D&D: The Perfect Sorcerer – A Data-Driven Character
Let’s celebrate the fact that we live in the future, and use cold, unfeeling data to craft the ideal sorcerer for the game Dungeons & Dragons.
If you’re playing D&D on the highest levels you have to be a little mean. You’re going up against powerful monsters that can alter reality or throw fireballs at you–so we’re going to create the meanest character we can by leveraging the aggregate data of a bunch of D&D players and seeing what the most common choices result in. Is it perfect? Is it ideal? Yes. Perfection is a real objective thing that we can arrive at by figuring out what the most popular thing is because we all know whatever the most people are choosing must obviously be what the most perfect choice is, otherwise, why would they be picking that.
With that in mind, we’re going to let the numbers do their terrible work, and from their data, we will arrive at the perfect Sorcerer. Here’s a look at what goes into it.
Sorcerers are a fairly popular class, with about ten percent of the player base picking them. This is data of characters who have unlocked options–but these are also numbers pulled from characters in a campaign. Now, like their Warlock brethren, Sorcerers are definitely multiclassed. Almost nobody is playing a single-class sorcerer, and when you look at what the top three choices for subclasses are, you start to see why. Sorcerers, with their easy access to spell slots, make for a great gish build (that is hybrid melee/caster) and so it looks like most people pick a big stabby type to go with them, with Fighter and Paladin holding the lead. Let’s go with Fighter.
Looking at the subclasses, we see that Draconic Bloodline towers over the others for the sorcerous origin choice. That too makes sense, when you consider that the sorcerer is probably going to be mixing it up in melee. A Dragon sorcerer’s affinity for a certain kind of elemental damage, as well as the natural armor of their draconic scales, means they’ll have a decent AC without needing to actually wear anything–so damage, AC, and even wings if you are one of the rare people to make it to high levels.
Plus who could resist a face so well dressed?
Sorcerers have a lot of versatility to offer and pretty quickly, between their metamagic abilities and the option to create either more spell slots or to power whatever metamagic abilities they need through their spell slots. Sorcerers might not have the biggest spell lists, but they can do a lot with them.
Adding in Fighter to the mix skews us towards a gish build of some kind. If we were going by the forums, we’d probably run with something like Green Flame Blade and Booming Blade, and get a lot of mileage out of the fact that you can cast one, make an attack with a melee weapon while casting it, then quicken a spell to cast a second melee cantrip on the same turn, meaning you get two attacks well before your Fighter friends have them. With a level or two (or four) of Fighter, we get a Fighting Style, most likely Duellist for that extra one-handed melee weapon damage, we also get Second Wind for some extra stamina in a fight, and most importantly, Action Surge, which lets us maximize our effectiveness on a single turn with two actions–which is handy for making attacks and spells.
All we really have to do now is pick out spells.
Looking at the list here we see that the single most popular cantrip by a long shot is Fire Bolt, which again makes sense. We are probably a fire-affinity dragon sorcerer, so we are going to be rolling 1d10+Charisma modifier to start with, and scaling up eventually. It’ll never be quite as good as Eldritch Blast, but then few Cantrips are. We also pick up Mage Hand, Prestidigitation, Minor Illusion, and Shocking Grasp to have a close-up option. As before, we’d probably add in Green Flame and/or Booming Blade, but they’re not as popular (or this data doesn’t take them into account).
We’re already pretty optimized though, going into picking out spells. We only know five, so, Shield, Magic Missile, Burning Hands, Mage Armor, and Fireball are going to have to get the job done. But really, that’s all you need–though again, Mage Armor is a little redundant for both a Fighter and a Draconic Sorcerer. So we might grab Ice Knife instead.
So there you have it folks, the Perfect Sorcerer. Play a Dragonborn for maximum draconic-ness, and you’re good to go.
Happy Adventuring!
