Ultimate Guide to Wizards in D&D 5e

Guide by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold

Wizards are the scientists and nerds of the D&D universe. They take hours pouring over pages of ancient texts and magical accounts of experiments done by other wizards to cultivate and practice spellcasting. In return, they’re gifted with the best suite of spells in the game, a massive pool of spells to prepare and add to their book, and the best form of Ritual Casting in the game.

Basically, if you want to play the most straightforward and powerful spellcasting option, Wizard is the choice for you.

It's divided into schools and other forms of training to offer options for spell specialization that differentiate them from each other. A necromancer commands a legion of the dead and uses blasphemous necromancy to wilt away life while bolstering their own through undeath. An abjurer wards and protects themself and others from magical and physical assaults with arcane wards and blasts of countermagic. Evokers blow stuff up.

Wizards are carried on the back of their raw spell power. When selecting Wizard, what spells you’re regularly preparing, and how you use spells you aren’t preparing, can determine your entire impact on the game. This guide will dive deep into your options, and what directions you can specialize in from the various schools and options presented. Let's dive in!

Using This Guide

New Players coming to Wizard will want two fundamentals locked down: how Spellcasting works, and how Ritual Casting works. These two features are the bulk of your power. Beyond that, figuring out which school excites you most and can deliver on getting you the fantasy you want is an important step. This all comes within the first few levels, so focusing on those early choices and mechanics will set you up for success.

Experienced Players looking to get more juice out of their wizard will want to focus on specific spell levels you’re noticing you don’t have regular uses for. Additionally, knowing what you’re concentrating on is pivotal to Wizard’s performance in the mid to upper tiers, and having a plan to defend that concentration while slinging out other spells around it can make your sheet more cohesive. I’d look to specific spell levels you want to replace, and check the in-depth breakdowns of the subclasses if you’re struggling with an option like School of Necromancy or War Magic.

Introduction to Wizardry

The basics of Wizard are mostly the same basics most classes have; you have your Ability Scores to assign scores to and weapon and armor proficiencies to explore.

Ability Score Placements

With spellcasting being your primary method of engaging with the world, having as high a modifier to work with this usually is where you want to be, so maximizing your Intelligence is normally a good place to start.

Wizards are squishy. You get the lowest hit dice in the game with Sorcerers: d6s. Your first few levels are incredibly delicate, as a lone goblin or kobold can drop you in a single attack with a 5 or a 6 on their d6 weapon attack. This means taking a high Dexterity can help you avoid hits outright, making it a great secondary choice, whereas Constitution can help you survive through a hit while also helping you maintain concentration on spells in the upper tiers. Either will work great for your second-highest Ability Score.

If you plan on mixing weapons with magic, you’ll definitely want to opt for a higher Dexterity, as it can enable Finesse weapons to hit more frequently for you. Some builds such as Bladesinger may prioritize Dexterity over their Intelligence and opt to prioritize spells that don’t require spell saves or spell attack rolls to impact their performance.

Beyond these three, the remaining assignments are up to what you may want to multiclass towards later and what skills you want decent modifiers for.

Weapon and Armor Proficiencies and AC

Wizards get next to no weapon proficiencies. Light crossbows are a notable exception, and with a +2 Dexterity, any wizard can get a reasonable Attack action with them.

An important note: rules as written, Quarterstaffs aren’t the same as the Staff spell focus you would use as an arcane focus in place of spell components when casting spells with a material component. Basically, this means you don’t typically want a Quarterstaff, and instead want a Staff, Wand, Rod, Orb, or Crystal, with Staff being the cheapest at 5 gold.

Having a dagger on you as well gives you a tool for close-quarters strikes, but you don’t really want to get to that point if you can help it. There are plenty of reasonable cantrips that compete with these weapon attacks, making these a bit unnecessary to invest in if you aren’t planning on exploring Bladesinging.

As far as armor goes, you can’t use any form of armor and still cast spells. If you can get that proficiency elsewhere, it opens up spellcasting while wearing it, which can be valuable.

There’s a 1st level spell that can improve your AC: Mage Armor. Doing so gives you functionally the best non-magic light armor AC in the game with a base of 13 + Dex mod. At 1st and 2nd level, I don’t want to be trading one of my precious few spells for this AC bump typically. Past 3rd level, it can find a home to give you a decent AC bump at a much lower comparative cost.

Your AC without Mage Armor is usually just 10 + your Dexterity modifier (around 11 or 12), and with Mage Armor will be 14 with a +1 Dex or 15 with a +2.

Starting Equipment

Out of the starting equipment offered, daggers, an arcane focus, your spellbook, and either scholar’s or explorer’s pack will do a great job setting you on the path to success. As to which focus you should use, it's entirely up to you and how you want your character to look. Outside of carrying capacity, which rarely comes up, there aren’t meaningful differences between them.

1st Level: Spellcasting, Arcane Recovery

1st level gives you a robust Spellcasting feature that defines the class with Arcane Recovery.

Spellcasting: Wizards are often referred to as “full casters”. This is relative to their spell slots; bards, clerics, druids, sorcerers, and wizards all share the same quantity of spell slots as they progress in character level.
As a wizard, you start with three cantrips and a spellbook with six 1st-level wizard spells of your choice. You can prepare from this book up to your level plus Intelligence modifier spells to cast using your spell slots, which start as two 1st level slots.
Your Spellbook: A wizard’s spellbook is akin to a druid’s or cleric’s total spell list; it's a pool of spells you can prepare your spells from. It has some other benefits and drawbacks with the biggest being the mechanics around getting additional spells in it, and how it works with Ritual Casting.
- Adding Spells Per Level. Every time you gain a level, you get to add two spells to your spellbook for free from the wizard spell list.
- Adding Bonus Spells. If you come across wizard spells not in your spellbook already, such as on a Spell Scroll or from another wizard’s book, you can spend two hours and 50 gold per spell level to get it in your spellbook and be able to prepare and cast it.
- Copying your Spellbook. If you’re concerned your spellbook would be stolen or destroyed, you can make a copy of it priced at 10 x its spell level gold per spell and an hour per level per spell.
  Managing all of this is daunting, but the majority of tables aren’t interested in denying wizards their ability to prepare the spells they’ve worked for and usually will view a spellbook similarly to a cleric’s entire spell list. It's mainly just something you’re going to prepare spells from.
Ritual Casting: You may only be able to prepare your level plus your Intelligence modifier spells from your spellbook, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use the rest of the spells you didn’t prepare. Wizards can cast spells with the Ritual tag directly from their spell book as rituals.
This feature basically means to optimize your utility on a given adventure, you want a set list of spells you always prepare, and as many ritual spells as you can fit unprepared in your book.
It turns spells like Find Familiar and removes basically any non-gold costs associated with them. Not only can you have more spells prepared than twice the total known spells of your sorcerer ally, but you can also have three or four other utility options at the ready with only 10 minutes needed to set up.
Arcane Recovery: Arcane Recovery gives you a short rest recharge mechanic to regain some expended spell slots once per long rest. Half your level rounded in the early tiers feels great, and usually, you’ll want to get as high spell slot level available to use your cool newest spells. It extends your resources just a bit, but hey, why not get a bonus 1st level slot or two?

1st Level Ritual Spell Recommendations

Find Familiar contends for the position of best spell in the game for its level, and that’s largely due to it functioning closer to a feature than a spell. You only need to cast it once over a long rest as a ritual to get a permanent companion that you can shift in and out of a pocket dimension, scout for you, and take free actions in combat. It easily disguises itself as humble fauna to dodge suspicion.
They can deliver Goodberries, take the Help action, offer you access to far away objects with climb and fly speeds, the list goes on and on. If you’re always going to put one spell on your wizards, it probably should be Find Familiar.
Detect Magic is our first example of a spell that you can stick in your spellbook and get most of the use out of it you’d want by using the Ritual Tag regularly. Detect Magic’s duration makes it something you can ritual cast before entering a dungeon, and have it up for the first few rooms, easily able to recast it between dangers. It's a great utility tool to have access to, especially when it doesn’t even require one of your prepared slots.
Unseen Servant gives you a little guy that follows you around and does mundane tasks for you for up to an entire hour. It doesn’t take concentration, meaning you can summon them in multiples over twenty or thirty minutes, and can float about interacting with the space around you. Their utility is majorly dependent on the environment, as if they have knots to untie or objects to maneuver about they’re much more useful than in an empty dungeon corridor. In either case, though, they don’t cost you anything to use, so why not have the option?

Cantrips

While Ritual Spells are close to free, the ten-minute cast time does limit their situational utility. Cantrips are your at-will spells that you can use as your main means of attacking in the early tiers as well as tools to engage in out-of-combat social and exploration encounters. There are a lot of great options; I’d highly recommend having one or two solid damaging cantrips with different in combat utility, and one or two utility cantrips for enhancing how you contribute to the other pillars of play.

Damage Cantrip Recommendations

Fire Bolt and Toll the Dead are the bread and butter damage cantrips; you cast them and deal damage. Fire Bolt consistently does a d12, while Toll the Dead does less damage to undamaged targets and slightly more to damaged ones.
Create Bonfire early is a great place to stick your concentration prior to getting higher impact effects. Paired with either of the prior options, you can set up bonus damage opportunities and force enemies into bad situations where they’re wasting actions, taking attacks of opportunity, or burning.
Frostbite, Mind Sliver, and Sapping Sting (from Explorer’s Guide to Wildemont) all do a bit of damage and impose a debuff on enemies or buff on your allies. Frostbite weakens enemy attacks, Mind Sliver enhances you and your team’s saving throw-based abilities (including itself), and Sapping Sting empowers your melee allies by utilizing the prone condition. One of these three can do an entirely fine job as your damage cantrip if you’d rather focus on support or other utility.

Utility Cantrip Recommendations

Mage Hand stands head and shoulders above the rest of the utility cantrips as a telekinetic force you can manipulate objects with safely from a distance. There is a feat that empowers it further if you love the playstyle and want to enhance your Mage Hand with invisibility and a longer range, Telekinetic!
Minor Illusion also is a powerhouse of a cantrip that gives you a 5 ft. cube to create any object you want. Need an explosive crate to threaten people with? You got it. How about a rock to hide your halfling buddy in? It can do that, too. It also can create instantaneous sounds, which have a myriad of potential uses in deception and breaking and entering encounters. There are endless opportunities for illusions in the hands of a player willing to try crazy ideas.
Control Flames, Dancing Lights, Encode Thoughts, Gust, Light, Mold Earth, Prestidigitation, and Shape Water all are what I refer to as “cosmetic cantrips”. They offer a bit of utility that doesn’t come close to the power of Mage Hand and Minor Illusion, but each gives your character the tools to look a specific way. If your goal is to bend fire to your will like the ancient red dragons, Control Flames gives you that power. Each fits a specific theme, but none are so much better than the others I’d recommend them for their utility if you aren’t also going for a specific look.

Cantrips to Avoid

Booming Blade, Green-Flame Blade, and Lightning Lure aren’t going to be good options on the majority of wizards. There is one exception: Bladesingers. If you’re specifically going into a martial/caster hybrid build, you kind of need to know that ahead of time. Bladesingers can use these at 6th level alongside another attack, making them upgrades for your Extra Attack. Otherwise, using the other damaging cantrips is typically a lot more effective.
True Strike and Blade Ward are horrendous spells that are outclassed by regular actions. True Strike could simply be an Attack action to get two chances to hit instead of one next turn with advantage, while Blade Ward is comparable to the Dodge action which there aren’t a lot of characters using. If you can ever use either as a bonus action they get a bit better, but the vast majority of wizards want nothing to do with these.

Non-Ritual 1st Level and Higher Spells

Concentration is a major element of spellcasting in 5th Edition; you generally get one persistent effect that has a large impact on the game and want to keep it up as long as possible by avoiding damage. When choosing and preparing spells, knowing what you’d like to be concentrating on can open up clear routes to pick specific other spells that won’t compete with it.

Fortunately, Wizards have no shortage of excellent non-concentration spells to improve their power at all tiers. At 1st level, you get access to some effects you’ll be regularly casting more and more as the game progresses while cycling out lower-level damage options for splashier higher-level versions.

1st Level Spell Recommendations

Burning Hands and Ice Knife both do roughly the same damage in different ways, with Burning Hands hitting a 15 ft. cone and Ice Knife dealing less area damage but more single target at a better range. Both are great for dealing with low-tier groups of enemies; as long as you can get two things in their areas, they’ll be worth the cast.
Magic Missile offers far less damage but at a superb range and has the massive upside of being unable to miss. Having a guaranteed 1d4+1*3 divided between one, two, or three creatures gives you a tool to do specific quantities of damage with certainty. Certainty in a game full of d20 rolls is a major asset, even if other options have more potential damage.
Tasha’s Caustic Brew introduces a spell effect that gives enemies a difficult choice with both outcomes being great for you. 2d4 damage is a lot less area of effect damage than Burning Hands and Ice Knife are dealing, and sometimes it’ll do no damage at all. Eating a creature's action on top of doing 2d4 damage is a fantastic deal, though, and should a creature that fails opt to ignore the damage, it’ll wrack up more damage than either area damage spell mentioned earlier. I’m a big fan.
Silent Image goes hand in hand with the School of Illusion. Having a mobile image you can make act and look natural is incredibly useful. Minor Illusion can’t make living things, whereas Silent Image has no such gates. It gets outclassed by Major Illusion once you’ve got 3rd-level spells, but up until that point, with some clever uses, you can get a lot of mileage out of Silent Image.
Charm Person works as an early game enchanter’s social interaction tool. If you want to entrance creatures with your charm and wit, Charm Person probably should be on your sheet for out-of-combat social events.
Cause Fear and Hideous Laughter both provide you a tool to get a low-level spell that debilitates a single entity with the main difference being that Cause Fear can up-cast to hit multiple creatures where Hideous Laughter drops a creature prone and incapacitates it. Both have situational advantages, and both can massively turn the tide of a fight in your favor at all tiers by removing an upper-tier enemy’s actions. Hideous Laughter is a bit more consistent but has a lower floor when it comes to up-cast utility.

1st Level Reaction Spells

The reaction spells get their own section, as they’re a massive portion of Wizard’s power. You get four stellar reaction spells you can use in all tiers of play, and while you’re not often going to be able to fit all four on your character in the early tiers, past 9th level I typically will swap out a lot of my other 1st level options for the rest of them to have as many options as possible during every round of combat.

Silvery Barbs has forever changed the 5th Edition landscape. A reaction to reroll any d20 roll is excellent, and it's stacked on top of a free instance of advantage. Past 5th level, this is an easy spot to spend your 1st level spells while your 2nd and 3rd start taking over most of your in-combat actions.
Shield and Absorb Elements are stellar protective options that provide you either a +5 AC or damage resistance as needed. Both will have windows to shine, with Shield being slightly more frequent, and both probably can easily find a home on your sheet in the mid-tiers.
Feather Fall finds a home on so many Wizard character sheets as a safety net from fall damage. A lot of parties will find themselves facing an enticing dark shaft to leap down. With Feather Fall, you can plunge into the unknown recklessly without fearing immediate death on impact!

1st Level Spells to Avoid

Distort Value reads like an effect similar to Charm Person but has a far more narrow window of utility that barely affects gameplay. It's a cosmetic 1st level spell with next to no meaningful impact on the game, as gold isn’t usually such a critical element to gameplay you need to be swindling people magically.
False Life just costs too much. 1d4+4 temporary hit points aren’t worth a 1st level spell slot. You’d much rather spend that slot mitigating any quantity of damage when you need it with one of the four reaction spells mentioned earlier.
Frost Fingers is a strict downgrade on Burning Hands. I have absolutely no idea why this was printed.
Witch Bolt was a design mistake. It deals a cantrip worth of damage that takes your action each turn, and can be broken in a dozen different ways that happen in nearly all encounters. Even when it works, you’re entire play pattern is “I keep casting Witch Bolt” which is far from riveting.

2nd Level: Arcane Tradition

What Arcane Tradition you go with will shape how powerful specific spells can be down the road. Most empower a specific school, as noted in their name, but a few take you in different directions. As a wizard, you’re going to have a great time agnostic of subclass with a robust suite of killer spell options. What tradition you go with then will enhance your character further.

School of Abjuration presents my favorite take on wizards: arcane protectors. As an abjurer, you form arcane wards that defend you and your allies in a unique way. They want to counteract powerful enemy spellcasters, and get rewarded for doing so with bonus hit points leads to a more durable wizard without stepping on the toes of a lot of martial characters.
Bladesinging, on the other hand, steps all over the toes of every martial character in the game. It fundamentally breaks the balancing levers on Wizard by giving them Extra Attack at 6th level and a bonus action tool to get a massive AC while protecting their concentration more efficiently. If you want to play a magus or other spell sword, Bladesinger is the best option in the game to do so, even if you’re still not going to be making a ton of Attack rolls prior to 6th level.
Chronurgy, from Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount, redoes a lot of the core of what the School of Divination was going for, but with a temporal theme. It ends up feeling like a generically powerful wizard option that gives you a bit of utility prior to 6th level, and a sweet, unique Stasis ability and spell delay feature at 10th level. I don’t think it gets to the feeling of a time wizard until the mid-tiers, but at that point it absolutely delivers.
School of Conjuration has a 2nd level feature I always have felt has to be great, but I have never seen used effectively. Minor Conjuration lets you summon whatever inanimate object you want that’s 10 pounds or smaller. It represents so many things, yet in practice, those things are dwarfed in relevance by larger objects and magic. Still, Benign Transportation and Focused Conjuration are excellent mid-tier features that empower you and your busted Summon and Conjure spells, so you’ll definitely get a lot of mileage out of this.
School of Divination, like Bladesinger, is utterly busted. It used to be that was just because Portent let you automatically choose two roll results each adventure, but with the printing of Mind Spike, Expert Divination became a way to massively increase your spell slot pool in the mid tiers while giving you tons of 1st level slots to spam some truly busted effects. We’ll get into it later in the Munchkin Nonsense section. Even without abusing Expert Divination, Portent is so generically powerful that pairing it with the best spell list in the game and all the support base Wizard has left you with a character that you feel can’t fail.
School of Enchantment builds towards Split Enchantment, an absurd feature that staples Twinned Spell to all of your enchantment single target spells, with some reasonable social enchanting effects. Alter Memories is another awesome feature, and while the lower-tier options aren’t outrageous, they don’t need to be. This gives you the enchanter feel in the low tiers with superb scaling built-in with two excellent upper-tier options.
Graviturgy, the other tradition from Explorer’s Guide to Wildemont, works with gravity in some stupidly fun ways. Adjust Density immediately satisfies the fantasy with an at-will ability to at or subtract weight from things, with Gravity Well, Violent Attraction, and Event Horizon all expanding on the idea of manipulating gravity to great effect. It isn’t the strongest Tradition but is an awesome execution of creating a wizard focused on gravity.
School of Illusion won’t be for everyone, but the players that love using illusions can go absolutely nuts with the School of Illusion tradition. Improved Minor Illusion lets you twin-cast Minor Illusion for all kinds of nonsense early on. Malleable Illusion radically improves spells like Silent Image and Major Image by letting you manipulate them through their entire duration, making them function like multiple casts for a single slot of their existence, and Illusory Realty jacks up the potential of illusions further by making non-magical, inanimate objects to life. It's sweet, but entirely dependent on your willingness to constantly cast Illusions and come up with crazy plans that play on how creatures will react to you messing with their perception.
School of Necromancy has only one reasonable feature: Undead Thralls. Beyond that, they’re left in this nebulous space where they don’t really deliver on the undead overlord fantasy meaningfully, nor do they successfully give you a life-drinker, undeath-wielding monster feel. If you want to go all in on maximizing the efficiency and effectiveness of your Animate Dead, you can go with Necromancer. Otherwise, each of these other traditions will give you more while Animate Dead and Create Undead the heavy lifting in giving you the lich overlord fantasy.
Order of Scribes works with the rules for scrolls presented in the Dungeon Master’s Guide, but isn’t so tied to them that tables not working with lots of spell scrolls will find nothing here. It presents the nerdiest wizard possible whose entire identity is tied to writing and using a magic quill and awakened spellbook to help you customize your spells and speed up your ritual casting. If you want the classic Wizard look and feel without specializing further, you can get some great flavorful enhancements, but it's lacking a bit of the juice a lot of other options are bringing.
School of Transmutation, like Conjuration, as a 2nd level feature that feels like it should be good, but I’ve never witnessed it do all that much. Transforming a stone door to a wooden one seems like a useful tool to have in your back pocket, and this provides you an at-will way to do just that, but changing materials doesn’t provide a quick, nor efficient solution to most problems. Its upper-level option is a bit more exciting; Transmuter’s Stone comes with a boatload of great improvements you can swap between as you cast Transmutation spells, which is one of my favorite mechanics printed in this edition, and Shapechanger and Master Transmuter have some cool single instance use utility. It's a nifty little option.
War Magic closes out the current traditions with another fairly generic wizard option. Arcane Defleciton feels like it was built to be abused with multiclass non-caster characters who want to be making multiple attacks anyway, as on Wizard it’s very difficult to justify forgoing spellcasting for a worse Shield. Power Surge starts giving the option a lot more stuff to do, though, and while the rest of the option isn’t particularly exciting if you want a wizard who has an objective of being a bit thicker and occasionally blasts out some bonus damage with Power Surge, War Magic is serviceable enough.

3rd Level: Cantrip Formulas, 2nd Level Spells

The bulk of what Wizards and the other full-casters get at 3rd level is 2nd level spells. Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything added Cantrip Formulas.

Cantrip Formulas: This is a nice little extra boost that lets you try out other cantrips if you don’t like your current selections. That’s it. Nothing much to talk about here.
2nd Level Spells: Wizard’s 2nd level spell list isn’t as robust as their 1st, but it's still packed with excellent tools for in and out of combat encounters.

2nd Level Recommendations

Invisibility fundamentally changes stealth and infiltration missions forever. Being invisible is a state that no mundane rogue or ranger can accomplish, and opens specific doors because of it. Like Find Familiar, I’d say Invisibility probably should be the first 2nd level option most any wizard takes.
Dragon’s Breath broke the norm for spells that ask you to spend actions reusing them by actually being worth casting at the tier you get it. Getting a 3d6 cone of damage is close to Burning Hands; for one spell level higher, you can now repeatedly use this cone over and over again. When you’re only working with 6 or 7 slots over two to three encounters, having a spell that can take an entire encounter on its own and give you a great action for the duration is a big deal.
Web locks down a huge space and eats precious enemy actions. Having free rounds to wail on them at a distance will trivialize some fights, and do so in a classic D&D fashion.
Suggestion fits onto the enchanter character as a pre-combat or exploration tool to get a creature to do what you want in a way you want. Out of all of these spells, this is the one I think can find moments to be cast the most, as if there is a creature it can affect, there probably is a benefit to casting Suggestion on it.
Tasha’s Mind Whip manages to successfully walk the line of being both a damage and utility spell without doing both too poorly or too powerfully. It does a fine chunk of damage and comes with a single round of potential debilitation. If you can deny the big bad a single round of attacks, you’re extremely happy with this 2nd level spell.
Rope Trick is a unique wizard tool that acts as a pocket hideaway. You can use it to safely short rest, hide from patrols, or stow something important you’ll need to surprise your enemies with. It won’t be something you’ll need every adventure, but it does bring a cool new tool to the table few other characters get access to.
Misty Step isn’t the best at 3rd level, but past 5th level, a bonus action 30 ft. teleport is really convenient. It helps you get around the map to exactly where you want to be and lets you do it without provoking attacks of opportunity. It helps you set up encounters prior, too, by putting you in the best spot on the map, often 20-30 feet above where the fight is going to happen.
Hold Person upgrades Hideous Laughter from knocking the creature prone to paralyzing it. A paralyzed creature suffers critical hits from anything that hits it. When you succeed with a hold person, if you have two or three weapon-attacking allies, you’ve condemned the humanoid to death.

2nd Level Spells to Avoid

Alter Self tends to function as a side-grade to Disguise Self at a higher spell level. The Water Breathing effect gets replaced with a 3rd level ritual spell, and the natural weapons are typically horrendous ways to spend your action.
Borrowed Knowledge and Enhance Ability both offer skill improvements for 2nd level slots that usually will easily be covered by your party working together. The Help action easily enables characters to make skill checks with advantage, and between four to five players, you’re likely to have somebody at the table who has a specific skill, making Borrowed Knowledge entirely unnecessary.
Gentle Repose could be a tool to put a body on ice for a future revivify, but you have to prepare it for it to function that way. As a ritual spell in your book it’s not really providing any benefit if you can get to somebody with Raise Dead within a week, you don’t need this. It serves next to no purpose in most groups.
Locate Object has a pitifully short range that makes it, to put it generously, inconsistent. 1,000 feet is roughly three city blocks- if you know an object is within that distance, it's probably in the same building as you, and you can, you know, search for it. If it's further than that, and you want to locate it to give you a way to look for it, this does literally nothing. Furthermore, if a competent creature is trying to hide an object, they just need a thin sheet of lead to prevent this from functioning at all.
Magic Weapon offers non-casters a way to fight creatures with non-magic weapon resistance with a +1 to hit and damage. The biggest cost to you is your concentration, usually resulting in you becoming a magnet for the attention of whatever creature the fighter is trying to get hits on. You don’t want to need Magic Weapon; hopefully, your DM knows this and gives the team other ways to get around non-magic weapon resistance.
Pyrotechnics and Skywrite both are cute, but way over costed for what they do. 1st level spells outperform them.

4th Level: Feat Considerations

Like all characters, 4th level offers a choice (should you be playing with feats): Improve one of your ability scores, or take a feat.

Feat Considerations

Full casters without melee combat options have a much smaller grouping of supporting feats than their competition. Still, there are some unique options to consider that empower you further I’d recommend most Wizards consider them.

General Recommendations

War Caster goes on wizards that have a plan to defend a powerful concentration effect that determines their average turn in combat. If you’re working with summoning or want to ensure Haste sticks around, War Caster is an easy option to consider.
Telekinetic and Telepathic both come with a bit of extra utility and a +1 Intelligence, making them excellent to work with if you can start with an odd Intelligence to bump up your modifier while getting a magical improvement.
Shadow Touched and Fey Touched both can give you +1 Intelligence, once again making them stellar choices if you’ve got an odd Intelligence or want both. Bonus 2nd level slots for Misty Step and Invisibility and 1st-level slots for Cause Fear, Charm Person, or other spells of the given schools are great extra value to expand your resource pool further.
The other bonus spell options, Magic Initiate, Divinely Favored, and Strixhaven Initiate, offer you a solid list of 1st level spells to consider. Strixhaven Initiate opens you up to getting a 1st level Bard, Sorcerer, Druid, or Cleric spell like Goodberry or Healing Word if you want a reliable way to heal downed allies you’d otherwise lack. If you also want Augury instead of a cantrip, Divinely Favored is slightly better. These options are usually taken to get access to spells like Find Familiar or other busted Wizard spells, making them mediocre choices for Wizard who already has access to most of the best options.
Eldritch Adept has some ability and class-specific combos that can be worth picking up. The big ones to consider are:
- Armor of Shadows on Abjurer for an at-will way to refill your ward
- Devil’s Sight on characters wanting to weaponize Darkness
- Fiendish Vigor on martial characters like Abjurerer or Bladesinger who want more durability
- Misty Visions on Illusionists for at-will Silent Image for their subclass features
Each of these does tend to want to go alongside a specific feature, but all can be huge improvements for the various archetypes that don’t require you dip two levels into Warlock.

Feats to Avoid

Spell Sniper works with very few spells in the game and usually isn’t going to provide meaningful benefits. You probably have the cantrips you want to be making attack rolls with and if you don’t know the AC benefits cover provides off the top of your head, it probably isn’t coming up enough at your table to justify this. You need to basically build around cantrips or Scorching Ray to get anything out of this, and what it gives you just isn’t going to be doing much even if you do go that direction. A +1 Int mod will do way more than this will.
Elemental Adept looks like it gives you a tool to build around a damage type but in practice, it doesn’t. Ignoring resistance is the best effect present, but that doesn’t affect enough encounters to justify taking this. Raising damage dice rolled from 1s to 2s is terrible; if you’re rolling a 6d6 damage spell, this is a feat that improves the damage, on average, by 1. Nope. No thank you. That’s not nearly enough for a feat.

5th Level and Beyond

Past 4th level, Wizards primarily get upper-level spells alongside their subclass features and cap things off with Spell Mastery and Signature Spells.

3rd Level Spell Recommendations

5th is the next big bump for the game, introducing 3rd-level spells and Extra Attack to the table. Wizards get some of the most impactful 3rd-level spells in the game you’ll routinely be using for the remainder of the campaign regularly.

Fireball sets the area of effect damage standard for the rest of the game. If it can’t match 8d6 damage in a 20 ft. area, Fireball probably is better. We’re going from 4d6 damage with 2nd-level spells to twice that with Fireball. It's a massive jump.
Haste gives you an insane place to put your concentration, usually empowering a melee ally with a third attack a round, double speed, and a bonus +2 AC. It is a high-risk plan, though, and definitely will teach your party to protect you or run the risk of watching a fighter stop dead in their tracks as concentration breaks.
Animate Dead is how you play Necromancers in 5th Edition. It's a bit of bookkeeping, and generally speaking, Skeletons are way better than zombies. Should you accept these facts, you can have a blast creating and managing an undead army firing off barrages of arrows with mediocre accuracy each round.
Summon Fey/Undead works as an alternative to Animate Dead and future Conjure Spells for players who may not want to manage a ton of stat blocks and bookkeeping while still getting the benefits of an ally running around killing stuff.
Fear hits a massive area of creatures with a save or die that disarms them and sends them screaming in the other direction. You don’t need more than two or three failed saves for this to be encounter warping by denying the enemy team a ton of actions in the first few turns. That kind of action advantage is hard to match for its spell slot; if you don’t want to kill them faster with Fireball, Fear will do nearly as good a job at pushing your team toward victory.
Major Image really goes just on Illusionists. You’ll know by this point if Illusions are for you, and if they are, this is a bigger version with a longer duration that plays beautifully with Malleable Illusions.
Counterspell is fickle. Some tables will lean into spellcasting heavily, and at those tables, the entire game warps around Counterspell’s range and components. Other tables will throw ogres, giants, and beholders at you as the big bads with no spellcasters in sight. Your table likely fits somewhere in the middle; knowing how many spellcasters you can expect to fight will largely determine the relevance this spell has.
Dispel Magic will feel nice to have in the upper middle tiers of play for dismantling brutal effects and magical traps. I find it a bit more applicable than Counterspell at most tables, as it often will be ruled to affect magical effects in the world beyond spells. It’ll still be something you want to consider in more magical environments and steer away from in less magic-driven settings.
Water Breathing you can stick in your spellbook and ritual cast every morning to give the team its effect at nearly no cost. It opens up a new world to explore under the waves, and while it won’t impact every table, with a cost this low it's really easy to find room for in your spellbook.

3rd Level Spells to Avoid

Nondetection has a myriad of issues, most prominent being its inability to meaningfully impact many games. Groups don’t tend to run games revolving around enemies spending resources scrying on players; even if they are, Nondetection only saves one member per cast from being spied on, making it a frustrating tool to tell players their magic doesn’t work when they try to spy on the villains and a useless tool at defending against enemy divination.
Vampiric Touch looks so much worse these days when it has to compare against Dragon’s Breath. It never was great, as an action for 3d6 damage to one target with a health regain that’s tough to get value out of is abysmal for a 3rd-level slot.

4th Level Spell Recommendations

7th level offers 4th level spells which, like 3rd level, shake up the game in a huge way.

Conjure Minor Elementals provides wizards a tool to generate a small squadron of mephits to destroy any semblance of encounter balance your DM may attempt to gain. It's a disgustingly powerful effect to summon multiple creatures with attack actions and area of effect damage for an hour, especially when they come with natural camouflage.
Banishment and Polymorph both tend to act as tools to entirely remove a threat from a fight for a good chunk of time. These two define “Save or die” effects for the rest of the game; if your target fails the save, they’re probably dead, and the encounter is usually going to be massively one-sided now.
Dimension Door is a blast to play with when you’ve got 5th and 6th-level slots. Spending your highest level spell on a single instance teleport is a bit challenging to justify at 7th level, but past that having it on your sheet opens some doors to you even things like flight cannot.
Greater Invisibility takes the 2nd level version and removes the elements that end it early, resulting in a minute-long buff that grants the invisible creature advantage on nearly all of their attacks and imposes disadvantage on all attacks against them. Stick it on your fighter or rogue and watch them tear things up.
Summon Aberration, Construct, and Elemental all are far more manageable summon effects compared to Conjure Minor Elementals that come with two attacks a turn and some wacky abilities. These are stellar places to put your concentration if you don’t have other plans for it.

4th Level Spells to Avoid

Locate Creature takes all of the issues with Locate Object and stacks a laundry list of conditions on top of that. You can’t have running water between you and them, have to be familiar with them, and need them to be close enough to you for this to detect them at all. It is incredibly difficult to get any kind of mileage out of this.
Secret Chest has a small chance of destroying all of your stuff after thirty days, and otherwise is a mediocre replacement to an item given for convenience, the Bag of Holding. Few games will find any value in this.

5th Level Spell Recommendations

9th level opens up 5th level spells which continue to offer you sweet new abilities that are great in a wide array of environments and kinds of encounters.

Animate Objects steps up from Conjure Minor Elementals by giving you a tool to make ten tiny +8 to-hit flying knives that rip apart all of your foes with a casual AC of 18 each and 20 hit points a pop. If you enjoy controlling a fleet of monsters, Animate Objects is for you.
Arcane Hand, also known as Bigby’s Hand, plays like an upgraded Spiritual Weapon with a dozen different use cases. At minimum, it's a 4d8 force-damaging bonus action. It can throw enemies around, block and defend you, grapple things while dealing damage, and so much more.
Danse Macabre gives Necromancers an at-will mass Animate Dead with a ton of upside. The monsters animated get a needed bonus to attack and damage rolls. It otherwise works similarly to Animate Objects and Conjure Minor Elementals but with fewer total summoned creatures and a higher restriction in needing to find corpses.
Dominate Person takes control of enemies. That’s ludicrously powerful in terms of action advantage. You’re functionally removing an entire enemy from a fight while gaining an ally that you can take finite control over if needed. Its creature type limitation definitely limits it, a lot of games rely on humanoid villains, and in those games, having Dominate Person will set you up for success.
Hold Monster takes the power of paralysis Hold Person introduces and offers it to you to use on any monster. Payalsis is gross. If something fails this save, they’re going to have a bad day.
Modify Memory works in the same way illusions do; on some people’s sheets, this will bend the game around it and let you walk around with impunity. Other players will struggle to shape Modify Memory to best suit their needs, finding it next to impossible to use effectively. If you like Illusions, Modify Memory is an insanely fun tool to add to your repertoire.
Synaptic Static is akin to Tasha’s Mind Whip; it gives you reasonable damage for its level with a great debuff effect. It's enough of each that it feels powerful, and will have a splashy impact at the table even when compared to the higher-damage Fireball.
Telepathic Bond crucially is a ritual spell. It's something you stick in your book, cast every morning, and have up for as long as you need it. On wizards, it feels more like a feature than a spell.
Summon Draconic Spirit continues the trend of great Summon spells. Want a dragon buddy? You got it here.
Wall of Force closes out the recommendations for 5th level as a near-indestructible massive wall you can summon and shape with a single action. Invincible invisible walls are surprisingly versatile. If you want a weird spell that you can surprise people with its utility, I highly recommend Wall of Force.

5th Level Spells to Avoid

Enervation makes the same mistakes of lower-level spells. If you were to combine Witch Bolt and Vampiric Touch, it’d look like this. You need to spend multiple actions to get this to deal 8d8 damage to a single target for a 5th-level spell, a horrendous rate that eats far more actions than its worth. The healing has little to no value with the values halved. If you want to do anything else during the cast, well it sucks to be you, that ends Enervation. If the enemy moves to a spot with an object between you and it or more than 60 ft. from you. It's really bad.

Legend Lore can be replaced by a library. It's an information-gathering tool that you shouldn’t ever have to use, nor should you justify spending spell slots and money on it.

6th Level Spell Recommendations

11th level and beyond are the 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th level spells, all of which are big upgrades, as we’ve seen before.

Contingency usually just acts as a prepared spell that acts as a bonus spell slot with a given command word. It's usually easy to set up prior to an adventure, and inflates your total known spells. It's a free bonus spell slot and costs very little to stick on your sheet.
Create Undead isn’t actually that great of a spell for its 6th-level slot. However, it upcasts to create Wights which can act as undead lieutenants to raze villages and build you an army of zombies. It's the top-end Necromancer fantasy past Animate Dead.
Disintegrate nukes something with a massive blast of damage. It's basically as much damage for a spell you can get to a single target up to this point.
Irresistible Dance, also known as Otto’s Irresistible Dance, takes the “save” out of “save or die”. Its main job is getting around Legendary Resistance while imposing a meaningful debuff, and does so for about as cheap a spell slot as you can ask for.
Scatter is stupid, silly, fun. Teleporting a bunch of creatures around a massive area can have wacky implications, and while it isn’t always going to be that effective, it easily leads to some of the most memorable, exciting moments.
Summon Fiend gets a mention here for the same reason all of the prior summon spells have gotten. All can be up-cast to this level, and each has three attacks at this point which is great. Fiends can throw fire blasts and be generally evil- what’s not to love?

6th Level Spells to Avoid

Eyebite costs more than it's worth. Repeatable saves that take your action each time to use is a costly way to spend your turns, and none of the conditions compete with the likes of Hold Monster or most other single target save or dies. I’d much rather spend one action on a more potent effect than multiple for any of these three options.
Instant Summons eats your gold for what usually costs a 2nd or 3rd level feature. Even as a ritual, you need a heck of a compelling reason to stash your object somewhere off your person to summon later. This spell sets you up for disaster and makes you pay out the nose for it.

7th Level Spell Recommendations

Simulacrum, like Contingency, is more like a feature than a spell and an insanely broken one at that. We’ll get into it in Munchkin Nonsense section below.
Crown of Stars upgrades Arcane Hand into 4d12 meteors that don’t take your concentration. If you want to condense your sheet's power into more damage per turn, Crown of Stars alongside a Conjure or Summon spell will pack your turns full of powerful actions you’ll get tons of damage out of.
Draconic Transformation is sweet. You turn into a giant dragon and blast fire around the battlefield. Where Crown of Stars gives you a non-concentration bonus action, Draconic Transformation gives you a slightly better bonus action with some other juice, but has a lower duration and does take your concentration. If you want the fantasy of flying around throwing out Fireballs and Breath Weapons together, though, this is an easy way to live that fantasy in a powerful way.
Etherealness provides you and your team an ethereal way to scout through dungeons and explore the world through walls. It's the ultimate infiltration tool that gives your DM a lot of hard questions to answer in terms of dealing with you and your access to near-unlimited information given enough time, often resulting in battles between the Ethereal and Material planes.
Forcecage takes a step beyond Irresistible Dance. It gets around Legendary Resistance, doesn’t take your concentration for some reason, and puts something in a box that it typically can’t get out of without ample teleportation resources. The only major constraining factor is size, and this contains up to Large creatures. If you want to stick something in a box and deal with it later, Forcecage is the spell for you.
Mirage Arcane creates a pretend world on top of an existing one. It's the top-end Illusionist fantasy where you sculpt a mile area to your exact specifications. With the School of Illusion you can edit it over its ten-day duration, giving you a dynamic environment you shape to fill your needs. It's easily one of the coolest spells in the game, but will still struggle to work meaningfully at some tables and on some players’ sheets who don’t gell with how illusions play.
Planeshift and Teleport are a bit more costly to pick up and use than Water Breathing but provide a juiced-up version of its effect. You now have the tools to enter and explore other places over massive distances. You’ll likely want to work with your DM prior to taking these, as they definitely ask your DM to work hard to make them fulfill their fantasies to their fullest.
Reverse Gravity does weird things and I adore it. Its something you’ll want to cast a handful of times per campaign, as it can be a massive headache to figure out what happens when gravity suddenly flips and objects and liquids start going all over the place, but it will radically impact ground-based encounters and can do some cool stuff in world exploration.

7th Level Spells to Avoid

Arcane Sword, when compared to Arcane Hand, Crown of Stars, and Draconic Transformation, is a complete joke. It's the worst version of this effect by a country mile.
Power Word: Pain introduces the Power Word mechanic for foes which checks their total HP and works if they’re within a certain threshold. These are obnoxious to use, and encourage and reward memorizing monster stat blocks and counting their exact hit points, which brews conflict between player and DM. This effect isn’t even that worth casting should hit land.
Sequester is a pricier version of Instant Summons and Secret Chest, two spells I think are horrendous. As a DM plot device, it's great. As a player tool, it's HOT trash.

8th Level Spell Recommendations

Antimagic Field produces a giant shut-off valve that makes no magic function. This is a fickle spell to work with, as it also denies you access to your 1st through 8th level spells, but is a universal answer to anything magical. It's a spell that does things no other spell really can, but the price makes it complicated to use.
Dominate Monster, on the other hand, is a clean and simple powerhouse that takes the highest CR creatures in the game and turns them against their allies. Dominate Monster is everything great about Dominate Person, but works on Balors and Mind Flayers.
Illusory Dragon is the final form for the bonus action concentration effect, acting as 7d6 60 ft. massive cone you can use round after round. The lower costed options are probably about as good for their level, but something about conjuring a giant shadowy dragon to ravage your foes speaks to me as a DM and player.

8th Level Spells to Avoid

Control Weather lost relevance ten years ago when most hex crawls ended. Few tables will have use for this, and those that do care about and engage with distance travel (where Control Weather tends to matter most) have way better tools for getting around and mitigating weather issues at this tier.
Telepathy costs far more than Scrying does for little meaningful upside. Telepathic Bond works with all your close allies and is a ritual, leaving Telepathy to only have the main use of long-distance communication. You could teleport to them and chat with them for a lower-level slot.

9th Level Spell Recommendations

Wizards have the best 9th-level spell selection in the game. You’ve got tons of exceptional choices to pick between.

Wish doubles as every other spell in the game while having other set uses and the general “ask your DM if you can do this” text which breaks some tables in half. Its limited uses are warranted, as it's easily a contender for best spell in the game.
Meteor Swarm does the most damage out of any spell in the game in three massive areas. Nothing comes close to 40d6 damage. Want to kill an army? Start with Meteor Swarm.
Shapechange functionally gives you access to all non-spellcasting traits of every monster you’ve seen. Want all the Eye Rays of a beholder? Want any Adult Dragon’s abilities and hit points? Shapechange gives you it all.
True Polymorph does what Shapechange does, but only once, and has two major differences: it can disable enemies, and it doesn’t prevent you from using the spellcasting trait. This gives it the mode of turning yourself into an Archmage to get another full spell list and full spell slots including Time Stop. It also can just make the kraken into a biscuit forever.

9th Level Spells to Avoid

Weird would be a bad 4th level spell. It’s a 9th level spell for some reason.
Power Word: Kill only affects creatures with 100 or fewer hit points, and does nothing if they have more. A 9th-level Disintegrate deals 19d6+40 damage, an average of 106.5, and can affect creatures regardless of their hit points while also having a 6th, 7th, and 8th-level mode.
Astral Projection may be the worst spell in the game. Its not really a spell at all, its a weird mode of transit that has an entirely different adventure baked into it. It has no business existing as a player spell.

Spell Mastery

18th level gives you Spell Mastery, giving you a 1st and 2nd-level spell of your choice with unlimited uses. This is particularly nuts with the reaction spells: Shield, Absorb Elements, and Silvery Barbs. These at will is a huge bump in utility and let you use all of your reactions more often at a lower cost.

Signature Spells

20th level gives you two short rest recharging 3rd-level spell slots locked to two 3rd-level spells of your choice. At this stage two extra 3rd level slots isn’t the best feature in the world, but hey, more spells are basically always a good thing, and 9th level spells are breaking the game in half. Why not get a free Fireball and Counterspell on top of those?

Multiclassing Wizard

Multiclassing is a “variant” mechanic in the same way feats tend to be; the vast majority of tables allow it. It adds a level of customization and depth to the mid-tier of play the game desperately lacks, giving you new choices and fun abilities all throughout the game.

The main problem Wizard faces is that they’re kind of already the best casting class in the game with access to one of the best martial subclasses in the game. This makes multiclassing out of wizard not all that exciting, as their upper-tier spells are exceptional and warp how the game is played. There are some neat options to consider, though, especially if your objective is to specialize in one or two specific spells or mix in other non-spellcasting features.

Caster Options

Sorcerers give you one major boon: Metamagic. Within Metamagic, you’re looking predominately at Twinned Spell to double up the power of some of your best single-target effects reliably. Their subclass selection isn’t the greatest, but if you also want access to Cleric spells, you can go with Divine Soul. Getting Spiritual Weapon alongside Twinned Spell is super efficient, all without losing out on upper-level spell slots.
Clerics do offer their domains at 1st level, making many still compelling options to consider. Armor proficiency from Forge or War domain can add some additional protection to your sheet without forgoing much while Death and Light empower specific kinds of magic. Death pairs great with Necromancer to cover a lot of the holes in its damage department with Reaper. Starting out with Death or picking it up at 6th level will feel like a major improvement to your round-to-round necromancy casting while your skeleton battalion satisfies your undead overlord desires.
Warlocks are packed full of goodies in their first three levels, but wizards can get most of what they offer from their spells. Pact of the Chain and Tome both overlap with just being a wizard with ritual casting and Find Familiar, and Pact of the Blade and Talisman both aren’t the most compelling features in the world. You can still get some great Invocations like Misty Visions to empower an Illusionist, and a patron for their unique abilities like the Fathomless’s tentacles or Genie’s Bottled Respite. Pact Magic also is just really nice to have in addition to full casting- two short rest 2nd level spell slots you can reliably use first and regain slightly faster alongside the invocations and patron can be worth it for some tables.

Martial Options

Fighters, rangers, and paladins all provide bonus armor and weapon proficiencies first and foremost, with the latter two also giving you additional upper-tier spell slots as you go. Extra Attack is typically easier to get by going with Bladesinger, but if you want to commit to War Magic, Necromancy, or Abjuration, these can be ways to get Extra Attack as well. Fighter mainly offers Action Surge over its competition, which is an insane tool to have access to as it gives you rounds where you can cast two spells at once.
Rogues are a bit messy, as Sneak Attack isn’t routinely going to help what wizards typically are doing, but Cunning Action and Expertise are both excellent features in their own right. If you are already mixing in Shadow Blade or Green-Flame Blade with a rapier you could consider this multiclass. Bladesingers could consider it as well for the extra mobility and extra damage per round after getting Extra Attack and seeking out busted features like Assassinate.

Munchkin Nonsense You Can Try

Honestly, base Wizard with no subclass can do really busted stuff just because they have access to a lot of the best spells in the game. Conjure Minor Elementals and Animate Objects are disgustingly powerful. We’ll look at three wizard-specific abilities to highlight just how nuts this class is: Simulacrum, Bladesinging, and School of Divination.

Simulacrum Duplication

The Simulacrum spell has some problems, as mentioned earlier. Mainly, the issue with it is Simulacrums of you share your spell slots even if they can’t regain them, and can then subsequently make Simulacrums.

The Costs. To do this, you’re going to need be working in a snowy place with access to ample snow and ice to form the duplicates. A single small ruby is worth 5,000 gold. Its dust, then, covers at least three instances of Simulacrum.

How Much Gold We’re Working With. According to the Treasure Hoard tables in the Dungeon Master’s Guide, a 13th-level character should have gained roughly 39,000. We can shave off 4,000 gold and assume we can’t buy ruby dust at a consistent rate and have to get rubies instead, giving this character a little over 4,000 gold worth of wiggle room.

35,000 gold equates to seven rubies, each of which produces three simulacrums with 500 gold worth of ruby dust left over. This means a 13th-level Wizard should be able to cast Simulacrum twenty-three times; three per ruby with the leftover dust adding up to two additional casts.

Limitations. Simulacrum does specify you can’t create multiple duplicates, but your duplicates can make a duplicate each. Additionally, they’re going to need to make duplicates of you, not each other, to ensure their hit point pool never reaches zero.

Now, by leaving it with your spell book and providing an ample amount of robes and arcane focuses, over twelve days, you can produce 23 duplicates of yourself with half your maximum hit points and all your spell slots and prepared spells except one 7th level slot.

What You Get. It turns out having twenty-three duplicates of yourself is utterly busted, even if each one can’t regain their spell slots. They provide you with:

92 additional 1st-level slots
69 additional 2nd, 3rd, and 4th-level slots
46 additional 5th-level slots
23 additional 6th-level slots
23 bodies that can cast cantrips and take other actions using your subclass
1 spare 7th level slot you can use to start the process again.

Want to get really nutty? Be a Bladesinger. Then, each can have an outrageous AC, Extra Attack that hits like a truck, and all of the other benefits mentioned prior. They can regain their Bladesong feature as well, meaning they will always get something back whenever you finsish resting.

Just how hard to hit are these Bladesinger duplicates? We’ll cover that next!

Stacking AC with Bladesinging

Bladesinging already is outrageous without needing to do anything to it, as it’s giving you all the perks of being a base Wizard with ritual casting and full-casting powered by the best spell list in the game alongside Extra Attack, meaning now martial builds are readily available to you if you decide you’d rather show up your Fighter or Barbarian ally in melee combat while also making it rain meteors from the sky.

Where Bladesinger truly gets obnoxious is when you start stacking AC bonuses on top of Bladesong. There are some constraining factors we have to keep in mind: if we ever don medium armor, heavy armor, or a shield, we can’t use Bladesong, so we’re going to have to work around that. As long as we meet those prerequisites, Bladesong lets us add both our Int and Dex to our AC, which we wanted to max out anyway!

Ability Scores. With a 27-point buy, we’ve got some work cut out for us. We need as high a Dexterity and Intelligence as possible, as we’ll eventually want a +5 in each, and we’ll also want to consider getting 13s to enable multiclassing.

We’re going with a 15 in Dexterity and Intelligence, a 12 in Con, and a 13 in Wisdom, leaving an 8 in Strength and Charisma.

For species, we’re going to need to use Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything’s variant to get custom Ability Score improvements to guarantee a +2 Int and +1 Dexterity, setting us to 17 Int and 16 Dex as a Warforged for their bonus +1 AC from Integrated Protection.

Base AC with Bladesong. A 2nd-level Bladesinging Warforged Wizard using Bladesong has an AC of 17; 10 + Dex + Int + 1 (Integrated Plating).

Ability Score Improvements. Maximizing our Dexterity and Intelligence is needed to stack an extra +4 to our AC. We just need a +1 in our Intelligence once, though, which opens up room for a utility feat like Shadow Touched or Fey Touched to get a bit of extra juice onto our sheet. The other four are +2 to Int, +2 to Dex, and +2 to Dex. Our final feat probably is War Caster, but could be Dual Wielder if we wanted as high a base AC without using other spells in combat. For now, we’ll forgo Dual Wielder to enable other options.

Spell Support. Mage Armor sets the base AC to 13, which is higher than any light armor options, so it's going to be our “armor” for the build. Haste is the second spell we’re going to want on, which gives us an additional +2 AC. Shield, then, gives us a 1st level spell costed way to improve our AC by an additional 5 whenever we would be hit.

In total, this Bladesinger with no levels in any other class is working with an AC of:

13 (Mage Armor)+5 (Dexterity) + 5 (Intelligence) +1 (Integrated Plating)+ 2 (Haste) + 5 (Shield)

In total, you have a casual AC of 32. This character is a wizard with a spell save DC of 21, full casting, extra attack, and is going to be harder to hit than basically any other character at the table.

Sure, this isn’t the highest AC possible, but for a single class build that simultaneously is getting two attacks a turn dealing 1d8+10 damage alongside 6th, 7th, 8th, and 9th level spells, its pretty nuts.

Diviner is Fundamentally Broken

We don’t have to work that hard to do some munchkin nonsense with just six levels of Diviner and three levels of Warlock.

Our primary tools in this build we’re looking to abuse are two of its features: Portent and Expert Divination. What makes this build truly obnoxious are in how it augments rolls every round to make the chances of party success feel outrageously high while mitigating every enemy action to ensure they fail.

Expert Divination refunds you a lower-level spell slot each time you spend a 2nd level or higher spell slot on a Divination spell. Historically, there weren’t that many ways to take regular advantage of this. It acted as a reduction in cost for utility spells like Scrying.

Everything changed when they printed Mind Spike.

On its own, Mind Spike isn’t anything special. A 2nd level spell for 3d8 psychic damage with little other meaningful text is a pretty bad rate. However, when it also refunds a 1st level spell slot, it becomes an exceptional way to spend your action, specifically when you have plenty of places to consistently put your 1st level spell slots with your reaction.

Enter Silvery Barbs, a mistake of a spell from Strixhaven: a Curriculum of Chaos. At the low cost of a 1st level spell slot and your reaction, you can take a known success and attempt to turn it into a failure. Additionally, you pick a creature (which can include you) to get advantage on its next attack roll, ability check, or saving throw.

It may seem innocuous if you haven’t played with it, but this flips the game on its head on its own in the mid-tiers by making any meaningful success enemies roll need to beat “disadvantage” through Silvery Barbs. Normally, you have to spread out your uses of it, only getting to affect four rolls with your 1st-level slots, usually wanting to conserve your 2nd and 3rd-level slots for bigger things.

Now, every time you cast Mind Spike, you refresh one of your Silvery Barbs slots, getting seven uses of it instead. Additionally, up-casting Mind Spike refreshes a 2nd level slot, which you guessed it, can be used to refresh another 1st level slot.

What you’re left with is a character that has a deep well of resources to mitigate enemy rolls while dealing great damage round to round. It can feel like a near-limitless pool of Silvery Barbs as the game progresses.

Portents Boon. If you ever run out or need a creature to have guaranteed success or failure, Portent steps in. You get two predetermined rolls you can set allies or enemies to use for any d20 roll you want. DMing for this is a nightmare; the diviner can outright choose the result of a critical roll before rolling, and if it's only moderately important, they have a massive amount of Silvery Barbs slots to skew the outcome. It's truly obnoxious.

Pact Magic Abuse. To further stretch your resources, three levels in Warlock provide you with two 2nd level spell slots that refresh on short rest. Nothing stops you from using these to cast Mind Spike, which in turn, refreshes two of your long rest recharging 1st level spell slots. More levels in Warlock makes this feature even better, as it can cascade as mentioned before. A 3rd-level Pact Slot casting Mind Spike gives you back a 2nd-level long-rest spell slot, which in turn can cast Mind Spike to give you a 1st-level spell slot back. A 5th-level Pact Magic spell slot can represent a 4th, 3rd, 2nd, and 1st-level full-caster spell slot over a long adventure. It's a deep well of resources, even if they’re the equivalent of up-cast Chromatic Orbs.

Further Support. This naturally extends to work with Metamagic and Font of Power in Sorcerer, both of which enhance every element of the build. Sorcery points give you a way to empower your Mind Spike to hit multiple targets, radically improving your damage output. Additionally, you can use the slots regained as fuel to fire off more twinned Mind Spikes, which in turn refill even more spell slots.

With the Right Spells, Wizard Works Wonders

The Wizard spell list and all of their extra boons to those spells sets wizards up as the base class to beat. You get Find Familiar, Silvery Barbs, Shield, Fireball, and a robust list of Summon and Conjure spells to create massive amounts of allies you don’t even need to commit actions towards to get value out of in encounters.

Wizards also don’t need to take all of the most busted stuff to function; there are tons of reasonable options that’ll give you different play patterns that can deliver on tons of different character concepts in a satisfying way. If you have a specific kind of non-healer magic user in mind, you can probably get a Tradition and spell list to bring that vision to life in wizard.

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Wizard 5e