D&D 2024 Player's Handbook: The Sorcerer is the closest thing we have to a superhero

The upcoming Dungeons & Dragons 2024 Player's Handbook continues to trot out character class updates. It's a veritable Oprah episode worth of buffs. You get a buff! You get a buff! Everybody gets a buff!

Even the sorcerer, whom my sorcerer player said was already in a good position, got buffed. Dungeon Masters, we never had a chance. You have to understand: Market forces are in play, and they are more powerful than any one DM. Hasbro wants sales numbers to go up. So Wizards of the Coast has to make sales numbers go up. And how do you convince a generation raised on D&D 5th Edition to buy into a new edition of D&D? You make their characters' numbers go up. That way, the players themselves buy the new book, which is unlikely since the vast majority of core rulebook buyers are DMs, not players. Or players hint at the "need" for these new 2024 D&D core rulebooks by begging or bribing their DMs to make the purchase. (Something that DMs were going to do anyway, but bribe pizza helps.)

So. The sorcerer. A perennial source of fireballs for every battlefield, sorcerers epitomize the glass-cannon stereotype by loading up their spell guns and turning every map into the surface of the sun. Their motto is, "I didn't ask how big the room is—I said I cast fireball!" Although it's not just sorcerers. It's any and all spellcaster classes that can get their hands on that spell. Sorcerers, Wizards, Druids, Warlocks, Artificers, and even Bards.

"We wanted to enhance that theme in a variety of ways," designer Jeremy Crawford says. And when he says "theme," he's talking about turning sorcerers into Dragon Ball Z characters and making their power go over 9,000!

Innate Sorcery is a brand new power that capitalizes on the magical power bottled inside every sorcerer. It's like Barbarian Rage, but for the guy over there in robes. 

WotC has revisited every Metamagic option. "Metamagic" is the currency—or at least a conduit—by which a sorcerer modifies spells while they're casting them. It's a signature power of sorcerers, and they now have an even more robust metamagic kit at their disposal. Starting at 7th level, they'll even be able to apply two metamagic options at a time to their spells instead of the usual one.

I have no idea how well this has been play tested. All I know is that my sorcerer is going to wreck shop even more than they did before. It was already impossible to throw a deadly challenge at my players. The sorcerer indeed relishes in his glass cannon role. One aforementioned and well-placed fireball can remove literally hundreds of hit points' worth of creatures from the field at a time. Giving the Twinned metamagic ability to Tasha's Mind Whip spell has brought my bad guys to a screeching halt with splitting headaches. The sorcerer at my table is a nightmare. He knows it. He loves it. He's drank more cups of DM's Tears than any one of my other players.

As a sorcerer's capstone ability at level 20 (the highest level a player can reach in D&D), they get Arcana Apotheosis. That's a fancy phrase that means a sorcerer with their Innate Sorcery power fired up, no longer burns Sorcery Points when doing their Metamagic thing. Sure, less than 1 percent of players will ever reach level 20, but it's always fun to see what's all the way up at the top of the Christmas Tree. 

Check out the second half of the video below for getting into the weeds about the subclasses of Sorcerer. Like Draconic Sorcerers being able to summon dragons. Or there being a new Wild Magic Surge table. 

The D&D 2024 Player's Handbook is still on track for a September 17 launch. I'll be over here counting the days to my players giving me my first aneurism with these way overpowered character classes.