Why are anti-scrying spells expensive?


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

Liberty's Edge

Scrying and clairaudience/clairvoyance cost nothing except for a focus that you will use again. But false vision costs 250 gp per casting, and nondetection costs 50 gp. I get that it is useful to be able to stop people from spying on you - potentially even giving them false information - but why is it more expensive than the spell used to spy on you in the first place?

Is this a holdover from old editions, or is it actually balanced?


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*looks around furtively*

I spent 300 gold on telling you this, so listen up. Almost all of today's magic has its roots in the fey. However, given the sheer number of available sources, this doesn't need to be the case. And yet it is, across regions ,cultures, even worlds. Evidently, somebody must be actively keeping it that way. And if they can stop people from finding out how to enchant cold iron on the cheap, they can stop us from disrupting their surveillance easily.


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I consider it a "GM's tool/Players price"... It's far easier to justify the BBEG spying on your party and protecting himself than it is to waste Party resources making your entire group scrye-proof, So the GM can keep you on the rails easier.


Mage's Private Sanctum Isn't too high level, covers a massive area, has no cost and blocks any and all Scrying attempts


If find the "area" (really a volume) somewhat ambiguous. Do you get as many cubes 30 feet on a side as your caster level?


The reason is that by making the anti-scry spells cheap the whole divination branch becomes worthless...most of those spells are weak to start with. I have yet to see a caster specializing in divinations ;)


M1k31 wrote:
I consider it a "GM's tool/Players price"... It's far easier to justify the BBEG spying on your party and protecting himself than it is to waste Party resources making your entire group scrye-proof, So the GM can keep you on the rails easier.

Additionally, if anti-scrying techniques are not trivial or cheap, then the PCs would be plausibly able to use scrying to their advantage for reasons other than "the antagonists just bother to didn't think of it."

A BBEG who is cheap and thus does not go around putting nondetection on basically everybody in his organization all the time is a lot more effective than one who just didn't bother to consider that this might be a good idea.


Khudzlin wrote:
If find the "area" (really a volume) somewhat ambiguous. Do you get as many cubes 30 feet on a side as your caster level?

A 30 foot cube refers to a 30x30x30 volume/Area per caster level. So you could arrange them in any contiguous shape.

I believe this is the case as stone shape is 10 cu. ft. + 1 cu. ft./level. Which refers to the total volume.


Vatras wrote:
The reason is that by making the anti-scry spells cheap the whole divination branch becomes worthless...most of those spells are weak to start with. I have yet to see a caster specializing in divinations ;)

Divination is the most common specialization for wizards due to the initiative bonus.


Firewarrior44 wrote:

A 30 foot cube refers to a 30x30x30 volume/Area per caster level. So you could arrange them in any contiguous shape.

I believe this is the case as stone shape is 10 cu. ft. + 1 cu. ft./level. Which refers to the total volume.

Thanks, the difference between the two wordings makes it clearer.

Dark Archive

Anti divination spells are expensive, but anti divination countermeasures are not. A thin sheet of lead lining your personal chamber, or at least your valuable treaure chests, will block lots of scanning. Not telling your underlings the entirety of your plans means invasive mental scans (and more traditional interrogations) give minimal information. Classic power-behind-the-scene tactics will often lead to Diviners not having the initial nuggets of information that they'll need to direct their first volley of spells.

Even without such measures? Spell descriptions hint towards information being vague at times, and anything that involves asking a mystical 3rd party for information can vary wildly between the perspective and mindset of such entities. Hell, even the all powerful Find the Path can lead the party through the quickest, (often) most dangerous paths. You did remember to install traps and hire guards, right?

The Ultimate Intrigue book has several pages dedicated to giving DM advice in dealing with spellcasting as a general problem solver. I highly recommend you give it a read, the whole book is pretty great.

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