Good spells for a Wizard with this particular party composition?

[Coidzor]

So I've got a longbow-wielding Half-Elf Ranger with Colossus Slayer, a Protection Style Eldritch Knight Half-Orc, a Tiefling Pact of the Tome Undying Patron Warlock, and a Green Dragonborn Druid that I believe is Circle of the Moon and has been mostly wildshaping and saving their spells for healing.

I'm playing a School of Illusion Human Wizard and have so far tried to go mostly for control and use Minor Illusion to create distractions as much as possible up to now, and use my raven familiar to Help in combat and scout once or twice through its eyes, since I found out a bit too late in getting things together that familiars are dumb as a box of rocks in this edition.

Just had a phenomenal combat facing off a pair of Hill Giants with some allied NPCs where one of the Hill Giants managed to fail 15 saving throws in a row over the course of the combat between when it started with me winning initiative and hitting it with Hideous Laughter so that it only stopped laughing after weathering two rounds worth of attacks from every other creature still in the combat, just in time to die from the last creature to attack it before the first turn it could actually do something.

Using the spoils from that, I taught our Warlock how to add Find Familiar to his tome so that he could use it as a ritual and get himself a bat familiar, and then we rolled into Waterdeep to sell off the treasure we had acquired and buy our Fighter a suit of Plate armor.


Cantrips:
Firebolt
Minor Illusion
Prestidigitation
Ray of Frost (starting to regret that one, might talk to the DM about switching it for Frostbite or a utility cantrip)

Also one that I still have to pick for leveling up.

First Level:
Detect Magic
Find Familiar
Fog Cloud
Grease
Hideous Laughter
Mage Armor
Magic Missile
Silent Image
Sleep

Second Level:
Acid Arrow(tentatively learned from a scroll, considering not learning it and instead keeping the scroll to trade for another spell)
Flaming Sphere
Phantasmal Force
Scorching Ray
Skywrite(learned to use as a ritual to communicate with our Cloud Giant Wizard friend who is playing party taxi for us)

Third Level: (not settled on yet)
Fireball (seems too tempting/necessary to need to take out a lot of dudes at once so far in this adventure)
Hypnotic Pattern (Because I want to have an illusion spell and some crowd control, but Major Image seems to be one to grab in a bit when I can make better use of it with Illusory Reality and my school's ability to change it into a different illusion)


So far our main tactic has been for our Fighter to charge forward and either attack the enemy with Advantage from my Raven helping him or sometimes Thunderwave them after getting into the thick of them, and give disadvantage to the occasional attack directed at our Druid who is following along behind him or our Ranger if the enemy gets close too fast. Our Ranger will typically plink away at a distance, and our Warlock is mostly alternating between doing the same with Eldritch Blast and using Vicious Mockery if there's a particularly nasty enemy that we don't want hitting us, but has a tendency to get a bit too close to the action, partially due to having Hellish Rebuke.

I tended to use Sleep a lot but its time in the sun has ended except for maybe mopping up towards the end of a fight, but I've managed to gain some minor tactical advantage out of Grease and in our last fight as I said, Hideous Laughter performed amazingly well, largely due to the Hill Giant rolling poorly and not being very wise either. Other than that, I've largely been reduced to blasting or occasionally getting a bit of play out of Minor Illusion as a distraction, since I haven't had many good opportunities to set up Silent Image.


Edit: We're doing Storm King's Thunder, btw, but I'd prefer to avoid spoilers of course. So far we've encountered goblinoids, humans, orcs, giants, dragons, and guys mounted on flying monsters, and at least the giants will be recurring enemies, presumably with goblinoid allies/slaves given the trend so far.


Edit 2: Looks like I'll be able to buy some scrolls in Waterdeep for 60 gp for a 1st level scroll, 120 gp for a 2nd level scroll, or 200 gp for a 3rd level scroll.

I'm tentatively going to have around 500 to 680 gp after selling off our loot and pooling our gold to buy our Fighter Plate Armor before splitting the rest.

So suggestions for which spells to get via scrolls or by paying a wizard to let me copy from their spellbook would be appreciated.

Completely forgot to see if I can copy any spells from our Giant Wizard friend(?) Zephyros (he seems to like us anyway) and how much that might cost.

I believe I can persuade one of our quest-givers who is a Wizard-type to let me learn Misty Step, Suggestion, Fly, and/or Lightning Bolt from her, so scrolls of those spells are lower priority right now. Possibly might learn more of her spellbook, but she's a 6th level spellcaster.

[Ninja_Prawn]

It looks like you've got things set up pretty nicely. The overall scheme with two tough melee fighters and a wizard with plenty of control options should be enough to contain most foes so the ranger and warlock can blast them. Against foes that don't need much containment, I can see how you would feel a little redundant, but I'm wondering: have you faced many flying enemies yet? How would the fighter & druid deal with them? Might be worth you picking up Earthbind, just in case.

At the end of the day, I see wizards as being the kings of 'just in case'. Spells like Feather Fall and See Invisibility generally don't justify the opportunity cost for other people to pick them, but for a wizard, that isn't an issue. Rituals like Comprehend Languages, Identify and Rary's Telepathic Bond are sensible picks, too.

Apart from the druid, the party might be lacking in out-of-combat utility, which you can also help with (à la Skywrite). Though from that post it sounds like the campaign is a bit of a slugfest, so maybe that's not necessary.

[Coidzor]

It looks like you've got things set up pretty nicely. The overall scheme with two tough melee fighters and a wizard with plenty of control options should be enough to contain most foes so the ranger and warlock can blast them. Against foes that don't need much containment, I can see how you would feel a little redundant, but I'm wondering: have you faced many flying enemies yet? How would the fighter & druid deal with them? Might be worth you picking up Earthbind, just in case.

Managed to talk our way around the last two fights like that, but I had been wondering about it. I'll look into nabbing some anti-air now though, definitely. Thank you.


At the end of the day, I see wizards as being the kings of 'just in case'. Spells like Feather Fall and See Invisibility generally don't justify the opportunity cost for other people to pick them, but for a wizard, that isn't an issue. Rituals like Comprehend Languages, Identify and Rary's Telepathic Bond are sensible picks, too.

Yeah, definitely going to pick up some rituals(so few of them now that I'm actually looking for them!) and some more utility depending upon whether I can pay others to copy spells from or have to hunt down scrolls.

Not sure if I quite grok the role of Identify in this edition, though, since you can find out about magic items just by looking at them intensely and neither using the Identify spell nor studying the object will reveal if it's cursed as I understand it. :smallconfused:


Apart from the druid, the party might be lacking in out-of-combat utility, which you can also help with (à la Skywrite). Though from that post it sounds like the campaign is a bit of a slugfest, so maybe that's not necessary.

So far, yeah. There's been one fight where the book apparently expected us to go all hit and run tactics and Home Alone on a bunch of orcs but instead we just fought them, but otherwise it's largely been fairly direct combat, a bit of exploration, and two situations where we were able to successfully use our words instead of have a fight.

Not sure how much of that is how our DM is running Storm King's Thunder and how much is Storm King's Thunder itself.

[Ninja_Prawn]

Not sure if I quite grok the role of Identify in this edition, though, since you can find out about magic items just by looking at them intensely and neither using the Identify spell nor studying the object will reveal if it's cursed as I understand it. :smallconfused:

It's a bit DM-dependent. I use the 'can't identify without Identify' variant rule in my games, and I'm currently playing a diviner under another DM who tries to make the spell useful. It does have the second part about learning what spells are currently affecting a creature or object, as well.

A while back I ran an encounter where Identify could have changed the whole tactical picture, but the wizard in question opted not to use it. Basically, a monster attacked them, but it was motivated to do so because it was under a Geas. I hinted to them via NPCs that something was up and they cast Detect Magic, so they know it was under the influence of some kind of enchantment, but they don't know which spell. I think they assumed it was domination, but if they'd known it was a Geas, they could have turned the encounter into a non-combat one and opened up a bit of hidden plot and a different path to their long-term objective.

[Coidzor]

It's a bit DM-dependent. I use the 'can't identify without Identify' variant rule in my games, and I'm currently playing a diviner under another DM who tries to make the spell useful. It does have the second part about learning what spells are currently affecting a creature or object, as well.

A while back I ran an encounter where Identify could have changed the whole tactical picture, but the wizard in question opted not to use it. Basically, a monster attacked them, but it was motivated to do so because it was under a Geas. I hinted to them via NPCs that something was up and they cast Detect Magic, so they know it was under the influence of some kind of enchantment, but they don't know which spell. I think they assumed it was domination, but if they'd known it was a Geas, they could have turned the encounter into a non-combat one and opened up a bit of hidden plot and a different path to their long-term objective.

I suppose it would at that, though most people don't seem to prepare Detect Magic or Identify even if they take them as rituals, so they'd have had to have played things in a very particular sort of way with regards to the spoiler.

But, as long as you're not finishing someone off with a spell or ranged attack, you can always just knock people out, I suppose, and then use it to figure out what's what.

[Ninja_Prawn]

But, as long as you're not finishing someone off with a spell or ranged attack, you can always just knock people out, I suppose, and then use it to figure out what's what.

In theory, yes, but the monster disengaged and retreated once it got sufficiently wounded (and it had fulfilled its Geas obligations). Being an aquatic creature and the PCs being on a boat, pursuit would have been difficult and indeed, didn't occur to them. The wizard is a non-violent pacifist, that's why she had both Detect Magic and Identify prepared.

[Coidzor]

In theory, yes, but the monster disengaged and retreated once it got sufficiently wounded (and it had fulfilled its Geas obligations). Being an aquatic creature and the PCs being on a boat, pursuit would have been difficult and indeed, didn't occur to them. The wizard is a non-violent pacifist, that's why she had both Detect Magic and Identify prepared.

Ahh...

Yeah... I don't think I'll ever prepare Identify or Detect Magic unless I get some advance notice that I'll need one or the other of them on short notice, given that they're rituals.

Interesting idea, though.

I think I've decided upon Mage Hand for my new cantrip, in order to combine Mage Hand and Minor Illusion and my School of Illusion abilities so that I can create an illusion of a creature that is "carrying" the torch that I'll be Mage Handing along in front of us so that at least one attack is eaten by an illusion instead of us when it comes to ambushes.

[si1foo]

identify if your dm isn't home ruling it is the best spell because it tells you what you are dealing with cursed item, poisoned teammate

for third level haste is just good to have your ranger and fighter will hump your leg trying to get you to use it on them

blink is a good choice if you find your self getting hurt in combat often

counterspell, phantom steed, sending, lightning bolt, Leomund's tiny hut

there is alot of great spells wizards can get you have a druid and a warlock so your more the support caster of the group but yeah fireball is just useful

[busterswd]

I'd highly recommend picking up Shield, especially if you can just buy the scroll. You have very few defensive spells, and you're at the level where, while you can't QUITE be free with your level 1 spells yet, you've got a lot more leeway. And the nice part is it's a reaction, so you'll only use the spell slot when you need it.

Similar argument for Counterspell; once you have more playroom with your level 3 slots, it's the sort of spell that's good to have prepared just in case you end up needing it. The Warlock can learn it too, but he's got a lot less leeway with his spells in combat. That being said, Fireball and Hypnotic Pattern are nice, solid choices. Hypnotic Pattern in particular plays great with your party; you've got some very solid single target damage, and you'll be able to focus fire well with it. Also keep in mind: the druid can help out your aoe with Erupting Earth, if need be.

I believe the campaign ends before you can snag Illusory Reality, so may be best to not make long term plans based around that.

[sir_argo]

Haste
Counterspell
Fly
Darkness (if your warlock has Devil's Sight)
Levitate


I want to say something about Levitate. It is an underrated spell. It works both for defense and offense. If fighting some foes without ranged attacks, you can make yourself immune to attack by levitating out of reach. This works better if you're a damage dealer, because your concentration is now occupied by Levitate, and most damage spells do not require concentration. But it also is a nifty attack spell. Unlike many other attack spells that grant a saving throw every round, Levitate only allows a save at the beginning. If your target fails, you can lift it off the ground by a mere 6 inches and now they're stuck. Lift an Umber Hulk off the ground 6 inches and he's now toast. He has no ranged attack and your ranger can just casually pin cushion him. You'd be amazed just how many creatures have no method of ranged attack.

[Ninja_Prawn]

I'm surprised I forgot Counterspell. It's kind of obvious and if the warlock doesn't pick it (which they probably won't), none of your allies can provide the same functionality, so it's something they ought to be thankful for.

[Coidzor]

So grabbing Earthbind to deal with fliers, Identify to use in a pinch, Comprehend Languages for the sake of rituals, Levitate for utility and potentially immobilizing a big nasty, and Shield for personal defense seem like priorities at this juncture.

That'd add up to 420 for all of those if doing it just via Scroll pricing.

Maybe Sending to summon our cloud giant friend more immediately than Skywrite or at night. That'd bring it up to 620 total cost, leaving me a moderate amount of gold in reserve. Maybe Counterspell, but I think I might take that when I level up next.