Sneaky Quick Wizard Build Help

[Necrosnoop110]

Upcoming 5th Edition Campaign. Don't know the ground rules yet. But I'm interested in making a stealthy, lucky, mobile, wizard type. I love the idea of a small sized wizard hiding behind his team-mates and zipping around the battlefield undercover. Halfling? Gnome? Open to any suggestions? 

Peace,
Necro

[linklord231]

I would go Forest Gnome Diviner Wizard with either the Criminal or Urchin background. 
Forest Gnome gets you +2 Int and +1 Dex, as well as the Minor Illusion cantrip.  Diviner Wizard gives you the Portent ability, which emphasizes the "lucky" aspect of your character.  And the two backgrounds I mentioned both give Stealth and one other sneaky-related skill proficiency, and proficiency with thieves' tools. 

[Dictum Mortuum]

You could also go multiclass with 3-5 levels of Lore Bard, Cutting Words is awesome and Vicious Mockery is very funny.
Also, you could get the Lucky feat to mess with rolls people make, but only against you.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

"Hey Beholder, you ever run a comb through those ~hairs of yours?  'Cause if you went bald you'd be cuter."

The Wiz Div 6 ability is a personal fave, but it's totally table dependent.
If the DM isn't handing you enough info for the Divs, then
the recharged slots are effectively making you into a lower level Wizard.
If the DM is handing out good info, you can set up Div chains.
Cast 2 1s, Cast 2 Div 2s, Cast 2 1s, Cast 2 Div 3s, Cast 2 Div 2s, Cast 2 1s, etc.
Do something stupid like paralleling your advancement with Warlock.
Bumps the Div recharge up to per encounter rest.

Mirroring Dictuum, I'm going to play a Fighter 1 / Lore Bard X soon.
I figure the skills are almost the same, Archery with Crossbow Expert,
get the Lore 6 choices of Animate Dead and Conjure Animals.

[Dictum Mortuum]

I used Animate Dead with my war cleric, but I didn't have much fun. They ended up being unable to hit anything and just used them to provide advantage to me and my teammates.

I'm now playing a weird support character that's Alternative Human Lore Bard 5/Divination Wizard 2/Knowledge Cleric 1 - mainly provides bless to the party and uses Cutting Words/Portent/Lucky to force save or suck effects on enemies and in addition I've got every useful skill there is
I also found out that Magic Missile is great for dishing out some reliable damage, because almost no one has resistance to force and it's also auto-hit; it doesn't scale so good, but I have an Int score of 14, so that's a good deal.
I'm planning on picking up Scorching ray (I have a Cha score of 18) by leveling up Lore Bard to 6, because it scales really well!

[awaken_D_M_golem]

I didn't like my Wizard spamming Chill Touch over and over ...  ... but by level 3, I was running through my spell list with regularity.

N110
Halfling Wiz 4 Skulker feat, for the trick Caelic spotted, and Firebolt then
Rogue 2 for the sneaky zip around the battlefield part and enabling the Hide for Skulker
Wiz Div 2 gives you another set of "lucky"-like dice subs, even though they don't stack.
+2 to Int at levels 8 and 12, although Resilient Con is a good idea too,
continuing Wiz to 18, feat at 16 is wtf you want by then if you get there.
Int Dex Con, probably Wis 10
Could go Rogue 3 Assassin, you'd want Alert feat for that.

[Dictum Mortuum]

What was the wizard/Skulker trick aDMg?

[awaken_D_M_golem]

I'm afb, but Lightfoot Halfling with Skulker feat, can Hide behind a larger medium-sized PC in combat.  Much better with Rogue 2 using the bonus action.  (the combo has generated lots of grumpiness at wotc boards , for whatever that's worth) That's about as sneaky In-combat as you can get.  It can still be targetted by an AoE.

[Necrosnoop110]

Ok, getting closer to show time. Please give it a once over and I'm open to any suggestions.

Race: Gnome (Forest)
Class: Wizard (Diviner)
Level: 1
Background: Criminal

(Rolled stats: 16, 15, 13, 12, 12, 11, 11 [we are using honor])
Str: 11
Dex: 15 +1 = 16
Con: 12
Int: 16 +2 = 18
Wis: 12
Cha: 13
Honor: 11

Skills:
(Criminal Bonus) Deception
(Criminal Bonus) Stealth
(1) Arcana
(2) Investigation

Spells:
Cantrips
(Gnome Bonus) Minor Illusion
(1) Chill Touch
(2) Mage Hand 
(3) Ray of Frost

1st Level Spells
(1) Charm Person 
(2) Disguise Self
(3) Find Familiar
(4) Mage Armor
(5) Shield or ... Detect Magic (I really want this for campaign reasons) 
(6) Sleep

[awaken_D_M_golem]

Looks good.
Might wanna switch Cha 12 and Con 13
in anticipation for the Resilient Con feat
probably at level 8.

Plan on +2 Int at level 4.

Perception instead of Deception
via the customizing backgrounds.

I'd go ahead and take Detect Magic instead of Charm Person at level 1.
You can get Charm the next level anyway.

2 ranged cantrips might be a bit of overlap at the start.
Shocking Grasp can get you out of melee range.
Fire Bolt does a bit more damage, though more monsters are resistant.
But most of this is campaign dependent anyway.

[sambojin]

Yeah, lightfoot and skulker lets you hide behind someone (medium or bigger) and not reveal your position when you miss them with your attack. So when you hit them (what you're intending to do I assume), they'll know you're there, but nothing else you're hidden from will. Unless an enemy says "Hey everyone, the halfling hiding behind that human just hit me with a snow-cone." Then all the enemies will know you're there.

The hiding while lightly obscured part is probably the better part of the feat, because dim light is pretty prevalent, even if darkvision is too (counts as dim light when in total darkness, so it's nice if you've got darkvision yourself and don't use torches). The perception checks are just gravy.

Lightfoot+skulker is good, great for rogues, but not the best part of the feat. It's like cleric(trickery) 2. Seems great for rogues. But only some bits of it (advantage on stealth is for someone else, invoke duplicity is nice, but there's lots of ways of ensuring SA for rogues).