Illusionist Wizard: D&D 2024 (5.5e) Subclass Optimisation Guide

Trick and misdirect with this illusory subclass.

Illusionists are specialists in magical deception and misdirection. They can produce the illusion of reality more quickly and proficiently than other spellcasters. Some illusionists can take this one step further, by turning their illusions into actual reality, if only temporarily.

Expect to gain enhanced illusory spells, summon spectral creatures, use illusions for protection and turn your illusions into temporary physical objects.

The illusionist subclass has been updated in D&D 2024. Below I’ve gone through these changes as well as tactics and optimisations you can use for your illusionist character.

At a glance

A wider range of spells than any other class
Capable of casting more spells than any other class
Cast enhanced illusions
Use illusions to create summons, protect yourself and even create temporary objects

2/5 – While illusionists can do some really unique things with their magic, it tends to be situational and it’s success based too much on a combination of creativity and a generous DM. This makes the illusionist an unreliable subclass, despite it’s potential for cunning and innovation.

What’s changed in D&D 2024?

The illusionist subclass gets a bunch of changes with the revised Player’s Handbook. These include:

Silent spells – You can now cast illusions without using verbal components.
Increased illusion range – Illusions can also be cast further (+60ft to be precise).
Bonus action minor illusions – You can cast minor illusion using a bonus action.
Phantasmal creatures – New feature – You have a new feature that lets you cast summon beast and summon fey as spectral versions of the spells. You can do this without expending a spell slot once per long rest too.
Reusing illusory self – You can now reuse illusory self by expending a level 2+ spell slot.

Related articles

Illusionist features

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

Illusion savant – Lv3

How it works

Gain an illusion spell from the Wizard’s spell list for every level of wizard spell slots you have and gain another illusion 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; disguise self, silent image, blur, invisibility, mirror image, hypnotic pattern, major image, greater invisibility, phantasmal killer, seeming and simulacrum

Improved illusions – Lv3

How it works

Your illusions don’t need verbal components and gain an extra 60ft range. You also gain the minor illusion cantrip which can be cast as a bonus action and can create both a sound and an image in the same casting.

Tactics

Quietly casting illusions can be quite handy, especially as so many of them are just more useful during stealth moments and using your voice can be a dead giveaway.
It will also let you prepare for combat with something like mirror image or blur without giving away your presence. You can cast these spells ahead of combat and then launch a spell before the enemy is aware of your presence.
Extra range can be handy for staying clear of danger.
Minor illusion is an interesting one. The fact you can cast it as a bonus action means it becomes a viable combat spell. But making this work requires creativity and a willing DM. For instance, you could make a crashing noise and show the illusion of a broken heirloom that might distract an enemy. Or perhaps the whispering sounds of eldritch beings or spellcasting that could provide a distraction. There are limitations here though. The illusion must be an object for instance. I think your mileage here may depend more on your DM though.

Phantasmal creatures – Lv6

How it works

Have summon beast and summon fey as prepared spells and cast a spectral version of them each once per long rest but with half the hit points.

Tactics

While a half hit point summon may feel a little underwhelming in combat, it could make a solid utility option, especially as you can cast them without verbal components (at least when cast without a spell slot).
This means you could sneakily distract a guard with a teleporting fey creature while your beast could fly around the room creating a disturbance while you sneak past.
Usually, if you want to use these spells in combat though, I’d cast them with a spell slot (or accept that they might only last a single turn).

Illusory self – Lv10

How it works

When you’re hit by an attack roll, you can use your reaction to cause the attack to miss, interposing an illusory self between you and the attacker. This can be used once per short rest free or by expending a level 2+ spell slot.

Tactics

Really handy safety feature that’s more potent than something similar like the shield spell as it guarantees a miss.
This makes it well worth the level 2 spell slot cost in my opinion.
I’d tend to use it more against high damage attacks, especially critical hits.
But it won’t protect you from saving throws or other effects that don’t require a roll to hit.
Some monsters do have conditions baked into their hits. In these cases, this can be a good way to avoid the hit and the condition altogether.

Illusory reality – Lv14

How it works

Turn a non-magical, inanimate object, that’s part of an illusion you’ve created, into something real for a minute.

Tactics

The example given here is a bridge, which is pretty big. This gives a fair bit of licence to manifest something substantial, with only the limits on the spell for the size of the object.
It only lasts a minute though so there are definite limitations.
This has broad reaching potential though. First off, we need to determine what illusions can create inanimate objects. These spells include; minor illusion, silent image, major image, hallucinatory terrain, programmed illusion and mirage arcane.
Some example uses might involving using minor illusion to create a key to get through a door or a precious gem to sell. For something much bigger, mirage arcane could create a temporary castle if you wanted (assuming that if a bridge is one object, then so is a castle). You could also just create a bridge…
There’s a lot of uses possible here, and like much of what the illusionist does, much is up to your creativity and what your DM will allow.
Some questions marks remain over whether disguise self could work (is a disguise an object)? I’d probably rule that it’s multiple objects, but you could make part of it real perhaps.

How good is the illusionist subclass?

The illusionist is a really difficult subclass to assess, because other than illusory self, the impact of its features are heavily down to the DM’s decisions and the player’s creativity. At its worst, you could end up with a load of features that have little impact on the game. Or you could have a bunch of features that can have really fun and unique effects.

Sadly, I think this makes the subclass too situational to be consistently useful. If you’re keen to play an illusionist though, I imagine you could have a lot of fun with one. But first, I’d speak to your DM and see how they might rule certain situations to gauge whether this subclass will be a fulfilling or frustrating experience.

2/5

Building an optimised illusionist

Wizard diviner 2024 — Wizard: Wizards of the Coast

Like all wizards, illusionists are capable of casting powerful spells as well as having many utility options up their sleeves. However, they shine in stealth situations with a bunch of illusions available to help them sneak around. Silent casting of illusions will help them here too.

Often, these can be used to distract and misdirect, but spells like invisibility are great for straightforward sneaking about.

In this section I’ve put together advice on building a well-optimised illusionist:

Ability scores

Recommended options

Intelligence: Your most important ability score, used for enhancing your spellcasting and for your knowledge skills.
Dexterity: You’ll need this to have any kind of decent AC. You should grab the mage armor spell or the lightly armored feat to complement this and enhance your AC further. Dexterity will also help you sneak around more quietly.
Constitution: Wizards have the smallest hit dice in the game making them highly susceptible to damage. Upping constitution where you can will help make your character a bit more durable.

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 mostly for face skills which wizards aren’t that great at.

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.
Stealth – Wizards don’t come with natural stealth, but illusion spells are great for this. Grabbing a species that can help you be more stealthy will help you out in this area.

Recommended options

Aasimar (2024): Damage resistances make you more durable. 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 for stealth, especially perception. Innate spellcasting is the most useful aspect for a wizard though. You might want to consider a Wood Elf to get pass without trace, but High Elf and Drow are both good options too.
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 want to be a competent stealth class, then the extra skill will allow you to grab something like stealth, sleight of hand or perception proficiency. You could even use the extra origin feat to pick up skilled and get even more skill proficiencies. The consistent supply of heroic inspiration is useful too.
Tiefling (2024): 4 extra spells known is mainly what you’re after here.

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

For an illusionist, I’d probably recommend the criminal background for the stealth and sleight of hand proficiency.

Feats

Origin feats

I’d say the below are your best origin feats for an evoker:

Alert: Get nasty AoE spells cast on your foes before your martial friends get in the way.
Lucky: Invoking advantage and disadvantage is always handy. Make sure your spells land and that enemy attacks don’t.
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).
Skilled: Pick up some stealth skills (or any other skills you like) to best make use of some sneaky illusions.
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.
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

Weapon attacks might be stronger than cantrips at low levels, but your spell attacks will be more accurate. And by level 5, your cantrips should be outperforming a light crossbow.

I’d grab a light crossbow and a dagger in case you get caught in an anti-magic field, a silence spell or something similar. Otherwise, you should be wholly focused on magical damage.

You could grab true strike for the best of both worlds, allowing you to make a weapon attack using your intelligence modifier, while increasing its damage as you gain levels.

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 is the easiest way to enhance your AC.

Alternatively, you could grab the lightly armored feat for light armor and shield training. The best setup for this (studded leather and a shield) will grant you 1 extra AC than mage armor and won’t require spell slots.