Solasta Sorcerer Build Guide | Mana Painter Class Guide

In this Solasta Crown of the Magister Sorcerer Build Guide I’m going to discuss my Mana Painter Sorcerer Build, and show you what works in terms of choosing the best Ancestry, Background, Abilities and a lot more. If you’ve been looking for a way to play as a Sorcerer who can control Spells to their liking while maintaining decent durability, then this guide is for you.

Solasta Crown of the Magister Sorcerer Build Guide | Mana Painter

Sorcerers are imbued with magical powers, which come from their ancient bloodline, mysterious lineage, or unexplained cosmic authority. Unlike Wizards, they don’t need arcane tomes to develop their abilities and unlike Clerics, they don’t rely on deities to provide them with continuous guidance. Sorcerers are only Proficient with a limited number of Weapons, and they can’t equip Armor, making them quite fragile. Although, their magical prowess more than compensates for these weaknesses.

As a Mana Painter Sorcerer, you’ll focus on Charisma, Constitution and Dexterity to improve the chances of successfully attacking enemies with Spells while maintaining your resiliency and composure in Combat. You’ll focus on efficiently dealing the most amount of damage before they can put you down.

Solasta Sorcerer Character Creation

In this section, we’ll discuss the best Sorcerer’s Ancestry or Race, Background, Abilities, Skills, and Language to choose in Character Creation.

Ancestry

Out of all the races, Humans make the best Sorcerers since they gain +1 bonus to all of their Abilities. As such, their most essential Abilities can be raised significantly at lower levels.

Sorcerous Origins

Similar to Clerics, Solasta Sorcerers choose their Sorcerous Origin or Subclass at Level 1. Among the Draconic Bloodline, Mana Painter, and Child of the Rift, Mana Painter turns you into a well-rounded Sorcerer, capable of inflicting high damage and remaining durable even in precarious situations.

Draconic Bloodline draws its power from the Dragon Ancestor’s chosen element, may it be Acid, Fire, Poison or Cold. You also gain Draconic Resilience, which supports your lack of Armor Proficiency since wearing Clothing provides you with a base AC of 13 plus your Dexterity Modifier. At higher levels, you can deal effective Spell Damage because you add your Charisma Modifier to your damage roll and you’re able to become resistant to the element you’ve chosen previously.

On the other hand, the Child of the Rift gives you the chance to save your Spell Slot when you cast a Sorcerer Spell. This is very random so there’s little to no guarantee that you’ll be able to avoid spending the slot. At higher levels, you can sacrifice a portion of your HP in order to gain 1 Sorcery Point, which isn’t worth it considering how low HP is, to begin with.

This brings us to our chosen Mana Painter Subclass. Although it seems like choosing the Draconic Bloodline is a good bargain, this isn’t the case because Mana Painter provides you with more benefits overall. Furthermore, you won’t encounter that many enemies who will inflict Acid, Fire, Poison or Cold Damage against you so your resistance against these damage types isn’t as useful as expected.

With Mana Painter, you gain access to Mana Absorption, which accounts for your high Charisma Modifier when making Saving Throws against any Spell and its respective effects. At higher levels, you’re able to inflict strong Force Damage via a Melee Attack. Once again, your Charisma Modifier is added to your roll and on top of that, you gain 1 Sorcery Point. Taking a Short Rest also grants you additional Sorcery Points. These points are essential to Sorcerers because it gives them the ability to manipulate Spells as they see fit, may it be by increasing the Spells’ range or duration, to name a few.

Background

Just like Wizards, Sorcerers don’t have Armor Proficiency so they resort to wearing Clothing. As such, their AC isn’t as high as it should be. However, this changes when you choose Sellsword as your Background. As a Sellsword, you become proficient with Medium Armor, which significantly boosts your base AC. You also gain proficiency in Athletics and Intimidation.

Athletics allows you to jump across longer distances and to climb dangerous terrain with less difficulty while Intimidation provides you extra points when making Ability Checks related to this Skill.

Abilities

In this guide, I’ll make use of the Point Buy Ability Generation System instead of Dice Rolls so I can control the points I allot for each Ability. The Sorcerer’s Spellcasting Ability is Charisma, which determines whether or not the Spells they cast will successfully hit enemies. Additionally, this determines how well Sorcerer’s are able to interact with others by intimidating, persuading, or deceiving them into getting what they want. I highly recommend increasing Charisma to 16 because this immediately boosts your capabilities at lower levels. At the same time, you’ll gain +3 Spellcasting Ability Modifier to considerably improve your hit chances.

The next important Ability is Constitution. This should be raised to 16 so you can start with 9 HP. The third Ability to invest in is Dexterity, which has to be increased to 14 in order to maximize the Dexterity Modifier that you can add to your AC since you’ll be wearing Medium Armor. Remember to not go any higher than this number, otherwise, you’ll end up wasting your points pool. You can then distribute the remaining points to Strength and Wisdom.

With Point Buy, your Ability Score spread should look like this:

Skills

For Skills, I suggest selecting Deception and Persuasion. Both of these should raise your chances of successfully negotiating with NPCs.

Language

You can choose any Language you want.

Sorcerer Level 1 Features, Cantrips, Spells and Concentration

Magical Crafting

Sorcerers are able to make use of Magical Crafting to create Potions and herbal remedies since they’re proficient in using the Herbalism Kit.

Mana Absorption

Mana Absorption lets you add your Charisma Modifier to all Saving Throws against the enemy’s Spells and its corresponding Conditions. Since your Charisma Modifier is already high to begin with, you’ll most likely avoid or lessen the Spell’s harmful effect.

Cantrips

Cantrips are cast without expending Spell Slots, which means that you can use them every turn if you so wish. At Level 1, you get to choose four Cantrips. Remember that the majority of encounters take place in dimly lit and dark areas so you’ll need a stable light source to prevent incurring a Disadvantage. Disadvantage is a mechanic, which makes you roll a D20 twice for an Attack Roll, Ability Check, or Saving Throw. Of the two values that you get, having Disadvantage means you’ll be using the lower value between the two. In this instance, your attacks will most likely miss since you can’t see enemies well in the dark.

I recommend the following Cantrips:

Dancing Lights allows you to summon a wisp of light that you can control to reveal targets hiding in the dark. To cast Dancing Lights, you need to equip a Component Pouch because the Cantrip has the Material Component.

Chill Touch deals 1-8 Necrotic Damage while preventing targets from restoring their HP with the Chilled status effect. If you cast this against the Undead, they receive a Disadvantage every time they attack you.

Ray of Frost is a Ranged Attack that deals 1-8 Cold Damage while inflicting Hindered. This reduces the target’s Movement Speed by 2, and is just a great all around ranged Cantrip.

Shocking Grasp is a Melee Attack that deals 1-8 Lightning Damage while inflicting Shocked. This prevents the target from reacting to any of your actions. For example, enemies won’t be able to perform an Attack of Opportunity when you move away from them nor can they use Shield to protect themselves from incoming attacks.

Spells

At Character Creation, you get to choose two Level 1 Spells. I suggest taking the following:

Magic Missile deals 2-5 Force Damage by hitting targets with multiple projectiles. This Spell never misses so it’s ideal in situations where you might otherwise incur a Disadvantage like in dimly lit places or low elevation with respect to your target.

Shield is a Reaction that boosts your AC by 5 prior to getting hit and it makes you immune to Magic Missile. This significantly increases your defenses, thereby preventing nearly all damage.

Origin Spell

Part of being a Sorcerer is unlocking Origin Spells at specific levels. At Level 1, you unlock Entangle. This restrains a group of targets if they fail their Saving Throws. Additionally, affected enemies incur a Disadvantage in relation to their succeeding attacks and Dexterity Saving Throws. You also gain Advantage when you hit them. Entangle is a powerful Spell when it works because in most cases, restrained enemies who specialize in dealing Melee Attacks can’t do anything but face their demise.

Concentration

There are also Cantrips and Spells whose effects are dependent on the Sorcerer’s Concentration to remain active. Concentration is broken if you cast another Cantrip or Spell that also requires Concentration. For example, if Dancing Lights is active and you decide to cast Entangle, then Entangle will be the active Spell.

Moreover, when you take damage while a Cantrip or Spell that requires Concentration is active, you’ll need to make a Constitution Saving Throw and succeed to maintain its effect, otherwise you’ll have to recast it. This is where a high Constitution comes in handy in order to increase your Saving Throw’s success rate.

Sorcerer Level 2 Features and Spells

Flexible Casting and Sorcery Points

Flexible Casting allows for the conversion of Sorcery Points into additional Spell Slots and vice versa. Note that this is a Bonus Action so you can use it on top of casting Spells during your turn. At Level 2, you start with 2 Sorcery Points and gain 1 point per level thereafter. This pool is fully restored after taking a Long Rest.

Mana Drain

In addition to these features, you also unlock Mana Drain, which is a Melee Spell Attack. This lets you inflict 1-10 Force Damage plus your Charisma Modifier of +3. You also get 1 Sorcery Point. Taking a Short Rest restores this power.

Spell

At Level 2 onward, you’ll be able to unlearn and learn old and new Spells, respectively. Unlearning a Spell lets you choose what you wish to remove from your Prepared List. As replacement, you’ll get to pick one Spell when you level up. Alternatively, if you want to keep your current list, you can simply ignore this action and learn new Spells. In this Sorcerer Build Guide, we won’t be unlearning any Spells since the ones we’ve chosen are essential in combat.

At this level, I suggest learning Thunderwave. This is a powerful AoE Spell that deals 2-16 Thunder Damage and pushes targets away from you. Thunderwave is effective against nearby enemies because it creates enough space to disengage from them. It’s also ideal against groups of weaklings with low Constitution since their chances of succeeding Constitution Saving Throws is small. You just have to make sure that your party members are not near the targets, otherwise, they can be hit and damaged by this Spell.

Solasta Sorcerer Level 3 Metamagic and Spells

Metamagic

At Level 3, you gain two Metamagic options, which let you choose ways to manipulate the way you cast Spells. To use these, you’ll need to spend Sorcery Points beforehand. I highly recommend picking Quickened and Twinned Spell. Quickened Spell allows you to cast a Spell and Cantrip in one turn. You can use the former as your main action and then cast any strong Cantrip as a follow through to quickly eliminate enemies.

On the other hand, Twinned Spell lets you cast a Spell against two targets if that same Spell is only meant to be used for a single enemy. This lets you attack two enemies with a Spell in one turn. I often find myself casting Chill Touch, especially at lower levels due to the high number of Undead. Note that this can’t be used with Magic Missile nor Scorching Ray since these Spells deal damage to multiple targets.

Spells

At this level, I suggest unlocking Scorching Ray. This Spell deals 2-12 Fire Damage against multiple enemies, or 3x 2-12 damage to the same target. This is a lot of damage, making it very versatile. Remember that you gain Advantage when casting Scorching Ray from higher elevation with respect to your targets since it functions as a Ranged Spell Attack.

Additionally, you gain Barkskin as part of your Origin Spells. This grants an ally with an AC of at least 16. Barkskin is useful to other Sorcerers and Wizards in your party who are still wearing Clothing.

Sorcerer Level 4 Ability Score Choice and Spells

Ability Score Choice

At Level 4, you’re given two options to further enhance your character. First is with the Ability Score Choice, which allows you to allocate two points on an Ability or one point each to two Abilities. Second is with the Bonus Feat, which is part of a set of special Abilities available to almost all of the Classes. You’ll need to fulfill certain requirements before selecting a specific Feat. Some have a caution symbol beside them to warn you that that Feat is not recommended as you are already reaping some, if not all, of its benefits.

Between the Ability Score Choice and the Bonus Feat, I strongly advise picking the former. With this, you can boost your Charisma by 2 to raise its corresponding modifier to +4. As a result, you’ll be able to hit and to inflict damage with your Spells most of the time. You’ll again be given the option to choose between the Ability Score Choice and Bonus Feat when you reach Level 8.

Cantrip

At this level, you can select one Cantrip. I recommend choosing Fire Bolt since this deals 1-10 Fire Damage from a farther distance than Ray of Frost.

Spell

For the Spell, I suggest picking Color Spray. This lets you blind up to 3 targets in front of you for one round. As a result, they incur a Disadvantage when they attack while you gain Advantage upon hitting them.

Sorcerer Level 5 Spells

At Level 5, you unlock Level 3 Spells. I highly recommend getting Fireball because this is a very powerful AoE Spell that inflicts massive Fire Damage. Similar to Thunderwave, you’ll have to be careful when casting this as it can damage and even kill party members who are situated within the Spell’s range.

Additionally, as part of your Origin Spells, you gain access to Sleet Storm that creates an area filled with harmful effects. Affected targets are susceptible to Prone, making them vulnerable to attacks. Furthermore, their vision is heavily obscured and they move slower.

Sorcerer Level 6 Mana Tap and Spells

Mana Tap

Mana Tap encourages you to take a Short Rest in order to regain Sorcery Points equivalent to half of your current level, rounded up. So upon performing a Short Rest at Level 6, you recover 3 Sorcery Points. To use Mana Tap again, you’ll need to take a Long Rest.

Mana Tap also syncs well with Mana Drain because both features provide you Sorcery Points.

Spells

At this level, you’ll get to choose one more Spell. I recommend taking either Dispel Magic or Misty Step. Dispel Magic is an effective debuff that removes conditions imposed on allies such as being Shocked or Restrained, as well as negating enemy buffs like having extra AC. Remember that this is meant for Spells, which inflict lasting magical effects instead of instantaneous ones. As such, Dispel Magic is not effective against incoming Magic Missile and Scorching Ray Spells.

Alternatively, if you find yourself surrounded by enemies for the majority of the time, you can opt to take Misty Step. This is a Bonus Action that lets you teleport to a safer location.

Sorcerer Level 7 Spells

At Level 7, you unlock Level 4 Spells. I suggest unlocking Dominate Beast because this lets you command a beast to attack its own kind in combat. The higher your level is, the longer Spell’s duration.

Additionally, as part of your Origin Spells, you gain access to Fire Shield. This grants you resistance against Fire and Cold Damage while inflicting Cold and Fire Damage, respectively.

Sorcerer Level 8 Ability Score Choice

At Level 8, I still suggest choosing Ability Score Choice over Bonus Feat. With this, you’ll be able to max out your Charisma in order to further increase the chances of landing your Spells. You’ll also improve Mana Absorption and Mana Drain since you’ll be adding +5 Charisma Modifier to both features’ rolls.

Your improved Ability Score spread should look like this:

Similar to the previous level, you’ll be able to choose one more Spell.

Sorcerer Level 9 Spells

At Level 9, you’ll gain access to Level 5 Spells. You can choose any Spell that suits your playstyle. Additionally, you also unlock an Origin Spell, specifically Conjure Elemental. This is powerful because you get to summon any elemental of your choice. However, the caveat is when you lose Concentration, that same elemental will become hostile towards you.

Sorcerer Level 10 Metamagic, Cantrip and Spell

At Level 10, you have the option to choose another Metamagic. If you want to increase the range of your Spells, go with Distant Metamagic, otherwise, if you intend to double your Spell’s duration such as for Dominate Beast, then pick Extended Spell.

Moreover, at this level, you can choose one more Cantrip and Spell to your liking.

Solasta Sorcerer Weapon Selection

Since you’ll use Spells to deal Melee and Ranged Damage, equipping the basic Quarterstaff is fine.

Solasta Sorcerer Armor Selection

In terms of Armor, you should upgrade your Medium Armor to Half Plate +1. This boosts your AC to 18, which includes your base AC and +2 Dexterity Modifier. Accounting for your Shield Spell that provides you with +5 AC bonus, your total AC becomes 23. As such, you’re protected from enemy attacks most of the time.

When it comes to other accessories, the Cloak of Protection and Amulet of Health are good to have because these provide you with added durability. Both pieces of Equipment require Attunement, which is limited to a total of three pieces of Equipment per character. You can only attune one piece of gear per Short or Long Rest.

The Cloak of Protection can be purchased from Halman Summer of the Antiquarian Faction. In order to unlock and to buy this, you’ll have to attain the Brotherhood Reputation by giving them the majority of artifacts you collect. This Cloak provides you with +1 bonus to your Saving Throws and AC. As such, your total AC is now equal to 24, which guarantees that enemy attacks will often miss.

Lastly, the Amulet of Health raises your Constitution to 19. This increases your max HP as well as the chances of successfully rolling Constitution Saving Throws in order to maintain Concentration for your Spells that need it.

Solasta Sorcerer Final Tips

As a Mana Painter Sorcerer, remember that you can opt to select Bonus Feat instead of Ability Score Increase if you find yourself too squishy and vulnerable. Specifically, Raise Shield grants you Shield Proficiency and adds +3 to your AC against Ranged Attacks. Once you have this, it’s best to equip Shield +2 instead of the Quarterstaff to further boost your AC to 28.

Make sure to cast Ranged Spells from a higher elevation than your target in order to gain Advantage. Examples of these types of Spells are Ray of Frost and Scorching Ray. To identify these Spells, you can refer to their respective descriptions, particularly under the Range portion.

Lastly, remember to pre-cast Dancing Lights before engaging in combat so you can reserve your Cast Spell Action for other offensive or defensive Spells instead.

Be sure to check out our Solasta Wiki and Twitch Channel if you have any questions on the game. You can also check out our other Build Guides if you’re interested in trying out other Classes. What are your thoughts about the Sorcerer Class? What Subclass did you choose? What did you think of this guide? Let us know in the comments section below!