Philosopher Wizard: Crooked Moon D&D 5e Optimisation Guide

Draw on the powers of creation and destruction with this surprisingly alchemical subclass.

At a glance

Philosopher features

Alchemical knowledge (Lv3) – 1/5

Proficiency in alchemist’s supplies is a minor ribbon feature and the ability to use them to craft magic items is even less impactful. It’s a practical ability though for capabilities that come later in the subclass.

Quintessence (Lv3) – 3/5

This gives you the opportunity to spend less on material components for spells and crafting. This is kind of decent. I’d definitely recommend going about scribing spell scrolls as much as you can for this reason if you’re playing a philosopher. The other capability is to turn spell damage into force damage which can be quite good for bypassing resistances with your best spells (like fireball).

Killing enemies using dissolution is a problem though. It requires using a very specific spell and doing so in melee range which means putting your vulnerable wizard in harms way. Fortunately, there’s another way to create quintessence and that’s by using dissolution on small or larger objects.

This does put you in a position where you’re going to need to go around finding excuses to dissolve stuff which might annoy a bunch of people and be a bit of a roleplaying drag. It is the safest way to build up your supply of quintessence though. As pointed out in the comments, 1sq. yard of canvas costs 1sp and counts as a small object so carrying around rolls of canvas could be an easy way to overcome the quintessence limitations.

The alternative is dissolving dead bodies at the end of an encounter (which will usually count as small or larger objects) or coming in near the end of a combat to finish off the odd enemy on low hit points.

Albedo (Lv6) – 5/5

This allows you to essentially upcast your spells to levels normally not available to you and without expending higher spell slots. You’ll never be upcasting by more than 2 spell slots higher than your maximum spell level, but it does give you a great excuse to upcast things like summons and AoE spells while preserving your higher spell slots.

This makes your quintessence more worthwhile maintaining and you’ll obviously want a high intelligence to increase your quintessence capacity (though as a wizard, you should be keeping this high anyway).

Citrinitas (Lv10) – 3/5

Creation and fabricate can get around some practical problems you might face. They can be a bit limited by size and duration, but duration can be helped with the use of quintessence at least. Your mileage may depend on how flexibly your DM lets you use these spells though.

Rubedo (Lv14) – 5/5

You’ll need 20 intelligence for this to even work and it has more uses for your quintessence. The main things are amplified spells so the DC of a spell increases by up to 2. Interestingly, this works against all who make the saving throw (not just one target as many similar features will do). There’s also an automatically passed saving throw when you roll a failure. This will cost 5 quintessence so you’ll struggle to ever do this more than twice an encounter (and even then, you’ll need to replenish your quintessence a lot for that to work).

These are really good features. I’d tend to use equivalent exchange more sparingly, mainly for emergencies (and not against something like the poisoned condition). It will quickly eat up your quintessence which will rapidly diminish your power levels in combat. The increased DC is great for blasting really important save or suck spells at enemies.

How good is the philosopher subclass?

The philosopher is kind of fiddly as you actually need to go about doing other activities to obtain your resources. But it is an incredible resource with some very powerful options. This makes it well worth maintaining and topping up constantly.

However, I think I’d have preferred that they do what most expendable features do and simply have you distill more quintessence during rests. Not only would this remove the fiddly nature of the feature, but also balance the uneven regeneration of quintessence uses. As it stands, it’s too easy to simply have the maximum amount of quintessence between encounters.

It’s also an odd design choice to basically lock the level 14 feature from any wizard without 20 intelligence. This usually won’t be a problem, but could be frustrating for some builds.

Fiddliness aside, these are some really strong features. Better spell save DCs, a form of legendary resistance, upcasting without higher spell slots and changing spell damage type are all really good. Perhaps even a bit too good. Not game-breakingly good, but maybe enough that other subclasses feel a bit weak in comparison.

I do have a thematic issue with the subclass. Philosopher’s like to talk and consider and debate. But this philosopher is none of those things. Instead, they are an alchemist. Perhaps the naming was to avoid confusion with the artificer subclass, but philosopher makes no sense to me based on what they can do.

Overall, the philosopher is a top tier subclass from a mechanical point of view so gets top marks. Be aware though that it edges slightly into overpowered territory and that it is fiddly to maintain your resources. I think they could have tightened up the design a bit on this one.

5/5

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Building a philosopher wizard

Philosophers mostly fit the typical stereotype of dedicated spellcasting wizards. As such, you can build your philosopher in much the same way you can any wizard. If you want a full breakdown on how to do this using D&D 2024 character options, you can check out my wizard optimisation guide.

As this is a Crooked Moon subclass, I’ve just looked at character options in the Crooked Moon book and given advice on which work well for this wizard subclass.

Species/race

Below are some of The Crooked Moon species that I think have the best synergy with the philosopher:

• Ashborn: Some extra spells to cast is nice and there’s a couple of good options too. Darkvision is always useful and diverting attacks is helpful for some much needed resilience. The scorpion sting is a bit useless for a wizard, but there’s enough here without that.
• Azureborn: Flight is really handy for staying safe from melee specialists, especially for a ranged build. Guidance and augury are both good spells and augury can be cast again by a wizard. Enhanced initiative for the party is good on any class.
• Harvestborn: More damage against bloodied creatures works nicely for a class that can focus on damage dealing. Bonus action healing is the other useful thing here. You don’t have a lot occupying your bonus action so this gives you an option to help the party.
• Silkborn: A couple of decent spells here. The occasional AC enhancement works well as you shouldn’t be attacked loads, but this should prevent a hit every encounter which is likely. Climbing will allow you to get somewhere a bit safer, including a ceiling, and cast your spells from some relative safety.

Backgrounds

Unlike the Player’s Handbook, Crooked Moon backgrounds give you a choice of any ability scores to increase. Based primarily on the origin feats and proficiencies, I’d recommend the following backgrounds for a philosopher:

Name	Ability scores	Origin feat	Skill proficiencies	Tool proficiency
Crossroads gambler	Any	Fate gambler	Deception, insight	One kind of gaming set
Cultist	Any	Cult initiate	Arcana and one other	Calligrapher’s supplies
Druskenvald dweller	Any	Any	Survival and one other	Choose one
Experiment	Any	Altered	Intimidation, medicine	Alchemist’s supplies
Scholar of the forbidden	Any	Dread speech	Arcana, intimidation	Calligraoher’s supplies
Wicker weaver	Any	Charm twister	Insight, nature	Weaver’s tools

Feats

I’d consider the following feats for a philosopher:

• Altered: Natural armor will always be good as it accomplishes what mage armor does without using a spell slot or needing to be prepared. Night vision might be a good choice if you don’t already have darkvision.
• Charm twister: Bless is a good buff and you can repeat cast it. Twisted hex can be situational to engineer, but if you can plant it in the right place, then that disadvantage can be a real pain.
• Cult initiate: More spells to cast and an extra level 1 casting is good. The warlock list isn’t the biggest, but there’s still some good options in there. I might generally favour magic initiate if possible though.
• Dread speech: Bane is a pretty good debuff and frightened with a bonus action is a decent option too.
• Fate gambler: It’s probably saving throws you’ll be forcing most out of this list. The heroic inspiration will be handy, as will the temporary hit points for some extra resilience.
• Swift witchcraft: There aren’t many 1 minute spells that would really benefit from being cast as an action, but you could do a lot with Leomund’s tiny hut and magic circle this way (as lower level examples).

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