Scrying


Advice


Hello, I was making a scrying wizard and I was wondering how scrying really works. Can I use it in combat? How would It work in combat? Is there any cool things/combos you can do with scrying? Hope this wasn't a stupid question I am new to casters in the world of pathfinder. :)


Scrying isn't a combat thing. It's for looking at people that aren't right in front of you.

Start by reading the spell descriptions for Scrying and Greater Scrying. These are basically spells for spying on a person and their surroundings. They can also be a means of communication (using Message), though that's unreliable with regular Scrying.

More generally useful is Arcane Eye, which is great for scouting dungeon levels because it's not tied to a particular person. Unlike scrying though it has an indirect range limit imposed by the duration (minute/level) and movement rate.


The scrying spells work basically like the palantiri from LotR or the magic mirrors in some fairy tales: you can check up on people from far away. They have typically various limitations, from range to "you have to know the subject", and also allow a saving throw to negate them.

The only combat application is for high levels, and that tactic is known as scry-and-die. The caster and his group scry the target, use then a teleport spell to get next to him and then proceed to kill. This allows to pick a convenient moment and place (let's say when the bad guy is bathing) for the assault, avoiding whole dungeons and the guards. This is why so many bad guys make use of mindblank, forbiddance and other stuff to prevent it.

The other divinations, like claurvoyance/-audience, locate object, wizard eye and so on, typically allow you to scout the area. They are relatively short range and have often crippling limitations, like you have to know exactly, what you are looking for ("the key to this door" is out, you have to know what it really looks like). Quite often a rogue scouting ahead can do better, and often it is easier to just open a door and see for yourself (you were going to enter anyway, right?).
Many divination are subject to DM interpretation, mis-use by players (trying to find persons with locate object for example) and inherent flaws (check out augury and think through some typical situations), making this branch of magic the weakest and least used.


And with scry-and-die, you are taking a risk of bringing tactics into the game that your GM may choose to use against you. Once you break a gentlemen's agreement of how the game is played, especially in a way that starts messing up the story, then the GM my force your hand in some fashion. You could end up having to cast spells to protect the whole party from similar actions, tying up high-level spell slots that are needed for other things.

As Vatras says, divination is really about finding out what is behind the next door or around the corner. Often times you can just open the door or look around the corner, and the rogue can do that for free. That doesn't make divination useless, and there are times when it is a valuable ability, but playing casters (and especially wizards) effectively takes careful resource management. You only get so many castings of X per day. The trick with divination is to know when it's better to cast X instead of let the rogue do their thing.

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