Master of Magic Wizard (5e Optimized Character Build)

Big Boy Introduction Sequence

“	The best Sorcerer you can ever make is an Evocation Wizard.	”
—Supersmily5 (me), from around 2018.

Never has this statement, originally made in jest, held more true. With the advent of the Metamagic Adept feat, any full spellcasting class can have enough Sorcery Points and Metamagic options to be as powerful as a high level Sorcerer without any of the messy complications of only having 15 spells and terrible late game subclass abilities. It's kind of weird though, of all the ways they could have tried to fix Sorcerer, I never would have expected this. Jokingly referred to as a "feat tax" by people I've seen on Reddit, the Metamagic Adept feat allows players to gain 2 Sorcery Points and 2 Metamagic options. Before this, sacrificing 3 levels to get Metamagic from multiclassing into Sorcerer was basically never a good idea, so most multiclass builds for Sorcerer did the opposite: They'd be mostly a full Sorcerer but with a couple levels in another class (Usually Warlocks for Eldritch Blast and Invocations to combo into some max damage per round with Metamagic).

Now however, with the feat in tow a build would have a total of 5 maximum Sorcery Points and 4 Metamagic options if they took 3 levels of Sorcerer. The higher endgame levels for most other full casters, especially Wizards who would lose 6 free spells and the ability to cast low level spells for free, is still a very powerful thing to miss. That, combined with delaying the levels of spells you can get by 3 levels, makes the multiclass usually not worth it unless you KNOW you'll be going to level 20 (And maybe even beyond with extra Boons or whatnot). But if that IS the case, the ultimate endgame power of this multiclass is not to be understated as now you'd be a true master of magic.

The Build

In most other OP builds, certain races are required to make the combo work. Unkillable Moon Druid benefits from Warforged, Falco's build is built completely around being an Aarakocra Monk, etc. Here however, any race that can work for a spellcaster, especially a Wizard, can work for this build. I recommend using Variant Human though, because although some consider it a boring pick the floating +1s and extra feat massively help reduce the pain of not having the level 19 Ability Score Improvement. If using standard point array, I recommend having 08 Strength, 12 Dexterity, 14 Constitution, 15 Intelligence, 10 Wisdom, and 13 Charisma. I also recommend using the +1s on Intelligence and Constitution, because this will allow you to focus on Wizard spells as your main source of damage, and utility spells for your Sorcerer levels (You won't have a lot of levelled spells from Sorcerer anyway, and you'll get 5 Wizard cantrips for combat. Your 4 Sorcerer cantrips can therefore be focused on utility without sacrificing combat potential).

As for the feat, there are a lot of good ones, but the best are War Caster (If you want opportunity attack spells), and Resilient Constitution (If you want 16 Constitution at level 1. You can start as either class, but if you pick Resilient then I recommend starting as a Wizard until level 4. At level 4, you pick the Metamagic Adept feat to start the process of integrating your Metamagic capabilities, and then have the next 3 levels be Sorcerer. This was the smoothest way I've found to do this, but some of you may prefer getting 3rd level spells first by waiting until 5th level to multiclass.

Then, you take 3 levels in the subclass of your choice for Sorcerer (You'll only get the first level subclass features doing this, so choose wisely. Due to how front-loaded the subclasses are, most of them are completely viable.). Afterwards, the rest of your levels will go to Wizard, but since you're multiclassing full spellcasters, you still have the spellslots that you'd have staying in a single class. In other words, although you have the disadvantage of not having higher level spells, you can upcast to make up the gap.

Metamagic Metropolis

So what Metamagic options are worth picking? Well let's narrow down the options first. We'll assume for the sake of argument that the Unearthed Arcana options are banned by the DM. With the addition of Tasha's Cauldron however, we'll still have a look at the additional metamagic options there. Being an Evocation Wizard gives us a vastly superior version of the Careful Spell Metamagic: Sculpt Spells. While it's only viable on Evocation spells, Sculpt Spells doesn't require any of your precious few Sorcery Points, and prevents ALL damage and effects to allies instead of half. Empowered Spell is a no-go since you'll only get 1 die re-roll with your 13 Charisma. Transmuted spell seems like a valid pick, but your ability to have more spells as a Wizard can ultimately make this one worthless the higher level you get. Seeking spell isn't that good, since there aren't many spell attack rolls that cause powerful effects worth the precious few sorcery points.

This leaves us with 6 options, of which we get 4. Twinned Spell is good for doubling your utility concentration spells, but keep in mind that because it's cost is proportional to the spell level used, you can't twin a spell of 6th level or higher. The big reason this build didn't work before was because you couldn't twin 4th level spells though, so this is more than enough to make it useful. Do you know why? It's because you can use the other options without any limit on the spell level. Such as Quicken Spell, the other way to get maximum power. Remember how 14th level Evocation Wizards get Overchannel to do maximum damage with a spell? Yeah, you can do that as a bonus action now. So Quickened and Twinned, but those were both super obvious. The others are really dependent on the kind of power you want. I recommend Subtle Spell and Distant Spell as my personal favorites, but with the much larger spell list of the Wizard, the combo game is yours to behold. Heighten a Disintegrate! Distant a Meteor Swarm (2 mile range)! Extend an Investiture (Or a Control Weather! Or a Foresight! Honestly Extended spell's a more solid option than I originally gave it credit for.) The possibilities are endless! And as the obvious added bonus, you aren't limited in the amount of spells you have from being a pure Sorcerer!

Countering Multiclass Losses

I mentioned it briefly earlier but the build definitely works best as a Variant Human, and as an Evocation Wizard for your main class. Variant Human gives you an extra feat, but being a Wizard gives the best potential to minimize the losses of your build. You can prepare less spells from your main class whatever you take since most other classes have prepared casting, and if you want to use Metamagic as often as a pure Sorcerer can you're dipping a lot into your spellslots to recover Sorcery Points. Not ideal. However, being a Wizard also limits the impact of this, since your Arcane Recovery feature gives you more spellslots. As for the 6 free spells (That could have all been 9th-level Wizard spells by the way), Wizard is the only class in the game that lets you research spells you don't have and add them to your list of spells you can prepare. This helps mitigate the loss, but you still have one glaring flaw: You won't get 9th-level spells at ALL until level 20 (Unless you wait until level 17 to multiclass, but by then what's the point?). While you can research spells after reaching this cap to eventually get all the spells you missed, this almost certainly won't happen before the end of the campaign, and the entire time up until the endgame you are 3 levels behind every other full caster, limiting the levels of spells you can cast. Not to mention, whenever you take the 3 levels of Sorcerer, you're getting Sorcerer features, but not your Evocation Wizard ones. So it's not actually a truly OP build, but may be the build with the largest potential power you could possibly have. If that's okay for you, then this is definitely a build worth checking out.

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