A lot depends on your GM. Augury and Divination can be very useful if used intelligently with appropriately phrased questions and your GM plays fair. If so, take the Fortune Teller feat to avoid paying material component costs on these and True Seeing.
At 7th level Vision (if the GM gives useful info) and Greater Arcane Sight are good.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Divination spells depend a lot on what you and your party are doing, and how you want to support it. You might very easily want to have different spells memorized before you go out on an adventure, while you are on an adventure, and while you are socializing...
Divination spells come in four classes.
Special Glasses change the target's perceptual abilities -- e.g., see auras, have darkvision, pierce illusions, that sort of thing. Often these are very nice buffs to have on the party death-dealer (melee type, archer type, blasting caster) to let them see their targets or see through obstacles. They're usually the sorts of spells one casts during or just before an encounter. Things that boost your Perception or Sense Motive skills belong here. Buffer casters use a lot of these. You might prep a lot of these if you were planning to have lots of encounters that need them.
Remote Viewing spells and abilities change the location of your perception -- you can see other places, or from other viewing points (e.g., the scrying pool, or the bird soaring over a landscape.) These overlap with tactics like sending in scouts (conjured creatures, arcane eyes, that sort of thing) and basically allow you to gather information in (relative) safety and plan before the encounter. These are used by anyone who values advance information. Note that you can cast many of these days before-hand to learn about your enemies before you go out to fight them.
Brain Implants give you knowledge or abilities you otherwise wouldn't have, but aren't really a change-in-perception. Tongues is a classic example; so are things like discern location or locate object. Things that boost your Knowledge-type skills belong here. These come in handy in all sorts of situations, but are necessarily situational spells. If you have a good map to the secret lair of the dracolich you don't need find the path; if everyone in your campaign speaks and writes Common you don't need tongues.
Plot Breakers are the high-level divination spells that hurt the brains of unimaginative GMs and make many standard plots totally useless. Commune, divination, contact other plane, legend lore, vision, and similar spells come here. These are very dependent on the GM -- though GMs should note that the real name of many of these spells is Reveal Background Information or Give PCs A Honking Obvious Ticket to the Railroad, not frustate GM or Make It Easy On PCs. Most of these don't get cast in combat; they get cast a while before.
So which one is the best? It depends a lot on your playstyle and the sorts of obstacles you are facing, and on how your GM and group interact. The mindset of divination is not "which is the one spell I must use?" but "How do I find out what I need to know right now?".
Put the more situational ones on scrolls so you'll always have it available if the situation in question arises. Detect charm isn't something you commonly carry around in your head, but it might be vital if you think a succubus is in the area...
That said, things I often use a lot of as an arcane caster:
1 - comprehend languages (if GMs put in clues in obscure languages), true strike at any levels (low-level guy can hit, high-level guy can quicken it to make sure his maximized disintegrate or polar ray hits), anticipate peril (at high levels only, where it can be pre-cast and buff your already awesome initiative bonus
2 - detect thoughts to interrogate people, see invisibility (especially at mid-high levels!), blood transcription (you're a wizard, you want cool spells to add to your spellbook!)
3 - clairaudience/clairvoyance (very useful for scouting out areas in advance, arcane sight (wraps up most of the detect spells in one handy package
4 - scrying for too many reasons to mention, detect scrying especially at higher levels, arcane eye for scouting. Also note: if you can cast 4th-level spells you can use Improved Familiar to get someone with 1/week commune!
5 - prying eyes for mass scouting, contact other plane for plot-breaking (it can, among other things, reveal things you ought to know without the need for yes-or-no question games like commune
6 - true seeing aka make all illusionists cry and legend lore aka reveal backstory
7 - greater arcane sight aka detect everything, greater scrying for too many reasons to list, and vision aka superquickened legend lore
8 - discern location and moment of prescience
9 - foresight. Or maybe a metamagicked version of one of the lower-level spells, depending on how my GM rules foresight works.
I've never found divination useful unless it's got a specific mechanical effect. Telling the future doesn't really work unless the DM wants it to.