School of Divination
Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold
The School of Divination is all about prophecy; you see into the future, understanding future outcomes and omens that inform you of how to proceed. The tea reader mystic with a smokey crystal ball fits this fantasy, as does a mathematical astronomer, fixated on the sky and reading its changes as predictions for events yet to transpire. Conceptually, I love how diviners look.
Mechanically, this option is busted. Its core feature revolves around setting dice results before they’re rolled which is silly. When you can confirm your Polymorph will work because you have an 8 stored in your Portent dice, you can make the game a nightmare for your DM to manage.
Then, because of how trash the vast majority of the upper-level Divination spells are, this tradition tends to rely on spells that augment die results while doing generically powerful wizard things to feel like they're doing what diviners are supposed to do by changing outcomes as they see them coming. When it all comes together, there are going to be a ton of encounters where each round you’ve decided who can hit, who’s going to miss, and what saves are going fail. It's gross.
This school cares about Divination spells; for reference, here’s a full list of Cantrip through 9th-level Wizard spells of this school and the non-wizard options for multiclass considerations. .
Wizard Divination Spells
| Spell Level | Spells |
|---|---|
| Cantrip | True Strike |
| 1st | Comprehend Languages, Detect Magic, Identify |
| 2nd | Borrowed Knowledge, Detect Thoughts, Fortune’s Favor, Locate Object, Mind Spike, See Invisibility |
| 3rd | Clairvoyance, Tongues |
| 4th | Arcane Eye, Locate Creature |
| 5th | Contact Other Plane, Legend Lore, Scrying, Telepathic Bond |
| 6th | True Seeing |
| 7th | - |
| 8th | - |
| 9th | Foresight |
Non-Wizard Divination Spells
| Spell Level | Spells |
|---|---|
| Cantrip | Guidance |
| 1st | Beast Bond, Detect Evil and Good, Detect Poison and Disease, Gift of Alacrity, Hunter's Mark, Speak with Animals |
| 2nd | Augury, Beast Sense, Find Traps, Locate Animals or Plants |
| 3rd | - |
| 4th | Divination |
| 5th | Commune, Commune with Nature |
| 6th | Find the Path |
| 7th | - |
| 8th | - |
| 9th | - |
See Also: Best Feats for Divination Wizard
2nd Level: Divination Savant, Portent
Divination Savant provides the same passive benefit many tables opt to ignore entirely in its discount to adding spells to your spell book if they’re Divination. If you’re tight on gold, this gives you the incentive to invest in Divination spells you can find and copy, but realistically it's a ribbon most groups will immediately forget about. Most players tend to just use the spells they get for free on level-up, and those are more than enough.
Portent is the reason you play a Diviner. As it turns out, getting two predetermined results you can swap in for anyone’s rolls is utterly insane. It takes very little effort to figure out if one of your results will result in a hit or miss or pass or fail as needed. The best results tend to be middle numbers, as they can work as both outcomes in various circumstances, where 2s, 3s, 18s, and 19s all are locked to one specific result.
If there were a lot more encounters per rest, this feature would probably less oppressive as it tends to feel. With only two to three encounters at most per long rest, especially in the early tiers, this usually is going to trivialize a boss fight by giving you three opportunities to guarantee your team successful attack rolls, or more importantly, guarantee whatever target you throw a save or die at will fail.
6th Level: Expert Divination
Expert Divination prior to the printing of Mind Spike was a way you could justify casting some of the worst spells in the game like Locate Creature. When you’re getting a spell refund for casting them, they feel a lot better.
Mind Spike, though, lets you cast a reasonable damaging spell that also refills 1st level spell slots. Paired with Silvery Barbs, this character feels obnoxious at the table. Each round, you’ll have insane control over allied and enemy rolls between Portent and Barbs, and Expert Divination gives you a way to contribute damage to the fight that refills your Silvery Barbs slots. It's yucky good.
10th Level: The Third Eye
The Third Eye most of the time is usually going to be either Ethereal Sight or See Invisibility, as those are the two options that aren’t readily accessible to most characters. Neither is that exciting, but seeing as the prior features have been pretty strong, and you’re still working with wizard full-casting slots, having a weak passive level to improve your senses is fine by me.
14th Level: Greater Portent
If Portent wasn’t doing enough for you up to this point, Greater Portent is here with a third die for you. At this stage, Portent has lost a bit of its punch, and getting a third die definitely ups its value further.
All Together
Portent probably was a mistake. Setting results to guaranteed successes or failures in a system that’s core mechanic is a high variance d20 roll just breaks a core element of gameplay. Expert Divination used to be a mediocre feature that made casting Detect Thoughts feel a bit better. Now, with Mind Spike, you can get a huge supply of 1sts level slots to use on powerful reactions and effects without losing access to reasonable damaging actions.
I would only recommend Diviners for tables where everyone signs up for high-powered encounters pushing them to their absolute mechanical limits, or in groups who aren’t going to be investing a lot of time into figuring out exactly what every single one of their portent dice is going to be doing. At tables that are looking to play “fair” builds against lethal encounters, Diviner will trivialize a lot of fights with Portent while still doing all of the busted stuff tradition-agnostic wizards are capable of.
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