Choosing the right Wizarding School is an important decision for everyBaldur’s Gate 3player, since, even if you’re not a Wizard, you’ll most certainly have one in your party: Gale. He’s a Human Wizard that you’ll meet fairly early on in your adventure, so early in fact that he’d be only level two.
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That’s an important level for any Wizard, as it’s when they choose their School. Whatever you choose won’t lock you out from any spells, but it will come with certain benefits that are good to keep in mind, especially if you’re playing on the harder difficulties.
8Illusion School
The Illusion School focuses on confusing enemies and disguising yourself and others. While the role play potential is high, in a video game like Baldur’s Gate 3 this School comes with certain limitations. When disguising yourself, you can avoid being detected, but NPCs (important ones in particular) will still recognize you and speak as if nothing had changed. At least it’s a way tochange your appearance.
The other uses of this School are for confusing enemies in combat, particularly at level ten when you learn Illusory Self, making one attack per short rest miss you entirely. But, as defensive options go, other Schools give you far more at earlier levels.
7Divination School
The Divination School is all about predicting the future and seeing the unseeable. Certainly flavorful, choosing this School will give you some interesting benefits, although most of them are offered elsewhere in the game. You should only choose this School if you know you won’t overlap what it gives you.
Starting off, you get access to Portent Dice, allowing you to reroll certain dice during the day. While powerful, the Luck feat essentially gives the same benefit to any character, not to mention theKarmic Diceoption that already improves your odds. And, at level ten, you gain Darkvision and See Invisibility, but by that point there are too many ways to have access to those visions to justify the School.
6Transmutation School
While niche in its uses, the Transmutation School can be a powerful addition depending on your playstyle and team composition. For starters, Experimental Alchemy lets you double up on alchemical solutions while using the crafting interface. If you plan to use this feature, you better make your Wizard the dedicated alchemist.
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At later levels, the School can allow you to create special stones that buff your party in various ways, and even lets you transform yourself or others into a bird. This can make anyone get too hard to reach places and interact with objects, so if you didn’t already have a way to get there, this can be very useful.
5Enchantment School
The Enchantment School is all about charming others into thinking you’re someone they should get to know, or at the very least not hit. This can be a very useful School if your wizard is the face of the party, leading most if not all conversations.
Beyond social interactions, this School can also help in combat, controlling the battlefield and stopping enemies from taking action. Starting from level two, you’re able to completely shut down an enemy, letting you take out the minions before you take on the main boss. At level ten, you can have up to two targets at once with all your Enchantment spells, making harder encounters a breeze.
4Conjuration School
The benefits of the Conjuration School might seem tame at first, but the utility they offer can be a game changer. The level two benefit is the lesser one but still useful, letting you summon rain to create a water field and douse fires. If you’ve played the game for a while, you know how annoying the fire fields can be.
At level six, you can teleport once every long rest; a Wizard with a quick relocation spell can survive longer and keep casting spells. But the biggest advantage is at level ten: Focused Conjuration, making it nearly impossible for enemies to break your concentration. Enemies trapped in your Cloud Kill spell will have a harder time escaping it.
3Necromancy School
If you’re having a hard time getting intothe evil mood, the Necromancy School can help. It is for those that thrive in spells that weaken enemies while giving you life back, and of course for people that love having minions.
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While you’re able to still learn spells likeAnimate Deadwithout being part of the School, being a master of Necromancy allows you to summon more powerful variants. The biggest caveat of the School is that you need to have a corpse at the ready, and summoning a skeleton during combat can be tricky. There are, however, plenty of corpses dotted around in Baldur’s Gate, so having your minions ready before an encounter can be simple if you plan for it.
2Abjuration School
The Abjuration School is all about protecting yourself and others with a physical manifestation of magic. This School is great for beginners since it mostly works passively: each time you cast a spell you gain a shield that lasts for the whole day or until it is depleted.
This adds a lot of protection from as soon as level two, letting you focus on other angles of magic besides survivability. On higher levels the shield not only gets stronger, but you can also project it to other allies to mitigate their damage, making it so even if you’re not being focused, your shield still has an important use.
1Evocation School
If there’s one thing Wizards are known for, it’s casting Fireball. This and other Evocation spells are high on the elemental damage, but also on the friendly damage. Since the area of these spells is so large and most allies attack from melee range, you have to be very careful when casting such powerful abilities. Unless you’re part of the Evocation School.
Starting from level two, the Sculpt Spells feature lets you create safety pockets in your Evocation spells, letting you throw your fireball towards the whole group and only torching your foes. At level ten, Evocation spells have your intelligence modifier added to their damage, making them all the more devastating.
