diviner builds

[Oledirty]

Are divination focused wizards useful/fun to play if so anyone have any input on builds?

[Inevitability]

At level 5, take the Spontaneous Divination feature (Complete Champion) instead of your normal wizard bonus feat. This allows you to cast Divination spells without preparing them.

Arguably, this allows you to cast Divination spells not in your spellbook, or even not on the wizard list at all.

Even if it doesn't, it enables you to cast whatever divination spells a situation requires on the fly, without compromising your versatility when preparing spells. This both prevents running out of combat spells because you prepared so many divinations, and having no flavorful magic.

[Scots Dragon]

Arguably, this allows you to cast Divination spells not in your spellbook, or even not on the wizard list at all.

I wouldn't go quite that far, but it's still well worth taking. There are also in addition to that a few prestige classes that are well-suited to diviners.

The best is probably the divine oracle, available in the book Complete Divine, which grants a whole gaggle of divination bonuses, and even something equivalent to evasion. It's well worth taking all ten levels since you get outright immunity to surprise as a capstone, but even 4-6 levels of it are well worth it. It's also obviously pretty flavourful and fits the theme, which is always a bonus.

The master specialist in Complete Mage is also worth a look. At 4th level it increases the duration of your divination spells, at 7th grants uncanny dodge, and at 10th grants true seeing while divination spells are active, and increases the caster level with specialist spells by +2. Admittedly most of these bonuses are reproduced by the divine oracle, but they do tend to stack.

Also from Complete Mage is the unseen seer. A bit more of a rogue/diviner than an outright diviner, but well worth looking into if you like the idea of that combination.

[Eldariel]

I wouldn't go quite that far, but it's still well worth taking. There are also in addition to that a few prestige classes that are well-suited to diviners.

The best is probably the divine oracle, available in the book Complete Divine, which grants a whole gaggle of divination bonuses, and even something equivalent to evasion. It's well worth taking all ten levels since you get outright immunity to surprise as a capstone, but even 4-6 levels of it are well worth it. It's also obviously pretty flavourful and fits the theme, which is always a bonus.

The master specialist in Complete Mage is also worth a look. At 4th level it increases the duration of your divination spells, at 7th grants uncanny dodge, and at 10th grants true seeing while divination spells are active, and increases the caster level with specialist spells by +2. Admittedly most of these bonuses are reproduced by the divine oracle, but they do tend to stack.

Also from Complete Mage is the unseen seer. A bit more of a rogue/diviner than an outright diviner, but well worth looking into if you like the idea of that combination.

Unseen Seer notably gives you unarguble access to cross-list spells including even the almighty Choose Destiny (needs Persistomancy to truly shine).

[Thurbane]

At level 5, take the Spontaneous Divination feature (Complete Champion) instead of your normal wizard bonus feat. This allows you to cast Divination spells without preparing them.

Arguably, this allows you to cast Divination spells not in your spellbook, or even not on the wizard list at all.

Even if it doesn't, it enables you to cast whatever divination spells a situation requires on the fly, without compromising your versatility when preparing spells. This both prevents running out of combat spells because you prepared so many divinations, and having no flavorful magic.

The ACF was errata'd:


The first sentence should instead read, “You can spontaneously cast any spell you know from the divination school by sacrificing a prepared spell of equal or greater level.”

[gorfnab]

Rogue (or Spellthief with the Master Spellthief (CS) feat) 1/ Wizard (Spontaneous Divination ACF) 5/ Unseen Seer 10/ Divine Oracle (or Arcane Trickster) 4 - Grab the spell Hunter's Eye (PHB II) using the advanced learning from Unseen Seer. The feat Practiced Spellcaster (CA) will offset the non-divination CL penalties of Unseen Seer.

[Inevitability]

The ACF was errata'd:

I blame HPatN20 for my misinformed understanding.