| Stazamos |
In the Scrying spell, there are various levels of knowledge, one of which is "None". The next level up is "secondhand", meaning you have heard of the target, so "None" would imply that you haven't even heard of your target. There is a footnote for "none" which states you must have some sort of connection to the target. So you must have a connection, but have never heard of the target.
This basically results in what looks like a riddle:
What kind of creature has a connection with one, but whom one has never heard of?
Edit: Ya might want to jump to the end... I'm gonna go off on a little adventure of my own, here, and speculate to oblivion. If that's fun to read for you, however, proceed!
Here is one possibility: A target who knows the caster, but the caster doesn't know the target. The "knows of" must be strong enough to qualify as a connection. One example would be the BBEG monitoring the heroes' progress. So suppose the party fights past the enemy encampment, and reaches the Dark Spire of Doom. The party has no idea who is in charge, but can try to assume that there is indeed a leader and try to scry on "the leader". Another example, let's say the caster had a twin at birth, and they were separated early enough such that neither knows of the other. For the spell, the potential target need not know about the other twin (the BBEG example needed it so that there'd be a connection; here, the connection is by family), but can, but let's go and assume not, anyway. The caster is bored one day, trying to master the Scrying spell, and casts the spell, targeting "oh, I dunno, my long lost twin!" Boom.
Another is: "heard of" actually means that more than just the name is known. A few facts about the creature are also known, enough to ID the creature. So maybe if the name is unique, that'll work, but if it's not a unique name, some other details, like gender, profession, etc. help the arcane forces of the universe figure out to whom the caster is referring. Not a lot of detail is needed. My reasoning here is, suppose one overhears a discussion of "Frank". That may not count as having heard of them -- say, there are 2 Franks, and both speakers know both, and who is being discussed is obvious to them. But if you listen into the conversation more, and learn it's "Frank from accounting", then that might be enough? Ugh, I dunno.
Now -- in most situations, Seconhand is likely to be the minimum relevant level, but None can't possibly be an empty set, can it?
Anyone else have ideas?
Touc
|
To target a creature with "None" you must have one of the items listed in the "Connection" (body part, picture, etc).
So in your example, the BBEG is scrying them, but they have no knowledge of who or what it is and no items linking to the BBEG. Scrying fails.
One tries to scry their twin, having no knowledge if such a person exists, and with no item linking, scrying fails.
However, the party finds a lost Ring on the ground. An attempt could be made to find the anonymous owner.
Secondhand likely means someone has described the target well enough you can distinguish them from others even though you've never met. So while Harry might create a fail situation, thinking Harry Potter (the guy who makes ceramics in the town of Daggerford and not the famous wizard) would be enough.
| Stazamos |
Argh, I completely failed to notice that "connection" was an actual defined thing -- I looked at the table, ignored the title. That pretty much sums up my confusion. I'm so used to reading sketchy non-terms in spells that I completely missed an actual valid one! (not that spells are always bad, I'm just being overly dramatic for effect)