Divination Specialist Wizard Help

[Albanymusicfund]

Dear Gianttip community members,

I hope you are doing well. I was writing because I am currently playing a Divination Specialist Wizard (with Illusion and Necromancy banned), and I seem to struggle in bringing out his full-potential. He is currently level seven, and I have tried sticking with core-spells to avoid the crazy shenanigans of an optimized wizard. However, playing with him some more, I've noticed that his divination spells have not been as effective as I originally imagined. I was hoping for some advice from players familiar with the subject on how to better his divinatory efficacy. I am happy to employ some non-core spells to this end, as long as they do not cause my wizard to outshine, at least in terms of damage output, his somewhat unoptimized melee party-mates.

Any tips for making my Divination Specialist Wizard better?

Best,
AlbanyMusicFund

[Biggus]

What are you mainly wanting to use divination to do?

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

First of all, a specialist Diviner only needs to give up one school of magic, unlike all the other specialist wizards. Unless you've taken Incantatrix or something else that adds another prohibited school.

The problem with divinations is that there's not really any offensive options, and very few defensive options. It's best uses are to counter opponents' sense-affecting abilities (invisibility, etc.), solve noncombat challenges, or to gain information to be better prepared for future combat encounters. Even then, the latter can be accomplished at no cost of daily resources with a Third Eye: Sense (https://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/items/universalItems.htm#sense). If you want to use divination spells to attack, consider Permanency on a Detect Magic with Snowcasting, Flash Frost Spell, Fell Drain and/or Fell Frighten, etc. applied. All you need to do is concentrate on that to use it, and you can take the Swift Concentration skill trick to use it as a swift action once per encounter.

Generally a Wizard will want to buff his allies, debuff and/or crowd control opponents, and let the other party members be the damage dealers. So try to focus mostly on doing that stuff, and your party will feel like they're all doing great. I found this, scroll down a few posts to the divination section. (http://web.archive.org/web/20150403024721/http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=394.20) The entire thread from the beginning is the stuff of legends.

[ngilop]

I think that perhaps you are not quite understanding a divination specialists 'schtick' really is.

Knowledge: as my saturday morning cartoons taught me anything its that knowing is half the battle, cuz knowledge is power.

A divinization specialist is all about being proactive and preemptive; you know you gotta go into the Labyrinth of Ineth the Mad you retrieve the Kismet Inscriptions.

You use Ccntact Other plane to find out what obstacles you might encounter, legend lore to learn about NOUNS in the dungeon. scry to see whats a going on with said NOUNS and then relay all that information to the rest of the party so they can optimally prepare for the trek to obtain the Kismet Inscriptions.


if you are wanting to blow things up, divination spells are not going to be doing that.

[Albanymusicfund]

I think that perhaps you are not quite understanding a divination specialists 'schtick' really is.

Knowledge: as my saturday morning cartoons taught me anything its that knowing is half the battle, cuz knowledge is power.

A divinization specialist is all about being proactive and preemptive; you know you gotta go into the Labyrinth of Ineth the Mad you retrieve the Kismet Inscriptions.

You use Ccntact Other plane to find out what obstacles you might encounter, legend lore to learn about NOUNS in the dungeon. scry to see whats a going on with said NOUNS and then relay all that information to the rest of the party so they can optimally prepare for the trek to obtain the Kismet Inscriptions.


if you are wanting to blow things up, divination spells are not going to be doing that.

I think that perhaps you are not quite understanding my situation. I'm level seven and have no access to any of those spells you mentioned.

[Albanymusicfund]

What are you mainly wanting to use divination to do?

Information-gathering, espionage, and rumor-learning.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Information-gathering, espionage, and rumor-learning.

I think you want to invest in Gather Information. Get a Cleric 3+ to cast Guidance of the Avatar (https://web.archive.org/web/20171028122100/http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/sb/sb20010504a) on you for that.

There's Locate Object (2nd), Clairaudience/Clairvoyance (3rd), and Arcane Eye, Locate Creature, and Scrying (4th) in the core rules. Divinations from splatbooks seem to be mostly niche uses, like sneak attacking immune creature types, overcoming spell resistance, etc. This is partially why the spontaneous divination ACF is so good. There's Omen of Peril, but that's not on any arcane lists. Again, the Third Eye: Sense is going to be the most useful way to get information, which is too expensive to get for a while, but anyone can use it. A Wand of Clairaudience/Clairvoyance created by a Trapsmith so it's priced as a 1st level spell is extremely economical, though.

[Erik the Green]

Our gracious host has 3 interesting divinations in the thread https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?172910-Articles-Previously-Appearing-on-GiantITP-com. Sense of Timing is a 7th level Sor/Wiz spell that grants one subject the privilege of not provoking attacks of opportunity for rounds/cl plus Combat Reflexes for the duration. Not what you were asking, but could be situationally useful. Terrible Secret and Terrible Revelation though are Bard 6 Sor/Wiz 5 and Sor/Wiz 9 spells respectively that attack 1 target or everyone within medium range (except those you exclude) by delivering information so terrible that it causes damage, up to 15d6 vs Will (1/2) and clearly not Mind-affecting. Ironically, smarter creatures have less of a chance of saving successfully because they must add their Int modifier to the DC. Hope they are of some use-E

[Inevitability]

Vision of Punishment (Champions of Valor) might be a fun divination if you're a goody two-shoes. Sanctified, so any prepared caster can learn it, swift action, and a very powerful two-round debuff that hampers the foe even if they made their save. Plus, it's only 1st-level!

[Biggus]

Information-gathering, espionage, and rumor-learning.

There aren't many outside of core in that case. A couple worth looking at:

Circle Dance (SpC)

Spymaster's Coin (CSco)