Transmuted Spell 5e: Metamagic Review
by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold
Transmuted Spell is a metamagic option available to Sorcerers from Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything that reads
“Transmuted Spell. When you cast a spell that deals a type of damage from the following list, you can spend 1 sorcery point to change that damage type to one of the other listed types: acid, cold, fire, lightning, poison, thunder.”
If you want to maximize its potential, here are some abilities and spells you can look to get on your sheet, as well as general perks the option offers you.
Dodging Immunities and Resistance
The first major boon Transmuted Spell offers is the ability to dodge immunities and resistances. One weakness Fireball and similar large area of effect fire damage spells have is against common creature types like fiends and elementals, you’ll likely see a few that have resistance, forcing you into using a different option.
Transmuted Spell removes the need for other options; you can just burn a single sorcery point to make your once obsolete Aganazzar’s Scorcher deal cold damage, meaningfully blasting through the oncoming waves of Salamanders and Azer!
Tempest Domain
The cleanest pairing for Transmuted Spell outside of the Sorcerer class comes within Cleric’s Tempest Domain. It naturally fits alongside a Storm Sorcerer’s fantasy and offers two particularly potent features that care about damage type: Channel Divinity: Destructive Wrath at 2nd level, and Thunderous Strike at 6th level.
Destructive Wrath
Cleric’s Channel Divinity feature gets a few uses per short rest as you progress in that class, with one use per rest at 2nd level and two at 6th. Destructive Wrath allows you to opt to maximize a spell’s damage roll if it deals lightning or thunder damage; with Transmuted Spell, that means any elemental damaging spell can be maximized by swapping its type to thunder or lightning!
It's particularly brutal with high-dice size area of effect spells. Transmuting a Cone of Cold to lightning damage gives you a guaranteed 64 thunder or lightning damage in a massive space- creatures that pass the save still get smacked for 32 damage.
Thunderous Strike
Thunderous Strike at 6th level allows you to freely push creatures that take lightning damage 10 feet; with Transmuted Spell, you can enable this push mechanic on a much wider list of spells.
One spell I particularly like is Scorching Ray; each instance of damage pushes the target 10 feet, and Scorching Ray fires a volley of rays equal to the level cast +1, meaning with 4th or 5th level slots you can push something 40 or 50 feet in a single round, or divy up the shoves to push multiple creatures away from you at once.
Circle of Wildfire
Next on the list comes within the Druid Circle of Wildfire; at 6th level, the option gets Enhanced Bond. This feature lets you add a d8 to either a healing roll or fire damage roll, and would you look at that, Transmuted Spell lets us change from any one type of elemental damage to fire if we want!
This lets us functionally add the d8 damage to any cold, acid, lightning, poison, or thunder damage roll made for a single sorcery point. It's a neat little trick that ups the damage of Druid’s big area-of-effect spells like Ice Storm and Cone of Cold.
Notably, it does limit the boon to one damage roll per spell, so spells with multiple damage rolls like Scorching Ray aren’t majorly improved by this feature.
Storm Sorcery
Within the Sorcerer class, you get access to one subclass with a feature that rewards two of these six damage types: Storm Sorcery.
It has the 6th level feature Heart of the Storm rewards you with area lightning or thunder damage around when you cast a 1st level or higher spell that deals either lightning or thunder damage. With Transmuted Spell, most damaging spells suddenly can become lightning or thunder damage, giving you an easy way to keep activating this ability.
Elemental Adept
Elemental Adept isn’t a feat I’m particularly thrilled to take on most spellcasters simply because it's not offering enough reward for its cost. Usually, it adds 1 to 2 bonus damage on a select few elemental spells you’re casting while potentially overcoming resistance. I’d much rather have a second spell to bypass resistance, as that’s far cheaper than a feat.
Transmuted Spell does empower it further, as now nearly every damaging spell you’re casting can be of the type selected for Elemental Adept. In particular, it pairs well with spells that roll lots of dice with few sides, like Acid Arrow and Vitriolic Sphere. Both normally deal acid damage- if you’re building around thunder and lightning, though, you can transmute them to lightning and get those 1 rerolls while maintaining a passive boost to the lightning and thunder damage spells you’re picking up elsewhere.
Again, you probably don’t need this on your sheet, but if you want to go all in on a damage type and get every possible boost for it, this counts and works alongside Transmuted Spell to ensure all the spells you’re casting work with the selected damage type.
Transmuted Spell for Flavor
Even if you don’t invest in some of the awesome options transmuted spell pairs with, it can still be a great time to play with, especially if you’re building around a theme or frequently want to switch up the look of your spells.
Thanks for reading, and go out there and transmute some spells!
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