Playing a wizard in D&D can be a lot of fun due to the vast amount of flexibility you can access. Each game day your spell selection can be changed to fit your party's need, and your ability to make scrolls and convert scrolls to new spells in your spellbook can give you a huge repertoire. However, a wizard isn't going to cast as many spells per day as a sorcerer, but a specialist can cast extra spells at the expense of giving up access to two schools of magic. Today's guide will focus on some tips for choosing the specialization and prohibited schools that suit your needs. This guide focuses only on the Player's Handbook.
Abjurer
Abjuration is the school of defense. There are a lot of AC and damage prevention spells in this school. At low levels, you get the protection spell, which is a very effective defensive buff not only at low levels, but it remains effective up to the mid levels. The resist energy spell is also a great spell to have when facing opponents that deal elemental damage. In the mid levels, you get access to dispel magic, which is useful for negating enemy buffs and ongoing area effects, as well as magic circle which allows you to grant the effects of the protection spell to a number of allies at once. You can cast magic circle on the party tank or melee striker, and everyone within 10ft of your melee fighter gets a defense buff, allowing two or three allies to gang up on one enemy and all be protected by a single spell. In addition, the protection and magic circle spells grant additional benefits other than just an AC bonus. They prevent mind control effects, and can potentially stop summoned creatures from even touching the protected character. A little later in the mid levels, you gain access to one of my favorite defensive buffs: stoneskin. While stoneskin does carry a component cost of 250g per casting, it's an affordable cost once the party is high enough level to cast the spell.
Abjuration can be a very effective defensive buffer. If you're going to be an abjurer, I'd recommend giving up illusion, because it's spells are almost entirely defensive, and you've already got a lot of defense in abjuration. Picking a second prohibited school is difficult. I'd recommend either evocation or necromancy. Evocation contains both offensive and defensive spells. You can afford to give up the defense, and if you lose a little offense along the way, well... wizards shouldn't be blasters (see lesson 2-1). Necromancy is primarily a debuff school, and if you're already buffing defense, you don't really need to debuff the enemy too (though it would be very effective), but as a wizard, your goal should be to accomplish as much as you can by casting as few spells as possible.
Conjurer
I'm currently playing a conjurer, because conjuration is the school of utility. Need an extra fighter, something to carry a lot of stuff, or a mount? Summon something. Want to make your rogue happy? Put that summon in a flanking position. Conjuration has a lot of battlefield control options. You can cast a number of spells that can grant concealment or hinder movement in a large area, forcing opponents to take the path you want them to take, or fight on your terms. Conjuration also has access to the teleport spells, giving you exceptional movement ability.
When I played a conjurer I gave up abjuration and enchantment. Abjuration because it's pretty much pure defense, and playing my wizard as a controller, I wasn't worried as much about defensive buffs. I decided my second choice would be enchantment or illusion, and I just like illusion more than enchantment, but either should be alright for a conjurer, though I recommend never giving up both. Necromancy seems like a good choice, but necromancy is primarily debuff, and since I had given up the defense of abjuration, I didn't also want to give up debuff.
Diviner
Divination is a tough specialization. Most of the divination spells revolve around getting information. You can see invisible things, but the vast majority of the remaining spells are just various spells of seeing the future or seeing things in other locations. While these spells are useful, I wouldn't specialize in it. I will, however, mention that specializing in divination requires only one prohibited school. So, you can specialize in divination in order to get the extra spells while giving up only one school, but your extra spells are divinations, so not very useful.
If you're going to be a diviner, it really doesn't matter what you give up. Unlike other schools, where you try to give up a school that has a lot of redundant spells with your specialty, there really aren't any redundant spells in divination. However, as a diviner, I would recommend that you do not give up conjuration or transmutation. Both of these schools offer a lot of utility spells, and transmutation has the largest list of spells at low levels. Giving up one of these while specializing in divination would cripple your wizard.
Enchanter
Enchantment is primarily debuff, but there are a few good buffs in enchantment as well. At low levels, you'll use sleep and deep slumber to knock an enemy out of the fight, and heroism can provide a huge boost to an ally. You'll also find the hold person and hold monster spells in enchantment, which can paralyze opponents, possibly for multiple turns. However, the hold spells do have one major drawback: they allow the target a new save each turn to end the effect. Despite this drawback, the hold spells do paralyze the opponent, which leaves them helpless, and reduces their effective strength and dexterity to 0. Effectively, this means the creature's AC drops by 5 or more (loses dexterity bonus, new dexterity penalty is -5). Being helpless means that someone can take a full-round action to perform a coup de grace, but as a GM, I would rule that an evil action, so you'd best check with your GM.
If you're going to be an enchanter, you can give up illusion, due to some redundant effects. As for your second prohibited school, I would suggest abjuration because in most situations, while abjuration has some good defensive spells, you could live without them, especially if your spells are already debuffing or paralyzing opponents.
Evoker
Evocation is usually seen as blast spells, but there's more to evocation than just blasts, particularly at higher levels. The various "hand" spells, wall of force, contingency, and forcecage are all very useful spells. If you want a blast spell for backup, you'll have quite a variety to choose from, though I don't recommend wizards try to blast as a primary focus.
As for prohibited schools, at later levels the hand spells, wall spells, and forcecage can be used to trap opponents and block off parts of the battlefield, so you could possibly live without conjuration and be okay. I would probably choose enchantment or illusion as a second prohibited school, because in most situations if you have one of the two, you can do without the other. If you decide you want to keep conjuration, then you would most likely want to give up abjuration in its place.
Illusionist
Illusion can be a fun school, particularly if you're creative. All of the "image" spells are dependent on exactly what you want them to look like. Clever use of your images (and a flexible GM) can allow you to do all sorts of fun things with your spells.
If you're going to specialize in illusion, you can safely give up enchantment. As for your second prohibited school, conjuration might be the right choice. The illusion school grants access to shadow conjuration at later levels, allowing you to duplicate many of the spells you just gave up. It also grants access to shadow evocation, but I don't recommend giving up evocation in this instance. The shadow spells create effects that are only partially real. This means that a shadow evocation only deals a percentage of the damage it normally would, so your blast (which is already an ineffective use of spells) becomes even wimpier, and your walls have only 20% of their normal hit points, your hand spells allow a will save to disbelieve, honestly shadow evocation isn't worth it. By the same token, one might say that shadow conjuration isn't worth it. While this is true, keep in mind that illusions only allow saves if interacted with, usually that means some sort of contact. Until such time, creatures do not get a will save to realize it's an illusion, so that shadow conjured wall acts as a perfectly normal wall, blocking sight until someone touches it, then that person is allow a save to figure out if it's real or not. There are more conjurations that can be duplicated by a shadow spell that don't automatically interact with opponents than there are evocations.
Necromancer
Necromancy is the king of debuff. Starting at 1st level, you already have a spell that can sap 1d6+1 strength from an opponent, with a ranged touch. No save to avoid. Only spell resistance, which you shouldn't have to worry about until later levels. So, right off the bat, you've got a spell that's easy to use, since most creatures have terrible touch AC, and it's guaranteed to sap 2 points of strength, which would cause a -1 penalty to melee attacks and damage, with the possibility of sapping up to 7 points. This spell even scales up with level to a maximum of 1d6+5, for a minimum of 6 points of strength and a maximum of 11, which is insanely good for a 1st level spell. The downside is that this spell doesn't cause strength damage, just a penalty, and penalties tend to not stack if they're the same type of penalty, but the spell doesn't name a type, so it's up to GM interpretation. Some other good debuffs include blindness, and the fatigue and exhaustion spells. Being fatigued causes a -2 penalty to strength and dexterity, being exhausted causes a -6 penalty. If you manage to nail a creature with either of these, then stack a ray of enfeeblement on top of that, you could potentially cause a penalty of anywhere from -8 to -17 to strength, which can cripple most enemies, or at least turn a hulking brute into a mediocre annoyance.
If you're going to be a necromancer, I would suggest giving up enchantment. The necromancy school has paralysis effects, and crippling effects like I described above, enchantment becomes redundant at this point. As a necromancer, I would probably choose abjuration for my second prohibited school, but not so much for redundancy, but mostly because abjuration is my go-to for spells I could live without.
Transmuter
Transmutation is the king of the buff. You have so many spells here that can make a normal fighter into a big fighter, grant any of the "animal" buffs, and most importantly, the king of all transmutations, polymorph. Got a rogue in your party? Turn him into a seven-headed hydra, now he gets seven attacks per round! If he's flanking with anyone, that's seven sneak attacks. Heavily armored enemy coming at you? Turn someone into a rust monster! Polymorph is pretty much the ultimate in utility, on par with summons. Summons have a limited list of creatures you can summon, all lower level than yourself. Polymorph, however, lets you pull from almost the entire monster manual, and you get creatures that are equal in level to either yourself or the subject you are changing (whichever is lower). The only downside is that summons give you an extra creature, while transmutation changes one ally into something else.
Give up abjuration. You don't need it as a transmuter. As for your other school, either enchantment or illusion. However, if you want to be the best buffer ever, give up conjuration and illusion. Turn your rogue into a seven-headed hydra, cast stoneskin and heroism on him. Laugh at your enemies.
Which specialty is the best? Honestly, it depends on what job you want to do. If your goal is battlefield control, conjuration is your best bet, and illusion is a good second. If your goal is buff, transmutation, followed by abjuration. If you prefer to debuff, necromancy, followed by enchantment.
Now, this doesn't mean all controllers should be conjurers or illusionists, nor should all buffers be transmuters or abjurers. With the right spell choices, any wizard can fill any role. These schools just offer the most effective choices based on the PHB alone.
