How to Play a Divination Wizard in Dungeons and Dragons 5e

the cultists cry out in jubilation as their Dark Ritual comes to completion the ground trembles fire blossoms through the air as the gateway to the nine hells opens and the great pit fiend gar blacks scourge of worlds steps forward into the hallway just then the chamber doors open and in walks a wizard and her League of great adventurers and she stares the demon right in the eyes the demon looks down upon her and cries out foolish mortals you are far too late now watch as I turn your world to act and Flay the flesh from your bones not today demon she says flinging out her staff and pointing it at him for today I have seen your future and your fate rests in my fingertips greetings my name is Monte Martin and I'm Kelly McLaughlin and we are the dungeon dudes welcome to our channel where we cover everything Dungeons and Dragons including advice for players and guides for Dungeon Master's we upload new videos every Thursday so please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode today we are taking an in-depth look at how to play a divination school wizard in Dungeons and Dragons fourth edition we're gonna be talking about the class features feats traits and spells that you might want to grab to play the best divination wizard at your table there is so much to discuss behind this complex and nuanced class so let's get rolling so let's start by explaining the general concept of the divination wizard and answering the question why would you want to play one well the wizard is an incredibly rewarding class to play in Dungeons and Dragons fourth edition because it is the one that gets the broadest access to more spells than any other class in the game the divination wizard stands out as a very unique and powerful entry amongst the various subclasses available to wizards for their unique play style that really inspires a lot of foresight a lot of plan and using information as a weapon to make the most of the Wizards true strength which is being prepared for almost any situation the divination wizard lets you play out the fantasy of being the master of fates and the manipulator of the future and I think that's a really cool concept that a lot of people who play a wizard really like to explore and I love that concept of the wizard imagining the future predicting it and letting things play out the way that they foresaw your character might take a more darker tone with this and draw inspiration from mythological figures like the Prophet Cassandra who could see the future but felt unable to actually do anything about it simply regarding that all of us being bound up like a Clockwork Orange and really that we don't have any true free will other characters might be more inspired by the forces of luck than fate and really embrace this kind of gamblers mentality and look at their dividend Tory powers as a way of cheating the system and breaking the rules of reality in their favor so let's take a look at what the divination wizard has to offer in ways of combat exploration and the social aspects of the game well in almost all cases the divination wizard is going to be the master of arcane power in the party but in a very different way compared to other classes like warlocks and sorcerers and bards because the wizard really values preparation and planning in advance you really have to think ahead and think about what spells you're gonna prepare and choose them properly for the situation that you're going into I find that I tend to steer my divination wizard even more towards things like divination illusion transmutation and things of that nature I find them to be one who harnesses the powers around them to manipulate and change the world more so than just blow things up in this respect the divination wizard is an excellent candidate for a battlefield controller in combat someone that is using their magic to hinder foes debuff them cause status effects and other conditions or summon up magical effects and creatures that can help them the flow of the battle divination Wizards are particularly effective at applying nasty debuffs thanks to some of their class abilities but they only get to use this in a limited number of times per day few classes can as reliably take a foe out of the fight completely as a divination wizard although not necessarily killing that foe in the process and when we talk about the exploration aspect of the game it is important to note that you are an intelligence based spell caster which makes you the prime person in the party for investigation and knowledge based checks so when it comes to exploration you're the prime investigator because you can see the future when it comes with a social dimension of the game though role-playing a wizard as an intelligent and logical character can really still be fun in role-playing moments it's just that if you're trying to convince somebody or lie to them you're probably not gonna be the first point of call for doing those sort of things unless you're gonna magic that person up and use spells like suggestion or dominate person to brute force your way through those social situations and to that I would say that that really encapsulates the strengths and weaknesses of the wizard because ultimately the weaknesses of the wizard are pretty apparent you've got very low hitpoints poor armor proficiencies not a lot in the way of skill proficiencies you are a pretty weak soppy mess without all of your magic at your disposal which is why you need a good team around you but when it comes to strengths of the divination wizard I actually find that the abilities and traits that they get are the strongest of the Wizards options indeed let's take a look at those class features and talk about why they are so unique and powerful so wizards are unique in that they pick their subclass at level two so you're picking the school of divination this immediately gives you an ability called divination savant which allows you to scroll those divination spells into your spell book at half the cost that a normal wizard would be able to this is a little bit of a tricky ability to use well because you really don't know how often you're gonna find other spell books and how much gold you're gonna have to describe spells and there's not a lot of divination spells in general so you're probably gonna want to pick them up over the course of leveling up this is an ability that every wizard subclass gets and it's about as useful for each one you still want to pick the spells that you want and just hope to find some cool spell books along the way this just makes a little easier as a divination wizard to grab divination spells the next ability that you get right away at level 2 is really the one we're all here for and that is called portent starting at second level when you choose this school glimpses of the future begin to press in on your awareness when you finish a long rest roll 2d 20s and record the numbers rolled you can replace any attacker all saving throw or ability check made by you or a creature that you can see with one of these foretelling rolls you must choose to do so before the roll and you can replace a roll in this way only once per turn each foretelling roll can be used only once when you finish a long rest you lose any unused foretelling rolls I love this ability it's one of my favorite abilities that any character in the whole game gets because nothing makes you feel more powerful than being able to tell the DM what they roll first of all you have to declare that you're using it before the dice are rolled so once the dice are down and the result is plain to see in front of everybody the fate has been written and cannot be changed anymore so if you do want to modify a roll that someone else is going to make you need to be a little bit proactive with saying I'm going to use important now the second factor here with portent is that because it is determined before the roll even happens and is determining the final outcome of that roll it actually does not interact with advantage and disadvantage if you use portent on a roll that a creature has advantage on it doesn't matter you don't roll another die that was just the final result which actually makes it an extremely valuable tool to use when advantage or disadvantage come up if an enemy is about to attack you and you know they have advantage you could throw a 2 down and say no they just get a 2 instead or if your party has disadvantages at a crucial moment and you have a really high dice roll that you can just throw it in place it can be a really valuable use of that this ability does mean that you can use a very powerful disabling spell like hold monster or banishment or finger of death and basically force a creature to fail it's saving throw by using one of your foretelling rolls that was like a five another great thing about Porton is that you roll these foretelling rolls before you even prepare your spell's for the day if you roll really high you might want to pack spells that require an attack roll so that you can use those to amplify the chances of hitting a target or if you rolled really low you might want to take a lot of spells that require a saving throw so that you can use those rolls to make sure that those crucial spells land if you're foretelling roll is 10 and you want to stick an ogre with a hold monster spell well ogres have notoriously low wisdom scores and so that 10 might be enough to force them to fail they're saving throw on the flipside if a monster is attacking you and you know that you've got an AC of 15 and that you've got the shield spell prepared that 11 might be enough that with your shield spell and your foretelling roll you can protect yourself effectively because the foretelling role using it is no action required there's no bonus action there's no reaction nothing also if you have a average middle ranged roll those might be perfect for passing a death saving throw or succeeding a concentration check the next ability that they gain is at 6 level and this is expert divination this is a really cool ability that basically says that when you use a divination spell you can regain spell slots of lower level spells when you cast a divination spell of 2nd level or higher using a spell slot you regain one expanded spell slot the slot you regain must be of a level lower than the spell you cast and can't be higher than 5th level this is just a really great way that as a divination wizard if you're casting higher level divination spells you can get a bit of change back on your spell slots and it's gonna actually have a really cool trickle effect and you actually have a great example let's pretend that you're a higher level wizard maybe 11th level and you've already used a fifth fourth and third level spell slot at some point during your adventures you decide that you want to use your level six spell to cast true seeing now that you've done that you can regain your fifth level spell slot which you could then use to cast scrying and regain a fourth level spell slot which that you could then use for a spell like locate creature or arcane eye which you can then now use for a third level spell which couldn't continue the chain of using divination spells all the way down something like perhaps clairvoyance and then locate object or detect thoughts and so what this means is that your level six spell that you use true sight on also got you a fifth level spell for scrying a fourth level spell for arcane eye and a third level spell slot so you had a bunch of all these free information-gathering spells this means that really at the end of the day if you have some of these higher-level spell slots left over get them out there get more uses of these spells get more information going into the next encounter take advantage of it because information is power and that is the true strength of the divination wizard now this is a pretty nice example and you won't always find yourself in this exact situation however just being able to look down at your sheet and being able to cast a divination spell and regain a spell slot of a lower level is always beneficial at level 10 your divination wizard gains the third eye ability which allows them to spend an action to enhance their senses in some way this enhanced sense lasts until you become incapacitated or short or take a short rest and there's a few different options that you have you can either gain dark vision out to a range of 60 feet ethereal sight so that you can see the ethereal plane within 60 feet of you greater comprehension so you can read any language and see invisibility where you can see any creature within 10 feet of you that is invisible as long as you have line of sight this is a really handy way to change out your extrasensory perceptions between every single rest I think for the most part if you don't have dark vision you're probably gonna default to that but otherwise you're probably gonna default to the ability to see invisible things or see into the ethereal plane also the amount of times that you want to take the spell comprehend languages but then you don't but it's okay because the divination wizard can just read all languages switch it out I can read that super useful and then of course at level 14 we gain greater portent and getting an extra die to use when we roll for portent we don't really need to explain that much we've already talked about how amazing Porton is and now you get to do it three times instead of two and that's just incredible and I love it so Kelly all of us on the table let's look at the ability scores and player character races that we would choose for a divination wizard both you and I have now built some divination wizards I've taken my divination wizard all the way up to 20th level in campaign planning but I currently do have a level 13 divination wizard that I'm playing in D&D adventurers League I made a level seven divination wizard just for fun because I love divination wizards cool so how do we break down our ability scores for our divination wizards you're a spell caster your spell casting ability is intelligence it plays in really well with the divination wizard I say go for intelligence yeah I'm gonna put that 15 right there in intelligence and basically never look back Constitution would be my next one for concentration spells and then I'm gonna put in dexterity so for my divination wizard I put in at least 14 for my Constitution and dexterity 15 in my intelligence I dumped strength entirely and then I put in tens for wisdom and charisma I would almost dump strength and charisma and give myself a little bit higher wisdom really just just to get that extra of perception bonus and things like that to make my character feel more aware of his surroundings so when it comes to which races to pick for your divination wizard we actually both went very different directions both of which I think are amazing directions I went with a halfling because halflings gained the lucky ability and I just love the fact that my divination wizard feels even more like he has control over the dice for me building that divination wizard is all about being able to say I don't want that dice to be that and changing it I was inspired very much by luck as well but I went with a different tack and I chose the variant human with the lucky feet right away at level one putting my flexible ability score bonuses into dexterity and intelligence gnomes make excellent divination wizards because they do get that increase to their intelligence and I just find them to be such wonderful little absences the the tinker rock gnome gaming plus two tier intelligence is amazing flat-out gaining advantage on saving throws to your intelligence wisdom and charisma related saves against magic is also incredible you get your little bit of a boost to your Constitution as well as a rock gnome and you get to tinker around with clocks so we could also look at things like the High Elf as a great option plus two bonus to dexterity some nice advantage on saving throws against enchantment magic and you get the +1 bonus to your intelligence and an extra can trip so I think that they are an excellent option there as well tea flings might be an interesting choice I don't know if they're optimal but I think you things are a lot of fun to play in general they got lots of great traits and because tea flings now have all these options in Morden kind in stone the foes you can mix and match a bunch of different ability score bonuses and there's also the Winget tiefling if anyone's gonna let you play it but if you have that as an option it's really really good if we look at some more interesting options we could go with something like a Genesee or a Hobgoblin your intelligence score is less important because you can use portent for the times that it really matters and so because you're giving such a massive penalty to the saving throw by forcing your lower role you might be able to get away with not having to max out your intelligence score right away and in fact that's what I did with my divination wizard and it worked out pretty ok so we alluded this two a little bit already with talking about our races but what feats are you going to choose for a divination wizard it's not usually my first choice but lucky lucky has to be paired with the divination wizard I think it actually is mandatory I think that if you are going to play a divination wizard take lucky as soon as you can and never look back it is so much fun the whole reason you play a divination wizard is to be in control of the dice yeah control those dice rolls change the dice as you see fit at the table you have portent you have lucky and really that's just gonna give you a great package to feel like you are the great diviner lucky saves your but in the times when you should have used portent but didn't because you use lucky after you see the results of the die and then you get to add another die to it whereas you have to make the decision of important before the dice are even rolled if we look at other feats lucky being the prominent one that we're talking about but I would also look at war caster is a good option for any spell caster I personally took resilient for my constitution I like that because I actually found with my divination wizard that I played such a defensive character that I wasn't getting attacked a lot so when I was concentrating on a spell I could rely on lucky to save myself for the concentration and then I wanted to have the blanket benefit of resilient instead lastly I would look at alert as a great feat just to get you that boost too first of all never be surprised being the squishy wizard it feels appropriate also that a divination wizard can't be surprised yeah I knew you were coming like they always know when an enemies approaching and not only that but a bonus to your initiative is never a bad thing so you're playing a primary spell caster so the real question which spells are you going to pick as a divination wizard there's a lot of must-haves for this and you get to choose two spells every time you level up as a divination wizard I think you really want to take advantage of those ritual spells and make those a big part of how you plan your character out too well it just so happens that so many of the great divination spells can be cast as a ritual which just really helps out this build well we do want to learn them all we do need to think about which ones we want to prioritize which ones are broadly applicable and there are always going to be situations where as a divination wizard you can take advantage of your foresight and prepare a completely oddball spell because you did the homework in advance and found out Oh turns out the spell that I would never use is going to be the perfect tool for the job in this situation with my divination wizard I started off with tall the dead minor illusion and mage hand and then I eventually picked up ray of frost and prestidigitation unfortunately the divination cantrip true strike is garbage and not worth taking and it doesn't really bear into any of the divination wizard abilities at all for first level spells my two must-haves at low levels are fine familiar and unseen servant and I get so much mileage out of these two spells it's ridiculous I mean the familiar on its own is an amazing Scout it's a great helper in combat and an essential companion as well as is the unseen servant but I also took mage armor shield and absorb elements the only two spells that I have different than yours or I took Tasha's hideous laughter and ice knife I took ice knife because I've seen it in play is a great way to deal with a small grouping of enemies if they're close to each other and I just wanted an attack II spell in that low range and Tasha's hideous laughter is just a really great spell that I can use my important on to make sure that I take an enemy out of combat I think it also goes without saying that I'm gonna pick up comprehend languages and detect magic as quintessential divination rituals - and I also really like having sleep at low levels it only is really useful for like level 1 2 & 3 but at those low levels it's a great way to end combat and again it doesn't matter what your intelligence modifier is sleep is sleep and it just takes the enemy's right out now with comprehend language I will say that eventually you do get that ability where you can comprehend languages anyway so it might become less useful later on but having it as a ritual in your back pocket is never a bad thing for second level spells I chose invisibility Webb rope trick and hold person and hold person is your first opportunity to really see the devastating power of portent and I've used it many times to hold an enemy intelligent at a grip and let the barbarian and rogue finish them off with a bunch of free critical strikes against a paralyzed humanoid foe I would also consider misty step and detect thoughts for a divination wizard just help you get around the battlefield on a bonus action is really useful and detect thoughts seems very in tune with a divination wizard for my 3rd level spells I chose counterspell thunder step hypnotic pattern and Lehman's tiny Hut the only one that I have that you didn't list was clairvoyance clairvoyance a very good spell the problem is that there's so many good third level spells I'm really aggressive as a wizard that once you get to level 5 you got to start seeking out those other spell books because you're gonna really want to find things like dispel magic and fireball and slow and all those other really amazing spells it's just that when you only get to pay 4 of them when you level up at level first at level 5 and then again at level 6 it's a really limited list so those are just my first points a call I don't think the divination spells really get into overdrive until we get to the fourth level spells cuz this is when we start to get spells like locate creature and arcane eye and I'm definitely taking arcane I with my divination wizard I'm gonna take polymorph I'm gonna take dimension door and I'm gonna take banishment I have a lot of the same ones on your list the only one that I took that was different was greater invisibility just because I find that to be an incredibly useful spell so fifth level is another point where the divination wizard is really spoiled for choice because there are three amazing must-have divination spells and you gotta have them to really fully leverage the power of a divination wizard and so for me that list of spells that I'm gonna learn right away are gonna be wall of force contact other plane scrying and telepathic bond and at this point the divination wizard is at full power you want to talk about scrying for a second and how useful that is if you ever have an enemy that tries to flee from you after a combat chances are you have some of their blood on your fighters blade that you can just be like okay we're just gonna see where he's going you're going to just cast these spells every day the play style really comes to life when you very carefully use these spells to augment your party you're going to create a telepathic bond between you and all of your party members which is going to enable you to do planning and coordination in a way that you really couldn't before and using contact other plane regularly every day to ask questions your DM might get annoyed with you but you're gonna be able to gather so much information and figure out just interesting things like where you can get resources what the weaknesses of your enemies might be what spells you should prepare scrying in the hands of some really crafty players can tend to really derail some campaigns keep in mind that the main villains of your campaign probably have a few tools sets to stop the players from scrying on them but it is something that they can use a lot to gain Intel information make sure that they're on the right track know where to head next sometimes if they're at odds with where do we go to find our enemy camp we're not sure where it is but you have a divination wizard it's okay to give the players that whole oh you guys aren't sure where to go you're gonna have to collect a sample and figure out how to scry on the enemy and make that part of the mission much like third level spells fifth level is another place where I really want to start seeking out the other options because there's a lot of utility that comes online at this level things like teleportation circle animate objects telekinesis and of course hold monster are all amazing spells that we probably want the Arsenal synaptic static kind of cope the list is a mile long this is where you are able now to take advantage of the fact that you have contact other plane and you have scrying so you can decide which of this giant list of spells you're gonna prepare when we get into higher-level spells are there any great divination six seventh eighth or ninth level spells that come into play for you uh there's actually not a lot aside from true scene which is nation s use but kind of nice for the divination wizard I think that there's not too many high level divination spells that I really love until the ninth level spell for sight which is an eight hour long concentration free buff that just gives you advantage on every and if you're playing a divination wizard and you want to roleplay into that then that's the 911 spell you take I think ultimately my my kind of shortlist for high-level wizard spells that really make the divination wizard come to life are going to include things like mental prison because then between mental prison hold monster and banishment you have one single target spell that targets intelligence wisdom and charisma saving throws so you always have a target to take an enemy out of the fight I also really love forced cage we've discussed that many times I know you're probably gonna want to make a simulacrum you're probably gonna want a contingency you're probably gonna want to create a demi plain and a clone and all that fun stuff political Wizards their typical wizard things wizard business the one thing to keep in mind with playing a divination wizard is that it can be a little bit of a slow play style if you're somebody who isn't really into the whole meticulous planning trying to figure out what's going to happen in the upcoming adventure trying to use scrying and contact other plane and all of these spells to gather Intel if you're more of a person who likes to just march forward into adventure then this might not be the right choice for you but as Mangia said if you're the DM if you're used to playing a DM and you have this wealth of knowledge of how the game works this is actually a really cool class to be able to explain why you have this wealth of knowledge and at the same time the divination wizard really encourages a slow and methodical approach to the adventures one that really deconstructs all your objectives and plans things out and then takes grand action you have to be a little bit decisive with your divination wizard and recognize that well you're going to be tempted to know everything sometimes you won't be able to know absolutely everything and you have to rely on your intelligence and planning to solve things when the future is uncertain so this has been a look at the divination wizard in Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition tell us about your great diviners in the comments below if you're enjoying the show please consider supporting our work on patreon you can find out how by following the links in the description below or at patreon.com slash dungeon underscore dudes and don't forget to check out our live play dungeons of dragon hime which airs every Tuesday night at 6 p.m. Eastern on Twitch you can find all the previous episodes right up over here and we have many more guides to the classes and subclasses and Dungeons & Dragons competition over here please subscribe to our channel so that you never miss an episode thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time in the dungeon

Channel: Dungeon Dudes

Views: 243,230

Keywords: dungeons, dragons, tabletop, gaming, roleplaying, games, accessories, rules, rule, gameplay, play, game, rpg, d20, player, character, D&D, 5e, DM, PC, tips, advice, guide, guides, review, dice, book, wizard

Id: ZDUkKqlaIcw

Length: 29min 17sec (1757 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 07 2019