Wizard

Basics

Hit Dice: 1d6

Proficiencies

Saving Throws: Intelligence, Wisdom

Skills: Choose two from

Equipment

You start with the following equipment, in addition to the equipment granted by your background:

Table: Wizard

Spellcasting

As a student of arcane magic, you have a spellbook containing spells that show the first glimmerings of your true power. See chapter 10 for the general rules of spellcasting and the wizard spell list.

Cantrips

At 1st level, you know three cantrips of your choice from the wizard spell list. You learn additional wizard cantrips of your choice at higher levels, as shown in the Cantrips Known column of the Wizard table.

Spellbook

At 1st level, you have a spellbook containing six 1st-level wizard spells of your choice. A spellbook doesn’t contain cantrips. Your spellbook is the repository of the wizard spells you know, except your cantrips, which are fixed in your mind.

Preparing and Casting Spells

The Wizard table shows how many spell slots you have to cast your wizard spells of 1st level and higher. To cast one of these spells, you must expend a slot of the spell’s level or higher. You regain all expended spell slots when you finish a long rest.

You prepare the list of wizard spells that are available for you to cast. To do so, choose a number of wizard spells from your spellbook equal to your Intelligence modifier + your wizard level (minimum of one spell). The spells must be of a level for which you have spell slots.

For example, if you’re a 3rd-level wizard, you have four 1st-level and two 2nd-level spell slots. With an Intelligence of 16, your list of prepared spells can include six spells of 1st or 2nd level, in any combination, chosen from your spellbook. If you prepare the 1st-level spell magic missile, you can cast it using a 1st-level or a 2nd-level slot. Casting the spell doesn’t remove it from your list of prepared spells.

You can change your list of prepared spells when you finish a long rest. Preparing a new list of wizard spells requires time spent studying your spellbook and memorizing the incantations and gestures you must make to cast the spell: at least 1 minute per spell level for each spell on your list.

Spellcasting Ability

Intelligence is your spellcasting ability for your wizard spells, since you learn your spells through dedicated study and memorization. You use your Intelligence whenever a spell refers to your spellcasting ability. In addition, you use your Intelligence modifier when setting the saving throw DC for a wizard spell you cast and when making an attack roll with one.

Ritual Casting

You can cast a wizard spell as a ritual if that spell has the ritual tag and you have the spell in your spellbook. You don’t need to have the spell prepared.

Spellcasting Focus

You can use a arcane focus as a spellcasting focus for your wizard spells.

Learning Spells

Each time you gain a wizard level, you can add two wizard spells of your choice to your spellbook. Each of these spells must be of a level for which you have spell slots, as shown on the Wizard table. On your adventures, you might find other spells that you can add to your spellbook (see the “Your Spellbook” sidebar). The spells copied into a spellbook must be of a spell level the wizard can prepare.

Arcane Recovery

You have learned to regain some of your magical energy by studying your spellbook. Once per day when you finish a short rest, you can choose expended spell slots to recover. The spell slots can have a combined level that is equal to or less than half your wizard level (rounded up), and none of the slots can be 6th level or higher.

For example, if you’re a 4th-level wizard, you can recover up to two levels worth of spell slots. You can recover either a 2nd-level spell slot or two 1st-level spell slots.

Ability Score Improvement

When you reach 4th level, and again at 8th, 12th, 16th, and 19th level, you can increase one ability score of your choice by 2, or you can increase two ability scores of your choice by 1. As normal, you can’t increase an ability score above 20 using this feature.

Spell Mastery

At 18th level, you have achieved such mastery over certain spells that you can cast them at will. Choose a 1st-level wizard spell and a 2nd-level wizard spell that are in your spellbook. You can cast those spells at their lowest level without expending a spell slot when you have them prepared. If you want to cast either spell at a higher level, you must expend a spell slot as normal.

By spending 8 hours in study, you can exchange one or both of the spells you chose for different spells of the same levels.

Signature Spells

When you reach 20th level, you gain mastery over two powerful spells and can cast them with little effort. Choose two 3rd-level wizard spells in your spellbook as your signature spells. You always have these spells prepared, they don’t count against the number of spells you have prepared, and you can cast each of them once at 3rd level without expending a spell slot. When you do so, you can’t do so again until you finish a short or long rest.

If you want to cast either spell at a higher level, you must expend a spell slot as normal.

Arcane Tradition

When you reach 2nd level, you choose an arcane tradition, shaping your practice of magic through a specialized style or one of the eight schools of magic: Abjuration, Conjuration, Divination, Enchantment, Evocation, Illusion, Necromancy, or Transmutation.

Your choice grants you features at 2nd level and again at 6th, 10th, and 14th level.

The study of wizardry is ancient, stretching back to the earliest mortal discoveries of magic. It is firmly established in the worlds of D&D, with various traditions dedicated to its complex study.

The most common arcane traditions in the multiverse revolve around the schools of magic. Wizards through the ages have cataloged thousands of spells, grouping them into eight categories called schools. In some places, these traditions are literally schools. Elsewhere, they are more like academic departments, with rival faculties competing for students and funding. Even wizards who train apprentices in the solitude of their own towers use the division of magic into schools as a learning device, since the spells of each school require mastery of different techniques.

Bladesinging (SC)

Bladesingers are elves who bravely defend their people and lands. They are elf wizards who master a school of sword fighting grounded in a tradition of arcane magic. In combat, a bladesinger uses a series of intricate, elegant maneuvers that fend off harm and allow the bladesinger to channel magic into devastating attacks and a cunning defense.

Restriction: Elves Only

Only elves and half-elves can choose the bladesinger arcane tradition. In the world of Faerun, elves closely guard the secrets of bladesinging.

Training in War and Song

When you adopt this tradition at 2nd level, you gain proficiency with light armor, and you gain proficiency with one type of one-handed melee weapon of your choice.

You also gain proficiency in the Performance skill if you don't already have it.

Bladesinger Styles

From its inception as a martial and magical art, Bladesinging has been tied to the sword, more specifically the longsword. Yet many generations of study gave rise to various styles of Bladesinging based on the melee weapon employed. The techniques of these styles are passed from master to students in small schools, some of which have a building dedicated to instruction. Even the newest styles are hundreds of years old, but are still taught by their original creators due to the long lives of elves. Most schools of Bladesinging are in Evermeet or Evereska. One was started in Myth Drannor, but the city's destruction has scattered those students who survived.

Styles of Bladesinging are broadly categorized based on the type of weapon employed, and each is associated with a category of animal. Within that style are specializations named after specific animal types, based on the types of spells employed, the techniques of the master, and the particular weapon used. Bladesingers who apprentice to a master typically get a tattoo of their chosen style's animal. Some bladesingers learn multiple styles and bear many tattoos, wearing a warning on their skin of their deadly skills.

Bladesong

Starting at 2nd level, you can invoke a secret elven magic called the Bladesong, provided that you aren't wearing medium or heavy armor or using a shield. It graces you with supernatural speed, agility, and focus.

You can use a bonus action to start the Bladesong, which lasts for 1 minute. It ends early if you are incapacitated, if you don medium or heavy armor or a shield, or if you use two hands to make an attack with a weapon. You can also dismiss the Bladesong at any time you choose (no action required).

While your Bladesong is active, you gain the following benefits:

You can use this feature twice. You regain all expended uses of it when you finish a short or long rest.

Extra Attack

Starting at 6th level, you can attack twice, instead of once, whenever you take the Attack action on your turn.

Song of Defense

Beginning at 10th level, you can direct your magic to absorb damage while your Bladesong is active. When you take damage, you can use your reaction to expend one spell slot and reduce that damage to you by an amount equal to five times the spell slot's level.

Song of Victory

Starting at 14th level, you add your Intelligence modifier (minimum of +1) to the damage of your melee weapon attacks while your Bladesong is active.

School of Abjuration

The School of Abjuration emphasizes magic that blocks, banishes, or protects. Detractors of this school say that its tradition is about denial, negation rather than positive assertion. You understand, however, that ending harmful effects, protecting the weak, and banishing evil influences is anything but a philosophical void. It is a proud and respected vocation.

Called abjurers, members of this school are sought when baleful spirits require exorcism, when important locations must be guarded against magical spying, and when portals to other planes of existence must be closed.

Abjuration Savant

Beginning when you select this school at 2nd level, the gold and time you must spend to copy an abjuration spell into your spellbook is halved.

Arcane Ward

Starting at 2nd level, you can weave magic around yourself for protection. When you cast an abjuration spell of 1st level or higher, you can simultaneously use a strand of the spell’s magic to create a magical ward on yourself that lasts until you finish a long rest. The ward has hit points equal to twice your wizard level + your Intelligence modifier. Whenever you take damage, the ward takes the damage instead. If this damage reduces the ward to 0 hit points, you take any remaining damage.

While the ward has 0 hit points, it can’t absorb damage, but its magic remains. Whenever you cast an abjuration spell of 1st level or higher, the ward regains a number of hit points equal to twice the level of the spell.

Once you create the ward, you can't create it again until you finish a long rest.

Projected Ward

Starting at 6th level, when a creature that you can see within 30 feet of you takes damage, you can use your reaction to cause your Arcane Ward to absorb that damage. If this damage reduces the ward to 0 hit points, the warded creature takes any remaining damage.

Improved Abjuration

Beginning at 10th level, when you cast an abjuration spell that requires you to make an ability check as a part of casting that spell (as in counterspell and dispel magic), you add your proficiency bonus to that ability check.

Spell Resistance

Starting at 14th level, you have advantage on saving throws against spells.

Furthermore, you have resistance against the damage of spells.

School of Conjuration

As a conjurer, you favor spells that produce objects and creatures out of thin air. You can conjure billowing clouds of killing fog or summon creatures from elsewhere to fight on your behalf. As your mastery grows, you learn spells of transportation and can teleport yourself across vast distances, even to other planes of existence, in an instant.

Conjuration Savant

Beginning when you select this school at 2nd level, the gold and time you must spend to copy a conjuration spell into your spellbook is halved.

Minor Conjuration

Starting at 2nd level when you select this school, you can use your action to conjure up an inanimate object in your hand or on the ground in an unoccupied space that you can see within 10 feet of you. This object can be no larger than 3 feet on a side and weigh no more than 10 pounds, and its form must be that of a nonmagical object that you have seen. The object is visibly magical, radiating dim light out to 5 feet.

The object disappears after 1 hour, when you use this feature again, or if it takes or deals any damage.

Benign Transposition

Starting at 6th level, you can use your action to teleport up to 30 feet to an unoccupied space that you can see. Alternatively, you can choose a space within range that is occupied by a Small or M edium creature. If that creature is willing, you both teleport, swapping places.

Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a long rest or you cast a conjuration spell of 1st level or higher.

Focused Conjuration

Beginning at 10th level, while you are concentrating on a conjuration spell, your concentration can’t be broken as a result of taking damage.

Durable Summons

Starting at 14th level, any creature that you summon or create with a conjuration spell has 30 temporary hit points.

School of Divination

The counsel of a diviner is sought by royalty and commoners alike, for all seek a clearer understanding of the past, present, and future. As a diviner, you strive to part the veils of space, time, and consciousness so that you can see clearly. You work to master spells of discernment, remote viewing, supernatural knowledge, and foresight.

Divination Savant

Beginning when you select this school at 2nd level, the gold and time you must spend to copy a divination spell into your spellbook is halved.

Portent

Starting at 2nd level when you choose this school, glimpses of the future begin to press in on your awareness. When you finish a long rest, roll two d20s and record the numbers rolled. You can replace any attack roll, saving throw, or ability check made by you or a creature that you can see with one of these foretelling rolls. You must choose to do so before the roll, and you can replace a roll in this way only once per turn.

Each foretelling roll can be used only once. When you finish a long rest, you lose any unused foretelling rolls.

Expert Divination

Beginning at 6th level, casting divination spells comes so easily to you that it expends only a fraction of your spellcasting efforts. When you cast a divination spell of 2nd level or higher using a spell slot, you regain one expended spell slot. The slot you regain must be of a level lower than the spell you cast and can’t be higher than 5th level.

The Third Eye

Starting at 10th level, you can use your action to increase your powers of perception. When you do so, choose one of the following benefits, which lasts until you are incapacitated or you take a short or long rest. You can’t use the feature again until you finish a rest.

Greater Portent

Starting at 14th level, the visions in your dreams intensify and paint a more accurate picture in your mind of what is to come. You roll three d20s for your Portent feature, rather than two.

School of Enchantment

As a member of the School of Enchantment, you have honed your ability to magically entrance and beguile other people and monsters. Some enchanters are peacemakers who bewitch the violent to lay down their arms and charm the cruel into showing mercy. Others are tyrants who magically bind the unwilling into their service. Most enchanters fall somewhere in between.

Enchantment Savant

Beginning when you select this school at 2nd level, the gold and time you must spend to copy an enchantment spell into your spellbook is halved.

Hypnotic Gaze

Starting at 2nd level when you choose this school, your soft words and enchanting gaze can magically enthrall another creature. A s an action, choose one creature that you can see within 5 feet of you. If the target can see or hear you, it must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw against your wizard spell save DC or be charmed by you until the end of your next turn. The charmed creature’s speed drops to 0, and the creature is incapacitated and visibly dazed.

On subsequent turns, you can use your action to maintain this effect, extending its duration until the end of your next turn. However, the effect ends if you move more than 5 feet away from the creature, if the creature can neither see nor hear you, or if the creature takes damage.

Once the effect ends, or if the creature succeeds on its initial saving throw against this effect, you can’t use this feature on that creature again until you finish a long rest.

Instinctive Charm

Beginning at 6th level, when a creature you can see within 30 feet of you makes an attack roll against you, you can use your reaction to divert the attack, provided that another creature is within the attack’s range. The attacker must make a wisdom saving throw against your wizard spell save DC. On a failed save, the attacker must target the creature that is closest to it, not including you or itself. If multiple creatures are closest, the attacker chooses which one to target. On a successful save, you can’t use this feature on the attacker again until you finish a long rest.

You must choose to use this feature before knowing whether the attack hits or misses. Creatures that can’t be charmed are immune to this effect.

Split Enchantment

Starting at 10th level, when you cast an enchantment spell of 1st level or higher that targets only one creature, you can have it target a second creature.

Alter Memories

At 14th level, you gain the ability to make a creature unaware of your magical influence on it. When you cast an enchantment spell to charm one or more creatures, you can alter one creature’s understanding so that it remains unaware of being charmed.

Additionally, once before the spell expires, you can use your action to try to make the chosen creature forget some of the time it spent charmed. The creature must succeed on an Intelligence saving throw against your wizard spell save DC or lose a number of hours of its memories equal to 1 + your Charisma modifier (minimum 1). You can make the creature forget less time, and the amount of time can’t exceed the duration of your enchantment spell.

School of Illusion

You focus your studies on magic that dazzles the senses, befuddles the mind, and tricks even the wisest folk. Your magic is subtle, but the illusions crafted by your keen mind make the impossible seem real. Some illusionists—including many gnome wizards—are benign tricksters who use their spells to entertain. Others are more sinister masters of deception, using their illusions to frighten and fool others for their personal gain.

Illusion Savant

Beginning when you select this school at 2nd level, the gold and time you must spend to copy an illusion spell into your spellbook is halved.

Improved Minor Illusion

When you choose this school at 2nd level, you learn the minor illusion cantrip. If you already know this cantrip, you learn a different wizard cantrip of your choice. The cantrip doesn’t count against your number of cantrips known.

When you cast minor illusion, you can create both a sound and an image with a single casting of the spell.

Malleable Illusions

Starting at 6th level, when you cast an illusion spell that has a duration of 1 minute or longer, you can use your action to change the nature of that illusion (using the spell’s normal parameters for the illusion), provided that you can see the illusion.

Illusory Self

Beginning at 10th level, you can create an illusory duplicate of yourself as an instant, almost instinctual reaction to danger. When a creature makes an attack roll against you, you can use your reaction to interpose the illusory duplicate between the attacker and yourself. The attack automatically m isses you, then the illusion dissipates.

Once you use this feature, you can’t use it again until you finish a short or long rest.

Illusory Reality

By 14th level, you have learned the secret of weaving shadow magic into your illusions to give them a semireality. When you cast an illusion spell of 1st level or higher, you can choose one inanimate, nonmagical object that is part of the illusion and make that object real. You can do this on your turn as a bonus action while the spell is ongoing. The object remains real for 1 minute. For example, you can create an illusion of a bridge over a chasm and then make it real long enough for your allies to cross.

The object can’t deal damage or otherwise directly harm anyone.

School of Evocation

You focus your study on magic that creates powerful elemental effects such as bitter cold, searing flame, rolling thunder, crackling lightning, and burning acid. Some evokers find employment in military forces, serving as artillery to blast enemy armies from afar. Others use their spectacular power to protect the weak, while some seek their own gain as bandits, adventurers, or aspiring tyrants.

Evocation Savant

Beginning when you select this school at 2nd level, the gold and time you must spend to copy an evocation spell into your spellbook is halved.

Sculpt Spells

Beginning at 2nd level, you can create pockets of relative safety within the effects of your evocation spells. When you cast an evocation spell that affects other creatures that you can see, you can choose a number of them equal to 1 + the spell’s level. The chosen creatures automatically succeed on their saving throws against the spell, and they take no damage if they would normally take half damage on a successful save.

Potent Cantrip

Starting at 6th level, your damaging cantrips affect even creatures that avoid the brunt of the effect. When a creature succeeds on a saving throw against your cantrip, the creature takes half the cantrip’s damage (if any) but suffers no additional effect from the cantrip.

Empowered Evocation

Beginning at 10th level, you can add your Intelligence modifier to one damage roll of any wizard evocation spell you cast.

Overchannel

Starting at 14th level, you can increase the power of your simpler spells. When you cast a wizard spell of 1st through 5th level that deals damage, you can deal maximum damage with that spell. The feature doesn’t benefit cantrips.

The first time you do so, you suffer no adverse effect. If you use this feature again before you finish a long rest, you take 2d12 necrotic damage for each level of the spell, immediately after you cast it. Each time you use this feature again before finishing a long rest, the necrotic damage per spell level increases by 1d12. This damage ignores resistance and immunity.

School of Necromancy

The School of Necromancy explores the cosmic forces of life, death, and undeath. As you focus your studies in this tradition, you learn to manipulate the energy that animates all living things. As you progress, you learn to sap the life force from a creature as your magic destroys its body, transforming that vital energy into magical power you can manipulate.

Most people see necromancers as menacing, or even villainous, due to the close association with death. Not all necromancers are evil, but the forces they manipulate are considered taboo by many societies.

Necromancy Savant

Beginning when you select this school at 2nd level, the gold and time you must spend to copy a necromancy spell into your spellbook is halved.

Grim Harvest

At 2nd level, you gain the ability to reap life energy from creatures you kill with your spells. Once per turn when you kill one or more creatures with a spell of 1st level or higher, you regain hit points equal to twice the spell’s level, or three times its level if the spell belongs to the School of Necromancy. You don’t gain this benefit for killing constructs or undead.

Undead Thralls

At 6th level, you add the animate dead spell to your spellbook if it is not there already. When you cast animate dead, you can target one additional corpse or pile of bones, creating another zombie or skeleton, as appropriate.

Whenever you create an undead using a necromancy spell, it has additional benefits:

Inured to Undeath

Beginning at 10th level, you have resistance to necrotic damage, and your hit point maximum can't be reduced. You have spent so much time dealing with undead and the forces that animate them that you have become inured to some of their worst effects.

Command Undead

Starting at 14th level, you can use magic to bring undead under your control, even those created by other wizards. As an action, you can choose one undead that you can see within 60 feet of you. That creature must make a Charisma saving throw against your wizard spell save DC. If it succeeds, you can’t use this feature on it again. If it fails, it becomes friendly to you and obeys your commands until you use this feature again.

Intelligent undead are harder to control in this way. If the target has an Intelligence of 8 or higher, it has advantage on the saving throw. If it fails the saving throw and has an Intelligence of 12 or higher, it can repeat the saving throw at the end of every hour until it succeeds and breaks free.

School of Transmutation

You are a student of spells that modify energy and matter. To you, the world is not a fixed thing, but eminently mutable, and you delight in being an agent of change. You wield the raw stuff of creation and learn to alter both physical forms and mental qualities. Your m agic gives you the tools to become a smith on reality’s forge.

Some transmuters are tinkerers and pranksters, turning people into toads and transforming copper into silver for fun and occasional profit. Others pursue their magical studies with deadly seriousness, seeking the power of the gods to make and destroy worlds.

Transmutation Savant

Beginning when you select this school at 2nd level, the gold and time you must spend to copy a transmutation spell into your spellbook is halved.

Minor Alchemy

Starting at 2nd level when you select this school, you can temporarily alter the physical properties of one nonmagical object, changing it from one substance into another. You perform a special alchemical procedure on one object composed entirely of wood, stone (but not a gemstone), iron, copper, or silver, transforming it into a different one of those materials. For each 10 minutes you spend performing the procedure, you can transform up to 1 cubic foot of material. After 1 hour, or until you lose your concentration (as if you were concentrating on a spell), the material reverts to its original substance.

Transmuter’s Stone

Starting at 6th level, you can spend 8 hours creating a transmuter’s stone that stores transmutation magic. You can benefit from the stone yourself or give it to another creature. A creature gains a benefit of your choice as long as the stone is in the creature’s possession. When you create the stone, choose the benefit from the following options:

Each time you cast a transmutation spell of 1st level or higher, you can change the effect of your stone if the stone is on your person.

If you create a new transmuter’s stone, the previous one ceases to function.

Shapechanger

At 10th level, you add the polymorph spell to your spellbook, if it is not there already. You can cast polymorph without expending a spell slot. When you do so, you can target only yourself and transform into a beast whose challenge rating is 1 or lower.

Once you cast polymorph in this way, you can’t do so again until you finish a short or long rest, though you can still cast it normally using an available spell slot.

Master Transmuter

Starting at 14th level, you can use your action to consume the reserve of transmutation magic stored within your transmuter’s stone in a single burst. When you do so, choose one of the following effects. Your transmuter’s stone is destroyed and can’t be remade until you finish a long rest.

War Magic (XG)

A variety of arcane colleges specialize in training wizards for war. The tradition of War Magic blends principles of evocation and abjuration, rather than specializing in either of those schools. It teaches techniques that empower a caster's spells, while also providing methods for wizards to bolster their own defenses.

Followers of this tradition are known as war mages. They see their magic as both a weapon and armor, a resource superior to any piece of steel. War mages act fast in battle, using their spells to seize tactical control of a situation. Their spells strike hard, while their defensive skills foil their opponents' attempts to counterattack. War mages are also adept at turning other spellcasters' magical energy against them.

In great battles, a war mage often works with evokers, abjurers, and other types of wizards. Evokers, in particular, sometimes tease war mages for splitting their attention between offense and defense. A war mage's typical response: "What good is being able to throw a mighty fireball if I die before I can cast it?"

Arcane Deflection

At 2nd level, you have learned to weave your magic to fortify yourself against harm. When you are hit by an attack or you fail a saving throw, you can use your reaction to gain a +2 bonus to your AC against that attack or a +4 bonus to that saving throw.

When you use this feature, you can't cast spells other than cantrips until the end of your next turn .

Tactical Wit

Starting at 2nd level, your keen ability to assess tactical situations allows you to act quickly in battle. You can give yourself a bonus to your initiative rolls equal to your Intelligence modifier.

Power Surge

Starting at 6th level, you can store magical energy within yourself to later empower your damaging spells. In its stored form, this energy is called a power surge.

You can store a maximum number of power surges equal to your Intelligence modifier (minimum of one). Whenever you finish a long rest, your number of power surges resets to one. Whenever you successfully end a spell with dispel magic or counterspell, you gain one power surge, as you steal magic from the spell you foiled. If you end a short rest with no power surges, you gain one power surge.

Once per turn when you deal damage to a creature or object with a wizard spell, you can spend one power surge to deal extra force damage to that target. The extra damage equals half your wizard level.

Durable Magic

Beginning at 10th level, the magic you channel helps ward off harm. While you maintain concentration on a spell, you have a +2 bonus to AC and all saving throws.

Deflecting Shroud

At 14th level, your Arcane Deflection becomes infused with deadly magic. When you use your Arcane Deflection feature, you can cause magical energy to arc from you. Up to three creatures of your choice that you can see within 60 feet of you each take force damage equal to half your wizard level.

Your Spellbook

The spells that you add to your spellbook as you gain levels reflect the arcane research you conduct on your own, as well as intellectual breakthroughs you have had about the nature of the multiverse. You might find other spells during your adventures. You could discover a spell recorded on a scroll in an evil wizard’s chest, for example, or in a dusty tome in an ancient library.

Copying a Spell into the Book. When you find a wizard spell of 1st level or higher, you can add it to your spellbook if it is of a spell level you can prepare and if you can spare the time to decipher and copy it.

Copying a spell into your spellbook involves reproducing the basic form of the spell, then deciphering the unique system of notation used by the wizard who wrote it. You must practice the spell until you understand the sounds or gestures required, then transcribe it into your spellbook using your own notation.

For each level of the spell, the process takes 2 hours and costs 50 gp. The cost represents material components you expend as you experiment with the spell to master it, as well as the fine inks you need to record it. Once you have spent this time and money, you can prepare the spell just like your other spells.

Downtime: Copying Spells. You must use this downtime activity to copy spells. For each downtime day spent, your character can spend 8 hours copying spells into their spellbook or making their spellbook available for other characters to copy from. Characters playing the same adventure together can “trade” spells with each other using this activity. Each wizard has their own “language” used for scribing spells and can’t benefit from the Help action when scribing - even if assisted by other wizards. You must pursue this downtime activity in the presence of your table’s DM.

Logsheet. When copying spells into your spellbook, you should record the transaction in the “Adventure Notes” of your log entry and then notify the organizer.

If you copy the spells from a scroll, you should record the transaction as follows:

If you copy the spells from another character’s spellbook, only the character copying spells must spend Downtime. Record as follows:

Replacing the Book. You can copy a spell from your own spellbook into another book — for example, if you want to make a backup copy of your spellbook. This is just like copying a new spell into your spellbook, but faster and easier, since you understand your own notation and already know how to cast the spell. You need spend only 1 hour and 10 gp for each level of the copied spell.

If you lose your spellbook, you can use the same procedure to transcribe the spells that you have prepared into a new spellbook. Filling out the remainder of your spellbook requires you to find new spells to do so, as normal. For this reason, many wizards keep backup spellbooks in a safe place.

The Book’s Appearance. Your spellbook is a unique compilation of spells, with its own decorative flourishes and margin notes. It might be a plain, functional leather volume that you received as a gift from your master, a finely bound gilt-edged tome you found in an ancient library, or even a loose collection of notes scrounged together after you lost your previous spellbook in a mishap.

Class Description

The First Hilt parried a clumsy axe swing and caught the rhythm of the wizard 's spell. It was one with which he was wellfamiliar. Using his free hand, the bladesinger mirrored his opponent's casting then sent his considerable power out to surround the overmatched wizard, binding it to himself. Argent energy flew from the human's outstretched hand only to fizzle into nothingness as the bladesinger quenched the spell.

- Keith Francis Strohm, Bladesinger

Scholars and practitioners of what they call "the Art", wizards are the most disciplined spellcasters in the Forgotten Realms. They need to be, as their powers come from years of careful study and practice. Some wizards apprentice and study with an experienced master, while others attend formal academies or universities of wizardry, such as those in Evermeet or Halruaa, or in the great cities of the North like Waterdeep or Silverymoon.

With the intensity of their study and practice, wizards tend to become increasingly solitary as they advance in their Art, having fewer peers with whom they can share their insights, if they choose to share them with anyone at all. Thus great wizards often take up residence in isolated towers or strongholds, exh ibiting ever more eccentric behavior as time goes on. Some say this is a mark of madness brought on by delving too deeply into arcane lore, but they never say it too loudly anywhere a wizard might overhear.

The greatest wizards of the Realms find means of extending their lives far beyond the span of any race except the elves. Archwizards may be centuries old, having seen civilizations rise and fall across Faerun. Other wizards seeking this longevity turn to lichdom, dwelling in isolated tombs and strongholds as they withdraw from the world in body as well as mind.

Wizardly Groups

Many wizardly groups exist in the Forgotten Realms, but two, in particular, stand out.

The Red Wizards

The most infamous group of wizards in the Realms are the Red Wizards of Thay. Garbed in their distinctive red robes, the Red Wizards have sought to expand their power and to extend Thay's influence across the Realms, particularly in lands in the East. They shave their heads and wear complex tattoos reflecting their ambitions and achievements and their favored school of magic.

In Thay, the Red Wizards have ultimate power, although they give governance of day-to-day affairs to those without skill in the Art. Every Red Wizard devotes study to one of the eight schools of magic and serves that school's zulkir, the leader and ultimate master of that style of magic. The zulkirs and their underlings constantly vie with one another for power and influence, and this competition frequently sends Red Wizards far from Thay to seek new spells, recover lost artifacts, and create wealth that can flow back to Thay. The power the Red Wizards hold in Thay gives them a measure of diplomatic legitimacy in the lands of the Sword Coast and the North, but their presence is rarely welcome and is universally viewed with suspicion.

War Wizards

The potential for wizards to influence the outcome of battle is something no ruler in Faerfm can afford to ignore, and most great armies seek to recruit and include wizards among their ranks. Evokers are the most common, simply for the potential their spells have of inflicting the most damage to the greatest number of enemies. Still, all schools of magic find their applications in warfare.

The War Wizards of Cormyr are perhaps the best known application of the Art to the field of battle. As much soldiers as they are scholars, many of them were members of the Purple Dragons before they began their training in the Art. In addition to field duty in times of war, the War Wizards also protect the royalty of Cormyr, and each one swears a magic oath of service to the Crown. In this role, War Wizards serve as bodyguards, advisors, and even spies. Members of the royal family, Purple Dragon Knights, and officers of the Purple Dragons frequently wear magic rings that allow a War Wizards to know where they've gone and to scry upon them. Removing such a ring, even for innocent reasons, can call a cadre of battle-ready War Wizards to teleport nearby with attack spells already in the midst of being cast.