D&D 5E What Wizard should I be?

[Kobold Stew]

I'll admit that I am way more excited about playing wizards than I have been in the past few editions. There's some great choices:

Diviner: affecting two dice rolls, anywhere at the table, per long rest gives you a lot of fun opportunity to change the balance of power at the table.

Illusionist: if you're creative, improved minor illusion makes the cantrip even more effective, and you will have everyone spending their actions disbelieving you.

Transmuter: I've not played one yet, but this is the next character I'm looking at. The spells tend not to have DCs, and so you don't need to hyper optimize. But the benefits are amazing, and (IMO) just keep getting better and better. Both alchemy and the transmuter's stone sound like fun to me.

Abjurer is also fun -- what's neat is that everyone choice naturally leads to a different spell deployment, and so a different build. I've not felt that before, and it's pretty neat.

find something that tickles your fancy, or just start working your way through them alphabetically.

 

[Falling Icicle]

All of the wizard specialists are really good, but my favorite is the Conjurer. Its level 2 ability, Minor Conjuration, is one of the most useful features in the entire game. It turns your wizard into a Swiss army knife. Almost any tool you need is at your fingertips, without having to carry around a laundry list of items in your pack. Want to get out of jail? Since you saw the guard's keys as he walked by, you can conjure a copy of them. Want to "record" a treasure map without stealing it or making a copy? All you have to do is look at it and you can conjure a copy of it whenever you need it. Fighting a werewolf and the fighter doesn't have a silver weapon? Conjure one for him. The uses for this ability are endless. It may not be a super powerful combat ability, but it's so much FUN!

That's just the level 2 feature, and even though I think it's the best thing the conjuration specialty offers, the fun doesn't stop there. Benign Transposition is a life-saving teleportation ability, and it has some great tactical uses. Just imagine the surprised look on that monster's face when it grapples you and suddenly you switch places with the raging barbarian! And you know all of those annoying concentration spells, that your enemies can easily disrupt by hitting you? Well, once you are level 10, that's no longer a problem, at least not for your conjuration spells. You won't really have to worry about your conjured elementals turning on you ever again! And finally, at level 14, your conjured minions get +30 hp. That is just crazy with conjure minor elementals. Summon 8+ mephits with +30hp each. That's an extra 240hp the monsters will have to cut through. It also makes your minions much more likely to survive those pesky fireballs, breath weapons and the like.

Plus, conjuration is one of the largest and most versatile schools, second only to transmutation in size and scope, and it has some of the strongest spells in the game. It has everything from offense to defense to utility. You'll definitely get a lot of mileage out of the half-scribing cost for those spells.

 

[Celtavian]

Depends on what you want to do. I'd read over each one carefully and decide according to what you feel like doing.

Diviner has the cool roll altering ability.
Tranmuter has a cool ability to create a Philosopher's Stone that gives nifty abilities.
Evoker for damage.
Abjuration for defense.

Those are the ones that looked most interesting. All of them seemed to have useful abilities that looked fun. The illusionist would be cool if illusion magic was more interesting. I hope they come up with some better illusion spells that work regardless of whether you touch them or not at some point.

 

[PnPgamer]

I found that abjurationist is the one that can be in the melee, spamming his shield when he is attacked. He can start out with mage armor and keep on shrugging blows with ac of 20-21. Offensively using just cantrips. When he doesnt have shields left, he can still take a hit ot two because of the abjurationist ward.

 

[GlassJaw]

I take it by this you mean Necromancer.

I really like the 5E necromancer, assuming your party is "ok" with it hehe. You can create a lot of pets!

I really want to play a Rock Gnome Necromancer that uses his Tinker ability to create all sorts of surgical devices. Nice and creepy!

I love that halfling diviner idea though!!

 

[machineelf]

Thanks for all the great suggestions! I've decided to go with a gnome divination wizard with a gambling problem. (Although being able to tell the future means it's a profitable problem, usually.) He'll probably get himself into a lot of trouble.

 

[TarionzCousin]

I really like the 5E necromancer, assuming your party is "ok" with it hehe. You can create a lot of pets!

So you really did mean Slytherin.

 

[PnPgamer]

So you really did mean Slytherin.

I think even slytherin was disallowed of creating undead. Death eaters are the guys to go for.not sure though if there even existed magic to create undead.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I think even slytherin was disallowed of creating undead. Death eaters are the guys to go for.not sure though if there even existed magic to create undead.

Inferi.