What is the best way to phrase questions for a commune? I'd like to get the most bang for my spellcasting buck.
In Planescape:
My party needs to assault (or otherwise infiltrate) a temple of Mask and my character (a cleric of Brandobaris) wants to commune with his deity with some questions about what we're getting into (guardians they might have, resistences we might need, etc.). We need to deposit an item behind a statue in the temple so I was thinking of asking if the statue is warded with death magic or something similar.
Some pertintent info:
I'm a Cleric 10 so that's 10 questions. We are currently on one of the planes of hell (which doesn't exactly make sense...isn't Mask CE?...earlier the DM thought we went to the abyss, maybe this is a plot remenant). Most of the party is Good or chaotic (though my cleric is True N) so they are taking major penalties just being in hell. Hopefully, the chaotic forces of Mask will take the same penalties.
Also, if anyone has any specific tips for ya'know...assaulting a temple feel free to put them here. Our party sucks at Gather Information (even more so in the hells), but some sort of scrying before the commune would probably be a good idea.
Advice, free that it is, would be much easier to give with some more pertinent information.
Verification of the plane you're on, preferably by layer if known.
Asides from your Cleric 10, what else comprises the party's classes and member numbers ? (Do you have 3 buddies or 6 ? What are they playing ?)
Commune from the Lower Planes to most of the other planes - especially if you're in another Gawd's turf - is a Bad Idea generally speaking. And given your proximity to an extraplanar temple of a Gawd nominally hostile to your own, there's a safe bet that one of the lesser mini-onions with a functioning brain and a Name is therein somewhere, ensuring that mooks of the Lower Planes don't simply rampage all over the place and take all thier hard-stolen-stuff and schwag.
You would be advised - at present - to be sure (without burning off a great many spell slots just to provide against the baleful planar influences of whatever plane you're on) that the entire party can see in non-magical darkness and won't be eaten by the primary nature of the plane itself. The Spell Compendium has a number of such spells readily available to a Cleric of your character's level *presuming* you can still commune with your patron Gawd and receive spells. (If you're playing 2nd edition, however, you're royally hosed - I'd advise an immediate plane shift back to the Prime Material, do gobs of planar research and accumulate the necessary pile of goodies and minor magic stuff to ensure whole-party-survival in the plane in question.)
In a nutshell, I'd generally advise against such a raid unless I had reasonably concrete intelligence on the oppsition therein. One way to do so is by very mundane means ... give that high Spot bonus Rogue or equivelant party member the spyglass *someone* is probably toting around and recconoiter the whole place for a couple of days. Watch thier routines, any guard patterns, ariel patrols of thier own and so forth.
Unless you're on a strict timetable for some insane reason, take your sweet time while there and cower like rabbits during winter with hungry wolves nearby. Hide thyselves! Mundane scrying (by an arcane caster should they happen to have either the Scry spell (and its attendant, bulky and expensive foci) or a Crystal Ball available, preferably with Clairaudience and - even better - both Infernal languages), would attract less attention thereabouts than divine scrying probably would.