Does the spell “Silence” affect the caster?

Question

While I was DMing a 5th Edition game, one of my player's sorcerers cast the spell Silence while they were 5 feet away from an enemy caster. They centered the spell on the space that the enemy caster was in, and a round of combat finished. On the sorcerer's turn, they asked me if they could use a verbal spell while in the Silence area. Their reasoning is that they had cast the spell, so they could prevent it from affecting them.

In this situation, I decided to not allow it because it would unbalance the spell. But I want to know what other people would think about this.

So would the user of the Silence spell be able to prevent it from affecting themselves?

Answer 1

The Sorcerer is indeed Silenced by their own spell.

Nothing in the spell description excludes the Sorcerer from the spell. The only way to get around this is if the Sorcerer also has the Subtle Spell meta-magic skill selected so that they can remove the Verbal component.

Nothing about casting a spell makes you immune to it's effects unless it's stated in the spell description.

Answer 2

The text of the spell Silence states that:

Casting a spell that includes a verbal component is impossible there.

And since by the rules of D&D the all the spells can also affect the user and his allies if not stated otherwise, every spellcaster that would find himself in the radius of the spell would not be able to cast spells that require a verbal component.

This could actually be used at your advantage for countering enemy spellcasters, maybe your sorcerer has the meta-magic Subtle Spell. Being the DM I would also allow the meta-magic Careful Spell to be able to target someone and make it immune to the silence spell, but that is up to you.