Self-explanatory thread.
Of all the sorts of spellcaster PC's I've seen in terms of stats (and gameplay), not a lick of them have any Divination type spells. It seems like an absolutely useless school unless you have some NPC who specifically specializes in being all like "Yup, I see what's going to happen here." And this is something that some BBEG would do when dealing with a group of meddlesome PC's getting in the way of his plans.
Other than maybe for the occasional bad guy who wants to make sure the good guys fail in their quests, is there really any use for the Divination school for PC's? What sort of good spells from the Divination school would a spellcaster choose (besides True Strike)?
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Level 0: Detect Magic, Read Magic
Level 1: Anticipate Peril, Identify
Level 2: Detect Thoughts, See Invisibility
Level 3: Blood Biography
Level 4: Arcane Eye, Detect Scrying, Named Bullet, Scrying
Level 5: Prying Eyes, Telepathic Bond
Level 6: Battlemind Link, True Seeing
Level 7: Greater Arcane Sight
Level 8: Discern Location, Greater Prying Eyes
Our group has greatly benefited from most of these spells.
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Big thought time!
One of the developments in warfare since the start of the 21st-century is the notion of intelligence-driven warfare. The more we know about an enemy, the better we can tailor a response. Police forces in the United States have also adapted an intelligence-driven approach. Both of these groups have adapted their tactics to intruding into small spaces and dealing with enemies on a room-by-room basis, almost like adventurers. Let’s leave aside the political ramifications of such tactical evolution for a moment and consider what intelligence-driven adventuring looks like. Knowing your foe lets the wizard and cleric select the right spells, and lets the martial PCs choose useful arms for the battle.
Several divination spells provide both location-based and target-based intelligence. scrying and greater scrying, as previously mentioned, are great for seeking out enemies for whom you have a name. arcane eye and prying eyes can provide you with the layout of a dungeon or other encounter area before you arrive. This opens up asymmetric strategies, like dropping into rooms that are not the front entrance of the dungeon. Quick example from Shattered Star:
The various detect spells have situational use. At level 10+, detect scrying has an outstanding duration, gives you information about what sort of enemies you are facing, and, with a successful opposed caster roll, can even identify enemies you didn’t realize were out there!
TL;DR – Yes, they are.
If anything I would say Divination is TOO useful, making surprises in story and surprise encounters trivial to the point of damaging the campaign. We had a diviner for one campaign and I felt bad for our GM because it was just a bunch of hey I can see that, or hey I auto detect everything within X range, or hey what is the answer to this puzzle/trap. I know there are ways around it as a DM but it can be fun sucking to never have the element of surprise
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It depends on the DM. A lot of divination spells are easy to fool, or can give false information, that said they can allow the players to custom prep for encounters which is a huge boon. The vision and communication spells are quite useful but again situational.
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It depends on the DM. A lot of divination spells are easy to fool, or can give false information, that said they can allow the players to custom prep for encounters which is a huge boon. The vision and communication spells are quite useful but again situational.
I second this. Some GMs have an inherent dislike of divination, and will use it to mess with you; some appreciate players that want to scout out/use smart tactics. The usefullness really depends on the GM.
Even yes/no questions are absurdly powerful if used right... spend a few days in town and you can learn almost anything if you know how to ask.
Looking for a lost thing? Ask yes/no for regions, then sub regions, then questions like "is the magical gubbin contained in the northmost half of subregion X?" Yes? "Is the magical gubbin contained in the northmost quarter of subregion X?" and so on and so on...
Once you have a good general location, you can scry on the area, and fan out some arcane eyes to find the entrance...
Then you can scry through the entire dungeon.
really, the applications are immense... are there invisible enemies in this place? Are there traps? Are there more than 5 traps? No? More than 3? Etc.... you can just keep playing 21 questions until you narrow nearly anything down to the desired result.
Do we have to kill super special boss guy using a particular method?
Does that method require a specific item?
Is that item on this plane?
Is that item in the country of blahblahblah?
Is it in county X? county Y? County Z? etc..
Eventually you get the info you need, scry on the item, telelport in, grab it and teleport out.
This is why so many GMs hate divination spells.... a whole slew of adventures involving finding that information.. and the whole dungeon that protects the item... keys needed to open certain doors, red herrings, surprises about the item itself etc.... they all get side-stepped by divination.
It depends on a lot on the GM. Lots of GMs will block a lot of scrying/divination spells because they destroy the plot.
If anything, divination spells are TOO good; you either have to ban them, nerf them, or hope your players go with the spirit of the game and don't use them to negate your entire game.
My players went to the trouble to work up a "speak with dead truthfully" spell as getting accurate data from a dead villian was kinda difficult...
I made it a very high level spell [7th for cleric and 9th for mage...in 1st/2nd edition].
And made it the lifes work of every necromantic cultist in the country to steal it for their masters.
If the players use it...the cultists show up...don't use it and the cultists merely shadow them for days...if not weeks.
Actually, it was a clever idea...just one that it was too good to not mess with them over.
Even yes/no questions are absurdly powerful if used right... spend a few days in town and you can learn almost anything if you know how to ask.
Looking for a lost thing? Ask yes/no for regions, then sub regions, then questions like "is the magical gubbin contained in the northmost half of subregion X?" Yes? "Is the magical gubbin contained in the northmost quarter of subregion X?" and so on and so on...
Definitely agree with you there. Have a character now with Lore mystery so 1/day free Commune. Old party fought a lich and got massacred. New guy figures that there can't possibly be that many liches in existence and with an insanely high knowledge history check gets a potential list unaccounted for mighty spell casters throughout history who could be the lich based on the characteristics known. Now I'm just Communing everyday until we find out who exactly he is and what his phylactory is likely to be be based on his personal history.
It's like having Google really.
This is why so many GMs hate divination spells.... a whole slew of adventures involving finding that information.. and the whole dungeon that protects the item... keys needed to open certain doors, red herrings, surprises about the item itself etc.... they all get side-stepped by divination.
Scry and Teleport seems like it would be a very poor tactic against any high value targets. There are counter measures and anyone with a good mage on their side has those on their super hidden volcano lair.
Scry and Teleport seems like it would be a very poor tactic against any high value targets. There are counter measures and anyone with a good mage on their side has those on their super hidden volcano lair.
This creates a different problem. If you create a game-breaking ability, then make it easily countered, why bother having it in the game at all? It's like how every bad guy in the world wears a Ring of Mind Shielding, because of all the spells that can be used to easily find them out. Would have been better, IMFAO, to not include the game-breaking spells so as to not have to require ham-fisted defenses.
These spells should help the plot along, not let PCs utterly bypass it, thus requiring every bad guy to have the same defenses to stop X, Y, and Z.
We needed to infiltrate a castle held by a hostile force, and some BBEG's. Good thievery got us inside. I cast Prying Eyes
http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/prd/spells/pryingEyes.html#_prying-eyes
we fiddled about a bit, then left. We were rewarded some time later (when the eyes returned to me) with a map of the castle, and some intel on what everyone in it was up to. Only a small dog noticed the floating eyes, and there were few doors they weren't able to go beyond.
In another situation, we needed to find out what some very sneaky cultists were up to somewhere in our town in the middle of the night. I began casting Prying Eyes every evening, and reviewing the information in the morning. We found who was going where under cover of darkness, and were able to investigate.
There is a 1-10 hour delay on the return of Prying Eyes (that is the time they take to get back to you), but respecting the limitations of divination spells can prevent their abuse, and lend some flavor to the story. The players and the GM sometimes need to sit down and figure out just how efficient and informative a divination would actually BE in a given situation, instead of just "oh well, here's the info you were after". In this case, it was able to give us info and hooks to move the story forward, and with a little flair.
Not many people take this into account, but Prediction of Failure is a pretty useful Divination spell. It has a couple snags from it's descriptors, but it's an offensive Divination that last rounds/level on a failed save! Not a bad way to inflict some status effects.
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I'd also like to add that Scrying requires a lot of factors like, knowing you who you're looking for, knowing details, requiring a long casting time, and requires a /creature/.
So its harder to get a glimpse into a place with it over long distances.
Divination spells provide useful information, but they cost in time. If you have a site based situation, or its a heist, they work better. If its 'the ebony order is moving to do something!' most of them are entirely useless requiring good old fashioned information gathering.
Not many people take this into account, but Prediction of Failure is a pretty useful Divination spell. It has a couple snags from it's descriptors, but it's an offensive Divination that last rounds/level on a failed save! Not a bad way to inflict some status effects.
Pretty useful? 90% of the things you fight will be immune to Mind-Affecting Effects, Curses, or Fear Effects by the time you have access to this spell.
Having a spell which practically never works (even for how powerful it is) seems quite silly if you ask me.
Pretty useful? 90% of the things you fight will be immune to Mind-Affecting Effects, Curses, or Fear Effects by the time you have access to this spell.
Having a spell which practically never works (even for how powerful it is) seems quite silly if you ask me.
It also suffers from being underpowered because it's permanent. Even though anyone you cast it on likely won't live very long anyway, it is weak for an 8th level spell because it has permanent duration. -4 to most d20 rolls is just not a great use of an 8th level spell slot and a standard action.
Well, I guess that's opinion. Though under the right circumstances, it still could be useful. Mind effecting and fear effects do get a swift kick in the pants for most enemies, but how often is something immune to curse effects? As far as I remember, the only creature I saw that was immune to curses was the Father of All Linnorms.
I'm starting to think I have a soft spot for underpowered spells, though.
But multiple Bestow Curses don't stack, right? Because by the time I reach the power level for this sort of thing, I've already got Major Curse in my repertoire. Still, it's not like that's the first 8th level spell I pick up.
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Divination is very dependent on the type of campaign you play. I found it to be pretty handy in Kingmaker, and virtually useless in WotR. The whole school of magic seems to be largely situational. But when it does come into play, it usually makes a fairly substantial difference, and it definitely is home to at least a couple of "must-have" spells, like See Invisibility and True Seeing.
But multiple Bestow Curses don't stack, right? Because by the time I reach the power level for this sort of thing, I've already got Major Curse in my repertoire. Still, it's not like that's the first 8th level spell I pick up.You can do multiple Bestow Curses for different effects. -6 to each ability score, -4 to pretty much all D20 rolls, etc, etc.
Yeah, but using the two in conjunction gives a -8 penalty. Also, PoF is a Divination spell, so I decided to bring it up in the thread about Divination. I just think that it can be useful, situationally and subjectively. Objectively, I think that it may be one of the only, or at least one of the very few, strictly offensive Divination spells.
Scry and Teleport seems like it would be a very poor tactic against any high value targets. There are counter measures and anyone with a good mage on their side has those on their super hidden volcano lair.
This creates a different problem. If you create a game-breaking ability, then make it easily countered, why bother having it in the game at all? It's like how every bad guy in the world wears a Ring of Mind Shielding, because of all the spells that can be used to easily find them out. Would have been better, IMFAO, to not include the game-breaking spells so as to not have to require ham-fisted defenses.
These spells should help the plot along, not let PCs utterly bypass it, thus requiring every bad guy to have the same defenses to stop X, Y, and Z.
Yep... this is a big problem IMO. The game hands out big weapons and then hands out equally big shields...
There are many who think that offensive magic is too powerful... and it really isn't, because it can pretty much all be countered. But that does mean that defensive magic is too important... go into any high level fight without the right defenses and you will all die. Go in with the right set-up and things can be trivial.
Saying that power X is okay because there is a counter is a bad setup. If anything, Power X needs to be okay all on its own... without that you end up being overly dependant on defensive magic or end up as a corpse. Its the same issue I have with save DCs scaling based on the assumption of a Cloak of Resistance.
Essentially, it makes certain defensive spells, and spells to counter divination and travel magic, requirements rather than unique or characterful choices for enemies and players alike. In the same way that players take cloaks of resistance... not because they are 'cool' or fit their character concept... but because they are flat out necessary.