Graviturgy Magic Wizard Handbook: DnD 5e Subclass Guide – RPGBOT

Graviturgy Magic Wizard Introduction

While Critical Role content is only sort of first-party, it’s built into Dndbeyond, so we’re going to count that for these purposes. We’ve already covered the excellent Chronurgist subclass, but it turns out that some people want to bend gravity instead of time. As the other subclass allowed to access Dunamancy, we get several powerful options no one else can take without specific DM permission. What this means is that, like most Wizards, you’re going to drop some big area control/denial spell early in a fight, but then, even more than most Wizards, you’re going to spend the rest of the encounter manipulating enemies into its range.

Regardless, it’s still a subclass of the strongest class in the game, and we’ll still make good use of that where appropriate. What you end up with is a strong Controller that’s still capable of putting out good sustained damage while also being the single best archetype for forced movement in the game.

The Graviturgy Magic subclass gains access to the Dunamancy spell list. See our Dunamancy Spell List Breakdown for guidance on Dunamancy spells.

Table of Contents

• Graviturgy Magic Wizard Introduction
• Disclaimer
• Graviturgy Features
• Graviturgy Ability Scores
• Graviturgy Races
• Graviturgy Feats
• Graviturgy Weapons
• Graviturgy Armor
• Multiclassing
• Example Build – Pull!
  • Abilities
  • Race
  • Background
  • Skills and Tools
  • Feats
  • Levels

Disclaimer

RPGBOT uses the color coding scheme which has become common among Pathfinder build handbooks, which is simple to understand and easy to read at a glance.

• Red: Bad, useless options, or options which are extremely situational. Nearly never useful.
• Orange: OK options, or useful options that only apply in rare circumstances. Useful sometimes.
• Green: Good options. Useful often.
• Blue: Fantastic options, often essential to the function of your character. Useful very frequently.

We will not include 3rd-party content, including content from DMs Guild, in handbooks for official content because we can’t assume that your game will allow 3rd-party content or homebrew. We also won’t cover Unearthed Arcana content because it’s not finalized, and we can’t guarantee that it will be available to you in your games.

The advice offered below is based on the current State of the Character Optimization Meta as of when the article was last updated. Keep in mind that the state of the meta periodically changes as new source materials are released, and the article will be updated accordingly as time allows.

Graviturgy Features

2. Adjust Density: Situational. Your allies might enjoy the extra speed from time to time, and Advantage on Strength checks is great for allies who are grappling, but the 1-minute duration and Concentration requirement mean that you can usually find something better to do. Still, you can use it as often as you like and there’s no save, which is great if your allies like to Shove or Grapple.
6. Gravity Well: 5 ft. of positioning is occasionally very useful. Since this is forced movement, it doesn’t provoke Opportunity Attacks, so you can use this to cast a spell on yourself or an ally to move the target out of melee without provoking an opportunity attacks, and potentially breaking grapples. Tragically, it only applies when you cast the spell so you can’t repeatedly reposition targets to keep them inside areas of effect. This also doesn’t specify which directions you can move the target, so theoretically you could move targets 5 feet into the air to force them into conveniently-positioned effects like Wall of Fire.
10. Violent Attraction: There aren’t many options which can force enemies to fall, so either you need to really like Reverse Gravity and Gravity Sinkhole, or your DM likes to put a lot of pits and cliffs on the map. Regardless, it’s at most 10d10 damage per day (assuming you can somehow cause falling damage on 5 separate rounds) and you have to spend your Reaction to activate it each time, meaning that you don’t have your Reaction for Shield or Absorb Elements.
14. Event Horizon: A great area control effect hampered only by the fact that you need to be in the middle of it. With a radius of just 30 feet, you’re easily within reach for attacks and abilities with any sort of range, and since you need to Concentrate on this, you might lose your signature feature for the day if you take even a tiny amount of damage.

    Fortunately, this doesn’t appear to care about cover, so you can do things like casting Stone Shape or Wall of Ice to erect a dome over yourself for cover, then lie prone inside it to impose Disadvantage on ranged attacks against you. If cover isn’t a option, try to keep moving enemies at bay by hitting them with things like Thunderclap to push them away or Ray of Frost to reduce their speed. Even Earth Thremor may be useful, as knocking targets prone forces them to spend half their speed to stand.

Graviturgy Ability Scores

No change from any other Wizard.

Str: We are (probably) not a muscle Wizard. We leave casting Fist to the War Mages.

Dex: We can’t wear armor, so get this as high as your budget will let you.

Con: Everything likes more Con.

Int: Wizard spells are powered by Int, plus it makes you good at knowing things.

Wis: Wizards rarely concern themselves with whether or not they should do a thing after finding out they can.

Cha: Dump.

	Point Buy	Standard Array
Str	8	8
Dex	15	14
Con	15	13
Int	15	15
Wis	8	12
Cha	8	10

Graviturgy Races

No different than other wizards, unless you do want to try being a Muscle Wizard by putting Adjust Density on yourself. If you want to do that, I’d suggest making your first level Fighter and being a Centaur so you don’t mind the speed reduction and really like the advantage on Strength.

Please someone help me stop finding uses for Centaur Wizards.

Graviturgy Feats

I wish this wasn’t the case, but Telekinetic is even more useful here than on most wizards. Since your whole schtick is controlling people’s movement in some big area effect, being able to push them 5 feet further after pulling them in with Gravity Well is especially good. Other than that, no different than other wizards.

Graviturgy Weapons

Your weapon can be best described as an applied acceleration of 9.81m/s².

Graviturgy Armor

You can’t unless you multiclass.

Multiclassing

This section briefly details some obvious and enticing multiclass options, but doesn’t fully explore the broad range of multiclassing combinations. For more on multiclassing, see our Practical Guide to Multiclassing.

Like most wizards, the subclass isn’t really served by multiclassing. Your overall character can be with the stereotypical first level artificer or fighter (followed by a second level somewhere for action surge, allowing you to set up your own spell combos), but this is all covered in the Wizard Handbook.

Example Build – Pull!

I have a sinking feeling that this build might suck.

Abilities

Since we’ll be getting a single +2 from custom lineage instead of a normal +2/+1 stat spread, we leave Dex even.

	Base	Increased
Str	8	8
Dex	14	14
Con	15	15
Int	15	17
Wis	10	10
Cha	8	8

Race

Custom Lineage. Size doesn’t matter, we want the feat because we often target the strongest save in the game and so we want to be ahead of the curve on our DC, and free darkvision never hurts.

Background

Take Sage, because how else would you have learned to deeply understand gravity in a fantasy setting.

Skills and Tools

Between the class and the background, we can walk out with Arcana, History, Nature, and Religion to know all the things.

Feats

We walk out at level 1 with Telekinetic for reasons described above. It also puts us ahead on the fundamental math with 18 Intelligence at level 1.

Level 4 caps Intelligence to 20.

Level 8 gets us Metamagic Adept

Level 12 gets us Resilient (Con)

Level 16 gets us Eldritch Adept

Level 19 gets us Lucky to prevent ourselves from failing critical saves which get very scary at high levels.

Levels

Level	Feat(s) and Features	Notes and Tactics
1	Cantrips: – Fire Bolt – Mind Sliver – Mage Hand 1st-Level Spells: – Comprehend Languages – Find Familiar – Mage Armor – Magnify Gravity – Silvery Barbs – Sleep Arcane Recovery Telekinetic (Int)	Because we pumped our starting Int up to 18, Fire Bolt is actually (slightly) better DPR than just using a light crossbow, so we can feel optimized while using magic from day one. Speaking of day one, you’re not really a Graviturgist yet, though you can kind of pretend to be one with all the shoving people around you’re doing. Just do Wizard things and survive for now. I really want to remind you to think about Silvery Barbs on this character, especially because, at higher levels, things might well succeed on all the Con saves you’re asking them for. Asking them to roll again can help, and someone will love the Advantage you’re handing out.
2	Adjust Density New Spells: – Absorb Elements – Shield	We already covered this some above, but Adjust Density really wants something like a Centaur with Shield Mastery on your team to use your concentration at low levels. I have no idea how a Centaur with a feat is going to happen at low levels, but that’s also not my problem to solve in this guide.
3	New Spells: – Phantasmal Force – Web	Perhaps unsurprisingly, these are the two best 2nd-level wizard spells and so we want both of them. Web also has a neat interaction with Gravity Well when we get there in that you can pull anyone you catch with the initial spell deeper into the center, making leaving even harder.
4	Ability Score Increase: Int 18 -> 20 New Cantrip Known: – Prestidigitation Retrain Cantrip: – Firebolt -> Ray of Frost New Spells: – Invisibility – Immovable Object	Immovable Object isn’t the best spell, but it’s certainly great for starting arguments if you’re already the kind of player willing to use gravity as a weapon. Does “fixed in place” mean it doesn’t follow the planet as it orbits? If it does follow the planet as it orbits, then clearly it must understand relative velocity to some degree, so where does that lead? Will it hold something in place if there’s an earthquake? Will it hold something in place relative to a ship if you cast it while standing on deck? How big a ship does it have to be? Enjoy the debate! Ray of Frost will be great for keeping enemies already in your big area effect from leaving. In addition to slowing them, a hit will let you push them towards its center. Plus, now that we’re almost level 5, the fact that it’s a smaller damage die won’t matter as much.
5	Spells: – Fly – Pulse Wave	Fireball is great and all, but Pulse Wave is way cooler and resisted by functionally nothing.
6	Gravity Well New Spells: – Counterspell – Dispel Magic	Did someone make it 10 feet out of your Web? Sure would be a shame if you Telekinetic’d them 5 feet towards it, then Mind Slivered them, using the additional 5 feet of movement from Gravity Well to push them into the area again, but now they have to make the save at a penalty.  This level is about becoming mage bane, because next level we really turn on.
7	Spells: – Black Tentacles – Wall of Fire	Black Tentacles, Gravity Well, Telekinetic, and Ray of Frost are a tailor-made combination to keep a bunch of people unhappily in one place, getting frozen and battered to death together. Cold damage not doing it for you? Wall of Fire accomplishes something very similar, but in a different shape. You can even push people back through it and force them to take the damage again if they want to get to you.
8	Metamagic Adept: – Extend Spell – Quicken Spell New Spells: – Gravity Sinkhole – Polymorph	Did someone manage to escape your tentacle patch? Pull them into the air above it with Gravity Sinkhole and let them fall in, taking falling damage (which will trigger Aggressive Attraction in a couple levels), then deal with being prone in the spell. If none of these tricks are working, you’re still a Wizard and can turn into a T-Rex for two hours thanks to the feat you just picked up. Quicken will be a surprise tool to help you in a few levels.
9	Spells: – Gravity Fissure – Hold Monster	We like gravity magic so we take it, but we also like Wisdom-save-based single-target disables, so we take one of those too.
10	New Cantrip: – Shape Water New Spells: – Telekinesis – Wall of Stone Violent Attraction	Telekinesis is a great way of throwing people into the air to make them fall into your extra 2d10 damage trap. Wall of Stone lets you make weird Minecraft houses wherever you want.
11	New Spells: – Contingency – Gravity Fissure	Oh, Contingency. A spell so good I wrote a whole article on it. Fun thing it can do: “If I cast Gravity Fissure and there are four or more targets in a straight line from me after it resolves, cast Lightning Bolt down that line.”
12	Resilient (Con) New Spells: – Scatter – Disintegrate	Concentration saves just got way easier to pass. Disintegrate is there for obvious reasons, and Scatter can do neat things like pick 5 random creatures up in a huge range and deposit them in your ongoing tentacle party.
13	New Spells: – Reverse Gravity – Tether Essence	A fun thing about Scatter: It just wants things on “the floor,” it doesn’t care if that floor is in an area of reversed gravity. Alternately, Tether the two biggest creatures then Disintegrate one of them. It’s like Twinning, but different.
14	Event Horizon New Spells: – Forcecage – Teleport	Event Horizon is an action, meaning you can’t cast most spells the turn you use it. Unless you Quicken those spells. Once a day you can lock several things into your orbit and follow up with a Quickened Scatter to teleport a handful of their friends into the area too. If you’re really worried, now that you’ve piled everything scary into one place, next turn you can just Forcecage it and walk away.
15	New Spells: – Dark Star – Clone	Well, Dark Star is really what we’ve been building too all this time. It’s persistent force damage that will all but trap your problems inside it. While you won’t be able to see into it (yet), Gravity Well doesn’t require that you see the targets, just that they fail a save. Clone is part of becoming immortal, and especially the endgame.
16	Eldritch Adept (Devil’s Sight) New Spells: – Maze – Simulacrum	Devil’s Sight gets us the ability to see into (and therefore target things in) our Dark Star. For spells, Maze is the absolute last word in single-target removal and control. Simulacrum is the final piece of the puzzle before next level.
17	New Spells: – True Polymorph – Wish	After you’ve finished making infinite simulacra of yourself, use True Polymorph to turn all the rocks you can find into CR 9 monsters.
18	Spell Mastery: – Silvery Barbs – Invisibility New Spell: – Ravenous Void	Neither of these should really need an explanation, but having infinite Silvery Barbs is almost literally cheating.
19	Lucky	By this point, there’s nothing really left to talk about.
20	Signature Spells	None of your 3rd-level spells really matter for the build, so probably choose Fly and Dispel Magic.