Diviner Wizard: D&D 2024 Optimisation Guide

Divine your way to success with magical foresight.

Diviners are able to peer into the mists of time and see things of the past, present and future not normally known by mundane means. This can be of incredible value to an adventuring party, allowing the diviner to predict future events and work to prevent their outcomes.

If you’re looking for a wizard that can cast a lot of divination spells as well as alter the outcomes of a few problematic d20 tests each adventuring day, then the diviner is for you.

The diviner subclass has been revised and updated for D&D 2024. Below I’ll take you through tactics and optimisations you can use for your own diviner.

At a glance

A wider range of spells than any other class
Capable of casting more spells than any other class
Cast lots of divination spells
Capable of altering the outcome of important d20 tests

4/5 – The ability to alter d20 tests in your favour is very powerful. Other abilities are smaller in impact, but being able to use many divination spells to get information and tackle some problematic situations make this a strong subclass.

What’s changed in D&D 2024?

Not a lot as the diviner was already a strong wizard subclass in D&D 2014. But it does get a few quality of life improvements which include:

Third eye: Third eye can now be used as a bonus action (so it doesn’t disrupt your main action from being used for spellcasting).
Further darkvision: Darkvision from the third eye feature now reaches further with a 120ft range.
See invisibility: This can now be cast without expending a spell slot while ethereal vision has been removed.

Related articles

Diviner features

Yolande high elf wizard DnD 2024 — Wizard: Wizards of the Coast

Divination savant – Lv3

How it works

Gain a divination spell from the Wizard’s spell list for every level of wizard spell slots you have and gain another divination spell each time you gain a new level of wizard spells. These spells go into your spellbook.

Tactics

The big thing here is picking effective spells. Some of your best options include; true strike, detect magic, detect thoughts, see invisibility, arcane eye, divination, scrying and foresight.

Portent – Lv3

How it works

Roll 2 d20 each long rest that you can use to alter the roll of d20 tests for anyone you can see.

Tactics

This is a fantastic way to nearly guarantee successes (or failures) on a couple of d20 tests each day. Save it for important rolls and plan with your party which types of saving throws might be imposed on enemies that you really want them to fail (save or suck spells, especially without repeat saving throws are great for this, like banishment).
Ideally, you’ll want your d20 rolls to be very high or very low. Middling rolls tend to be less useful (but can still help). Something like heroic inspiration could be used to reroll these if you want a more useful score.
I’d also share with party members which rolls you have so they can help you know if they really need one to help them out. Consider heavy hitting attacks like a rogue’s sneak attack for these types of assists. You don’t want to be spending these dice on something like a single hit from a monk.

Expert divination – Lv6

How it works

Gain back spell slots when you cast divination spells as long as the spell slot is of a lower level than the spell cast.

Tactics

Most divination spells are out of combat spells, but in the right campaign, can be hugely useful in finding information. The problem is they can drain spell slots. This way, you can use these spells and only lose a spell level or 2 on a spell slot rather than an entire spell slot.

The third eye – Lv10

How it works

Use a bonus action to gain one of the following effects until your next rest:

Darkvision
Language comprehension
See invisibility

Tactics

While these are technically situational problems, all of these issues crop up enough that you want to have something available to combat them.
Handily, see invisibility, while a spell, doesn’t use a spell slot. And it’s activated with your bonus action. This means you can see the invisible creature, and still blast them to smithereens with your action if you want as you can still use a levelled spell.

Greater portent – Lv14

How it works

Gain another d20 for your portent feature.

This is one of the most powerful features in the game, and this gives you another use of it making you a very powerful diviner.

How good is the diviner subclass?

Diviners make great team player, information gatherers and are excellent at preventing or causing highly problematic situations.

If you want to be more reliable in combat and find out more information, then this makes a very good subclass.

The natural comparison is with the clockwork sorcery sorcerer who has similar features allowing them to alter die rolls in favour of the players. While portent is extremely reliable, I do think clockwork sorcerers can more regularly impact rolls and the performance of those around them, making them the superior subclass. Diviners do remain a very good option though.

4/5

Building an optimised diviner

Wizard diviner 2024 — Wizard: Wizards of the Coast

Diviners home in on their ability to gather information. While they can also provide buffs, debuffs and some utility, they’re not pigeon-holed into these roles. This allows you to build into whatever type of wizardly focus you want.

Below I’ve put together some advice for building an optimised diviner:

Ability scores

Recommended options

Intelligence: Your primary ability. This will determine the power of your spellcasting and how good you are at some knowledge skills.
Dexterity: Wizards are notoriously fragile. With no kind of armor proficiency, you’ll need some investment in dexterity to protect you. I’d also recommend mage armor or lightly armored for the extra AC. Both will work with your dexterity too.
Constitution: With just a d6 hit dice, wizards are hugely vulnerable! Increasing your constitution where you can will help to mitigate this at least partly.

Options to avoid

Strength: You’ve got almost no use for strength.
Wisdom: Only useful for some skills and saving throws, otherwise, not worth investing in.
Charisma: This is for face skills and there are a bunch of better classes than a wizard for this.

Ability score	Point Buy	Standard Array
Strength	8	8
Dexterity	15	14
Constitution	15	13
Intelligence	15	15
Wisdom	8	12
Charisma	8	10

Skills

Recommended options

Arcana: Common knowledge skill and you have the intelligence to back it up.
History: Another common intelligence skill.
Investigation: Investigation comes up a fair bit and as one of the few intelligence based classes, you’re in a good place to help here.
Nature: This feels like the domain of rangers and druids, but as an intelligence skill, this is another that a wizard is well placed to focus on.
Religion: Unless you have a cleric in the party, religion proficiency can be useful for all that religious lore you need to know.

Options to avoid

Insight: Not a bad skill, but it’s based around wisdom and works alongside face skills, both of which, you’re poor at. So I wouldn’t bother with this on a wizard.
Medicine: Another wisdom based skill and tends to be inferior to a healing spell. I’d prefer either taking a species with light healing like an Aasimar, grabbing some potions or taking the magic initiate cleric origin feat to grab healing word (or just leave healing to others).

Species/race

I’d look for species with the following qualities:

Resilience: You could use your species to make you more durable. Things like extra HP, damage resistances, flight and teleportation will all help you either survive more damage, or get away from danger.
Innate spellcasting: The more spells you have in your repertoire, the more situations you can aid your party with. Innate spellcasting will help you fulfill that role more and often give you free castings of spells too.

Recommended options

Aasimar (2024): Damage resistances make you more durable and some bonus action healing helps you play backup healer (an area of spellcasting wizards happen to be quite poor at). But you’re mainly here for temporary flight which will keep you a lot safer in nasty battles.
Elf (2024): An extra skill and darkvision are both helpful but innate spellcasting is the most useful aspect for a wizard. High Elf is a good option for misty step and an extra cantrip while Drow are good for buffs and debuffs with the likes of faerie fire and darkness.
Gnome (2024): Gnomish cunning is great against magical effects. Minor illusion and speak with animals are good utility options for a utility caster.
Human (2024): If you need to boost your skill proficiencies to take full advantage of all those knowledge skills, then Human’s a good option. The consistent supply of heroic inspiration is useful too, especially as you can use it with your portent feature. I’d use the extra origin feat on the kinds of feats that can be difficult to grab through a compatible background. Things like tough are good for this.
Tiefling (2024): 4 extra spells known is mainly what you’re after here. I’d favour the infernal legacy.

Backgrounds

Backgrounds are much more important now with D&D 2024 with ability score increases, origin feats and skills all now linked to your background.

For a wizard, I’d prioritise intelligence and then one of dexterity or constitution with the below being your best options:

Name	Ability scores	Origin feat	Skill proficiencies	Tool proficiency
Artisan	Strength, dexterity, intelligence	Crafter	Investigation, persuasion	One kind of artisan’s tools
Criminal	Dexterity, constitution, intelligence	Alert	Sleight of hand, stealth	Thieves’ tools
Merchant	Constitution, intelligence, charisma	Lucky	Animal handling, persuasion	Navigator’s tools
Sage	Constitution, intelligence, wisdom	Magic initiate (wizard)	Arcana, history	Calligrapher’s tools
Scribe	Dexterity, intelligence, wisdom	Skilled	Investigation, perception	Calligrapher’s tools

I’d say that sage and scribe are probably your best options. I might have preferred magic initiate from another class for a better range of spells, but more spells from the plentiful wizard’s spell list is not bad thing.

Feats

Origin feats

I’d say the below are your best origin feats for a diviner:

Alert: Wizards will often want to use their first turn in combat blasting off a nice big AoE spell while martials are safely out of the way and before enemies start to split up. This means going early in combat and alert will help with this.
Lucky: Works nicely as a way of not using your more precious portent dice and then having your portent dice as backup if this fails.
Magic initiate: Grab some extra spells known from another spell list (or from your own). Wizards need a good range of spells and grabbing them from a other class list can help you fill any spellcasting gaps in the party (like becoming a backup healer with healing word for instance).
Musician: A generally excellent origin feat for helping your allies out with some heroic inspiration (kind of like a slightly better lucky, you give to your friends). You might actually prefer an ally to take this so you can use the heroic inspiration for your portent rolls.
Skilled: If the party needs a bit more proficiency in knowledge skills, you’re a good candidate for that. This can bump up your number of skill proficiencies a decent bit.
Tough: Really valuable extra hit points if you want a bit more durability.

General feats

At level 4, you can start picking up general feats. These are some of the better options for a wizard:

Fey touched: Misty step is great for staying safe. Plus you get more spells known. You can read my fey-touched guide for more advice.
Lightly armored: If you don’t want to keep spending spell slots on mage armor, then you could invest in this, especially as studded leather and a shield will give you better AC than mage armor.
Mage slayer: Great for disrupting spellcasters and gives you something similar to legendary resistance. If the spellcaster still passes their concentration saving throw, you’ve always got portent to force a failure. And guarded mind can add to your repertoire of guaranteed successes/failures allowing you to use portent for other things.
Resilient: You don’t naturally have proficiency in constitution saving throws, but these are important for maintaining your concentration. You could grab the constitution increase to help here.
Ritual caster: If you feel like you’re struggling to have enough of the spells you want available to you, then this is the best way to boost your utility with more spells gained through this feat than any other. You can check out my full guide to ritual casting for more tips.
Shadow touched: Invisibility and an illusion or necromancy spell are great for a caster class.
Spell sniper: Great for bypassing cover and getting some extra range on your spells.
War caster: Mainly great for better concentration, but there’s a few other benefits here too.

Weapons

If you’ve got a decent dexterity, a light crossbow may do more damage than your cantrips early on. Once you hit level 5 though, cantrips will certainly be outperforming weapon attacks.

Really, the only reason to go with weapons over spells is if you happen to be caught in an anti magic field, a silence spell or something similar. Grab a light crossbow and dagger just in case.

Alternatively, you could use true strike with a light crossbow which would allow you to benefit from using intelligence for the attack, the damage increases from cantrips cast when you’re at higher levels and a better damage type while still getting the damage bonus from your ability score modifier.

Armor

Wizards don’t naturally have proficiency in any armor, which makes them even more vulnerable to attacks. Increasing your dexterity and grabbing the mage armor spell are the easiest way to help here.

Alternatively, you could grab the lightly armored feat for light armor and shield training. Wearing studded leather and a shield will grant you 14 + dexterity modifier AC, while mage armor is a little lower at 13 + dexterity modifier AC (but without the expense of taking a feat).