Baldur's Gate 3 will not be a D&D video game that is all about combat and smashing down opponents, there is a very wide array of skills you will need to cover between the 4 adventurers you will be controlling. This includes elements of stealth, detecting hidden objects, and talking your way out of things. However, there is another important element you will need to round this array of skills, and that element is your knowledge.

RELATED: Best Isometric RPGs

The game features many different classes, but none of them are as iconic as a Wizard. The OG spell slinger of the popular tabletop roleplaying game has been a staple of every edition of Dungeons and Dragons and has always been associated with high Intelligence rolls. The role they will be playing is to cover controlling the tide of battle and providing accurate knowledge checks outside of combat.

Updated by Chad Thesen on August 23, 2023: This guide has been updated to feature a new section on the choices you should be making while leveling up your Wizard in the Necromancy School. This includes all the choices you make at each level up and what pieces of gear you should go out and claim when at each of these levels to keep your performance high.

Best Wizard Ability Distribution

When it comes to being a Wizard, all that matters is Intelligence. This is what the group expects of you and what you do better than anything else. Getting your Intelligence to 20 should and ‘is’ your primary concern when it comes to leveling and progressing. Higher Intelligence means higher everything. You will never be the one taking the lead in a dungeon, that is the scout’s job. The scout will uncover, and disable, all the traps. Likewise, you will not find yourself on the frontline when a Paladin or Fighter is ready to put a barricade between the enemy and the Wizard. The Wizard’s role will be to unleash epic-level spells of destruction, shape the world so that it may be approached in different ways, and to unearth every secret the game hides from you with unlimited knowledge through high Intelligence skill rolls. Dexterity may come in handy when you need to get out of the way and to increase your Armour Class. Everything else should be dumped. Make sure your Constitution is on an odd number.

• Primary Abilities (Max these out): Intelligence and Dexterity
• Secondary Abilities: Constitution and Wisdom
• Dump Abilities (Ignore These): Charisma and Strength

Best Race For Wizards

Rock Gnome will be an ideal pick for being a wizard. Thanks to Gnome Cunning, you have advantage for your Wisdom, Intelligence and Charisma saving throws. The speed is of no issue, as you will be in the back rows of the party when in combat and only moving when needed to reposition, rather than to gain distance. The Rock Gnome subrace provides Darkvision and Artificer’s Lore. Darkvision lets you perform just as well in gloomy caves and deep dungeons and Artificer’s Lore lets you double your proficiency bonus to your History skill checks.

Alternative Race Option

Other gnome subraces are good choices too, but neither offers you as much as Rock Gnome. Githyanki will help give an extra proficiency, to let the wizard be proficient in every Intelligence skill, and the psionics will be great for escaping. Humans Wizards offer a way to round up plenty of odd-number Abilities, with one offered as an Origin companion.

Best Skills & Background For Wizards

There is only one Background that gives two Intelligence skill proficiency, and that is Sage. Sage will provide you with proficiency in Arcana and History. With your Background out of the way, pick up Investigate and Religion. This will give you 4 of the 5 Intelligence skills in the game to go with your primary Ability.

Alternative Background Options

Other backgrounds are not worth it, as they only provide one Intelligence proficiency and one useless one.

RELATED: Best Games Like Baldur's Gate 3

Best Subclass For Wizards

Evocation school offers something that no other subclass comes close to its usefulness. Evocation school will grant you “Sculpt Spells”, which will let your allies automatically succeed in their saving throws against your spells and avoid them being hurt. This is basically the game’s way of turning off friendly fire and lets you bring down powerful novas of damage directly on top of your allies in melee combat that are surrounded to hit every enemy and spare your ally.

What Do The Other Sub-classes Offer?

You will get a lot of schools to choose from for Wizards, each of them makes it cheaper to learn spells from their respective school of magic and come with another little feature. Abjuration gives you a little bit of suitability, but this can be wasted if you have an effective party that are each doing their job. Divination is a nice choice for newcomers as it helps them restore previously used-up spell slots and makes managing their economy easier. Other options get very niche and circumstantial.

Best Feats For Wizards

Your main focus is getting your Intelligence Ability up to 20, after that, but there is one feat that will be brilliant to get before that. Resilient will increase your constitution by 1 point, bringing it up to a round number. It will also give your proficiency in saving throws for that Ability, meaning if you are casting a concentration spell and need to roll a saving throw, you get 2 chances to keep casting it rather than just one.

Avoid Multiclassing. There is no class that gives you anything you need, maybe something you want if you are experimenting with build ideas or have a different role in mind. This build, however, is all about optimizing an Intelligence-driven Evocation Wizard.

RELATED: Best RPG Party Members Of All Time, Ranked

Best Spells For Wizards

Wizards are spell casters, they have spells for every situation and that is why they have a book with so many. Low-level spells can be cast with higher-level spell slots to make bring them up to keep their viability. Whenever your journey’s goal changes or a new situation approaches, it is best to give your spells a gander and decide which ones may be most useful for this part of the game. There are plenty of good choices to always have on hand though. If nobody in the group has Speak with Animals, this will be a great utility spell to have in the pocket, you don't need to make every spell a combat one, just have what you feel best fits the environment you are in and what might be weak to certain elements.

Best Party Composition For Wizards

The Wizard does well in a classic party approach, throw in a fighter for the frontline, a Cleric for healing and Wisdom skills and a Rogue with expertise in social skills to cover the talking and rounding out all the other needed skills. Alternatively, you could have a Paladin leading the charge and doing all the talking with them backed up by a Druid and Monk. This approach gives a lot of frontline potential and survivability, but that survivability comes with the cost of not having anyone proficient in thieves’ tools.

Wizards In Combat

A Wizard will be able to rain down extremely powerful spells that cause a ton of damage in a single hit. As an Evocation Wizard, these spells will not harm your allies when dropped on top of them and allow you to be very reckless and get as many enemies affected as possible. They also have a ton of control options that take away enemies' strengths in the fight. Observe the fight and see which enemy can be picked off and what allies need assistance. Many fights will be different and analyzing the field will be key to deciding how best to use your turn. Wizards do not follow a set pattern or rotation of spells, you will need to manage and make decisions based on different situations. Good thing you have such high intelligence.

Wizards Outside Of Combat

You have plenty of utility spells to make use of that can shape the world around you and lots of skills to cover understanding any secret the game has in its lore. Read every book you find for clues, investigate desks, make checks about objects' histories, and explore faiths in the area. Gather information and use it to benefit your party.

Evocation Wizard Leveling Choices

Each school will offer its own features, but the Evocation school's feature to just let your AoE spells go wild without the risk of your allies being caught in the crossfire is just too good. It puts the subclass in a league of its own. Wiping out all threats before they can deal a significant amount of harm is a perfect way to have a high rate of success.

• Race: This is the race you should choose at character creation.
• Background: This is the Background you should choose at character creation.
• Skills: These are the skills you should choose at character creation to cover what your Background does not.
• Cantrips: Having this spread of Cantrips means you have a different elemental type to deal out damage every turn without blowing through all your spells before your long rest. This gives you more time you'll have an ace ready up your leave when you need it.
• Spells: Just like with cantrips, you want a wide coverage of options. Chromatic Orb lets you just pour on the damage with your chosen elemental type, making it your go-to high-damage-in-a-single-hit option. Magic Missile cannot fail, so it is perfect for a guaranteed finisher. Grease lets you alter the terrain and Thunderwave is how someone with no strength can shove something off a cliff. Mage Armour is nice, but with some frontliners soaking up aggro and not being hurt by your spells, enemies will not live long enough to put much of a dent in your health. Minor Elemental summons make for great decoys, and Mud Mephits give you two of them to help divide the aggro from enemies. You will get more spells as you level up and knowing when you will need them in specific fights will be important. Familiarize yourself with the spells that appear at later levels, so it becomes obvious for a fight and/or situation you should prepare it.
• School: This is the Subclass you should choose when given the option to pick one.
• Haste Helm: When combat starts, you will have 3 turns of Momentum to help you put some distance between you and your targets. Let your higher AC characters sit between the two. You can find this item in a chest at Blighted Village. Which you will need to lockpick.
• Crusher's Ring: You can get this ring from Novice Crusher in the goblin village, how you choose to do that is up to you. This ring gives you +3 to your movement.
• Boots of Striding: Having Momentum while you are concentrating on any of your spells is very good. It lets you keep mobile while needing to avoid losing concentration. This serves as Loot obtained from Minthara.
• Feat: Take the corresponding feat for each of the corresponding levels.

Conjuration Wizard Leveling Choices

Each school will make it cheaper to learn spells from the same school. However, you are not limited to just that school. Conjuration School's ability to regain spell slots means you can be a lot more liberal with your casting. This means you can mark places to come back to, find some useful utility spells and then return to these places with the peace of mind that your spell slots will not run low if you need them.

• Race: This is the race you should choose at character creation.
• Background: This is the Background you should choose at character creation.
• Skills: These are the skills you should choose at character creation to cover what your Background does not.
• Cantrips: Having this spread of Cantrips means you have a different elemental type to deal out damage every turn without blowing through all your spells before your long rest. This gives you more time you'll have an ace ready up your leave when you need it.
• Spells: Just like with cantrips, you want a wide coverage of options. Chromatic Orb lets you just pour on the damage with your chosen elemental type, making it your go-to high-damage-in-a-single-hit option. Magic Missile cannot fail, so it is perfect for a guaranteed finisher. Grease lets you alter the terrain and Thunderwave is how someone with no strength can shove something off a cliff. You should also use your Spell Slot recovering abilities to make use of lower-level spells since they are the cheapest and can be used much more often. Lesser Restoration is normally something the dedicated healer would take care of, but being able to use it in their stead means they get to save their slots for different circumstances. Fly is another great utility spell, albiet a costly one for your Arcane Recovery. You will get more spells as you level up and knowing when you will need them in specific fights will be important. Familiarize yourself with the spells that appear at later levels, so it becomes obvious for a fight and/or situation you should prepare it.
• School: This is the Subclass you should choose when given the option to pick one.
• Haste Helm: When combat starts, you will have 3 turns of Momentum to help you put some distance between you and your targets. Let your higher AC characters sit between the two. You can find this item in a chest at Blighted Village. Which you will need to lockpick.
• Crusher's Ring: You can get this ring from Novice Crusher in the goblin village, how you choose to do that is up to you. This ring gives you +3 to your movement.
• Boots of Striding: Having Momentum while you are concentrating on any of your spells is very good. It lets you keep mobile while needing to avoid losing concentration. This serves as Loot obtained from Minthara.
• Feat: Take the corresponding feat for each of the corresponding levels.
• Poisoner's Robe: You may be tempted to take Poison Spray but do not be fooled. These robes are for giving a bonus to your Ray of Sickness. You will have Crone's Staff for a free use of this. Poison Spray is too close range for a wizard to safely use and would be a waste of a cantrip spot.

Necromancy Wizard Leveling Choices

Necromancers in Baldur's Gate 3 are not just about raising the dead in other well-known game titles, they harvest the life force of their fallen foes to extend their own mortality. The limit on this is that you only regain hit points for twice the level of the spell that caused a target to die, and this only happens once per turn. Three times if the spell used is from the School of necromancy. This feature does not come into effect when defeating constructs.

• Race: This is the race you should choose at character creation.
• Background: This is the Background you should choose at character creation.
• Skills: These are the skills you should choose at character creation to cover what your Background does not.
• Cantrips: Having this spread of Cantrips means you have various elemental types to deal out damage. Chill Touch is a cantrip, meaning it will not let you regain a spell slot. So be mindful of that.
• Spells: You need some powerful spells of different elemental types to decimate your foes to keep harvesting that precious life force. Having a high-level spell slot can be brilliant for even low-level spells thanks to the damage increases. Chromatic Orb lets you just pour on the damage with your chosen elemental type, making it your go-to high-damage-in-a-single-hit option. Magic Missile cannot fail, so it is perfect for a guaranteed finisher. Grease lets you alter the terrain and Thunderwave is how someone with no strength can shove something off a cliff. Always have some high-damage spells on hand when things go south. This lets you use them to obliterate the weakest enemy to regain some health and prevent going down. You will want to finish enemies off with a Necromancy school spell like Ray Of Sickness for three times the HP gains.
• School: This is the Subclass you should choose when given the option to pick one.
• Haste Helm: When combat starts, you will have 3 turns of Momentum to help you put some distance between you and your targets. Let your higher AC characters sit between the two. You can find this item in a chest at Blighted Village. Which you will need to lockpick.
• Crusher's Ring: You can get this ring from Novice Crusher in the goblin village, how you choose to do that is up to you. This ring gives you +3 to your movement.
• Boots of Striding: Having Momentum while you are concentrating on any of your spells is very good. It lets you keep mobile while needing to avoid losing concentration. This serves as Loot obtained from Minthara.
• Feat: Take the corresponding feat for each of the corresponding levels.
• Poisoner's Robe: These robes are for giving a bonus to your Ray of Sickness, Cloudkill, and your Poison spray. Even though Poison spray is a little close range for a wizard, your Necromancy will let you regain some HP for killing targets. So when they get close, let your poison-boosted spells fly, and use Poison Spray to push them closer to death. Don't finish them off with Poison Spray, it's a cantrip.
• Circlet of Blasting: Just like Staff of Crones, you will want as many damage spells as you get fit onto this build to keep regaining HP.
• Avenge Glut's Circle: This Quest will give you a nifty ring that will increase your Wizard's fire damage.
• Sentient Amulet: A Free cast of Shatter is a very welcomed extra damage spell.

Next: Games to Play If You Love Forspoken