Introduction

Divine Soul Sorcerer is one of the most popular subclasses in the entire game for its sheer, unprecedented capacity for spell selection. Of course, being a Sorcerer, you’re still only going to get to know 16 of those spells at any one time, so the hardest choice by far becomes knowing which spells are worth taking and when. 

Being able to function as your party’s main divine caster while still picking up some staple arcane utility and damage is an incredible feeling. Almost nothing else can Fireball one turn and Healing Word the next, and almost nothing else single-class can cast Heal on one turn and Disintegrate on the next (Arcana domain cleric and some bards being the only exceptions). What this means is that every time you get a new spell it’s going to be an agonizing choice and/or a lot of research. Fortunately, we’ve got a build suggestion for that.

Table of Contents

Disclaimer

RPGBOT uses the color coding scheme which has become common among Pathfinder build handbooks, which is simple to understand and easy to read at a glance.

  • Red: Bad, useless options, or options which are extremely situational. Nearly never useful.
  • Orange: OK options, or useful options that only apply in rare circumstances. Useful sometimes.
  • Green: Good options. Useful often.
  • Blue: Fantastic options, often essential to the function of your character. Useful very frequently.

We will not include 3rd-party content, including content from DMs Guild, in handbooks for official content because we can’t assume that your game will allow 3rd-party content or homebrew. We also won’t cover Unearthed Arcana content because it’s not finalized, and we can’t guarantee that it will be available to you in your games.

The advice offered below is based on the current State of the Character Optimization Meta as of when the article was last updated. Keep in mind that the state of the meta periodically changes as new source materials are released, and the article will be updated accordingly as time allows.

Divine Soul Features

  1. Divine Magic: Access to the cleric spell list is amazing. They have many of the absolute best divine spells, including most of the best healing options, a ton of great support options, and many fantastic divinations. Unfortunately you’ll need to split your focus between normal arcane spells and pretending to be a cleric, but the possibilities for combinations are amazing.

    You also gain an additional spell known at level 1 based on your alignment. One spell doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s still very useful for the Sorcerer.

    • Good: Important in most parties, but Healing Word is more frequently useful.
    • Evil: Beyond low levels the damage is poor, the scaling is bad compared to many sorcerer spells, and getting into melee to use this is risky.
    • Law: A fantastic buff at any level.
    • Chaos: Decent but difficult to rely upon, and if you’re going to force Charisma saves you really want failure to be more meaningful than a small debuff. Still, Bane may be a good way to burn through Legendary Resistances.
    • Neutral: A fantastic defensive buff.
  2. Favored by the Gods: Most features like this only grant 1d6, which has a lower average and is less reliable because it’s only a single die. This also recharges on a short rest, making it a frequent and reliable defensive option.
  3. Empowered Healing: The problem with this ability is the problem with healing in combat. If you’re in a fight, healing is rarely the best option. Death is easy to prevent in 5e, and if you’ve got Healing Word you can get an ally back into the fight as a bonus action. Being massively injured isn’t much of an impediment, so allies can limp around at 1 hp and still be perfectly effective. With the exception of Heal, getting a creature back to full hit points should generally be reserved for healing out of combat. Once you’re out of combat and your action economy isn’t limited, you usually don’t need to expend limited resources like spell slots to scrape together every last hit point. Sit down and spend some hit dice.
  4. Otherworldly Wings: Persistent flight is amazing at any level.
  5. Unearthly Recovery: This could be a lot of healing, but by this level you probably know Heal.

Divine Soul Ability Scores

No change from standard Sorcerer, but, since this class is so ripe for multiclassing, just make sure to assign points where you’re going to want them to do so.

Point BuyStandard Array
Str810
Dex1413
Con1414
Int108
Wis1012
Cha1515

Divine Soul Races

If you’re playing the example build below, you might be tempted to pick up a race with innate spellcasting like the Fairy or Yuan-ti, but the wording on Voice of Authority requires you to spend spell slots to trigger it, which means they don’t interact. That doesn’t make them bad choices, although fairy is a hard sell because it means we have to choose between using our flight and our heavy armor proficiency. If you’re not using the example build, see the Sorcerer Handbook for advice on selecting a race.

Divine Soul Feats

Nothing different for Divine Souls. Feats that grant spells are always good to help expand your versatility.

Divine Soul Weapons

Nothing different than any other Sorcerer.

Divine Soul Armor

Your main defense is being far away from hostile things unless you multiclass.

Multiclassing

This section briefly details some obvious and enticing multiclass options, but doesn’t fully explore the broad range of multiclassing combinations. For more on multiclassing, see our Practical Guide to Multiclassing.

Having the biggest spell selection ever makes this class synergize with many things. 1-3 levels in anything for a subclass feature will still let your character cast Wish by the time it’s done, and that’s the single best capstone on any character no matter what class they are. In particular, I wrote this build and the Order Domain Cleric Handbook at the same time because I played the example build below at level 5 for a one-shot and it is busted. A level or two of hexblade lets you key everything off of Charisma. A touch of Paladin can reward you with some nice things (particularly if you take the Blessed Warrior fighting style),. The list goes on. Just make sure to start with something that’s going to get you those delicious armor proficiencies first so you can walk out protected.

Example Build – 5e Mystic Theurge

Striving to be the single greatest support caster in the multiverse, this build takes an incredibly strong ability and the best spell list in the game and drives them to their logical conclusion.

Abilities

Since we’re multiclassing into a Cleric flavor that gets us heavy armor proficiency, we can dump Dex and put the resulting surplus into Wisdom to make said multiclass possible. Strength isn’t actually required to wear heavy armor, you just take a speed penalty if you don’t have the amount it wants. With that said, we don’t really care about move speed and even have a way to counteract it if you’re really worried about that extra movement in your game. Honestly though, just pick up a broom of flying at your first opportunity and solve that problem.

BaseIncreased
Str88
Dex88
Con1516
Int1010
Wis1414
Cha1517

Race

Shifter. We get proficiency in Intimidation and one of two options. If you’re really worried about that slow speed because of armor, using Swiftstride will fix that. That said, I would probably use Wildhunt for the ability to vibe check someone with Insight or when rolling Perception/Survival for finding or tracking things.

Background

We take Spy and move the Stealth proficiency over to Perception. It turns out that spies are generally only useful if they can actually see and hear things.

Skills and Tools

We’re going to be a Face, so we act like it. Starting with Cleric gives us Medicine and Insight, while the bonus proficiency in Persuasion comes from the domain. These, combined with our race and background gives us proficiency in every standard Face skill (Deception, Insight, Intimidation, Persuasion) and a total of 6 skill proficiencies.

Feats

We’ll be a level behind on ASI’s for the entirety of the character, so we definitely want to take a hybrid feat at 5 and ASI our main stat up to 20 at 9. We use Telekinetic for that because of course I did. At 13, we take Inspiring Leader and show you a bit of the math for why it’s incredible at this level. At 17, we take Eldritch Adept for Devil’s Sight, before finally taking Metamagic Adept at 20 for a pretend capstone.

Levels

LevelFeat(s) and FeaturesNotes and Tactics
1- Cleric 1Cantrips:
– Guidance
– Light
– Sacred Flame
Spells Prepared:
– Bless
– Protection from Evil and Good
– Shield of Faith
– Command
– Heroism
Voice of Authority
As described above, we’re mostly taking spells that don’t mind so much that our Wisdom is a point lower than expected starting value and, more importantly, won’t ever get better. If you’re actually playing this build at first level, prepare Healing Word over Protection from Good and Evil for now and just accept that your target is getting one less HP back per casting.

Speaking of bonus action spells, man Shield of Faith is good. Wait for your martial friend to walk into melee, throw a +2 AC on them as a bonus action and enjoy as they get to slap whatever poor sap is next to them. The fact that you only get two spell slots at this level means that you need to be very careful about when you use them and what you use them on. Don’t use one unless it’s life and death or it can trigger Voice of Authority.

Voice of Authority is one of the single most impactful class features in the game and putting it one something that can cast Silvery Barbs is so good that I did it here too. See more on that below.

For starting equipment, take chain mail, a mace, and a light crossbow. Immediately sell both of those weapons and use it to buy full plate when you can.
2- Sorcerer 1Cantrips:
– Firebolt
Mage Hand
– Mind Sliver
Shape Water
Spells:
– Healing Word
– Silvery Barbs
– Bane (Affinity)
Favored by the Gods
I really did mean immediately switching to sorcerer. The cantrips are a mix of great utility and damage options to cover attack rolls and an uncommon save.

Healing word is now present to give you another bonus action spell to trigger Voice of Authority which, this time, doesn’t require concentration.

Then there’s Silvery Barbs. Tyler was so salty when this came out that he spent a whole article saying why you shouldn’t. It turns out that the true enlightenment of this spell is on an Order Cleric, though. You cast Mind Sliver. The target succeeds on its save. You cast Silvery Barbs as a reaction, forcing it to reroll its save. Pass or fail, you now target your ally with the second half, granting it advantage on its next attack. This triggers Voice of Authority.

The target can now immediately make an attack, with the advantage you just gave it. Target failed its save against Mind Sliver? Just wait for it to roll something successful on its turn. Target didn’t manage to roll anything successfully? Congratulations, you saved a spell slot because your foe was completely ineffectual.

Do note that the only limitation on Voice of Authority is spell slots. If you Healing Word one person and Silvery Barbs someone else in the same round, they can both take the reaction attacks.
3- Sorcerer 2Spell Known:
– Guiding Bolt
Sorcery Points
Since our reaction is going to belong to Silvery Barbs basically 100% of the time, we don’t really bother with staples like Shield or Absorb Elements. Instead, we take some radiant damage and even more advantage for our friends.

Sorcery Points are already good for us, even before we get metamagic. We can already cast Silvery Barbs with the four 1st level slots we have right now. If we run out, we just burn the two points and get another slot.

Do also note that, thanks to the magic of multiclassing, we have 2nd level spell slots right now and no 2nd level spells to cast in them. This means you’re free to upcast Healing Word (or Guiding Bolt if your team’s doing really well) without guilt.
4- Sorcerer 3Metamagic:
– Heighten Spell
– Twin Spell
New Spell:
– Vortex Warp
Twin Spell is still incredible. It’s slightly unfortunate that it doesn’t trigger Voice of Authority on both targets, but honestly that’s still fine.

Vortex Warp sure does trigger VoA though, and it’s one of the few things that lets people voluntarily fail the save if they want to. Did you beat the rogue in initiative? Yeet them at the enemy, and they can attack as part of it. Technically speaking, if you went super first, you could even Twin Spell it, pick up your Defender and your Rogue, put them on opposite sides of an enemy if your table cares about that for the variant flanking rule, and then let the rogue sneak attack, all on your turn. 
5- Sorcerer 4New Cantrip:
– Prestidigitation
New Spell:
– Lesser Restoration
Feat:
– Telekinetic (+1 Cha)
For our new spell, we are still a (pretend) Cleric, so we need to learn this one since we can’t just prepare it the next day like a real Cleric would.

I would understand if you told me to stop recommending Telekinetic, but it wouldn’t change my behavior. Maybe you need to push someone that extra 5 feet before you throw a spell at them so they can attack. Maybe you want to cast a spell on them for the attack, then pull them away 5 feet so they don’t have to disengage on their turn. The options are even better here than on most characters, and that’s saying something.
6- Sorcerer 5New Spell:
– Fireball
If I told you to pick anything else, would you believe me?
7- Sorcerer 6Empowered Healing
New Spell:
– Haste
Retrain Spell:  Bane -> Bestow Curse
Both of these spells can be used with Twin Spell. I actually think that’s the entire reason Bestow Curse isn’t natively on the Sorcerer list even though most other full casters get it. Also good is Heightening it on one target and then choosing Wisdom, meaning they have disadvantage on the initial roll and disadvantage on every roll thereafter to avoid losing their turn.

Do just keep in mind that, if you do Twin Haste, you now really need to make sure you don’t drop concentration or your party’s going to have a rough round.
Empowered Healing isn’t super useful since rerolling d4’s isn’t going to help much.
8- Sorcerer 7New Spell:
– Death Ward
Say, you know what else is a viable choice for Twin Spell? Death Ward.
9- Sorcerer 8Cha 18 -> 20
New Spell:
Polymorph
Even better than one Tyrannosaurus Rex: two Tyrannosauruses Rex.
10- Sorcerer 9New Spell:
– Mass Cure Wounds
Finally, a spell worth using Empowered Healing on.
11- Sorcerer 10New Cantrip:
– Thaumaturgy
New Spell:
– Greater Restoration
Metamagic:
– Distant Spell
Nothing about Twin Spell says it consumes double the material components. You can get two Greater Restorations for the price of one.

Also at this level, all of those touch spells you have can now be cast at a 30ft range instead. Sadly you can’t both Distant and Twin a spell, so keep in mind which you may want to do on a given casting.
12- Sorcerer 11New Spell:
– Heal
Retrain Spell: Guiding Bolt -> Disintegrate
Twin Spell casting Heal is the single most time-efficient way to restore HP in the game until characters get 9th level spells.

Meanwhile, you can Twin or Empower Disintegrate as needed.
13- Sorcerer 12Feat:
– Inspiring Leader
Every rest lets you put 17 temp HP on each party member. That may not seem like a lot at this level, but on an average party of 4 members, in a day where you wake up, have a fight, short rest, have another fight, short rest again, fight one last time, and then sleep, that’s over 200 points of possible healing you don’t have to do.
14- Sorcerer 13New Spell:
– Resurrection
Retrain Spell:
Lesser Restoration -> Teleport
At this level, our friends may need bringing back from the dead. Again, being a pretend cleric means we have to permanently learn this spell, so we do this now because, again, we can Twin Spell it for the same material components. Bring your two dead party members back to life at the same time.

Speaking of material components, we don’t really mind the cost of all the diamond dust we spend on Greater Restoration at this level and so we lose Lesser to gain access to some much-needed utility.
15- Sorcerer 14Otherworldly WingsYou can now just fly, period. Give the Broom of Flying you’ve been riding since you could afford it to someone else.
16- Sorcerer 15New Spell:
– Dominate Monster
Dominate both halves of a mated pair of monsters.
17- Sorcerer 16Feat:
– Eldritch Adept (Devil’s Sight)
Pick up Devil’s Sight and Hallow your room in the permanent base you probably have by this point, choosing to fill it with magical darkness.

While this is an amusing choice to take now over the Resilient (Con) we take later, you can really take either. This is here because, as a high-level servant of a deity, it seems likely that said deity will be asking you to fight high-level devils and we would like to be immune to one of their most common tricks.

If your campaign isn’t about that, feel free to swap them, or even disregard this entirely in favor of something else with a Con bump. Just not Chef, because we already distribute tons of temp HP from Inspiring Leader.
18- Sorcerer 17New Spell: Wish
Metamagic:
– Any
Even more than most things that can cast Wish, you need Wish to expand on your lack of versatility.

Pick whichever Metamagic seems like fun to you. Subtle is a little hilarious because you can use it to remove the verbal component (which is the only component) of Wish, so you just think reality should change and it does.
19- Sorcerer 18Unearthly RecoveryNothing worth saying here except that you should use it when you can.
20- Sorcerer 19Feat: Metamagic AdeptTwo extra points is still 10% more at this level, and it almost makes up for not getting the real Sorcerer capstone. The choice you make for Metamagics don’t actually matter, this is just for the points.