Storm Sorcery Sorcerer 5e

Review by Sam West, Twitter:@Crier Kobold

The Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide has earned a level of infamy for its wild variation in power that the subclasses it brought offer. On one hand, you have Bladesingers, a busted martial expansion that gives wizards about as good access to Extra Attack as they could possibly ask for. Then there’s Battlerager and Purple Dragon Knight, two options so terrible I’ve literally never once seen anyone attempt to play them.

Storm Sorcery manages to be one of the few options in that book that really sticks the landing. It gives you dynamic and interesting new toys to enhance your spellcasting but doesn’t fix any of the larger issues the core sorcerer class has.

It definitely shines brightest at tables where naval exploration and natural storms are a main component, but there is enough otherwise presented that you can still make this character come to life at a dungeon delving table, too.

1st Level: Wind Speaker and Tempestuous Magic

Wind Speaker teaches you Primordial, which basically lets you communicate with elementals. Neat!
More importantly, you get Tempestuous Magic. This simple little feature defines Storm Sorcery as what it is. I’d equate it somewhat to Cunning Action; when you’re doing your thing, you get some free mobility and disengagement.
As a defensive tool to get out of trouble, it’s great. A 10 ft. burst of flight paired with regular movement often will put you exactly out of a single movement from an enemy, forcing them to dash at you to keep up, or making them reconsider targets.
That 10 ft. flight isn’t just a disengage tool, though. It gives you a limited, interesting out-of-combat exploration tool to get on roofs and across gaps. Your limited spells known definitely still makes trying to mix Jump into the mix a bit too cute to try, but there are going to be plenty of opportunities to get mileage from it as the game progresses.

6th Level: Heart of the Storm and Storm Guide

Heart of the Storm boosts you up with passive resistance to lightning and thunder damage while rewarding you with bonus damage to anyone you choose around you whenever you deal that kind of damage.
It's a simple, yet compelling reason to get into the thick of combat and blast away. Thunderwave is an obvious example of a spell that thrives in that situation; it knocks things away, but not before dealing out a free bonus 3 thunder damage, no save. The damage at 6th level isn’t great, but by 10th level, should you find ways to get that bonus damage every round, it does feel pretty excellent. Transmuted Spell really shines here as a tool to ensure regardless of what kind of damaging spell you’re casting, you can get the thunder or lightning damage out of it from Heart of the Storm.
This notably plays perfectly alongside Tempestuous Magic. You can rush into enemies, blast them with Heart of the Storm and Lightning Bolts, and bonus action disengage and fly off to safety.
Storm Guide is a ribbon that gives you a purely cosmetic weather-controlling tool. These kinds of ribbons, while having little impact on how a character performs, help a ton in making a character embody their fantasy. When you redirect the wind or force the rain around you to part, you feel like a sorcerer commanding nature. It makes perfect sense for the archetype, and alongside a reasonable damage feature with some niche resistances, I’m all about it.

14th Level: Storm’s Fury

Storm’s Fury follows in the footsteps of Tempestuous Magic and Heart of the Storm by giving you a 20 ft. shove on each lightning damage-dealing spell you cast. This can push a lot of creatures at once when attached to transmuted Fireballs or Cone of Colds. A single Lightning Bolt can knock back a massive line of creatures 20 feet into each other.
Now, is the 20 ft. shove that impactful? I think the answer is usually, no. Where it can shine its brightest is when you’re blasting creatures back into other damaging areas you or an ally has set up. As a disengagement tool, it’s a slight upgrade from just Tempestuous Magic, as now slightly faster creatures that get knocked back have to dash to reach you again.
By 14th level, though, I’m not too impressed by a potential shove on all my lightning effects. It does add some weight to the blasts and certainly can make you feel powerful as you watch creatures literally blown back by the raw power of the lightning you wield.

18th Level: Wind Soul

Wind Soul finishes off Storm Sorcery with immunity to lightning and thunder damage, a 60 ft. fly speed, and a method to share your flight with the team once a short rest.
As far as final features go, a group version of Fly isn’t the most exciting thing in the world, nor is immunity to two uncommon damage types.
It definitely helps that you’re also getting 9th-level spells by this point, which will carry most of the power of your upper-tier fantasy. A magical fly speed and immunity to allow you to comfortably stand in your own lighting blasts is a reasonable amount of extra utility when you consider that you’re also going to be starting to grant Wishes.

All Together

Storm Sorcery’s number one issue is its lack of bonus spells. Sorcerers are incredibly light on castable 1st level spells or higher. Storm Sorcery insists that you invest at least a little into lightning and thunder damage spells, leaving little room for other tools you’d want to consider.

If you want a character that consistently casts the same grouping of four to five empowered spells with crackling electrical energy, everything here comes together to put you in interesting places in combat with ample repositioning opportunities alongside real payoffs for using the damage types it asks of you. I do love Storm Sorcery; I think if you just want to blast off Lightning Bolts and fly out of range of the stinky ogres, this is going to work great for you.

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