Wizard Subclasses 5e
Published on December 13, 2024
Get your books out, it’s time to pick a Wizard school! In our guide to Wizard subclasses in Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition, we’ll review each Wizards subclasses, their upsides, and their playstyles.
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Learn more.Your Guide to DnD 5e Wizard Subclasses
The Wizard’s subclass is a defining aspect of their playstyle, dictating how your character interacts with the arcane arts. Your choice of specialty shapes your spell list, your role in the party, and how your Wizard approaches their magical studies, making it one of the most impactful decisions for customizing your character.
Will you be an Evoker who shapes devastating spells with precision, or a Diviner who bends fate and glimpses the threads of destiny? This article breaks down each of the Wizard’s subclasses and provides insight on how to master each arcane tradition!
What is this guide?
This guide is meant as a deep dive into the 5e wizards subclasses. For the full overview of the wizard class, check out our wizard class guide.
To allow you to scan through the options quickly, we use the following color rating scheme:
- Red : Isn’t going to contribute to the effectiveness of your character build at all
- Orange : Situationally good, but a below-average option otherwise
- Green : A good option
- Blue : A great option, you should strongly consider this option for your character
- Sky Blue: An amazing option. If you do not take this option your character would not be optimized
Bladesinger
The Bladesinger subclass provides everything you need to make an effective melee/spellcasting hybrid character. Not only is it loads of fun, it's also quite strong.
Check out our
Bladesinger 5e guide for a more in-depth breakdown of the Bladesinger subclass, including build recommendations, playstyle breakdowns, and an example build.
Chronurgy Magic
Chronurgy Magic Wizards can manipulate the flow of time and bend it to their will. The features this subclass gets access to are all useful and unique.
2nd level
- Chronal Shift: Forcing a creature to reroll their attack, ability check, or saving throw is incredibly strong and is a great use of a Wizard’s reaction, especially since you already get this at 2nd level. What makes this extra cool is that you can use it on allies or enemies and you get to use this ability after seeing if the roll succeeds or fails.
- Temporal Awareness: Your Wizard will likely max out their INT, meaning that you’ll get a huge boost to your initiative roll. Taking your turn before your enemies in a fight is very valuable as you can immediately use some crowd control to give your party an advantage.
6th level
- Momentary Stasis: The nice part of this ability is that it is basically a spell without burning a spell slot. The drawbacks are that many creatures have good CON saves and that it burns an entire action to use. If you fail, you may have been better off just casting a more reliable control or damage spell.
10th level
- Arcane Abeyance: This is a very fun feature. If you know you’ll be fighting soon, there’s really no downside to storing away a spell for later. You could give the spell to your ally so that they can buff themselves, or even to your familiar so you can cast two spells in a single round. In the worst case, you can just hold onto the spell and cast it yourself if you don’t have somebody to give it to.
14th level
- Convergent Future: Chronal Shift is good because it forces a reroll, but this ability literally just lets you decide the outcome. It does cause you to gain one level of exhaustion, but having a single level of exhaustion really isn’t the end of the world.
Graviturgy Magic
Graviturgy Magic Wizards can manipulate gravity and bend it to their will. Not as powerful as Chronurgy, Graviturgy is still quite flavorful with some interesting abilities.
2nd level
- Adjust Density: The effects of this ability certainly don’t justify using your concentration. You would be much better off concentrating on a more powerful spell as the effects are quite situational.
6th level
- Gravity Well: This adds onto the effect of any spell that you land by moving the target 5 feet. It can be combined quite nicely with certain area of effect spells, and can be used to move a creature into or out of harm’s way.
10th level
- Violent Attraction: Increased fall damage is quite situational, but bolstering an ally’s attack is a nice use of your reaction if you have no other use for it on a turn. If you have a high INT modifier the damage will really add up since you can use it many times throughout the day.
14th level
- Event Horizon: Powerful, but risky. Since enemies have to be within 30 feet of you, it’s best to use this if you have good AC, hit points, or at least a fail safe like shield or misty step.
Order of Scribes
An Order of Scribes wizard excels at learning new spells and is at its best when it has a huge spellbook to pull from. If you want to play this subclass, make sure you have a plan on how you will get access to lots of gp and spells to copy.
2nd level
- Wizardly Quill: The best part of this feature is that you can copy spells into your spellbook much faster, though it will still cost gp.
- Awakened Spellbook: Great for role-playing and adds even more utility to spells. Being able to change damage types of your spells on the fly is great if you know that a certain enemy is resistant to a specific damage type. Additionally, sometimes you want to pull off your ritual spells without waiting or burning a spell slot, and this lets you do just that once per day.
6th level
- Manifest Mind: This is a good scouting tool and can be used to maintain oversight of an area. Interestingly, you can cast spells from the location of the Manifest Mind instead of your own, so it’s a great way to set up an ambush or combo if you’re creative.
10th level
- Master Scrivener: Sadly the spell scroll created with this feature cannot be given to anyone, making it essentially a bonus spell slot. Not that that’s a bad thing, it’s just way less powerful than it could be.
14th level
- One with the Word: Advantage on all Arcana checks is perfect for a wizard. Using the secondary effect, mitigating damage by temporarily sacrificing the ability to use certain spells, is really not good unless you have built your character to take advantage of this. The best way to go about this is to collect vast amounts of gp throughout your adventures and use it to copy new spells into your spellbook. The least useful spells can be “burnt” with this ability to avoid damage and you will hopefully still have your good spells to use as normal.
School of Abjuration
The School of Abjuration is a powerful and easy-to-use wizard subclass that focuses on the defensive aspect of spellcasting.
2nd level
- Arcane Ward: Bonus hit points of twice your Wizard level + INT modifier is no joke, especially early in a campaign.
6th level
- Projected Ward: Helping absorb damage for others improves the usefulness of the ward.
10th level
- Improved Abjuration: Adding a flat +4 (and up to +6 beyond 17th level) to your checks for key defensive spells can make quite the impact on your ability to protect yourself and party members. The main determinate of how effective this ability will be is how many spellcasters you run into during your adventures. Abjuration wizards should also notes that D&D is moving toward ‘spell-like abilities’ that aren’t actually spells for monster’s stat blocks, so this ability may get less use as fifth edition evolves.
14th level
- Spell Resistance: Advantage on saving throws against spells and resistance against magic is just amazing in the late game.
School of Conjuration
The School of Conjuration is all about summoning creatures and objects.
2nd level
- Minor Conjuration: You better hope your DM allows shenanigans with this one, as it is only as good as they allow it to be.
6th level
- Benign Transposition: Any form of teleportation is good, though Misty Step is far better since it is a Bonus Action.
10th level
- Focused Conjuration: No more pesky enemies breaking your conjuration concentration is huge, but ideally you wouldn’t get hit in the first place utilizing the wizard’s extensive defensive spells.
14th level
- Durable Summons: Not exciting but helps your summons be tankier later in a campaign by giving them 30 temporary hit points. At high levels this may let your summon live for an extra turn.
School of Divination
Experts in seeing into the future, divination wizards use their abilities to manipulate the battlefield
Check out our
School of Divination 5e guide for a more in-depth breakdown of the School of Divination subclass, including build recommendations, playstyle breakdowns, and an example build.
School of Enchantment
As the name implies, wizards in the School of Enchantment can enchant people and monsters to obey their commands.
2nd level
- Hypnotic Gaze: This feature can get you out of a sticky situation when you are far too close for comfort to an enemy that wants to smash your face in. Ideally, you would use this as a last resort since it only has a range of 5 feet, or to take the strongest enemy out of the fight for a round.
6th level
- Instinctive Charm: Redirect enemy attacks, but they need to be near another enemy and do a saving throw.
10th level
- Split Enchantment: Enchanting two creatures for the price of one literally doubles the effectiveness of single target enchantment spells.
14th level
- Alter Memories: This is only good if you like casting charm spells and is therefore very situational.
School of Evocation
School of Evocation wizards like to blast their enemies with big flashy elemental spells. If want a straightforward damage-dealing mage, this is the one for you.
2nd level
- Sculpt Spells: If you like casting big spells like fireball, something the School of Evocation is known for, this makes sure your allies won’t get singed.
6th level
- Potent Cantrip: Potent Cantrip improves cantrips that require saving throws since they will always at least do half damage. It’s a nice consolation prize since those saving throw cantrips often have secondary effects, though they won’t trigger on a failed save.
10th level
- Empowered Evocation: Adding your INT modifier to damage rolls of evocation spells makes them that much more devastating. This is especially good to power up cantrips or spells like magic missile where the damage would be added to each missile.
14th level
- Overchannel: Another great way to improve your low-level spells that would be outshone in high-level fights. Watch your hit points though.
School of Illusion
The School of Illusion focuses on deception through illusion magic. This subclass requires the most creativity to be effective, as well as a DM that sometimes lets you get away with silly ideas.
2nd level
- Improved Minor Illusion: If you’re creative you’ll get more utility out of your minor illusions by combining sound and image.
6th level
- Malleable Illusions: Again, you’re gonna have to be creative to get the most out of this ability.
10th level
- Illusory Self: “Get out of jail free card” once per short rest if you’re facing down an attack.
14th level
- Illusory Reality: Turn your dreams into reality. The sky’s the limit here.
School of Necromancy
2nd level
- Grim Harvest: Yeah you can regain some hit points, but it doesn’t work with cantrips and you have to deal the killing blow on an enemy. You get more hit points back if the spell is from the School of Necromancy, but these aren’t typically among the best damage dealers.
6th level
- Undead Thralls: You get Animate Dead for free and your undead will be stronger. Perfect for a necromancer.
10th level
- Inured to Undeath: This ability could either save you multiple times in a campaign, or not come up even once. Hit point reduction can be a party killer so at least it’s some insurance against that.
14th level
- Command Undead: Very useful if your enemies are undead, but you will have a harder time if they are intelligent.
School of Transmutation
School of Transmutation Wizards can transform materials at will, manipulating matter into whatever they see fit. Unfortunately this school is relatively weak compared to other wizard subclasses and doesn’t do much to differentiate itself from a regular wizard.
2nd level
- Minor Alchemy: Changing a substance into another substance for 10 minutes is not a riveting prospect.
6th level
- Transmuter’s Stone: The ability to give yourself or a party member a variety of different buffs is the best ability in a Transmutation wizard’s arsenal.
10th level
- Shapechanger: You get polymorph for free and can use it without expending a spell slot, but it can only be cast on yourself and the creature must be a beast whose challenge rating is 1 or lower. This is a huge penalty to the spell and makes it nearly useless in most situations.
14th level
- Master Transmuter: Get instant value from your Transmuter’s Stone, but it can’t be reformed until after a long rest. This is risky and is pretty situational.
War Magic
War Magic wizards are great at keeping themselves in the fight and holding up powerful concentration spells as long as possible.
2nd level
- Arcane Deflection: Shield provides a better bonus to AC, but +4 to a saving throw, if you fail, can make all the difference in the world. Not being able to cast leveled spells for a turn isn’t the worst drawback, just make sure you have some good damage cantrips to fall back on.
- Tactical Wit: Your wizard will likely max out their INT, meaning that you’ll get a huge boost to your initiative roll. Taking your turn before your enemies in a fight is very valuable as you can immediately use some crowd control to give your party an advantage.
6th level
- Power Surge: The idea behind this feature is really neat, though in practice it falls flat. You only gain power surge if you have dispel magic or counterspell and use them successfully. This means you need to be in an area with lots of magic or fighting spell casters for this to even come online. The extra damage from expending a power surge is very low considering the specific circumstances required to get one.
10th level
- Durable Magic: Some of the best spells require concentration, and most higher-level wizards want to constantly be concentrating on a spell when in combat. Durable Magic makes concentration spells so much better by drastically lowering the chance you will break your concentration.
14th level
- Deflecting Shroud: This may be lackluster for a final subclass feature, but it improves Arcane Deflection at no extra cost to you. The damage isn’t much, but at least force damage is rarely resisted.
Sources Used in This Guide
- : 2014 Player's Handbook
- 2024 PHB: 2024 Player's Handbook
- BR: Basic Rules
- GotG: Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants
- SotDQ: Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen
- ERLW: Eberron: Rising from the Last War
- EEPC: Elemental Evil Player’s Companion
- EGtW: Explorer’s Guide to Wildemount
- FToD: Fizban's Treasury of Dragon
- GGtR: Guildmasters' Guide to Ravnica
- MotM: Monsters of the Multiverse
- MToF: Mordenkainen’s Tome of Foes
- MOoT: Mythic Odyessys of Theros
- PAitM: Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse
- PHB: Player's Handbook
- SAiS: Spelljammer: Adventures in Space
- SCoC: Strixhaven: A Curriculum of Chaos
- SCAG: Sword Coast Adventurer’s Guide
- TCoE: Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything
- TTP: The Tortle Package
- WBtW: The Wild Beyond The Witchlight
- : Unearthed Arcana
- VRGtR: Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft
- VGtM: Volo's Guide to Monsters
- XGtE: Xanathar’s Guide to Everything
Other Wizard Guides
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