Hello, everybody. Welcome to a new video of Baldur’s Gate 3. In this episode, I’m gonna share my Divination School Wizard build and some tips for this school of magic and what kind of fun you can have in and out of combat with such a character. In the world of Dungeons & Dragons, the Divination School is the magic of things like seeing, foreseeing, detecting, comprehending, and guiding. It is my favorite school in DnD. But I have to admit it is very head-scratching in Baldur’s Gate 3. It only has 9 spells in the game compared to easily dozens from any other school. And only 6 of the spells are accessible to casters by default. Only 3 are available to wizards. 2 of them are utility spells. The other is a supporting cantrip. And its wizard school ability is just getting some random dice to change results in combats. You can say it works with any build. But that also means there is always another subclass better for that build. Seems like it’s a weak background school that’s there just because it’s in the world setting and is not really meant for you to play. No, the Divination Wizard has long been widely considered one of the strongest archetypes in DnD 5e. But when they adopted it into Baldur’s Gate 3, they drastically weakened this school. I think it’s because nobody can handle that much freedom in a video game, at least not yet. But still, if you know how to use a Divination Wizard, it’s still very strong to play because it’s the only subclass that can secure some absolution in such a game that has so much to do with luck. As a wizard specializing in the Divination School, your signature ability is about manipulating probability. At level 2, you get your 1st special school ability Portent. Every long rest, you get 2 random d20 results that become 1-time reactions in battles to change any attack roll or saving throw within 18m or 60ft. That’s the distance of a ranged attack. At first sight, this ability seems too random to be really useful. But with some calculation, we can create some absolution out of it. For example, if you have a good tank, like my Astarion here. I have re-classed him into an Illusion Wizard tank, and I have another video about this build. His AC is 22. And he has the Shield spell to give him another 5 when he needs it. So, his effective AC is 27. That means any enemy with an attack bonus of less than +7, which is the majority of your enemies, can only hit you when they roll 20, a critical, which means you have a 95% chance of dodging their attacks. And now you have your Divination Wizard. Any of your Portent Dice that’s not a 20 can negate that critical attack, making your tank totally invulnerable. This is your absolution. And if your Protent Die is a 20, well, better, you can secure a save from a difficult DC spell. As a Divination Wizard, you are the ultimate failsafe for your party. I think you can say Divination Wizard is the best failsafe in the whole game because it can negate situations where even an Abjuration Wizard cannot protect you. At level 6, you get the ability Expert Divination. Every short rest, if you have less than 2 Portent Dice left when you rest, (sorry, it's less than 3) this ability gives you random prophecies. And you can fulfill a prophecy to regain a Portent Die. At level 10, you get 2 class actions. Third Eye: Darkvision which allows you to see up to 24m in darkness. And, Third Eye: See Invisibility which allows you to see invisible things and possibly reveal them to others. It’s the equivalent of the See Invisibility spell. But now you don’t need to spend a spell slot to cast this ability. So, this build I made is a multi-class shadow seer that centers its strategy around seeing, preventing seeing, and manipulating probabilities. It’s about maintaining total control over the battlefield and eliminating uncertainty to the best as we can. This build has 10 levels of Divination School Wizard and 2 levels of Great Old One Warlock. The core spell of this build is the level-2 spell Darkness. It creates an area of magical darkness and blinds everyone in it. Creatures in it have disadvantages on attack rolls unless they can see through magical darkness, which is a very very very rare occasion. And creatures who can see through magical darkness have advantages on attack rolls against enemies in it. And ranged attacks cannot go into or out of it unless the attacker can see through magical darkness. You can still target those who are inside from the outside, though, but these attacks would always be in vain. We can get this spell when we reach level 3 of Wizard, which is pretty early. And we are not gonna cast it on the enemies. We are gonna cast in on ourselves. By doing this, we create a sanctuary for our party by protecting them from enemies’ ranged attacks. As for the melee enemies, most of them don’t dare to enter the darkness and are not clever enough to deal with this spell. Many of them would just keep trash-talking at you from outside and waste their turns. Maybe Larian will do some upgrading to the enemy AI in the future. But at present, this spell is this good. And because of this spell, usually, all the enemies will move closer to you and thus enter the distance where your Portent Dice can affect them. Though, neither can most of our own members shoot from inside the darkness, we can move to the brim of the area make an attack and then come inside again. Your battlefield is gonna look quite funny, like you are playing hide and seek with your enemies. The only way enemies can harm you from outside the darkness is AoE damage abilities which are usually spells and we can negate them with the level-3 spell Counterspell. And enemies cannot put the center of their AoE abilities in the area unless they can see through magical darkness. All in all, the Darkness spell gives us all kinds of advantages. And the seer itself gets the ability to see through magical darkness from the Warlock class. So, the seer can attack directly from inside the darkness. Outside of combat, this seer can help your party by casting all kinds of utility spell. For example, use Knock to unlock difficult locks. In conversations, it doesn’t rely on Charisma. Instead, it uses the Divination spell Detect Thoughts to gain an upper hand. When originally allocating ability scores, we give the major bonus to Intelligence and bring it all to way up to 17 which is the highest possible for now. We’ll eventually get it to 20. This is to maximize our chance to hit enemies with our spells. Then, we give the minor bonus to Dexterity and bring it up to 16. This is your second most important ability. It increases your AC, making you less likely to be hit. It also increases your initiative roll making you more likely to act before your enemies. Then we forego 2 Strength and 2 Charisma to bring Wisdom to 14 Wisdom makes you better at sensing danger and noticing hidden things, which is valuable when exploring and is coherent with the seer setting. It is the ability you need when using the Detect Thoughts spell. And it also makes you hard to control by the most powerful control spells in the game. And because we are a wizard, we have a proficiency bonus for Wisdom saving throws which is +2 for now and will eventually become +4 at level 9. So, our effective Wisdom is even higher than 14 when making saving throws. We leave Constitution unchanged at 10 because we usually hide in the migical darkness and don’t take hit. For the cantrips, we choose 3 damage cantrips to deal different types of damage. And we’ll keep choosing damage cantrips when we level up to make sure we can deal the most possible types of damage so that we can always deal the right type of damage in a battle that generates the best revenue. Here, I recommend Fire Bolt, which is Fire damage and deals the highest damage among the ranged cantrips. And it can ignite certain things. For example, things like torches. And it can ignite suspicious liquid to trigger an explosion and deal further AoE damage. So, it would be a nice idea to give those throwing items to your seer. It can create many combos out of them. Then, I recommend Ray of Frost. It deals Cold damage and can reduce the enemy’s moving distance, giving you some control before you get Darkness. And then, I recommend Shocking Grasp. This is a melee attack that deals Lightning damage. It has an advantage on enemies with metal armour. And if you land the hit, the enemy can no longer use reaction anymore and you can walk away safely without getting an opportunity attack. This is very useful before you get Darkness. Then, for the starting spells first, we need Mage Armour a must-have for any wizard who doesn’t wear armour. It sets your AC to 13 which is already higher than most light armours. You only need to cast it once each day. And it doesn’t require concentration. It will last until long rest or until you equip an armour or until you remove it from your prepared spells. Then, the second: Shield. Another must-have for any wizard build. It’s a reaction that gives you another 5 AC when you need it making you harder to be hit. Remember to untoggle your opportunity attack in case you waste your reactions on that and can’t cast your protection reactions. Then, Chromatic Orb. This spell deals 3d8 Thunder damage, which is quite high for a level-1 spell. And it adds Thunder damage to your arsenal. Besides, you can also sacrifice 1d8 damage to change its damage type into Fire, Cold, Lightning, Acid, or Poison, giving you great versatility. But before you get the Darkness spell, you shouldn’t use this spell too often, because you need to save your spell slots for the Shield spell. After you get Darkness, you usually don’t get attacked. As a result, you can save a lot of spell slots for this. Upcasting Chromatic Orb increases its damage for 1d8 for each level higher. Then, Longstrider which I think is a must-have for any party. It increases the target’s moving distance for the whole day without concentration as long as the spell is still prepared. And it’s a ritual spell, which means if you cast it outside of combat it doesn’t consume your spell slot. It’s free. So, every morning you can cast it on yourself, on your whole party, and on all the creatures you summoned. And everybody moves faster that day. For the other 2 vacancies, we choose 2 utility spells. Enhance Leap and Feather Fall. Enhance Leap and Feather Fall combined give your party more freedom when exploring the map. They are ritual spells, too. And they are usually always used outside of combat. So, they are almost always free. OK, now let’s talk about the leveling strategy. When to level into Warlock. And what you can do in different stages of the game. From level 1 to level 3, we are gonna stick to the Wizard class to get our core spells ASAP. At level 2, we get to choose into the Divination School and get the ability to receive Portent Dice. And at level 2, you also get to learn another 2 spells. I highly recommend Find Familiar. This allows you to summon a creature into your party to help with combat and exploring. Once summoned, they’ll be there until their hit points get reduced to 0. It’s a ritual spell. And summon spells don’t need to stay prepared once the creature is summoned. Then, at level 3, you can learn your core spell: Darkness. Now, you can create the sanctuary for your party. At this level, you also get to learn the spell See Invisibility. This is one of the best abilities of a wizard. It lasts a whole day and doesn’t need concentration. Before we get our class action for this, we’ll be using this spell instead. At level 4, we get to choose our 1st feat. Here we choose Resilient (Intelligence) to increase our Intelligence to 18 and thus increase our casting ability by 1. At this level, we take the chance to learn the spell Detect Thoughts to get the upper hand in conversations. From level 5 to level 6, we level into Warlock class for the ability to see through magical darkness. At level 5, we get the Warlock class. We choose Great Old One as the subclass for its passive ability Mortal Reminder. With this ability, your critical hits frighten enemies unless they succeed a Wisdom saving throw. This seer is not a critical build. So, you’re not gonna trigger this ability very often. But it’s still nice to have. I chose Great Old One also because I think it pairs well with the seer setting. With the Warlock class, you can also learn 2 cantrips. We choose 2 utility cantrips. Mage Hand, to manipulate things from a distance. Minor Illusion, to distract people. We also get to learn 2 spells. First, we choose Armour of Agathys. It gives you some temporary hit points and deal Cold damage to melee attackers when you still have those hit points. Then, we choose Dissonant Whispers, a signature spell of the Great Old One. It frightens an enemy for 2 turns, giving them disadvantage on Ability Checks and Attack Rolls and stopping them from moving while also dealing some Psychic damage. Then, at level 6, we get to choose 2 Eldritch Invocations. First, we choose Devil’s Sight to get the ability to see through magical darkness. Then, we choose Beast Speech to cast Speak with Animals without spending anything for the ability to gather information from animals. Then, from level 7 to level 12, we go back to Wizard class. At level 7, we get to learn a powerful spell that every mage should learn: Counterspell This allows you to completely negate an enemy spell as a reaction. Counterspell can negate any spell whose level is not higher than the spell slot you spent. If the spell’s level is higher, you still get a chance to negate it but you need to make an ability check. But, since you have high Intelligence, you are rather easy to succeed in that check. Then, at level 8, we get our 2nd special school ability: Expert Divination. Now the amount of our Portent Dice increases to 3. And we can receive prophecies to regain Protent Dice. Then, at level 9, we can learn the spell Conjure Minor Elemental to summon another unit for our party, which is recommended for any mage build. Then, at level 10, we can choose our 2nd feat. Here we choose Ability Improvement to increase our Intelligence to 20 the cap, maximizing everything. At level 11, we can learn the spell Conjure Elemental to summon the strongest unit we can summon for our party. Finally, at level 12, we get our final special school ability. Third Eye: See Invisibility. It’s the same as the See Invisibility spell, but it’s a class action and doesn’t consume your spell slot. Now you can save a spell slot and a prepare slot. OK, we have talked about how good this build is. Now, let’s talk about its weaknesses. The most obvious weakness of this build is that the Darkness tactic confines your party to a limited area. So, in battles that require you to move, you will have some trouble. And you are basically inviting a siege on yourself. So, if there are too many strong enemies surrounding you, the battle will be hard. But battles like that would be hard for anyone, anyway. The other thing is if your enemies can see through magical darkness, your Darkness strategy doesn’t work at all. Though that’s a very very very rare occasion, there are enemies like that in the game. And that is everything about this Divination School Wizard build. Hope you like it. And if you like this video, please click the like button and subscribe to my channel. Thank you for watching. I’ll see you in the next video. Bye bye.
