Recently my character learned he is a parent. He currently knows absolutely nothing other than that the mother is dead and odds are very high its not being on the material plane. Given only the knowledge the child exists and he has met its mother, what spells do I need to find it and confirm it is mine?
I have access to the wizard, druid, and cleric lists up to 6th level spells. UMD and plenty of gold is also available but I would prefer to avoid it
Scrying may work, if not you'll have to muck about with Commune / Contact other Plane.
"Do I really have a child?" Yes.
"Is my child on the prime material plane?" No.
"Is my child on a chaotically aligned plane?" No.
"Is my child on a evil aligned plane?" Yes.
"Is my child in Hell?" Yes.
"Is my child on an even numbered layer of Hell?" No.
etc...
You can narrow down the search area.
Scrying is the obvious choice to find your child, if you could cast it the connection modifier might be good, otherwise, probably not the greatest, so might be iffy...but that's probably the best way. How did you find out? Not sure what spell you'd need to confirm, speak with dead, but you'd need the corpse of the mother for that.
Plane shift would let him visit the mother. Death in Pathfinder is just a form of travel, baring total destruction of the soul.
I'd start off with a divination, for advice on your overall search. It never hurts, and you might learn something useful.
Next step would be scrying. If the knowledge of your child's existence counts as "secondhand knowledge" of the person you're scrying, you're good to go - even if the child saves, you can just try again the next day. If that doesn't qualify, you could always try the charitable gift trick - "I hereby give this rock to my one true offspring," now it's their property and might be enough of a connection to make them scryable.
If scrying fails, I agree that spamming commune/contact other plane is probably the most accurate method, but commune can get kind of pricy and contact other plane is a lot less reliable. Consider just using planar binding to bind, say, a few paracletus aeons and have them use their commune SLAs for you.
Once you figure out where they are, you can confirm that they're your child as easily as having your cleric cast the beautifully specific spell detect relations.
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Valandil Ancalime wrote: charitable gift trick? A somewhat facetious technique for scrying on someone with insufficient knowledge. One of the listed connections that make scrying possible is a "possession or garment." Well, if you own something, then you can give it to whoever you want, right? So if you just declare that you are giving your child full ownership of this rock you found, then, the logic goes, that rock becomes their possession.
Yeah, it's not likely to fly in any real game. But hey, it's worth a shot, right? I mean, since they're your kid, there's actually a reasonable justification for being able to leave them property.
But in all reasonableness, just move on to the bound aeon twenty questions commune factory and call it a day.
Source of info was basically an exposition fairy. Considering the dm there is a kid to find but I really needed to confirm lineage. Nice find on Detect Relations
I like the plane shift visit the mother but I would first have to find out who the mother was. A remembering spell would at least give me a list to go from but I would have to go through the list
He has yet to have any form of contact or even a description. I don't know age, gender, plane, or race
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I have definitely had a game where we teleported to Absalom and hired thirty wizards to simultaneously scry someone's kid, just to be almost totally sure. We wanted to make sure they didn't seek defenses once the will saves started coming. Fails on a one still is pretty good odds of failure if you're rolling more than 20 dice.
The GM was *not* fond of that tactic, let me tell you.
A Bird Feather Token travels "unerringly to a designated target" for a mere 300gp, but 'designated' doesn't get a definition. 'My eldest child' is a unique designation, but your GM may demand more.
Ring_of_Gyges wrote: Plane shift would let him visit the mother. Death in Pathfinder is just a form of travel, baring total destruction of the soul. If you’re playing in Golarion, or with that cosmology, then death is a form of transformation which almost always destroys the memories and personality of the dead.
would locate object work?
Lady-J wrote: would locate object work? 400ft+40/lvl
A scroll of Discern Location costs 3000 gp, and can be used without a UMD check by your cleric or wizard. It's guaranteed to work unless somebody is casting Mind Blank on the kid or a deity wants to shut you down.
In the event that Discern Location fails, that itself tells you something about how powerful your opposition is, and can be used as grounds for Commune questions. Things like:
Did a god intervene directly to prevent Discern Location from finding my child? NO
Did a wizard cast Mind Blank on my child? NO
Did a sorcerer cast Mind Blank on my child? NO
Did a witch cast Mind Blank on my child? YES
Is my child in imminent danger? NO
Does the witch who cast Mind Blank on my child have hostile intentions towards my child? YES
And so on. Incidentally, if the answer to that first question is YES, you may be out of your league.
GeraintElberion wrote: If you’re playing in Golarion, or with that cosmology, then death is a form of transformation which almost always destroys the memories and personality of the dead. I'm pretty sure that takes a really long time.
Discern Location is powerful but won't work:
"To find a creature with the spell, you must have seen the creature or have some item that once belonged to it."
Mind Blank, in my game, would block Commune:
"The subject is protected from all devices and spells that gather information about the target through divination magic" sounds pretty complete to me.
If your kid is on an unknown plane and subject to a mind blank you're just not going to find them with magic. You'll have to start going through your little black book and work out which of your ex-girlfriends has gone missing and go from there (that or start beating some more answers out of the exposition fairy, how did *it* find out about this?).
What did the exposition fairy tell you? How trustworthy is it?
When wording queries, make sure to account for the possibility that you have other children besides the child of interest, e.g., never just say "my child." If you do use commune ask about this early on. And don't assume that the exposition fairy would have known about such other children.
I think this is one of the rare occasions where the scent child hex is called for !!
...except not...
Go back to where you met the mother, ask people questions, find out what happened to her and how she died. Follow the plot thread and you might just find something or someone useful.
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PrinceRaven wrote: Go back to where you met the mother, ask people questions, find out what happened to her and how she died. Follow the plot thread and you might just find something or someone useful. So kid... This is the story... Of how I met your mother
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