded spell lists in the next edition WotC), meaning getting two known here for free while increasing our Charisma is a great option. Yes, both Misty Step and Silvery Barbs are Sorcerer spells already, but grabbing them here frees up those two selections for other spells we want to take.
Metamagic Adept (Lv 4): This is for all of you that want to make this subclass work with a damage type other than Fire, because you are going to be spending a lot of Sorcery Points on Transmute Spell. Fire-based characters can also take this, though I don’t think you need it quite so early on. You can probably wait until level 8 or 12.
Telekinetic (Lv 8): A great use of our bonus action that synergizes with spells like Wall of Fire, a great cantrip, and an increase to our Charisma? Sign me up! Don’t forget to use that 5ft push to save your friends from grapples and other bad situations too.
Alert (Lv 8): Going first in combat is a big boon for a full caster like ourself with access to great shutdown spells like Fear and Hypnotic Pattern, but going first will also usually make it much easier to place that Fireball as enemies tend to be grouped up at the beginning of a fight. The other benefits are nice, but we’re mainly here for the initiative bonus.
Inspiring Leader (Lv 12): I feel this is very on brand for a dragon-based Sorcerer. The actual mechanically benefits are what we are really here for though. At this level we will be dishing out 17 temporary HP to 6 creatures at a time (no cap on the number of creatures, just how many times a single creature can benefit), meaning that in a typical party of 4 you just added 68 points of damage for the enemy side to chip down, and it only gets better with pets, summons, undead, familiars, and anything else that can understand you. Temporary HP does not stack though, so skip this if someone else already has it covered.
Tough (Lv 12): Do you want to have as many hit points as the Barbarian while being a straight classed Sorcerer? Because this is how you do that. Not much more to it than that, but I would say that this is especially good if you’re going for a weird melee build like I mentioned earlier.

Dishonorable Mention:

Elemental Adept: I figured I should mention this here because it’s such a new player trap. You’d think that the feat that advertises to make you a specialist in a single damage type and the subclass that does the same would be a perfect pairing, but this feat is just terrible, even on a dedicated pyromaniac. This adds next to no damage to your spells, and certainly no meaningful damage. The ability to ignore resistance sounds helpful, especially with Fire being one of the most resisted types of elemental damage, but Transmute spell exists and even help you avoid immunity, which this feat does nothing for. You will literally get more damage out of your spells on average by just increasing your Charisma.

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