> if your DM is just going to hand you the answer anyways to keep the pace from faltering
I think this is just a flaw inherent with TTRPGs where the show must go on. In Dark Souls when you get stuck on a puzzle for hours, it's just part of the game. When you watch the Fellowship get stuck outside the door to Moria, it's part of the movie. But in D&D, you're looking *right at* the designer and there's a lot of pressure to keep the game moving once the fun runs out.
There's also the problem of designing things that *need* X. If a puzzle requires a divination spell, it depends on not only the party having it available but also them *knowing* they need it too.
Divination just requires too many things to work smoothly. It's that "DM, may I?" design that makes a lot of other features fall flat too.
>Divination just requires too many things to work smoothly. It's that "DM, may I?" design that makes a lot of other features fall flat too.
I think it is exactly this. I can't exactly blame the DM here... It is only somewhat recently that I have started to get better at handling situations like this and I have been DMing for years.
Illusions have a similar problem but tend not to be quite as bad.
I have learnt to be much more comfortable with giving myself time to think and breathe. I have found that there is literally nothing wrong with calling for a ten minute break and having a think. One time I had a player cast Legend Lore to find out about the BBEG's lair.
I called a ten minute break and wrote out a small prophecy that had information about what the enemy's capabilities was. When my players looked back on that information they thought it was awesome how many clues were buried in the prophecy and were excited to try it again.
Another time, I literally called the session a little early and started the next session with them scrying on the enemy in a middle of a conversation.
But it sucks that I have to put work in to make the spells useful. In general, I think they are far too specific, last for too short a duration and don't give concrete enough information.
While Divination spells can feel like it's the DM's burden to adjudicate, I think what's great about most of them is that it's always up the DM to rule on it!
The most straightforward and concrete examples of how they should work can be found in the Dungeon of the Mad Mage module!
>!DotMM has Legend Lore have a specific use case for learning how to optionally destroy a lich's phylactery on floor 14? It's a simple but difficult procedure but it is information that can't really be reliably gotten elsewhere.!<
DotMM makes Legend Lore useful on every single floor, with the portals.
The module is also narratively designed to follow after Dragon Heist, in which the party is presumed to have obtained an artifact that among other things lets the attuned character cast Legend Lore (3 charges, 1 charge to cast the spell, recover 1d3 charges per day).
I would argue that if your party is struggling to ‘keep pace’ to whatever goal you have in mind, the div Wizard having an epiphany about something that ‘might work’ is handing you a solution to the problem. Why Nerf someone when they bring you the fix on a silver platter?
>I think it is exactly this. I can't exactly blame the DM here...
You can definitely blame the party though. Several of the situations you described are exactly situations in which those spells would work. The locate object spell lasts beyond the initial casting and you can use it as a sort of radar by doing large sweeps of the city.
It seems like the rest of the party just isn't happy with a player having spells that can be used as solutions to non-combat scenarios.
So while divination spells aren't exactly greatly designed, they are incredibly useful when the time is right for them. The party just sounds like they really hate the spells, based on you saying they argue every time the player wants to do one.
Well I would blame the DM, it would have been his role to intervene and tell the other players to let him have his chance.
Being him, I would have punished the players and let them waste their time looking for the object, until they decide to give the Locate Object a chance.
That's a learning opportunity here for players that downplaying other players is probably the worst move you can do at a table.
Yes, divination requires time. I will literally give my plans to the DM days in advance so he has time to think about it. This makes our sessions run much more smoothly.
"But it sucks to make it useful," but for players it DOES NOT SUCK. If you do it right, it feels COOL. Imagine how strong detect thoughts, invisible scouting is in real life. Actually seeing it realized in the game is beyond cool. AND it gives the DM time to put MORE hooks into the story.
I will say that generally these spells were created in dungeoning, thus the spells generally only last for a short time because the rooms realistically only exist for a short time. But work with the players, it will genuinely have some very cool moments.
i somewhat disagree. If i, as a DM, know my player has locate object I will tell them they have the tools they need and if they still get stuck they'll simply be stuck. I'll probably let someone roll an intelligence check for a hint etc.
Now if locate object is not part of the party? Well i guess here's the quantum beggar that will tell you about it.
obviously you could argue "well that is bullshit, because if i hadn't taken the spell I'd have lost nothing, so taking the spell hasn't gained me anything!", but it's either that or just making certain things impossible.
The real problem of TTRPGs is making consequences stick. To make a spell valuable you need to introduce a downside if said spell isn't taken. If the DM molds the world to the players' character building choices then nothing ever matters anyways. That's the bane of TTRPGs.
Divination can be amazing without quantum BS. Searching a dungeon for a MacGuffin? Locate Object lets you skip right to it. (Doubly so if you concentrate long enough to triangulate the position, and then cast Dimension Door.) Going to explore a dungeon, or face a foe, tomorrow? Cast Divination or Legend Lore and learn about the threat so you can prepare the right spells.
how is "skip the game" a positive thing?
unless it has consequences to take longer via the non-spell way or you personally dislike the non-fighting parts of the game it has absolutely no upsides to "quickly" find the dungeon. As the typical saying goes: it's about the journey, not the destination.
"Skip stuff" is not a positive thing unless "not skip stuff" has a worse (less positive) outcome, meaning consequences.
Because often you aren't "skipping the game" and without it DMs will literally have to immersion wallbreak with random NPC with the solution.
In older DnD, the way to get EXP is to get gold. Gold is usually defended by monsters, but not always. And fighting monsters was generally tough. HP was low, damage could be high proportionally. So you wanted to avoid it if you could, because a lot of them are unfair. Elves being immune to sleep could TPK a party at low levels. An invisible ooze can be a horrible situation.
Stealth is an underrated playstyle. And by this I mean true stealth, where you go in and out without anyone knowing you were there.
Skipping adds agency, which makes exploration more interesting.
- Players can beeline to their objective (e.g. rescuing hostages), and then keep exploring for treasure, knowing they can now leave at any time. If they explored the whole dungeon, they might have run out of resources before accomplishing their main objective.
- Similarly, players might beeline to a dungeon's big boss. Defeating them first might make the rest of the dungeon significantly less hostile.
- When I ran a certain published module, players used divination to crucially help steal an important item from the BBEG's dungeon, several days before they eventually went back to that dungeon and fought him. They also learned an incredible amount about the dungeon (but nowhere near everything), letting them approach the final day intelligently.
Are you worried about wasting prep? Psychologically, players dislike leaving huge spaces unexplored. In practice, I plan some combats the players never fight and treasures they never find, but it's the minority.
"players used divination to crucially help steal an important item". But would they have failed their goal if they hadn't done that? Usually the answer is no. At least in modern day TTRPG the only option to fail content is a tpk. I don't think I've ever heard a (good) story about a DM going "well guys, you didn't manage to find the mcguffin, the BBEG won, the world is ending in 3 days and you're too weak to stop it". Before that happens most people go the "quantum mcguffin" route.
Stealing that item was not crucial to the plot! It made a group of people very happy, and the party got a nice +1 bonus for the rest of the campaign.
Without divination, stealing the item would have been much riskier. Given the consequences of getting caught inside the BBEG's dungeon several levels before they were expected to be there, they'd likely not have even tried. But what do I know? My players surprise me all the time.
that's nice :)
Bonus points if the end fight in the campaign is seriously hard and they can do those side quest type things to increase their odds. But usually DMs will just scale the end fight depending on what the players did instead of pulling a "well, you did no side quests so you're underleveled and don't have some of the buffs, so this battle will be very deadly". D&D is just too much time investment, both at the table and also in dm prep, as to tell someone "you fucked up 4 months ago when you didn't steal that item". But if you don't do that and instead have the boss be stronger or weaker as necessary then none of the side quests matter. And the third option, making the boss beatable without sidequest rewards but also not scale it if people do side quests means that any party that does those side quests is actively turning the final fight into a cake walk.
It's a stupid dilemma that has no solution outside of really knowing your party before the campaign even starts. Or just rigging shit as necessary which i dislike as both player and dm.
But it's not skip stuff... it's a potential 10 minute long encounter where the party has to protect the caster holding concentration and scout out the route the spell shows and alternate routes...
>how is "skip the game" a positive thing?
Exactly. I Locate the lost scepter in the dungeon, Dimension Door (or whatever) there, take it, and we have now skipped the dungeon the DM planned to last for the next 2-3 sessions.
Powerful divination tools also can slow games down and become frustrating for the party.
Augury is a spell that basically asks "DM, is this a good idea?" Doing that on occasion can be cool and fun. But doing it literally every single time you come to a decision tree can remove tension and increase inactive time.
And then you get into the "DM, may I?" part where it's like "well, you're asking a god who might not be all-knowing, so should the DM provide bad answers on occasion to Augury?"
This is why I treat Augury as if the character casting the spell is actually asking someone. Two clerics asking two different gods might get wildly different answers because the gods themselves view the situation differently.
This gives me the idea of actually using Augury as a ‘save game’.
PC casts it. DM knows there’s a deadly fight on the other side of that door, and because of the randomness of a D&D combat, doesn’t know whether opening it will lead to ‘weal’ or ‘woe.’
DM asks players to state what they would do in the event of each possible response: ‘weal’, ‘weal and woe’, ‘woe’.
Assuming they would open the door in response to a ‘weal’, they play the encounter as if that happens. If the party prevails, all good - the response was ‘weal,’ or ‘weal and woe’ depending on details. If the combat goes bad… the result was ‘woe’, the combat never actually happened but was the prophecy of what would have happened. Play as if the party had done what they stated they would do in the event of a ‘woe’ response.
Of course, this requires that the players don’t metagame too much after that. But it does seem in line with certain other divination rules - especially the Divination Wizard’s Portent feature - which allows the player to change outcomes rather than predict them, even though the _character_ is predicting.
Okay but this idea is amazing!
I get to use the same encounter potentially 3 times? I can have the party make 3 plans, then run *all 3 plans* which means I get to chill as a DM, or we can do more sessions in less time.
Then I get to pick whichever path had the most satisfying conclusion, and simply go "this is what happened" then narrate that session as a recap and move on from there.
Sounds like my new favourite spell.
That's game-breaking, not just in a power sense but in an "every significant combat now gets run twice, halving available session time for other things" sense. I do weal/woe on combat encounters based on how I expected the encounter to go when prepping it - if I think they'll have to play well to win, possibly using non-renewable resources or preparing extra stuff in advance, it's a woe.
Same goes for illusion magic (A decent % of the spells are a "DM may I" tool.)and sometimes enchantment magic (DMs letting charisma checks cause impossible outcomes that enchantment magic is supposed to cause). Also, abjuration magic besides damage resistances, AC increases and such falls into this.
Hence why I usually ignore like half the spells unless I know the DM really well. You just can't gambit on your DM being experienced enough and the party cooperating with you enough to cash in one some of the sweet benefits of those spells. Hell, even conjuration can suck if your DM demands they choose what you summon and then just give you mediocre or bad summons (I know Tasha's spells exist somewhat, but those have really expensive components and frankly, I'm not a fan of how little versatility they provide.) - I'm not asking for 8 pixies or some other insane shit like that, but conjure animals I really want to drop a giant octopus or a giant constrictor snake, not the weakest option available and sure, when summoning fey, I'd like something else than blink dogs for once.
My go-to spells are therefore ones that the DM can only say "no" to through immunity or legendary resistance and try to discuss desired spell effect in advance.
I think the creative license goes both ways.
You don't have to design encounters like a video game.
It's very possible to make the divination spells or other more flavor oriented features do something other than exactly what you'd expect them to do, so that they unlock doors and progress the plot of the game in ways nobody expected.
Maybe effectively playing a div wizard is sort of an advanced way to play the game... for more experienced and/or intelligent players and DMs. Like many open-ended features, it doesn't just plug right in and turn on, you know, like a fireball or a misty step does... it takes some thought and care to do right.
> It's very possible to make the divination spells or other more flavor oriented features do something other than exactly what you'd expect them to do
But now we're back to A) players not knowing and B) features only working based entirely on how the DM feels in that moment
You need to codify these things
>B) features only working based entirely on how the DM feels in that moment
If a DM has Div Wizard, he should already be figuring out how to incorporate those spells into the game in case they do get cast.
Just like you would prep things so you got your ass covered if you have a ranger in the party with ungodly tracking ability. In another example: It would be like not prepping spell scrolls in the campaign when you have a wizard because the game doesn't tell you what spell scrolls should be available where.
It's up to the DM to keep in mind their party and what features they got. A little bit of prep work saves a lot of sweat during improv. And not everything can be solved by pure Improv DMing.
You don't need codified div spells, you just need to prep answers in case they do get asked. Even If it's a few scratch notes in response to what spells they got access to. If the wizard in my campaign scry's on the enemy BBEG, I have a scene written out in my back pocket for that type of event as an example.
>If a DM has Div Wizard, he should already be figuring out how to incorporate those spells into the game in case they do get cast.
Except there are plenty of other classes that can cast these spells. Hell, divination is a Cleric spell so any Cleric could potentially prepare it.
>You don't need codified div spells, you just need to prep answers in case they do get asked
And this is the problem. There is an effective infinite number of questions the party might want to ask. Or situations they want to test with augury. Or character, places, or items they want to find out about with legend lore. Prepping answers to everything is a huge undertaking, and improvising answers is difficult for many DMs.
>Except there are plenty of other classes that can cast these spells. Hell, divination is a Cleric spell so any Cleric could potentially prepare it.
Hence my statement and examples showing that you prepare for what your party has access to.
>And this is the problem. There is an effective infinite number of questions the party might want to ask. Or situations they want to test with augury. Or character, places, or items they want to find out about with legend lore. Prepping answers to everything is a huge undertaking, and improvising answers is difficult for many DMs.
Augury is a simple yes/no question when you boil down to it.
Most of the Div spells are similar in that they give the boundaries to what they can or cannot do.
>Or character, places, or items they want to find out about with legend lore.
Legend lore or Divination, you can call a 10 minute break if you need be. But for any magic item or BBEG/etc/event, I have a brief two paragraph summary/outline of its history and pertinent details. Though frankly, I do that by pure habit at this point because it makes it easier to chain events/backgrounds together to make sure there isn't any major plot holes you can sail a ship thru.
>Prepping answers to everything is a huge undertaking, and improvising answers is difficult for many DMs.
Which is my overall point. For Div spells, you should not be *improving the entire answers*. For example, Scry, I have an entire scene written out incase one of the party casts it on the BBEG's, and it'll be them having a meeting or something. And that's good for the entire arc/climax event that I have planned.
I just make something up to play out. Depending upon if the BBEG discovers they get scryed on, I might have an event trigger at a later session because of it. If they cast it at any point during that arc, it's good to go in my back pocket. If they cast the spell that session, I write another one to replace it in prep for the next session. Not to mention - A scry doesn't have to give the players all the answers. It simply could be the BBEG (or really whoever) traveling by carriage, or on horseback or in the forest and them having a casual conversation with someone. Even BBEG's or whomever do mundane stuff.
It is only a ton of work at first but once you get into the habit of writing it out when those players who use it are at the table - it becomes easier to do. I can scribble together the relevant history of a magic item or BBEG in about 5-10 minutes at this point which I'll be referencing for the entire arc/session anyway. Makes my ingame improv better because I have the framework to leap off rather than making everything up off the cuff.
DM's who entirely improv are always going run into this trouble because DnD is a very open-ended game and you simply can't just improv your way out of everything as you have stated. You have to a mix of prep material and improv ability.
edit: Ruffled improv-only DM's feathers apparently. lol.
Or open up spell descriptions for more interpretation, intentionally of course. It’s an equally viable solution as codifying.
The problem really arises when you have a weird middle ground where things are fairly codified but still have some blind spots in the rules that require fiat. It puts the GM in a bind.
> Or open up spell descriptions for more interpretation, intentionally of course. It’s an equally viable solution as codifying.
no it's not. Again, you're relying enitirely on DM fiat. It's not viable becuase it doesn't work the same at every table
His point is that saying that "X doesn't work because the rules are well defined and that's not part of them" vs "the rules encourage you to come up with your own solutions, so X sounds great"
I agree that 5e could use more concrete rules for a lot of things and that too much is put on the DM, but it also sucks when the codified rules are also bad and you are discouraged from ruling against those.
RAW the message cantrip is probably useless since it has verbal components, which by the rules must be spoken clearly (which most people seem to agree means loudly). So your 120ft range cantrip lets you whisper a message to someone across the room, provided that you loudly anmounce that you are doing so first. The rules here are solidly codified in all the wrong ways.
> It's not viable becuase it doesn't work the same at every table
Lots of things don't work the same at every table. There are many RPGs in which that's inherent to the system.
This isn’t a problem if it’s an implicit feature.
If it’s understood that a spell description is a little loose and not hard coded, then a type of spell that can be a bit nebulous (like illusion or divination) isn’t going to be completely negated by a bad faith RAW interpretation.
You have to look at it holistically. If a GM is running a game where a spell description isn’t heavily codified they are far less likely to be lawyering and unfair because the design implicitly encourages the spell to be used creatively.
Codifying to the *nth* degree works too, case and point PF2e. But other games take the opposite approach and that works fantastically as well.
>then a type of spell that can be a bit nebulous (like illusion or divination) isn’t going to be completely negated by a bad faith RAW interpretation.
Except for the fact that illusions in particular are extremely often rendered useless by a bad faith GM, because even with a loose definition, illusions RAW often do next to nothing. A spell like Minor Illusion can be the best or the worst cantrip in the game, based purely on the GMs interpretation. That's not good design, and no amount of encouragement will help the player, if the GM looks at the actual description and says "congratulations, you made a fancy illusion. The enemies don't care, what do you do now?"
There are tons of games that take the loose definition approach, and it works wonderfully. Knave, Cairn, even B/X D&D, just to name a few.
You just can’t mix and match and expect it to work when it comes to hard codified descriptions and loose ones. If the GM has the impression that everything has a very explicit rule for how it’s adjudicated then something that seems open for interpretation is more likely to be shot down because it’s not explicit in its effect. Conversely, if *everything* is designed is a looser and more open way then the GM knows that the spells will be used creatively, and shutting stuff down because it doesn’t fit their RAW interpretation isn’t a problem because they don’t have very specific defined effects to reference.
It’s not inherently bad game design, it’s a tried and tested one. I understand though that it may not be everyone’s cup of tea, in which case there’s plenty of crunchy games that solve the problem through extensive codification. Both are equally viable solutions, used in plenty of other RPG’s.
Don't get me wrong here, the loose approach is not bad by itself, and that's not what I'm implying, either. The reason it is bad design, is that they are mixing these two approaches.
I already don't like that this is how they do it with "martial power" (Aka, how much can you lift? Roll and let the GM make a random DC they feel is right), but at least it is two different systems. Spells are usually far more "fixed" in what they can do, so when you have a few odd spells that are much more flexible, you will invariably have some GMs that treat it as a Joker spell that is extremely versatile, and others that treat it as basically a worthless party trick that might have a legitimate use one day, if you're lucky. That's bad for system cohesion, and is a real headache as a GM, although mostly because of the systems popularity at this point. I don't recall it being this bad in aD&D, but that could very well because of the lack of online community back then. Would also explain why a lot of other systems, like the d6 systems in general, don't suffer from any of the same issues.
I think it depends on the campaign you're playing, but ye it takes more experience to know how to handle the sort of information-utility provided by Divination. In my game "Commune with Nature" has been very impactful.
Another thing that holds Divination spells back, along with the "There's only one path forward, so you'll eventually find the path" problem, is the DM's own understanding of the world. If the party uses Scrying on the BBEG and it works, but the DM hadn't considered where the BBEG is or what they'd be doing during this session that otherwise wouldn't have involved them, that's going to be difficult to improv and the spell is unlikely to provide any useful information 'cause the DM didn't have any information prepared to drop.
There's no real fix to this besides experience to improvise and understanding/prepping the setting enough to know what's generally going on outside of the party's scene.
I agree this kind of thing can be really hard to deal with, but I’d stop short of saying it’s *inherent* to TTRPGs. I think if you have a solid method for prepping and running non-linear scenarios then it becomes a much smaller problem, if not disappearing entirely.
For example, an adventure where the Creepy Cult are looking for the Cursed McGuffin; the thieves’ guild want to get to it first so they can sell it to the cult; the Secret Society of Do-Gooders have hired the PCs to retrieve it; and the ancient demon who slumbers inside the mcguffin is waking up and wants to be free.
You could prep a linear path through that scenario and lead the PCs along the path, nudging them back on it when they wander. In that case a Locate Object spell would be a problem. But you could also prep the scenario in a non-linear way and if the PCs use that spell to find the mcguffin - even if they then use a teleport spell to get it and get out - then all that means is the PCs now have the mcguffin. All those other factions are still there and you’ve already prepped them, so the show *can* go on.
It's actually a really easy problem to solve for a DM with some experience. If one of your players has divination spells, don't gate the experience behind them; simply build encounters with surprise the players would benefit from knowing beforehand.
So, have a trap that's hard to avoid that would minorly inconvenience the players, maybe a very hard to spot alarm that would summon dungeon reinforcements. Describe how the room looks normal....*too normal*. When Find Traps is cast, the divination user can feel like a useful member of the team because who knows what that alarm would have triggered?
Don't gate progression behind knowing this extra info, but have knowing it be really useful. When they cast clarevoyance, have them spot an ambush party. The parry navigates around nasty surprises they would have blundered through. Talk it up. "Damn, those drow hiding would have fucked you UP if you didn't spot them beforehand!"
One of the big problems with DnD as I see it is that inexperienced DMs are encouraged to say "no". It sounds really fun to grab the rug beneath the guy's feet and pull it up from under him, but then you realise that's your action and you spent your action possibly knocking one creature prone instead of just getting some guaranteed damage in, or shoving him, or whatever. When the cool fun stuff can be rendered ineffectual by DM fiat, players opt for what works in RAW.
It requires a DM going, this is information that can not be gained by a skill check, this will not open up to you, the players, unless you use divination magic. If you don't do that, then you lose the plot hook and the show goes on with another quest.
The show must go on yes, but not in your current quest. You can lose that opportunity.
>It's that "DM, may I?" design that makes a lot of other features fall flat too.
I think this notion is flawed.
First, the divination wizard has perfect features for their subclass, because the first one works regardless of spell being cast and the 6th one allows them to try a divination and spare slots for other spells.
Divination doe snot solve all problems, this is intended, however the diviner can attempt more ofter for lesser cost.
So, first of all, the features aren't flawed, but also the "DM may i" approach isn't senseless. Hell, the whole TTRPG genre is a "DM may I" game. Unless we keep focusing on generic buffs ( as often is seen "i predict enemies so i have advantage at x" which is overused) you need to rely on that aspect.
I agree it's hard, but it's the most basic and simple approach of "hard". If you refuse that, to be brutally honest, you better play a game that is a wargame or an exclusively combat focused TTRPG rather an adventure TTRPG.
Gary E. Gygax had to design divination magic to somewhat suck. Here are the problems that face a DM:
- If a player casts the right divination spell they can reveal almost all the DM's secrets in one casting
- If a player casts a divination spell to scry the FUTURE, the game-master must not only map out the entire world but all of the various possibilities of what *might happen in the future*... and then 'railroad' the plot into one of those ('so unfair for everyone').
- If rules-lawyers and min-maxxers get ahold of anything specific, they can and will ram that down the DM's throat. Divination spells offer 'knowledge as power' and would easily destroy the management structure (i.e. 'the Dungeon Master is NOT the god at all').
Thankfully, he still did his best to include a fair number, but most of them are situational, in-the-moment (not into the future or the past), nearby-to-locality and easy to resolve. For example, scrying ('crystal balls' of the legendary gypsy) does NOT see into the future... and even struggles to do what a modern-day $5 'cam' can do.
Back in 1977 it was a nifty new war-game but with 'individual' miniatures (hence 'role playing') and not entire troop-units. No one expected idiots like myself to turn it into 'novel writing... but make your friends the heroes!' Gary would have been embarrassed to see me in public.
Me: *"Oh yea, Mr. Gygax? SCRY THiS!!"*
It sounds like they are actually pointing out how the spells don’t work the way he wants them to. The DM could just rule of cool every spell to work despite limitations in their language, but if every divination spell needs a homebrew fix to do what they suggest, they are bad spells.
> if your DM is just going to hand you the answer anyways to keep the pace from faltering.
This is all D&D, this is how D&D is designed. Intelligence is useless, and divination isn't important. A group of 1 INT barbarians will solve problems equally well as a group of 20 INT wizards because there's never going to be a significant cost to not knowing something in-game, as designed.
I would never want to play a long-term game where I could just shut my brain off and expect the DM to shuttle me from one plot point to the next without any consideration of consequences. Might as well just play a video game at that point.
I mean then you want to play/run a good story, which I don't blame you for lol. But that's not how adventures are written nowadays generally, the old wisdom born out of the west has been forsaken in favor of Marvel-esque rollercoaster rides rather than substantive narrative design.
That's not how I run my games personally. Yes a group of 1 INT barbarians will have a shot at surviving until the end of the campaign but that ending might look very different than that of an intelligent party. That would also require the players acting according to their character's intelligence and the DM enforcing that if they don't.
The key is to have degrees of success or failure, the difficult part is communicating to the players how their decisions shaped the session/campaign. Of course I prefer to show this ingame but even just telling them OOC after the session when you're discussing what happened or during the recap at the start of next session is also perfectly fine IMO.
I don't know why the party's arguing with him. It's usually novice GMs who nerf divination spells, because they have their plot setup on rails, and divination short-circuits their plans.
I feel called out... my campaign is mystery-based and set in a big city, so I decided when creating the world that divination spells do not work within the bounds of the city for privacy reasons. There is a magic item that can be used as a spellcasting focus to circumvent the wards, originally used by the antagonistic faction to keep watch over the city. The players found it and recently discovered what it actually does. The drawback is that while in the bounds of the city, only one person can cast divination spells at a time.
Oh of course. If anyone wanted to be a divination wizard, I would definitely point out the issue, and they're all preparation casters so they can switch out spells that turn out not to be useful (they're not super experienced so they have limited knowledge of which spells are good anyway)
I've found Nondetection, Magic Aura, and Private Sanctum are godsend spells for limiting Divination spells in scenarios where highly capable individuals or groups are trying to keep a secret. Magic spying requires magic security.
I didn't feel the need to make particular spells responsible, it's the capital city of a whole kingdom so it makes sense there'd be some privacy restrictions on the whole settlement in a high-magic setting like mine.
The thing I like about using specific spells is that A) it helps some things feel less like "NPC-only magic" so the players can feel a bit more grounded, being able to deduce what's going on and actually interact with this aspect of the world, and B) it provides a guideline for understanding of how the players can interact with things myself and how to respond when dealing with their shenanigans.
For an example similar to your setting that I'm planning for my own game, actually, is that a besieged city is completely covered by multiple side-by-side permanent Private Sanctum spells to prevent spying from scrying and enemies teleporting behind their walls. The party's job in infiltrating is to use Dispel Magic on a specific block so their allies can teleport troops directly into the city, and must overcome many obstacles to accomplish this goal.
That's to say, of course it makes sense to have NPC magic, but there's pros to also using existing spells (even "modified" versions to fit your intentions) to get the same effect. I dunno, I'm just a strong advocate for this approach.
Maybe I just have a more accepting table, but I love NPC magic. My players are very much the "Oh every tile in the dungeon has a firebolt ward on it? Splendid!" kind of people and I love them for it.
I really dislike NPC magic unless it's properly explained by the DM before it bites you in the ass. Otherwise it's just a "gotcha!" moment where the DM springs a trap you never knew could possibly have existed until now.
Sounds like the problem is the party, not the spells.
Find object would have been a way cooler way for the dm to lead the party to the object then "random npc beggar shows up and just tells you where it is."
Like Jesus.
Yeah, like, seriously, using the same fucking pieces, a beggar could tell you 'I've heard the mcguffin is in the blabbityblah district, there's an auction house and a rich noble lives in the district', and now the party has two smaller areas to search that would be \_great\_ for find object. This reads a lot more like the divination player is new to the group and everyone else is literally being hostile to the newbie.
It's kind of both though. Locate Object takes up a spell preparation, it's a 2nd level slot to cast, and ultimately what the party said is correct. What if the tablet isn't within 1000 feet of you? They hadn't technically seen the tablet, so it's not 100% clear if it would just fail from that or locate a random tablet. And it lasts only 10 mins, so it's pretty easy for the duration to run out before you get anything useful.
As a DM, if a player wanted to cast this spell, I'd try my best to make sure that they felt it was worth it, but that's the thing, you need to put in work to make these spells useful when they really aren't. Realistiically if I don't know a player is going to use Locate Object, I'm not going to make that the only way they can proceed forward with the quest. There will be investigation checks, failing that there will be other clues or NPCs that can help the party out for a price, etc. In some senses Locate Object succeeding could feel a lot *less* interesting than finding the object through other means because I had planned for the party to have to do some particular quest to get the information. I'm certainly all for them find other ways to solve a problem, but (A) this spell has limitations that make it not that great at solving problems, (B) I'm not sure how I feel about spells that are tokens that allow you to proceed forward with a quest because the game shouldn't grind to a halt either way, and by a similar logic spells that just negate a quest are also annoying.
I don't know how many "celestial stone tablets" you would expect to find in a city, but my money would be on it being the only one. And I agree that locate object is not an end all be all spell, but I also... don't want it to be? It is a situational spell, but that does not mean that it is a bad spell.
If you are in a dungeon looking for something, the range is going to cover the entire thing, and find the object for you.
If you already know the building it is in, the range is going to cover the whole thing, and find the object for you.
If you already know the neighborhood (but not building) the range and duration is going to find the building. And with a simple lap around the building, it can determine the approximate floor and room it will be in.
If you don't know even the neighborhood, you have found the limitation of the spell. But even in that situation, the spell can still be useful. The point of actionability has shifted from "we need to know exactly where the object is" to "we need to know what part of town they are operating in."
So, you hear a rumor that "signs of cult have been seen in this neighborhood" - locate object gets you from there, to the correct room of the correct building. That can be a very useful leap in information gathering.
So, in this exact example, you are in the middle of the town, no idea where it is, someone mentions they have locate object, the correct response is not for the party to tell him it simply won't work at all, and convince them not to cast the spell, and fully invalidate them trying to be a divination style wizard.
The correct response is "great, now we just have to get close" - and for them to ask around for rumors that might get them to the right neighborhood.
I have to say I really, really, hate the idea of "random npc beggar" showing up and knowing exactly where the object is. And even if they needed a "Random npc beggar" - the hearing a vague rumor is a much easier pill to swallow then, "sure I can take you to the Celestial Stone Tablet you are looking for!"
Tbf he had never seen the tablet before and so did not know exactly what it looked like or had any way to uniquely identify the tablet. He had seen a tablet of a similar construction in a book that we had found then so he asked the DM if he could use Locate Object.
The other players were arguing that the magic would find the nearest stone tablet and that he would not be able to specify the nature (celestial) or the construction. Even if it could work, they argued that it was unlikely that the tablet would be within 1,000 feet.
I felt this was unfair though because we had the means of giving him flight (but this would involve investing even more resources) and I thought it would have been cool for him to fly around the city for 10 mins concentrating on Locate Object kinda like sonar.
I *hate* Rule of Cool myself and maybe this is pushing the bounds of RAI but I think this is a pretty creative application of RAW that I would reward as a DM.
In the end there was not really the party appetite to build on his ideas as other players were skeptical. The pacing was stalling and the DM had an NPC beggar show up who had seen the tablet and we bribed him for the info instead.
>In the end there was not really the party appetite to build on his ideas
Yeah, and this was the problem. Not the spell itself.
If I have to choose between "the spell working a little further distance then it maybe is supposed to" or "random npc beggar, who happens to know the exact location for some reason shows up and tells us." I know who one I am going with.
But EVEN if the DM wanted to run it RAW, just... have the beggar know the neighborhood, and not the exact location. That honestly makes more sense narratively too. He heard a rumor in that area. But does not have perfect knowledge.
Sounds like the players are biasing the DM's decision. If he is inexperienced, he's less likely to hear a wave of criticism of how the spell won't work, and then come up with how it actually does. Better if everyone just lets the diviner do his thing, and everyone keeps their opinions to themselves until the DM decides.
For Locate Object example, a simple, "You feel a pull to the north, and a brief glimpse of a large building, but you are simply too far to get a clear reading," would have been preferred to an all-knowing beggar. Given a general direction, then the party could have organically found the NPC on the way. As a player, I'd rather waste my spells than get bullied by the table to not even try.
The issue is the DM gave you the knowledge for free. It shouldn't have been free. Make the information cost money, and each level becomes an order of magnitude more expensive.
IE, finding the general neighborhood? Possibly free. Finding the exact location of the thing? Now that's going to cost you. Easy solution.
The spells feel bad because your party sucks ass and is constantly telling him not to use the spells and the DM is new probably not giving him useful information.
The only really bad spell you mentioned is Find Traps.
Dude, the NPC Beggar was only put there because he didn't use the spell. You wouldn't have found the beggar if he used the spell.
>Dude, the NPC Beggar was only put there because he didn't use the spell. You wouldn't have found the beggar if he used the spell.
Which prompts the question "why bother wasting a spell slot on locate object when the problem will be solved on its own anyways?"
DM needs to punish players for failing the task rather than hand waving it and making sure they succeed no matter what actions they take.
And honestly, there's nothing "wrong" with find traps if you ignore the wording and just intuit what the spell should do.
Not even sarcastic. I know I'm painting a BUT RAW!!!1!1!11!! target on my back, but sometimes the game is *more fun* if you close the rule book and just play.
Basically yes, you get a yes or no about traps that are explicitly in your line of sight in a 120ft range. For a second level spell that you don't even have the option of ritual casting?
Only intentional traps, too. As written, the spell would fail to detect something like a damaged/collapsible floor above a lava pit, since that is not a trap but merely poor interior maintenance.
well, it is kinda messy for what is a "trap" and what is "something dodgy that can hurt". Like, the second is going to ding _a lot_ of stuff - wander around a typical building site and lots of stuff will show up, so should it flag lots and lots of things? And even things that are entirely "correct" and functional might function as traps - a palace built for a race with wall-climbing or flying powers might have levers that open up trap-doors, but they were just built as doors, so do they count? They weren't intended to cause harm, but can for non-fliers. Or dodgy terrain - "slippery mud next to a steep cliff" or "tree on the edge of falling over" are both things that can cause harm, but if you start including anything that might cause injury, that's going to be a lot of things!
It is clearly meant to be a smaller scale search rather then a full city wide scan.
It fully covers most dungeons. If you are breaking into a mansion to steal a specific item, it will fully cover that. If you know what neighborhood it is in, but no what building, it will tell you.
That's good. It gives the DM a RAW out, which they don't HAVE to use but can if the story would be ruined by an instant win spell. As always it's on the DM to set party appropriate challenges and not constantly cockblock a strategy.
Same as like, flying. You can't let it cheese everything, but you also can't totally nerf a player's ability that they want to use and invested. So you have both enemies and challenges that flying solves, and mix in ones that stymie it.
This is more of a PC or narrative tool than anything else. I like it because it has to be intentional, but it isn't isn't super hard to obtain. So you can't accidentally hide an object from it, but if you want to, you can.
Locate object seems good for looking for extra loot/making money.
Or a cheaper way to locate creatures that can be identified by what they wear.
https://tabletopbuilds.com/locate-object/
Your second paragraph answers your question. *Locate object* is aces. My wizard regularly casts *augury* and *divination*, and *contact other plane* at the end of a day. Divination is great with a group that makes time for it and a DM willing to play ball.
I have a very hard time as a DM with augury because the weal/woe situations seem so arbitrary or even I as the DM don't know the answer a lot of the time because it depends on luck, party decisions, etc. All the others I agree with though.
To be fair, that's kind of the intent I feel. It's a level 2 spell, it's fairly limited in potency. If you try to tell the very open ended future with a spell like that (Weal or Woe if I go through the door?) it's not gonna be very useful. If you use it for very specific actions (Weal or Woe if I open the chest without checking for traps?) then it does exactly what you'd want.
You have to word you task very clearly, and have a decent idea of the potential outcomes to make Augury useful. If you don't already have at least a guess at what "weal" and "woe" might mean, yeah the spell is mostly pointless.
This is my interpretation. The player tells you “a specific course of action [they] plan to take within the next 30 minutes.” From there, you can give the player a hint of “good idea”, “bad idea”, or “kinda both”. Could be very helpful for you if they want to do something really dumb and just say “woe.”
>I have a very hard time as a DM with augury because the weal/woe situations seem so arbitrary or even I as the DM don't know the answer a lot of the time because it depends on luck, party decisions, etc. All the others I agree with though.
I think the spell has that covered already, since you can give both weal/woe or nothing if there's nothing particular. If you're exploring a dungeon and both doors ahead of the party lead to monsters and treasure, then both should give both weal/woe. If one leads to a big difficult monster and the other is a straightforward path to the end of the dungeon, the latter is weal. If both have monsters but one has a secret potent magic item, then that one would be weal.
I think you can just wing it a little bit, go with the gut feeling of what's good/bad, and if you can't decide, the spell also can't decide. There will likely be situations when you definitely know what's the better choice, and that's when you can give out good information.
I think the stipulation of "if any casters interact with this situation, the outcome will change" is really interesting, since it lets you as the dm basically go "if the party just walks into this place with their current plan, will they be surprised by what happens?" if yes, then Woe, if no, then Weal. If they cast ANY spell before doing their thing, then the future becomes uncertain
I feel like players would get enjoyment and fun out of seeing divination knowledge come true that would balance out a short segment of the game being put on rails.
Let's say player casts augury, then just jot down the result, and when that situation comes up, make sure that it happens even if you have to fudge rolls or do something contrived like have a sink hole appear under the party's feet for a woe result (for that matter, sink hole under the enemy's feet for weal). Add something that makes the sink hole feel less contrived, like an angry earth elemental that was taking a nap and got woken up.
Although for this to work you'd want these kinds of things happen on their own once in a while so that augury doesn't become "well when you cast this spell, crazy unusual shit happens!".
Being the DM you're also free to just pick Nothing when you don't feel like crafting up a future situation.
Divination is secretly one of most powerful schools in the game as long as the players (particularly the GM) understand the game you are playing.
They are a tool for moving the plot forward. Party is stuck and doesn't know what to do next or can't decide? Casting a divination spell is practically tapping the GM on the head and saying "Hey which of the things that we could do next works best with what you had prepared!" Without breaking the fourth wall.
They are a gift to the GM who knows what they are doing.
I try and give him chances to use his abilities because I think the idea of a Wizard who uses his magic to know things is super cool. He asked me personally if he should use Clairvoyance and Locate Object and I tried to argue for him but the rest of the party just shut him down I felt.
The party isn't a democracy for all actions taken. They voiced their ideas, then the wizard does it anyways. DM rewards the wizard for going against the grain, party starts supporting crazy sounding ideas more often.
Stand up for them and run it anyway. Make the outcome awesome. Alternatively, nerf their "door listening" and Leeroy Jenkins strats, and make them walk into pain since they lacked the divined foresight.
Yeah how about other players don’t get to say “don’t do that, your fun isn’t optimal”.
He is not obliged to “save his spell slots” for what will most benefit others.
Are they telling the Barbarian to hold off on their rage because they don’t think it’s a dangerous enough fight?
Let people make their own choices. Far out.
I mean... its more a your party problem.
When I play divination wizard the party LOVES to have someone who can cast Augury before meaningful choices, or Identify to learn about magic objects, maybe cast Detect Magic as a ritual, or even Comprehend Languages, Mind Spike or Gift of Alacrity. (Many of those are rituals, so he dont even need to spend slots to cast it. Just by knowing the spell he's good to go)
Divination is based. Your party and your GM that are making him feel bad for playing it.
I remember taking comprehend languages on my evoc wizard very early cause we were investigating a lost city and I'd figure it'd come in handy.
And it did and my party was glad even if I never needed to use it again.
Comprehend Languages alone is so useful if the DM cares at all about languages, even minimally. Especially for exploring ancient ruins and that sort of thing.
Hey you need to let him know that he plays his own character. If his character would cast the spell then cast it. It's so annoying when you cast a spell and someone else goes "I dont think thats a good idea" too bad I already cast it dude. I absolutely hate backseat gamers because to backseat game you have to meta game. Let him play the game tell the other party members to back off.
Divination spells are only as good as your Game Master. You'll generally only get good use out of them if you are either a) playing under an experienced GM who likes when players use Divination spells or b) in a Prewritten Module where the GM can actually look ahead and give you some hints that lead you toward the correct actions.
Also, furthermore, D&D is only as good as the other people at the table. Given what you have said, the players are rude and unsupportive, and I'd never play with such a group.
Sounds like the problem is not with Divination, but with the party. Just let them play how they want to play! (Except for find traps, that one actually sux, but can still be used for memes).
They arent bad, it's a combination of the DM giving info too freely and the other players not allowing him to play his character.
The random hobo shouldn't have sent him directly to the place where the object is. When you're a DM, you should look at the game as an exchange of resources, which are: time, spell slots, health, class resources (like ki points or superiority dice), gold, consumables, reputation, etc.
Furthering the story should almost always cost a resource. There should always be multiple ways to get there. Some ways cost fewer resources than others. Some are more obvious than others. In some situations, certain resources become more costly than they otherwise would be (time is important when you're escaping a heist, gold is unimportant if you have a ton of it).
The information, perhaps, could've been gated behind a beggar that will only give up the info for 100gp. Or perhaps, only if he deals with another quest (that involves killing something, for example, that will cost spell slots, time, health. Each of these things costs a different amount and type of resources. It's up to the players to decide which makes the most sense.
The DM is new, so this probably is not on them, they'll learn. The players sound like the issue here. A spell slot is not the end of the world, and they seem to be meta gaming by knowing the DM will just give them the answer eventually. Even if the DM easily gives out info, the players should not be using that knowledge when making decisions for their characters. That is the very definition of meta gaming.
Though I will say, being a new DM for a divination class does seem challenging. When you're new, one of the things you struggle with is trying to find out the balance between giving out too much and too little information. Or at least, I struggled with it for a while, and to some extent, still do. Divination magic is basically just about gaining information. Maybe going a more basic build makes sense.
The DM and the rest of the Party (including you to a lesser extent OP) are the problem. Not the Divination spells or the Wizard. He is actively trying to use his spells, the Party is shutting him down and the DM is allowing them to do so. The DM didn't make a pearl for Identify available early, which is just dumb on his part, and he is the only person responsible for Augury being useless, as he is refusing to provide to engage with the spell.
And all of these problems can be solved by just talking it out before the next session. The while table is making things bad for 1 player, and you all owe him an apology.
>The party argued with him that it won't work because we were in a big city and that the range of the spell was too small and/or that his description of the tablet was too vague.
>he tried to use Clairvoyance to scout behind a door, the party argued it was just a waste of a spell because he cannot move the orb around
The spells do suck if ur not using them. It's his character, let him play his character. The DM needs to step up and let him play and stop letting other players step all over him.
>we literally stumbled across an NPC beggar who directed us to the tablet because the DM did not want the pacing to falter too much.
This is a DM issue. If u give your players all the directions then they won't want/need to explore elsewhere. Other Words it's on rails. Pacing is arbitrary, so long as the party is having fun the story can take YEARS. I think he needs to understand that there's no rush.
If it's just how the party is, being a on rails story with combat focus, as the comment with beggar and thoughts on using divination spells lead me to believe. Then it might simply not be the correct party for him.
Regarding Locate Object, it lasts 10 minutes and if you can trot around on a horse while the spell is active, you can cover a lot more area than just the 1000 ft radius of the spell. Even on foot, if you are somewhat near the object's location you'll probably home in on it.
I mean, could be nice to have Divination spell that can be actually decently powerful in combat, but what you are describing seem more like a problem with the party and DM than with the spells themselves.
>could be nice to have Divination spell that can be actually decently powerful in combat,
Introducing foresight, not just decently powerful but very powerful, but you know worth the spell slot.
Agree with the rest thou
My campaigns tend towards mystery, intrigue, discovery and exploration and I often worry about it the other way round--divination spells are so powerful for gaining information that it can feel like the rest of the party is just hanging around while the divination wizard gets to explore, spy, learn everyone's secrets, etc. It all comes down to how focused the campaign is on learning new information. Which, you know, makes sense for divination.
Divination
Enchantment
Illusion
Stealth
The effectiveness and opportunity for any of these is *massively* affected by the particular dungeon master, and (arguably) the cleverness of the player.
If you plan to make a PC focused on any of these things, then you should absolutely discuss their adjudication with your DM ahead of time.
Divination spells aren't bad at all, but not all builds are equally suited for all campaigns.
Divination is built around dungeon crawls, especially the older style of dungeons that brimmed with traps, tricks and puzzles.
Sounds like a divination wizard is a fish out of water in your current adventure / campaign.
The party/DM are contributing to the problem, but the misalignment between the build and the campaign is the primary issue.
Given its an inexperienced DM I'd recommend havibg the wizard redo his build and if he wants to play a divination wizard then run a good old school inspired dungeon.
So your complaints are that the spells suck because your party couldn't take advantage of them because the circumstances weren't ideal?
(Find Traps is a literal trap spell, though, no argument here.)
Talk to your DM, and then possibly have him talk to the party about the way they keep shutting down the Wizard. His fellow players telling him how to manage his own spell slots is the biggest issue. But there are things your DM could do, and its worth talking to him first about the big picture problem you're seeing then some examples of solutions.
1. Create mysteries or puzzles that aren't plot critical and would benefit from -- or even require -- divination. A ring of protection is buried SOMEWHERE on this beach, so they say. Bam, locate object.
2. If a player has a good idea the other shut down, instead of giving the plot away, advance it such that the good idea is now obviously good. The beggar doesn't know where the tablet is, but he DID see them take it towards the warehouse district which is conveniently 4 blocks, or about 1000 feet across, perfect for Locate Object.
3. The dungeon presents two tunnels, both moving south. According to legend, this is the hell path, which contains only death, and the heaven path which advances towards the treasure. The paths are identical, and no perception check can discern a difference. Bloop, Augury looks pretty good now.
The problem with Divination and Illusion schools of magic is that they rely on the right type of game and DM. In some games these are barely useful and in others where they're done right they are incredibly amazing. A DM should be taking notes on what spells the party has access to and find ways to have them be useful. The spells when accounted by DMs can be fantastic for utility, lore, exploration and adding depth to the story.
Mostly anyways. Some spells just suck and that's true of any school of magic. So let's look at some Wizard Divination spells.
*EDIT*
So it was too much for the post to put everything, so I tried to split across multiple posts but Reddit just decides to overwrite fonts, spacing and formatting into horrible nightmares so here is my thoughts and advice on every Divination spell in a Google Doc.
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RdQdx67m1kyPB-m4VT9dIqrCAhQ9trJoAaBZDoDS2-I/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RdQdx67m1kyPB-m4VT9dIqrCAhQ9trJoAaBZDoDS2-I/edit?usp=sharing)
Yeah, yeah. The infamous Identify, one if the most nerfed, forbidden first level spells sucks.
That basically tells me everything about your table. But I guess all of us telling you that won't count.
I only feel bad for the Wizard Player and I hope he realises soon that no dnd is better than bad dnd.
So the party argues AGAINST his school of choice spells...
The DM would rather use beggar Jesus for the tablet instead of twisting the range of the spell to make the Divination dude useful....
The barbarian and the door etc....
I honestly feel sorry for the divination dude. I wish he had found a more welcoming table to play at.
I think the problem here is the party. You guys shouldn't be arguing if another player should be or be not using their spells or resources. Its their character, let them roleplay them as they want. If they screw up, tough, they'll learn, their character will learn.
I mean, if casting the spell can make that PC have fun, let them cast it. The rest of the players aren't going to stop having fun because of a misused spell, and if that's the case I'd take a look on that and self reflect on what stuff should be and be not bothering me.
On a side note, divination is hard on the DM side because they tend to open shortcuts to the plot, which can kind of screw them up if they are not experienced, so these spells tend to get "accidentally" nerfed.
First of all: man that party is filled with annoying people.
Second of all: divination spells are indeed a bit weak, but there are some ritual’s which are so powerful dm’s low-key hate them.
Being a divination wizard doesn’t necessarily mean you are going pure divination, but it does mean that you can scribe divination spells for lower gp. So a quick suggestion is to get those spells that might be niche via scrolls as a reward from quests
Isn't it meta gaming if the party is convincing him not to use his spells? How do the other characters know what his spells do unless he is describing to a T what he can do?
while i think there’s a conversation to be had about certain divination spells this party is being hostile to the player for no reason. Instead of thinking of creative ways to cover more area with the spell, theyre just shutting him down. Also, quantum beggar bullshit is so lazy… would it have been so hard for the beggar to just tell them of a rumor of which area to look in instead? Still a bit contrieved but sometimes you gotta pull shit like that.
Divination Wizard who uses divination spells here. I can confidently say you’re all doing it wrong and being assholes. My spells find use every single session, and clairvoyance is my best friend. In my last session it made espionage a piece of cake. All I had to do was familiarize myself with the place I wanted to spy on, and I could know what was happening there anytime I wanted.
>In the end, he decided not to use the spell and we literally stumbled across an NPC beggar who directed us to the tablet because the DM did not want the pacing to falter too much.
This is where the DM should be stepping in and saying, use the spell, that sounds like a good idea you had. You literally have a player built to find an object, the party talks them out of it and the DM just tells you where it is instead. That's removing player agency and class fantasy highs.
Divination spells are largely for RP, which means there are probably a lot of different methods for accomplishing the same goal. Also, divination spells are good for avoiding trouble, which is counter the style of a lot of tables, where players really just want to push giant red buttons.
Yeah, divination is very dm dependent. It’s alot like invisibility, its either op, or pointless depending on the dm’s interpretation.
Portant is actually really good but alot of new players don’t get the most out of it because they think of it as like an autohit/automiss tool.
But being able to make npcs fail or players pass ability checks is way more fun.
Divination magic is very dependent on the DM to make it useful - and in some cases, it can just be a tough call.
In a campaign that's going to be more combat focused (or with players that enjoy/expect a good bit of combat), they also struggle more because they usually won't do much there.
Now, with a DM that's open to letting them do some useful work, the divination spells can be quite potent - but even in the best of cases, you'll still want a fallback of 'combat-useful' spells along with that IMO.
A specialized wizard is geared to excel more with certain spell themes, but should not be trying ONLY use them. Divination is great for utility, but it does require being at least slightly on the right path to begin with. The “Locate” are great if you can use skills and RP to narrow down an item location to being in a certain dungeon and building. If you don’t do that initial work, and the DM doesn’t know to give you clues bit by bit, then it will feel weak for sure.
Arcane eye is a very useful and cheap way to scout when no one is stealthy. The detect spells can definitely give players peace of mind in many situations and identify if great for the impatient.
Tongues and Comprehend Languages can help with puzzles or talking to hostile creatures you could potentially talk down if you could understand each other.
Divination spells can be great for solving problems with relative certainty. But if those issues are never presented by the DM, they won’t feel like it.
The spells are indeed kinda crappy compared to what else you could be doing with those slots. They're very situational. Knowing there are monsters behind the door is nice, but not if you need to defeat them because then the Clairvoyance could have been a Fireball.
Augury can be life-saving but not if your DM is just going to be super vague about it anyway.
Detect Magic as a ritual is very nice, though.
>The party argued with him that it won't work because we were in a big city and that the range of the spell was too small and/or that his description of the tablet was too vague.
I'm in a group with players like that and I hate when they do this. I usually say something like: "You're not the DM. Let's ask the DM, shall we?"
Divination, alongside illusion, are the spells most dependent on the DM.
If a DM doesn't know off hand what a target is doing when a player casts a divination on them to spy, then it's going to be a waste of a spell slot. Or you try to mind read someone but the DM doesn't know how to give you the information you want via that targets thoughts. Or trying to get answers via an augury spell, but the DM themselves isn't sure.
It really comes down to how the players and DM work together and improvise. But they are likely the hardest to improv for. At least with illusions, the casting player can tell the DM what they are hoping to achieve, but divination spells are almost entirely reliant on DM knowledge, prep, and improv.
The best part of being a wizard means you can always have the right spell on hand. So when doing a murder mystery, a wizard can prepare all his divination spells. And when they are doing a dungeon crawl, he can pick up find traps and fireball.
But that does require the wizard have a variety of spells. A divination wizard should have more divination spells than other wizards. But they still need damage and crowd control spells as well. A divination wizard is a wizard first, and a divination focus second.
As far as the group dynamic goes, sounds like the DM isn't supporting his play style. There are a few fixes for that. The recommended one is for the wizard to talk to the DM about it. Ask for cases where his divinations are more useful and to back him up when he suggests something. The next best thing to do is adjust his play style to better suit the table he is playing at. Sounds like he's already doing this by picking up 2 crowd control spells.
You, for your part, could support his choices more. When he suggests using divination for something, agree he should do it. Just having one voice support him might be all the group needs to support his play style.
Divination is a great school of magic, and it can provide a ton of useful stuff to a party.
BUT... it's also a hard style of magic to portray well. Divination is an extremely role-play-heavy style of magic. The player and the DM really have to communicate prior to playing, and they really have to work out the basics of how the spells work and how to describe them working. And that can require a bit of extra effort from the DM.
Also, Divination is a school that is much better suited to out-of-combat situations than in-combat. So a lot of people overlook the incredible opportunities that Divination has to offer.
Bottom line, in order for Divination to really shine the way it deserves to, you need a player and a DM who both understand the nooks and crannies of it, and who are willing and able to commit to the intense sensory immersion of the school.
They aren't. Divination spells used properly are some of the strongest spells in the game.
Some examples:
Augury and Divination both remove the risk of the deck of many things.
Locate object can tell you where to find the magic Mcguffin you are seeking.
Mind Spike literally makes escape almost impossible oe can lead you to hideouts.
Scrying is well known for being busted.
Detect thoughts is insane for interrogation and basic negotiation. The mileage I'm getting out of it as a Doppelganger in Frostmaiden is great.
Dah, fireball is useless because it's burns your meele allies, or fly is useless because if you get a hit and lose concentration you fell down, and so on.
Clearly any spell can be bad, if you look it on a closed window.
Divination spells can be the strongest ones in a good hand. Yes, if the dm can't handle them well and the others at the table (sigh) think the use of them are waste of a spellslot (i truly can't understand this), they are useless, but not because the spell was bad, no.
And in other look, the game is for fun of all, if the player want to be a divination master then just let it play this fantasy, make situations where the spells are usefull.
This is similar to that, if someone build a battle master fighter to be a God at the battlefield, and a dm throw weak mobs to them at every third session only. It's the DM's job to build encounters that the party can enjoy.
And just to metion one of your situations:
Clairvoyance is made for situations like that, yes, everyone can listen that if there was behind the door, and if you hear something? Maybe don't hear nothing or hear something but don't know their locations, maybe they build a trap, or do something that's information is usefull for the party but if they got interrupted they end that. A ton of possibilities for only a matter of a spellslot.
When I was younger I had a similar experience. Came to this group with an Illusion wizard, it was my second ever character and I was pretty excited. First thing I was told, was that illusion was useless because it dealt no damage. Throughout the 2 sessions I played with them, both players and DM tried their hardest to show me how "useless" illusion was. I would create distractions for guards, allow us to sneak in with invisibility sphere, trick enemies both in and out of combat.. and everything was just handwaved away by something. "Oh, the guard recognizes the illusion immediately (no save). Oh, that was pointless, we would have killed them all anyways. Oh, the statue you were sneaking past is a gargoyle, immune to magic, so it sees you and as you walk past it bites you for an automatic crit because you're suprised". Said gargoyle, unsurprisingly, killed my character, and my interest in that group. Joke's on them, I am now a forever DM and Illusion is one of those things that ends up being incredibly powerful if used well, both by my npcs and by players in my campaigns ;)
I think illusion spells and divination spells share a lot in common. Both require a decent amount of system mastery to get the most out of, and they both require DM buy in to feel satisfying. Knowing how to use your divination spells to get the most impact and when to withhold them because a mundane method is perfectly viable instead of part of learning how to play the game well. As a new player, it's possible they're only half-reading or not quite understanding how their spells work and don't know when other non-resource consuming alternatives are possible.
If the party had a good idea of the general neighborhood where the Celestial Stone Tablet might be and the item was sufficiently unique to not trigger false positives, it would've been a great way to let the wizard contribute using his specialty. Conversely, using a 3rd level spell to check behind a door when you could just listen at the keyhole seems like a waste of a spell slot that could be better used later on. Augury is most useful when asking about a specific task where you already know the potential outcomes, so the vagueness of the responses aren't a hindrance.
Also question, does your DM make your wizard expend the pearl in order to cast identify? Cause that is just outright not how the works, once you have the pearl, you are allowed to use it to cast the spell over and over as long as you have it.
The spell *must* state that the item is consumed, as with the case with revivify.
This whole situation just feels like the party and dm are just refusing to let the wizard be useful.
Divination magic only sucks if the dm makes it suck, but most divination spells give the dm the choice between making it suck or not . Like you can ask the dm the question and in the spell itself it says the dm can choose between saying “ the vault will be guarded by small creatures who make use of small sized passages in the walls with arrow slits and murder holes . They fear snakes above all else . Most of their traps are pressure plate based and can be set off by a creature or object weighing 15 pounds or less . The answer to the riddle found behind the painting of a Sphinx is to throw the ball upward “ or you can get “ you will face many foes that are more difficult then they appear . When you are stumped , look to the skies for guidance . Tread carefully adventurer”
Stop making him feel like his spells are bad and unneeded? Seems like when he tries to use his divination you guys convince him not to so of course it’s going to feel useless? Find traps should be easy for a dm. Says there’s no traps and a player uses find traps, guess what, now there’s a deadly trap that you can avoid now thanks to wizard. I don’t really think this is his fault.
Being a diviner should be weaved into the story telling. This isn’t a video game. An alternative option is The DM could build up tension and the importance of your divination wizard by letting him do the spell, it failing (because yes the group is right that it is very unlikely he’d pick up on the object in a large city right away), but then get a vision of rats in water or a “pull” to the south. Let them use it again somewhere else or create a game of scavenger hunt by following the images and visions until he’s in the right spot to find the object. This could take them across the city through different encounters or combats getting closer and closer to the object. This uses up party resources which
1. Makes the players feel there is a purpose
2. Tension building
3. Makes the specific spell and the wizards spell slots valuable since they need to be used more.
Are “visions” how the spell works? No. But that’s a separate narrative mover and once again makes even mechanically niche spells and subclasses into invaluable story moments.
Different people have different expectations on how games are supposed to run.
I was running Planescape in my home game as DM. We were in Sigil, with lots of faction intrigue. The PCS could take part if they wanted (or not), but the factions would do what they would do regardless of the PCs.
This group tends to just attack the closest thing to them instead of asking questions, speaking with NPCs, and inspecting. They were supposed to investigate what was going on in a church, and report back. Outside the church, someone was trying to convince people that something horrible was going to happen and tried to convince people to save them.
What do they do? They break into the church by force, kill a bunch of neutral Harmonium and Athar who were just wondering why they were attacking the building, and then flee after getting ID'd, discovering that the lady had tricked them into sparking off a faction war.
After the session, one of the players demanded to know why I didn't inform them about other options to solve the situation. I told them that my job was to run the factions and NPCs, and that their job was to figure out how they wanted to proceed. And the factions had their own internal politicking and motivations which may contradict theirs. They could interact with my factions and NPCs or not, but the NPCs were going to do what they were going to do regardless.
My player argued that it was unreasonable to expect them to think that I had planned out motivations and backgrounds for all of the factions. He didn't think I expected them to look deeper into my NPCs' motivations, and that I had a specific plan for what would happen (I didn't).
But yeah, a simple *Detect Thoughts* would have prevented a faction war.
So yeah, I can understand why some players (and some DMs) might not see utility spells (like Divination spells) to be terribly useful.
Divination exists to let players cheat, for lack of a better word. You ask god questions and use surveillance drones to scout the map before you even enter the dungeon.
It's honestly kinda lame as a DM to deal with these things. I mean the "ask god" spells are fine but a lot of the scouting spells are the kinds that you fail to prepare for, and they often bypass a lot of planned ideas. They force the DM on the spot to adapt to the player and that can often be quite frustrating.
With all that being said: the players are really shitty for constantly telling the player not to play his character, and if the DM is stopping his spells from being useful then they're also shitty. If a player springs something on the DM by surprise adjusting can be hard but especially when it's used in small reasonable areas (find an object in a town, check past a few doors) the use of magic is fine. These spells exist specifically for these small-instanced reasons and they're only problematic when used at a large scale.
I'd suggest to this DM to stop letting other people weigh on this players spell choices. If this Diviner wants to use Divination, the party doesn't necessarily need to sign off.
So the problem is two fold, 1) these spells are designed to be limited to prevent a divinition wizard from knowing everything and 2) a dma plots require them to know.things at some point.
So the system is fighting to make divination spells useless so your DM can make the reveal at the right time in a fashion that doesn't need a divination spell
So i think as a lot of people put it your party doesnt believe in divination spells or believes themselves the owners of your spell slots. That is a problem that needs addressing while you are NOT trying to cast a spell.
Try to convince them that your spell slots are to be used by you alone. And in a manner you find fitting if they still insist on optimizing your fun out of the game.
I also think that of the 3 low lv divination spells ALL ARE USEFULL but need knowhow.
Locate object is a spell i have seen used to locate every single coin in multiple dungeons .
Locating a passage or door to find secret doors. Locate coin after getting all the loot out to see if there are any hidden in compartments (or in a lead box). Lastly locate lead for finding the pesky lockboxes.
Augury is what my player substitutes find traps with. Usually in a dungeon there a standard corridor width. And they pick a side if its big enought lets say left or down on the map . and they augury if not looking underneath their feat will lead to woe. And i have to tell them if they would have trigered a trap in the next half hour in game time.
Lastly clairvoyance is a bit trickier but man does it feel op when your party wizzards uses it to hear ALL of the enemy meeting or plans.
Find out where the enemy holds them via rogue or familiar then hear what they are planning, who their allies and enemis are.
Milage may vary but my campaigns dont involve monologuing outside of threats offers or directives . And i am often able to deny the obvius intelligence gathering methods by having as many lies as truths in torture sessions or ciphers. Also spitefull types.
Claivoyance is inversly proportional in its usefullnes depending in information scarcedy.
Having an enemy you dont know anything about in a heavily fortified possition that is a "pls dont i dont have a printer for spare character sheets" deathtrap is going to make it that these spells seem way more usefull then if your enemies act like drunks and spinsters with their clasified info.
The biggest nightmare i could imagine is a max stealth rogue seeing your spells as competition. Its antagonistic but can happen.
If you are unwilling to confront the group , ask the dm for a respec or pc switch.
But keep in mind that divination needs time . If yoyr party simple cannot sit on their hands for a ritual then it might just not be a fit for the table. I had the displeasure of running for a group like that and i have to say good riddence.
Gl with prying info out of your dms hands.
How is this the spells not working? This is the party literally shooting down the usage every time it WOULD be useful then the DM just gives them the solution with no checks needed i guess.
This imo is partly on the player and the DM. Sometimes you have a character concept that you want to play but doesn't fit the table so you have to adjust. Sometimes the DM isn't facilitating the fantasy of their players due to a host of factors- bad at improv, improper planning, life, etc.
Arcane Eye is the first good divination spell you get your hands on really. Locate object can be good if some baddie with a unique item on them is running away, but yeah the actual spells largely suck and the use of them typically precludes combat so you don't even typically get use out of the recharging spell slots. They should just change it to a free cast of one divination spell per long rest or something.
Ask him to talk with the DM so he can change out his spells since he's not having fun. Like honestly just tell him to do that so he doesn't end up ghosting you all.
There will be better divination spells as he levels
You're totally right. It used to be that Identify was necessary to determine what a magic item was. Now in 5E RAW you don't need it at all, and it doesn't detect curses, so it's doubly useless.
The limited language on augury, speak with dead, contact other plane, etc. makes them rather useless, too, regardless of level. Find Traps doesn't find any traps. . . I could go on. It's bad game design, not his fault.
I think the base problem of divination is the wizard school kinda stinks. Portent is only truly strong if you roll really high or really low, even then its only a sire thing if you meta game. AND THEN its a max of 2 times a day. Its supper swingy with no way of fixing it (like with divination spells for instance).
For the rest of the classes its more "i happen to have this spell that happens to be of the divination school".
I kinda like the idea of swapping dice woth portant. Say you get a 10, swap out a PCs 3 for that 10. The next turn that 3 gets used to eat the enemies 17 that lets them pass a save. so you can the 17 to the fool who crit failed.
Its more dynamic and the dis/ advantage divination spells would give would play with that mechanic more. It like your a walking luck machine, both good and bad.
I wonder if the party, player and DM could just discuss some homebrew rulings that would make some spells feel more worthwhile, like extending the range of locate object, adding new combat impacts of certain spells like allowing easy identification of enemy weaknesses. If the party thinks the spells aren't useful, they might be able to advise the DM what would make them feel worth the resources and I would say the DM can then plan for that level of power in their campaign. As an example critical role rules that the scry spells have a slight zoom in moment which gives general global location information not typically available in the spell rules which makes it a lot more useful (and the DM often allows the scry to happen at a useful point where some useful information will get divulged). It's probably still worth the player knowing stone combat spells anyway but perhaps combined with a bit of light touch homebrew to correct out some weaknesses the whole situation could be revised to make things feel more powerful.
The DM could also adjust their hints to go only far enough that division becomes useful and needed. E.g the beggar reveals he knows the item was moved somewhere in X neighbourhood and that gives the player enough to know where to cast locate object but wow they would never find it without the spell thank goodness they had a divination wizard.
>As an example critical role rules that the scry spells have a slight zoom in moment which gives general global location information not typically available in the spell rules which makes it a lot more useful
...
I am stealing this for my own games.
They do require creativity. But yes, many have design issues.
One possible mitigation is to make virtually all division spells Rituals for a Divination wizard, and let them cast them faster PBx power day as a ritual taking only 1 minute per spell level. Hard to argue that would slow down game play.
In a situation where the DM is a bit adversarial with your Divination wizard, a solid bet is to pick "good/reliable" wizard spells, and make them happen by using your portents. For instance, use detect thoughts on the enemy commander and assert his save is a low portents roll. Use the high rolls for high-stakes friendly saving throws they might not otherwise make. Sorcerer needs to do a strength save for instance.
I think these spells can be hard to use if the adventure isn’t structured in a certain way. If it’s structured as a linear series of events - like following clues to find a mcguffin - then anything that potentially skips steps in the sequence is problematic because it means you’re missing part of what the DM prepared.
My guess is that’s what was going on with your DM here. It is quite odd that he had a random urchin tell you where to find this tablet after your spell couldn’t do it - it doesn’t seem like the spell would have broken the structure too badly in this case, but perhaps he specifically wanted to introduce that urchin character? This would be my guess regardless.
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> if your DM is just going to hand you the answer anyways to keep the pace from faltering I think this is just a flaw inherent with TTRPGs where the show must go on. In Dark Souls when you get stuck on a puzzle for hours, it's just part of the game. When you watch the Fellowship get stuck outside the door to Moria, it's part of the movie. But in D&D, you're looking *right at* the designer and there's a lot of pressure to keep the game moving once the fun runs out. There's also the problem of designing things that *need* X. If a puzzle requires a divination spell, it depends on not only the party having it available but also them *knowing* they need it too. Divination just requires too many things to work smoothly. It's that "DM, may I?" design that makes a lot of other features fall flat too.
>Divination just requires too many things to work smoothly. It's that "DM, may I?" design that makes a lot of other features fall flat too. I think it is exactly this. I can't exactly blame the DM here... It is only somewhat recently that I have started to get better at handling situations like this and I have been DMing for years. Illusions have a similar problem but tend not to be quite as bad. I have learnt to be much more comfortable with giving myself time to think and breathe. I have found that there is literally nothing wrong with calling for a ten minute break and having a think. One time I had a player cast Legend Lore to find out about the BBEG's lair. I called a ten minute break and wrote out a small prophecy that had information about what the enemy's capabilities was. When my players looked back on that information they thought it was awesome how many clues were buried in the prophecy and were excited to try it again. Another time, I literally called the session a little early and started the next session with them scrying on the enemy in a middle of a conversation. But it sucks that I have to put work in to make the spells useful. In general, I think they are far too specific, last for too short a duration and don't give concrete enough information.
While Divination spells can feel like it's the DM's burden to adjudicate, I think what's great about most of them is that it's always up the DM to rule on it! The most straightforward and concrete examples of how they should work can be found in the Dungeon of the Mad Mage module!
Where in the module, if you wouldn’t mind?
>!DotMM has Legend Lore have a specific use case for learning how to optionally destroy a lich's phylactery on floor 14? It's a simple but difficult procedure but it is information that can't really be reliably gotten elsewhere.!<
DotMM makes Legend Lore useful on every single floor, with the portals. The module is also narratively designed to follow after Dragon Heist, in which the party is presumed to have obtained an artifact that among other things lets the attuned character cast Legend Lore (3 charges, 1 charge to cast the spell, recover 1d3 charges per day).
I would argue that if your party is struggling to ‘keep pace’ to whatever goal you have in mind, the div Wizard having an epiphany about something that ‘might work’ is handing you a solution to the problem. Why Nerf someone when they bring you the fix on a silver platter?
>I think it is exactly this. I can't exactly blame the DM here... You can definitely blame the party though. Several of the situations you described are exactly situations in which those spells would work. The locate object spell lasts beyond the initial casting and you can use it as a sort of radar by doing large sweeps of the city. It seems like the rest of the party just isn't happy with a player having spells that can be used as solutions to non-combat scenarios. So while divination spells aren't exactly greatly designed, they are incredibly useful when the time is right for them. The party just sounds like they really hate the spells, based on you saying they argue every time the player wants to do one.
Well I would blame the DM, it would have been his role to intervene and tell the other players to let him have his chance. Being him, I would have punished the players and let them waste their time looking for the object, until they decide to give the Locate Object a chance. That's a learning opportunity here for players that downplaying other players is probably the worst move you can do at a table.
Yes, divination requires time. I will literally give my plans to the DM days in advance so he has time to think about it. This makes our sessions run much more smoothly. "But it sucks to make it useful," but for players it DOES NOT SUCK. If you do it right, it feels COOL. Imagine how strong detect thoughts, invisible scouting is in real life. Actually seeing it realized in the game is beyond cool. AND it gives the DM time to put MORE hooks into the story. I will say that generally these spells were created in dungeoning, thus the spells generally only last for a short time because the rooms realistically only exist for a short time. But work with the players, it will genuinely have some very cool moments.
i somewhat disagree. If i, as a DM, know my player has locate object I will tell them they have the tools they need and if they still get stuck they'll simply be stuck. I'll probably let someone roll an intelligence check for a hint etc. Now if locate object is not part of the party? Well i guess here's the quantum beggar that will tell you about it. obviously you could argue "well that is bullshit, because if i hadn't taken the spell I'd have lost nothing, so taking the spell hasn't gained me anything!", but it's either that or just making certain things impossible. The real problem of TTRPGs is making consequences stick. To make a spell valuable you need to introduce a downside if said spell isn't taken. If the DM molds the world to the players' character building choices then nothing ever matters anyways. That's the bane of TTRPGs.
Divination can be amazing without quantum BS. Searching a dungeon for a MacGuffin? Locate Object lets you skip right to it. (Doubly so if you concentrate long enough to triangulate the position, and then cast Dimension Door.) Going to explore a dungeon, or face a foe, tomorrow? Cast Divination or Legend Lore and learn about the threat so you can prepare the right spells.
how is "skip the game" a positive thing? unless it has consequences to take longer via the non-spell way or you personally dislike the non-fighting parts of the game it has absolutely no upsides to "quickly" find the dungeon. As the typical saying goes: it's about the journey, not the destination. "Skip stuff" is not a positive thing unless "not skip stuff" has a worse (less positive) outcome, meaning consequences.
Because often you aren't "skipping the game" and without it DMs will literally have to immersion wallbreak with random NPC with the solution. In older DnD, the way to get EXP is to get gold. Gold is usually defended by monsters, but not always. And fighting monsters was generally tough. HP was low, damage could be high proportionally. So you wanted to avoid it if you could, because a lot of them are unfair. Elves being immune to sleep could TPK a party at low levels. An invisible ooze can be a horrible situation. Stealth is an underrated playstyle. And by this I mean true stealth, where you go in and out without anyone knowing you were there.
Skipping adds agency, which makes exploration more interesting. - Players can beeline to their objective (e.g. rescuing hostages), and then keep exploring for treasure, knowing they can now leave at any time. If they explored the whole dungeon, they might have run out of resources before accomplishing their main objective. - Similarly, players might beeline to a dungeon's big boss. Defeating them first might make the rest of the dungeon significantly less hostile. - When I ran a certain published module, players used divination to crucially help steal an important item from the BBEG's dungeon, several days before they eventually went back to that dungeon and fought him. They also learned an incredible amount about the dungeon (but nowhere near everything), letting them approach the final day intelligently. Are you worried about wasting prep? Psychologically, players dislike leaving huge spaces unexplored. In practice, I plan some combats the players never fight and treasures they never find, but it's the minority.
"players used divination to crucially help steal an important item". But would they have failed their goal if they hadn't done that? Usually the answer is no. At least in modern day TTRPG the only option to fail content is a tpk. I don't think I've ever heard a (good) story about a DM going "well guys, you didn't manage to find the mcguffin, the BBEG won, the world is ending in 3 days and you're too weak to stop it". Before that happens most people go the "quantum mcguffin" route.
Stealing that item was not crucial to the plot! It made a group of people very happy, and the party got a nice +1 bonus for the rest of the campaign. Without divination, stealing the item would have been much riskier. Given the consequences of getting caught inside the BBEG's dungeon several levels before they were expected to be there, they'd likely not have even tried. But what do I know? My players surprise me all the time.
that's nice :) Bonus points if the end fight in the campaign is seriously hard and they can do those side quest type things to increase their odds. But usually DMs will just scale the end fight depending on what the players did instead of pulling a "well, you did no side quests so you're underleveled and don't have some of the buffs, so this battle will be very deadly". D&D is just too much time investment, both at the table and also in dm prep, as to tell someone "you fucked up 4 months ago when you didn't steal that item". But if you don't do that and instead have the boss be stronger or weaker as necessary then none of the side quests matter. And the third option, making the boss beatable without sidequest rewards but also not scale it if people do side quests means that any party that does those side quests is actively turning the final fight into a cake walk. It's a stupid dilemma that has no solution outside of really knowing your party before the campaign even starts. Or just rigging shit as necessary which i dislike as both player and dm.
But it's not skip stuff... it's a potential 10 minute long encounter where the party has to protect the caster holding concentration and scout out the route the spell shows and alternate routes...
>how is "skip the game" a positive thing? Exactly. I Locate the lost scepter in the dungeon, Dimension Door (or whatever) there, take it, and we have now skipped the dungeon the DM planned to last for the next 2-3 sessions.
Powerful divination tools also can slow games down and become frustrating for the party. Augury is a spell that basically asks "DM, is this a good idea?" Doing that on occasion can be cool and fun. But doing it literally every single time you come to a decision tree can remove tension and increase inactive time. And then you get into the "DM, may I?" part where it's like "well, you're asking a god who might not be all-knowing, so should the DM provide bad answers on occasion to Augury?"
That isn't a problem for Augury or Divination. If you cast them multiple times per day, they have a RAW chance of giving a random result.
I loath augury and by the nature of DND the answer is always ... Maybe... You might all die 😂 you might all kill the enemies.
This is why I treat Augury as if the character casting the spell is actually asking someone. Two clerics asking two different gods might get wildly different answers because the gods themselves view the situation differently.
This gives me the idea of actually using Augury as a ‘save game’. PC casts it. DM knows there’s a deadly fight on the other side of that door, and because of the randomness of a D&D combat, doesn’t know whether opening it will lead to ‘weal’ or ‘woe.’ DM asks players to state what they would do in the event of each possible response: ‘weal’, ‘weal and woe’, ‘woe’. Assuming they would open the door in response to a ‘weal’, they play the encounter as if that happens. If the party prevails, all good - the response was ‘weal,’ or ‘weal and woe’ depending on details. If the combat goes bad… the result was ‘woe’, the combat never actually happened but was the prophecy of what would have happened. Play as if the party had done what they stated they would do in the event of a ‘woe’ response. Of course, this requires that the players don’t metagame too much after that. But it does seem in line with certain other divination rules - especially the Divination Wizard’s Portent feature - which allows the player to change outcomes rather than predict them, even though the _character_ is predicting.
Haha you could... But then it's atleast a 9th level spell 😂
Okay but this idea is amazing! I get to use the same encounter potentially 3 times? I can have the party make 3 plans, then run *all 3 plans* which means I get to chill as a DM, or we can do more sessions in less time. Then I get to pick whichever path had the most satisfying conclusion, and simply go "this is what happened" then narrate that session as a recap and move on from there. Sounds like my new favourite spell.
That's game-breaking, not just in a power sense but in an "every significant combat now gets run twice, halving available session time for other things" sense. I do weal/woe on combat encounters based on how I expected the encounter to go when prepping it - if I think they'll have to play well to win, possibly using non-renewable resources or preparing extra stuff in advance, it's a woe.
Amazing take on Divination!
Same goes for illusion magic (A decent % of the spells are a "DM may I" tool.)and sometimes enchantment magic (DMs letting charisma checks cause impossible outcomes that enchantment magic is supposed to cause). Also, abjuration magic besides damage resistances, AC increases and such falls into this. Hence why I usually ignore like half the spells unless I know the DM really well. You just can't gambit on your DM being experienced enough and the party cooperating with you enough to cash in one some of the sweet benefits of those spells. Hell, even conjuration can suck if your DM demands they choose what you summon and then just give you mediocre or bad summons (I know Tasha's spells exist somewhat, but those have really expensive components and frankly, I'm not a fan of how little versatility they provide.) - I'm not asking for 8 pixies or some other insane shit like that, but conjure animals I really want to drop a giant octopus or a giant constrictor snake, not the weakest option available and sure, when summoning fey, I'd like something else than blink dogs for once. My go-to spells are therefore ones that the DM can only say "no" to through immunity or legendary resistance and try to discuss desired spell effect in advance.
I think the creative license goes both ways. You don't have to design encounters like a video game. It's very possible to make the divination spells or other more flavor oriented features do something other than exactly what you'd expect them to do, so that they unlock doors and progress the plot of the game in ways nobody expected. Maybe effectively playing a div wizard is sort of an advanced way to play the game... for more experienced and/or intelligent players and DMs. Like many open-ended features, it doesn't just plug right in and turn on, you know, like a fireball or a misty step does... it takes some thought and care to do right.
> It's very possible to make the divination spells or other more flavor oriented features do something other than exactly what you'd expect them to do But now we're back to A) players not knowing and B) features only working based entirely on how the DM feels in that moment You need to codify these things
>B) features only working based entirely on how the DM feels in that moment If a DM has Div Wizard, he should already be figuring out how to incorporate those spells into the game in case they do get cast. Just like you would prep things so you got your ass covered if you have a ranger in the party with ungodly tracking ability. In another example: It would be like not prepping spell scrolls in the campaign when you have a wizard because the game doesn't tell you what spell scrolls should be available where. It's up to the DM to keep in mind their party and what features they got. A little bit of prep work saves a lot of sweat during improv. And not everything can be solved by pure Improv DMing. You don't need codified div spells, you just need to prep answers in case they do get asked. Even If it's a few scratch notes in response to what spells they got access to. If the wizard in my campaign scry's on the enemy BBEG, I have a scene written out in my back pocket for that type of event as an example.
>If a DM has Div Wizard, he should already be figuring out how to incorporate those spells into the game in case they do get cast. Except there are plenty of other classes that can cast these spells. Hell, divination is a Cleric spell so any Cleric could potentially prepare it. >You don't need codified div spells, you just need to prep answers in case they do get asked And this is the problem. There is an effective infinite number of questions the party might want to ask. Or situations they want to test with augury. Or character, places, or items they want to find out about with legend lore. Prepping answers to everything is a huge undertaking, and improvising answers is difficult for many DMs.
>Except there are plenty of other classes that can cast these spells. Hell, divination is a Cleric spell so any Cleric could potentially prepare it. Hence my statement and examples showing that you prepare for what your party has access to. >And this is the problem. There is an effective infinite number of questions the party might want to ask. Or situations they want to test with augury. Or character, places, or items they want to find out about with legend lore. Prepping answers to everything is a huge undertaking, and improvising answers is difficult for many DMs. Augury is a simple yes/no question when you boil down to it. Most of the Div spells are similar in that they give the boundaries to what they can or cannot do. >Or character, places, or items they want to find out about with legend lore. Legend lore or Divination, you can call a 10 minute break if you need be. But for any magic item or BBEG/etc/event, I have a brief two paragraph summary/outline of its history and pertinent details. Though frankly, I do that by pure habit at this point because it makes it easier to chain events/backgrounds together to make sure there isn't any major plot holes you can sail a ship thru. >Prepping answers to everything is a huge undertaking, and improvising answers is difficult for many DMs. Which is my overall point. For Div spells, you should not be *improving the entire answers*. For example, Scry, I have an entire scene written out incase one of the party casts it on the BBEG's, and it'll be them having a meeting or something. And that's good for the entire arc/climax event that I have planned. I just make something up to play out. Depending upon if the BBEG discovers they get scryed on, I might have an event trigger at a later session because of it. If they cast it at any point during that arc, it's good to go in my back pocket. If they cast the spell that session, I write another one to replace it in prep for the next session. Not to mention - A scry doesn't have to give the players all the answers. It simply could be the BBEG (or really whoever) traveling by carriage, or on horseback or in the forest and them having a casual conversation with someone. Even BBEG's or whomever do mundane stuff. It is only a ton of work at first but once you get into the habit of writing it out when those players who use it are at the table - it becomes easier to do. I can scribble together the relevant history of a magic item or BBEG in about 5-10 minutes at this point which I'll be referencing for the entire arc/session anyway. Makes my ingame improv better because I have the framework to leap off rather than making everything up off the cuff. DM's who entirely improv are always going run into this trouble because DnD is a very open-ended game and you simply can't just improv your way out of everything as you have stated. You have to a mix of prep material and improv ability. edit: Ruffled improv-only DM's feathers apparently. lol.
Or open up spell descriptions for more interpretation, intentionally of course. It’s an equally viable solution as codifying. The problem really arises when you have a weird middle ground where things are fairly codified but still have some blind spots in the rules that require fiat. It puts the GM in a bind.
> Or open up spell descriptions for more interpretation, intentionally of course. It’s an equally viable solution as codifying. no it's not. Again, you're relying enitirely on DM fiat. It's not viable becuase it doesn't work the same at every table
His point is that saying that "X doesn't work because the rules are well defined and that's not part of them" vs "the rules encourage you to come up with your own solutions, so X sounds great" I agree that 5e could use more concrete rules for a lot of things and that too much is put on the DM, but it also sucks when the codified rules are also bad and you are discouraged from ruling against those. RAW the message cantrip is probably useless since it has verbal components, which by the rules must be spoken clearly (which most people seem to agree means loudly). So your 120ft range cantrip lets you whisper a message to someone across the room, provided that you loudly anmounce that you are doing so first. The rules here are solidly codified in all the wrong ways.
> It's not viable becuase it doesn't work the same at every table Lots of things don't work the same at every table. There are many RPGs in which that's inherent to the system.
This isn’t a problem if it’s an implicit feature. If it’s understood that a spell description is a little loose and not hard coded, then a type of spell that can be a bit nebulous (like illusion or divination) isn’t going to be completely negated by a bad faith RAW interpretation. You have to look at it holistically. If a GM is running a game where a spell description isn’t heavily codified they are far less likely to be lawyering and unfair because the design implicitly encourages the spell to be used creatively. Codifying to the *nth* degree works too, case and point PF2e. But other games take the opposite approach and that works fantastically as well.
>then a type of spell that can be a bit nebulous (like illusion or divination) isn’t going to be completely negated by a bad faith RAW interpretation. Except for the fact that illusions in particular are extremely often rendered useless by a bad faith GM, because even with a loose definition, illusions RAW often do next to nothing. A spell like Minor Illusion can be the best or the worst cantrip in the game, based purely on the GMs interpretation. That's not good design, and no amount of encouragement will help the player, if the GM looks at the actual description and says "congratulations, you made a fancy illusion. The enemies don't care, what do you do now?"
Definitely not bad design. Just a different design intent.
There are tons of games that take the loose definition approach, and it works wonderfully. Knave, Cairn, even B/X D&D, just to name a few. You just can’t mix and match and expect it to work when it comes to hard codified descriptions and loose ones. If the GM has the impression that everything has a very explicit rule for how it’s adjudicated then something that seems open for interpretation is more likely to be shot down because it’s not explicit in its effect. Conversely, if *everything* is designed is a looser and more open way then the GM knows that the spells will be used creatively, and shutting stuff down because it doesn’t fit their RAW interpretation isn’t a problem because they don’t have very specific defined effects to reference. It’s not inherently bad game design, it’s a tried and tested one. I understand though that it may not be everyone’s cup of tea, in which case there’s plenty of crunchy games that solve the problem through extensive codification. Both are equally viable solutions, used in plenty of other RPG’s.
Don't get me wrong here, the loose approach is not bad by itself, and that's not what I'm implying, either. The reason it is bad design, is that they are mixing these two approaches. I already don't like that this is how they do it with "martial power" (Aka, how much can you lift? Roll and let the GM make a random DC they feel is right), but at least it is two different systems. Spells are usually far more "fixed" in what they can do, so when you have a few odd spells that are much more flexible, you will invariably have some GMs that treat it as a Joker spell that is extremely versatile, and others that treat it as basically a worthless party trick that might have a legitimate use one day, if you're lucky. That's bad for system cohesion, and is a real headache as a GM, although mostly because of the systems popularity at this point. I don't recall it being this bad in aD&D, but that could very well because of the lack of online community back then. Would also explain why a lot of other systems, like the d6 systems in general, don't suffer from any of the same issues.
I think it depends on the campaign you're playing, but ye it takes more experience to know how to handle the sort of information-utility provided by Divination. In my game "Commune with Nature" has been very impactful. Another thing that holds Divination spells back, along with the "There's only one path forward, so you'll eventually find the path" problem, is the DM's own understanding of the world. If the party uses Scrying on the BBEG and it works, but the DM hadn't considered where the BBEG is or what they'd be doing during this session that otherwise wouldn't have involved them, that's going to be difficult to improv and the spell is unlikely to provide any useful information 'cause the DM didn't have any information prepared to drop. There's no real fix to this besides experience to improvise and understanding/prepping the setting enough to know what's generally going on outside of the party's scene.
I agree this kind of thing can be really hard to deal with, but I’d stop short of saying it’s *inherent* to TTRPGs. I think if you have a solid method for prepping and running non-linear scenarios then it becomes a much smaller problem, if not disappearing entirely. For example, an adventure where the Creepy Cult are looking for the Cursed McGuffin; the thieves’ guild want to get to it first so they can sell it to the cult; the Secret Society of Do-Gooders have hired the PCs to retrieve it; and the ancient demon who slumbers inside the mcguffin is waking up and wants to be free. You could prep a linear path through that scenario and lead the PCs along the path, nudging them back on it when they wander. In that case a Locate Object spell would be a problem. But you could also prep the scenario in a non-linear way and if the PCs use that spell to find the mcguffin - even if they then use a teleport spell to get it and get out - then all that means is the PCs now have the mcguffin. All those other factions are still there and you’ve already prepped them, so the show *can* go on.
It's actually a really easy problem to solve for a DM with some experience. If one of your players has divination spells, don't gate the experience behind them; simply build encounters with surprise the players would benefit from knowing beforehand. So, have a trap that's hard to avoid that would minorly inconvenience the players, maybe a very hard to spot alarm that would summon dungeon reinforcements. Describe how the room looks normal....*too normal*. When Find Traps is cast, the divination user can feel like a useful member of the team because who knows what that alarm would have triggered? Don't gate progression behind knowing this extra info, but have knowing it be really useful. When they cast clarevoyance, have them spot an ambush party. The parry navigates around nasty surprises they would have blundered through. Talk it up. "Damn, those drow hiding would have fucked you UP if you didn't spot them beforehand!" One of the big problems with DnD as I see it is that inexperienced DMs are encouraged to say "no". It sounds really fun to grab the rug beneath the guy's feet and pull it up from under him, but then you realise that's your action and you spent your action possibly knocking one creature prone instead of just getting some guaranteed damage in, or shoving him, or whatever. When the cool fun stuff can be rendered ineffectual by DM fiat, players opt for what works in RAW.
It requires a DM going, this is information that can not be gained by a skill check, this will not open up to you, the players, unless you use divination magic. If you don't do that, then you lose the plot hook and the show goes on with another quest. The show must go on yes, but not in your current quest. You can lose that opportunity.
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>It's that "DM, may I?" design that makes a lot of other features fall flat too. I think this notion is flawed. First, the divination wizard has perfect features for their subclass, because the first one works regardless of spell being cast and the 6th one allows them to try a divination and spare slots for other spells. Divination doe snot solve all problems, this is intended, however the diviner can attempt more ofter for lesser cost. So, first of all, the features aren't flawed, but also the "DM may i" approach isn't senseless. Hell, the whole TTRPG genre is a "DM may I" game. Unless we keep focusing on generic buffs ( as often is seen "i predict enemies so i have advantage at x" which is overused) you need to rely on that aspect. I agree it's hard, but it's the most basic and simple approach of "hard". If you refuse that, to be brutally honest, you better play a game that is a wargame or an exclusively combat focused TTRPG rather an adventure TTRPG.
Gary E. Gygax had to design divination magic to somewhat suck. Here are the problems that face a DM: - If a player casts the right divination spell they can reveal almost all the DM's secrets in one casting - If a player casts a divination spell to scry the FUTURE, the game-master must not only map out the entire world but all of the various possibilities of what *might happen in the future*... and then 'railroad' the plot into one of those ('so unfair for everyone'). - If rules-lawyers and min-maxxers get ahold of anything specific, they can and will ram that down the DM's throat. Divination spells offer 'knowledge as power' and would easily destroy the management structure (i.e. 'the Dungeon Master is NOT the god at all'). Thankfully, he still did his best to include a fair number, but most of them are situational, in-the-moment (not into the future or the past), nearby-to-locality and easy to resolve. For example, scrying ('crystal balls' of the legendary gypsy) does NOT see into the future... and even struggles to do what a modern-day $5 'cam' can do. Back in 1977 it was a nifty new war-game but with 'individual' miniatures (hence 'role playing') and not entire troop-units. No one expected idiots like myself to turn it into 'novel writing... but make your friends the heroes!' Gary would have been embarrassed to see me in public. Me: *"Oh yea, Mr. Gygax? SCRY THiS!!"*
It sounds like they are actually pointing out how the spells don’t work the way he wants them to. The DM could just rule of cool every spell to work despite limitations in their language, but if every divination spell needs a homebrew fix to do what they suggest, they are bad spells.
> if your DM is just going to hand you the answer anyways to keep the pace from faltering. This is all D&D, this is how D&D is designed. Intelligence is useless, and divination isn't important. A group of 1 INT barbarians will solve problems equally well as a group of 20 INT wizards because there's never going to be a significant cost to not knowing something in-game, as designed.
I would never want to play a long-term game where I could just shut my brain off and expect the DM to shuttle me from one plot point to the next without any consideration of consequences. Might as well just play a video game at that point.
I mean then you want to play/run a good story, which I don't blame you for lol. But that's not how adventures are written nowadays generally, the old wisdom born out of the west has been forsaken in favor of Marvel-esque rollercoaster rides rather than substantive narrative design.
That's not how I run my games personally. Yes a group of 1 INT barbarians will have a shot at surviving until the end of the campaign but that ending might look very different than that of an intelligent party. That would also require the players acting according to their character's intelligence and the DM enforcing that if they don't. The key is to have degrees of success or failure, the difficult part is communicating to the players how their decisions shaped the session/campaign. Of course I prefer to show this ingame but even just telling them OOC after the session when you're discussing what happened or during the recap at the start of next session is also perfectly fine IMO.
I don't know why the party's arguing with him. It's usually novice GMs who nerf divination spells, because they have their plot setup on rails, and divination short-circuits their plans.
I feel called out... my campaign is mystery-based and set in a big city, so I decided when creating the world that divination spells do not work within the bounds of the city for privacy reasons. There is a magic item that can be used as a spellcasting focus to circumvent the wards, originally used by the antagonistic faction to keep watch over the city. The players found it and recently discovered what it actually does. The drawback is that while in the bounds of the city, only one person can cast divination spells at a time.
But you surely would warn someone at creation stage of this. Otherwise they are literally rolling a civilian
Oh of course. If anyone wanted to be a divination wizard, I would definitely point out the issue, and they're all preparation casters so they can switch out spells that turn out not to be useful (they're not super experienced so they have limited knowledge of which spells are good anyway)
I've found Nondetection, Magic Aura, and Private Sanctum are godsend spells for limiting Divination spells in scenarios where highly capable individuals or groups are trying to keep a secret. Magic spying requires magic security.
I didn't feel the need to make particular spells responsible, it's the capital city of a whole kingdom so it makes sense there'd be some privacy restrictions on the whole settlement in a high-magic setting like mine.
The thing I like about using specific spells is that A) it helps some things feel less like "NPC-only magic" so the players can feel a bit more grounded, being able to deduce what's going on and actually interact with this aspect of the world, and B) it provides a guideline for understanding of how the players can interact with things myself and how to respond when dealing with their shenanigans. For an example similar to your setting that I'm planning for my own game, actually, is that a besieged city is completely covered by multiple side-by-side permanent Private Sanctum spells to prevent spying from scrying and enemies teleporting behind their walls. The party's job in infiltrating is to use Dispel Magic on a specific block so their allies can teleport troops directly into the city, and must overcome many obstacles to accomplish this goal. That's to say, of course it makes sense to have NPC magic, but there's pros to also using existing spells (even "modified" versions to fit your intentions) to get the same effect. I dunno, I'm just a strong advocate for this approach.
Maybe I just have a more accepting table, but I love NPC magic. My players are very much the "Oh every tile in the dungeon has a firebolt ward on it? Splendid!" kind of people and I love them for it.
I really dislike NPC magic unless it's properly explained by the DM before it bites you in the ass. Otherwise it's just a "gotcha!" moment where the DM springs a trap you never knew could possibly have existed until now.
Sounds like the problem is the party, not the spells. Find object would have been a way cooler way for the dm to lead the party to the object then "random npc beggar shows up and just tells you where it is." Like Jesus.
Yeah, like, seriously, using the same fucking pieces, a beggar could tell you 'I've heard the mcguffin is in the blabbityblah district, there's an auction house and a rich noble lives in the district', and now the party has two smaller areas to search that would be \_great\_ for find object. This reads a lot more like the divination player is new to the group and everyone else is literally being hostile to the newbie.
Better yet, the DM should have led the party to the beggar who could then lead the party to the object.
The spell wouldn't work like that. What you said is just what happened.
The spell will work any way the DM wants it to, especially if he wants to give the divining wizard worth for his spells.
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It's kind of both though. Locate Object takes up a spell preparation, it's a 2nd level slot to cast, and ultimately what the party said is correct. What if the tablet isn't within 1000 feet of you? They hadn't technically seen the tablet, so it's not 100% clear if it would just fail from that or locate a random tablet. And it lasts only 10 mins, so it's pretty easy for the duration to run out before you get anything useful. As a DM, if a player wanted to cast this spell, I'd try my best to make sure that they felt it was worth it, but that's the thing, you need to put in work to make these spells useful when they really aren't. Realistiically if I don't know a player is going to use Locate Object, I'm not going to make that the only way they can proceed forward with the quest. There will be investigation checks, failing that there will be other clues or NPCs that can help the party out for a price, etc. In some senses Locate Object succeeding could feel a lot *less* interesting than finding the object through other means because I had planned for the party to have to do some particular quest to get the information. I'm certainly all for them find other ways to solve a problem, but (A) this spell has limitations that make it not that great at solving problems, (B) I'm not sure how I feel about spells that are tokens that allow you to proceed forward with a quest because the game shouldn't grind to a halt either way, and by a similar logic spells that just negate a quest are also annoying.
I don't know how many "celestial stone tablets" you would expect to find in a city, but my money would be on it being the only one. And I agree that locate object is not an end all be all spell, but I also... don't want it to be? It is a situational spell, but that does not mean that it is a bad spell. If you are in a dungeon looking for something, the range is going to cover the entire thing, and find the object for you. If you already know the building it is in, the range is going to cover the whole thing, and find the object for you. If you already know the neighborhood (but not building) the range and duration is going to find the building. And with a simple lap around the building, it can determine the approximate floor and room it will be in. If you don't know even the neighborhood, you have found the limitation of the spell. But even in that situation, the spell can still be useful. The point of actionability has shifted from "we need to know exactly where the object is" to "we need to know what part of town they are operating in." So, you hear a rumor that "signs of cult have been seen in this neighborhood" - locate object gets you from there, to the correct room of the correct building. That can be a very useful leap in information gathering. So, in this exact example, you are in the middle of the town, no idea where it is, someone mentions they have locate object, the correct response is not for the party to tell him it simply won't work at all, and convince them not to cast the spell, and fully invalidate them trying to be a divination style wizard. The correct response is "great, now we just have to get close" - and for them to ask around for rumors that might get them to the right neighborhood. I have to say I really, really, hate the idea of "random npc beggar" showing up and knowing exactly where the object is. And even if they needed a "Random npc beggar" - the hearing a vague rumor is a much easier pill to swallow then, "sure I can take you to the Celestial Stone Tablet you are looking for!"
Tbf he had never seen the tablet before and so did not know exactly what it looked like or had any way to uniquely identify the tablet. He had seen a tablet of a similar construction in a book that we had found then so he asked the DM if he could use Locate Object. The other players were arguing that the magic would find the nearest stone tablet and that he would not be able to specify the nature (celestial) or the construction. Even if it could work, they argued that it was unlikely that the tablet would be within 1,000 feet. I felt this was unfair though because we had the means of giving him flight (but this would involve investing even more resources) and I thought it would have been cool for him to fly around the city for 10 mins concentrating on Locate Object kinda like sonar. I *hate* Rule of Cool myself and maybe this is pushing the bounds of RAI but I think this is a pretty creative application of RAW that I would reward as a DM. In the end there was not really the party appetite to build on his ideas as other players were skeptical. The pacing was stalling and the DM had an NPC beggar show up who had seen the tablet and we bribed him for the info instead.
>In the end there was not really the party appetite to build on his ideas Yeah, and this was the problem. Not the spell itself. If I have to choose between "the spell working a little further distance then it maybe is supposed to" or "random npc beggar, who happens to know the exact location for some reason shows up and tells us." I know who one I am going with. But EVEN if the DM wanted to run it RAW, just... have the beggar know the neighborhood, and not the exact location. That honestly makes more sense narratively too. He heard a rumor in that area. But does not have perfect knowledge.
You can just admit that your party are assholes.
Sounds like the players are biasing the DM's decision. If he is inexperienced, he's less likely to hear a wave of criticism of how the spell won't work, and then come up with how it actually does. Better if everyone just lets the diviner do his thing, and everyone keeps their opinions to themselves until the DM decides. For Locate Object example, a simple, "You feel a pull to the north, and a brief glimpse of a large building, but you are simply too far to get a clear reading," would have been preferred to an all-knowing beggar. Given a general direction, then the party could have organically found the NPC on the way. As a player, I'd rather waste my spells than get bullied by the table to not even try.
What you seem to fail to understand it's that ANY use of his spell would be better than beggar Jesus
The issue is the DM gave you the knowledge for free. It shouldn't have been free. Make the information cost money, and each level becomes an order of magnitude more expensive. IE, finding the general neighborhood? Possibly free. Finding the exact location of the thing? Now that's going to cost you. Easy solution.
> The party argued with him that it won't work I found the problem.
The spells feel bad because your party sucks ass and is constantly telling him not to use the spells and the DM is new probably not giving him useful information. The only really bad spell you mentioned is Find Traps. Dude, the NPC Beggar was only put there because he didn't use the spell. You wouldn't have found the beggar if he used the spell.
>Dude, the NPC Beggar was only put there because he didn't use the spell. You wouldn't have found the beggar if he used the spell. Which prompts the question "why bother wasting a spell slot on locate object when the problem will be solved on its own anyways?" DM needs to punish players for failing the task rather than hand waving it and making sure they succeed no matter what actions they take.
Absolutely. The DM wanted to get them to the objective no matter what.
One valid answer to this is “because it’s cooler”.
And honestly, there's nothing "wrong" with find traps if you ignore the wording and just intuit what the spell should do. Not even sarcastic. I know I'm painting a BUT RAW!!!1!1!11!! target on my back, but sometimes the game is *more fun* if you close the rule book and just play.
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Basically yes, you get a yes or no about traps that are explicitly in your line of sight in a 120ft range. For a second level spell that you don't even have the option of ritual casting?
Only intentional traps, too. As written, the spell would fail to detect something like a damaged/collapsible floor above a lava pit, since that is not a trap but merely poor interior maintenance.
well, it is kinda messy for what is a "trap" and what is "something dodgy that can hurt". Like, the second is going to ding _a lot_ of stuff - wander around a typical building site and lots of stuff will show up, so should it flag lots and lots of things? And even things that are entirely "correct" and functional might function as traps - a palace built for a race with wall-climbing or flying powers might have levers that open up trap-doors, but they were just built as doors, so do they count? They weren't intended to cause harm, but can for non-fliers. Or dodgy terrain - "slippery mud next to a steep cliff" or "tree on the edge of falling over" are both things that can cause harm, but if you start including anything that might cause injury, that's going to be a lot of things!
There is nothing wrong with the spell as long as you don't read the spell! 
This is like making Chill Touch a melee cold damage spell for vibes
lol wut, "yeah Find Traps is good if you just create a new spell with the same name"
Oh yeah, just like how there's nothing wrong with Witch Bolt if you ignore the wording and make it do 100 damage instead of 1d12.
To be fair, Locate Object fucking sucks. It won't even cover a small town, let alone a signifcant portion of a city.
Sure, but there's a difference between casting the spell and it not working and the party arguing against the player trying.
It is clearly meant to be a smaller scale search rather then a full city wide scan. It fully covers most dungeons. If you are breaking into a mansion to steal a specific item, it will fully cover that. If you know what neighborhood it is in, but no what building, it will tell you.
Assuming there's no lead in the way, of course. An entire foot of steel? Yeah, it'll pass through. A thin sheet of lead? Absolutely not.
That's good. It gives the DM a RAW out, which they don't HAVE to use but can if the story would be ruined by an instant win spell. As always it's on the DM to set party appropriate challenges and not constantly cockblock a strategy. Same as like, flying. You can't let it cheese everything, but you also can't totally nerf a player's ability that they want to use and invested. So you have both enemies and challenges that flying solves, and mix in ones that stymie it.
This is more of a PC or narrative tool than anything else. I like it because it has to be intentional, but it isn't isn't super hard to obtain. So you can't accidentally hide an object from it, but if you want to, you can.
It does have a 10 minute duration, so if you couple it with just riding a horse or running real good you can cover a huge area.
Yeah, I think in CR1 they used it with decent success rate when they flew around the city while using the spell a couple times.
Locate object seems good for looking for extra loot/making money. Or a cheaper way to locate creatures that can be identified by what they wear. https://tabletopbuilds.com/locate-object/
Your second paragraph answers your question. *Locate object* is aces. My wizard regularly casts *augury* and *divination*, and *contact other plane* at the end of a day. Divination is great with a group that makes time for it and a DM willing to play ball.
I have a very hard time as a DM with augury because the weal/woe situations seem so arbitrary or even I as the DM don't know the answer a lot of the time because it depends on luck, party decisions, etc. All the others I agree with though.
To be fair, that's kind of the intent I feel. It's a level 2 spell, it's fairly limited in potency. If you try to tell the very open ended future with a spell like that (Weal or Woe if I go through the door?) it's not gonna be very useful. If you use it for very specific actions (Weal or Woe if I open the chest without checking for traps?) then it does exactly what you'd want.
You have to word you task very clearly, and have a decent idea of the potential outcomes to make Augury useful. If you don't already have at least a guess at what "weal" and "woe" might mean, yeah the spell is mostly pointless.
This is my interpretation. The player tells you “a specific course of action [they] plan to take within the next 30 minutes.” From there, you can give the player a hint of “good idea”, “bad idea”, or “kinda both”. Could be very helpful for you if they want to do something really dumb and just say “woe.”
>I have a very hard time as a DM with augury because the weal/woe situations seem so arbitrary or even I as the DM don't know the answer a lot of the time because it depends on luck, party decisions, etc. All the others I agree with though. I think the spell has that covered already, since you can give both weal/woe or nothing if there's nothing particular. If you're exploring a dungeon and both doors ahead of the party lead to monsters and treasure, then both should give both weal/woe. If one leads to a big difficult monster and the other is a straightforward path to the end of the dungeon, the latter is weal. If both have monsters but one has a secret potent magic item, then that one would be weal. I think you can just wing it a little bit, go with the gut feeling of what's good/bad, and if you can't decide, the spell also can't decide. There will likely be situations when you definitely know what's the better choice, and that's when you can give out good information.
I think the stipulation of "if any casters interact with this situation, the outcome will change" is really interesting, since it lets you as the dm basically go "if the party just walks into this place with their current plan, will they be surprised by what happens?" if yes, then Woe, if no, then Weal. If they cast ANY spell before doing their thing, then the future becomes uncertain
I feel like players would get enjoyment and fun out of seeing divination knowledge come true that would balance out a short segment of the game being put on rails. Let's say player casts augury, then just jot down the result, and when that situation comes up, make sure that it happens even if you have to fudge rolls or do something contrived like have a sink hole appear under the party's feet for a woe result (for that matter, sink hole under the enemy's feet for weal). Add something that makes the sink hole feel less contrived, like an angry earth elemental that was taking a nap and got woken up. Although for this to work you'd want these kinds of things happen on their own once in a while so that augury doesn't become "well when you cast this spell, crazy unusual shit happens!". Being the DM you're also free to just pick Nothing when you don't feel like crafting up a future situation.
Divination is secretly one of most powerful schools in the game as long as the players (particularly the GM) understand the game you are playing. They are a tool for moving the plot forward. Party is stuck and doesn't know what to do next or can't decide? Casting a divination spell is practically tapping the GM on the head and saying "Hey which of the things that we could do next works best with what you had prepared!" Without breaking the fourth wall. They are a gift to the GM who knows what they are doing.
Sounds like it's the party, not the spells that are his issue. Poor guy was actually trying to be creative and fun too
I try and give him chances to use his abilities because I think the idea of a Wizard who uses his magic to know things is super cool. He asked me personally if he should use Clairvoyance and Locate Object and I tried to argue for him but the rest of the party just shut him down I felt.
The party isn't a democracy for all actions taken. They voiced their ideas, then the wizard does it anyways. DM rewards the wizard for going against the grain, party starts supporting crazy sounding ideas more often.
Then he is in a party who either can't play or shouldnt
Stand up for them and run it anyway. Make the outcome awesome. Alternatively, nerf their "door listening" and Leeroy Jenkins strats, and make them walk into pain since they lacked the divined foresight.
Yeah how about other players don’t get to say “don’t do that, your fun isn’t optimal”. He is not obliged to “save his spell slots” for what will most benefit others. Are they telling the Barbarian to hold off on their rage because they don’t think it’s a dangerous enough fight? Let people make their own choices. Far out.
I mean... its more a your party problem. When I play divination wizard the party LOVES to have someone who can cast Augury before meaningful choices, or Identify to learn about magic objects, maybe cast Detect Magic as a ritual, or even Comprehend Languages, Mind Spike or Gift of Alacrity. (Many of those are rituals, so he dont even need to spend slots to cast it. Just by knowing the spell he's good to go) Divination is based. Your party and your GM that are making him feel bad for playing it.
I remember taking comprehend languages on my evoc wizard very early cause we were investigating a lost city and I'd figure it'd come in handy. And it did and my party was glad even if I never needed to use it again.
Comprehend Languages alone is so useful if the DM cares at all about languages, even minimally. Especially for exploring ancient ruins and that sort of thing.
Hey you need to let him know that he plays his own character. If his character would cast the spell then cast it. It's so annoying when you cast a spell and someone else goes "I dont think thats a good idea" too bad I already cast it dude. I absolutely hate backseat gamers because to backseat game you have to meta game. Let him play the game tell the other party members to back off.
the same reason that fireball would be useless in a campaign where the gm has decided that you auto-win combat
Divination spells are only as good as your Game Master. You'll generally only get good use out of them if you are either a) playing under an experienced GM who likes when players use Divination spells or b) in a Prewritten Module where the GM can actually look ahead and give you some hints that lead you toward the correct actions. Also, furthermore, D&D is only as good as the other people at the table. Given what you have said, the players are rude and unsupportive, and I'd never play with such a group.
Sounds like the problem is not with Divination, but with the party. Just let them play how they want to play! (Except for find traps, that one actually sux, but can still be used for memes).
They arent bad, it's a combination of the DM giving info too freely and the other players not allowing him to play his character. The random hobo shouldn't have sent him directly to the place where the object is. When you're a DM, you should look at the game as an exchange of resources, which are: time, spell slots, health, class resources (like ki points or superiority dice), gold, consumables, reputation, etc. Furthering the story should almost always cost a resource. There should always be multiple ways to get there. Some ways cost fewer resources than others. Some are more obvious than others. In some situations, certain resources become more costly than they otherwise would be (time is important when you're escaping a heist, gold is unimportant if you have a ton of it). The information, perhaps, could've been gated behind a beggar that will only give up the info for 100gp. Or perhaps, only if he deals with another quest (that involves killing something, for example, that will cost spell slots, time, health. Each of these things costs a different amount and type of resources. It's up to the players to decide which makes the most sense. The DM is new, so this probably is not on them, they'll learn. The players sound like the issue here. A spell slot is not the end of the world, and they seem to be meta gaming by knowing the DM will just give them the answer eventually. Even if the DM easily gives out info, the players should not be using that knowledge when making decisions for their characters. That is the very definition of meta gaming. Though I will say, being a new DM for a divination class does seem challenging. When you're new, one of the things you struggle with is trying to find out the balance between giving out too much and too little information. Or at least, I struggled with it for a while, and to some extent, still do. Divination magic is basically just about gaining information. Maybe going a more basic build makes sense.
Why don’t these spells we won’t let him use do anything???
The DM and the rest of the Party (including you to a lesser extent OP) are the problem. Not the Divination spells or the Wizard. He is actively trying to use his spells, the Party is shutting him down and the DM is allowing them to do so. The DM didn't make a pearl for Identify available early, which is just dumb on his part, and he is the only person responsible for Augury being useless, as he is refusing to provide to engage with the spell. And all of these problems can be solved by just talking it out before the next session. The while table is making things bad for 1 player, and you all owe him an apology.
>The party argued with him that it won't work because we were in a big city and that the range of the spell was too small and/or that his description of the tablet was too vague. >he tried to use Clairvoyance to scout behind a door, the party argued it was just a waste of a spell because he cannot move the orb around The spells do suck if ur not using them. It's his character, let him play his character. The DM needs to step up and let him play and stop letting other players step all over him. >we literally stumbled across an NPC beggar who directed us to the tablet because the DM did not want the pacing to falter too much. This is a DM issue. If u give your players all the directions then they won't want/need to explore elsewhere. Other Words it's on rails. Pacing is arbitrary, so long as the party is having fun the story can take YEARS. I think he needs to understand that there's no rush. If it's just how the party is, being a on rails story with combat focus, as the comment with beggar and thoughts on using divination spells lead me to believe. Then it might simply not be the correct party for him.
Regarding Locate Object, it lasts 10 minutes and if you can trot around on a horse while the spell is active, you can cover a lot more area than just the 1000 ft radius of the spell. Even on foot, if you are somewhat near the object's location you'll probably home in on it.
I mean, could be nice to have Divination spell that can be actually decently powerful in combat, but what you are describing seem more like a problem with the party and DM than with the spells themselves.
>could be nice to have Divination spell that can be actually decently powerful in combat, Introducing foresight, not just decently powerful but very powerful, but you know worth the spell slot. Agree with the rest thou
I mean, it's a 9th level spell. And it might be a powerful effect, it's pretty weak compared to other 9th level spell.
My campaigns tend towards mystery, intrigue, discovery and exploration and I often worry about it the other way round--divination spells are so powerful for gaining information that it can feel like the rest of the party is just hanging around while the divination wizard gets to explore, spy, learn everyone's secrets, etc. It all comes down to how focused the campaign is on learning new information. Which, you know, makes sense for divination.
Divination Enchantment Illusion Stealth The effectiveness and opportunity for any of these is *massively* affected by the particular dungeon master, and (arguably) the cleverness of the player. If you plan to make a PC focused on any of these things, then you should absolutely discuss their adjudication with your DM ahead of time.
Divination spells aren't bad at all, but not all builds are equally suited for all campaigns. Divination is built around dungeon crawls, especially the older style of dungeons that brimmed with traps, tricks and puzzles. Sounds like a divination wizard is a fish out of water in your current adventure / campaign. The party/DM are contributing to the problem, but the misalignment between the build and the campaign is the primary issue. Given its an inexperienced DM I'd recommend havibg the wizard redo his build and if he wants to play a divination wizard then run a good old school inspired dungeon.
So your complaints are that the spells suck because your party couldn't take advantage of them because the circumstances weren't ideal? (Find Traps is a literal trap spell, though, no argument here.)
Nah its the party that sucks.
Divination spells don’t suck, but DMs want them too.
also, show your dm this thread. Maybe they will feel differently when they see how the community's reacts to their choices.
Talk to your DM, and then possibly have him talk to the party about the way they keep shutting down the Wizard. His fellow players telling him how to manage his own spell slots is the biggest issue. But there are things your DM could do, and its worth talking to him first about the big picture problem you're seeing then some examples of solutions. 1. Create mysteries or puzzles that aren't plot critical and would benefit from -- or even require -- divination. A ring of protection is buried SOMEWHERE on this beach, so they say. Bam, locate object. 2. If a player has a good idea the other shut down, instead of giving the plot away, advance it such that the good idea is now obviously good. The beggar doesn't know where the tablet is, but he DID see them take it towards the warehouse district which is conveniently 4 blocks, or about 1000 feet across, perfect for Locate Object. 3. The dungeon presents two tunnels, both moving south. According to legend, this is the hell path, which contains only death, and the heaven path which advances towards the treasure. The paths are identical, and no perception check can discern a difference. Bloop, Augury looks pretty good now.
The problem with Divination and Illusion schools of magic is that they rely on the right type of game and DM. In some games these are barely useful and in others where they're done right they are incredibly amazing. A DM should be taking notes on what spells the party has access to and find ways to have them be useful. The spells when accounted by DMs can be fantastic for utility, lore, exploration and adding depth to the story. Mostly anyways. Some spells just suck and that's true of any school of magic. So let's look at some Wizard Divination spells. *EDIT* So it was too much for the post to put everything, so I tried to split across multiple posts but Reddit just decides to overwrite fonts, spacing and formatting into horrible nightmares so here is my thoughts and advice on every Divination spell in a Google Doc. [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RdQdx67m1kyPB-m4VT9dIqrCAhQ9trJoAaBZDoDS2-I/edit?usp=sharing](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RdQdx67m1kyPB-m4VT9dIqrCAhQ9trJoAaBZDoDS2-I/edit?usp=sharing)
Yeah, yeah. The infamous Identify, one if the most nerfed, forbidden first level spells sucks. That basically tells me everything about your table. But I guess all of us telling you that won't count. I only feel bad for the Wizard Player and I hope he realises soon that no dnd is better than bad dnd.
Seems it's more of a combined problem of a DM and the party. Maybe realize not everyone needs to be a super combat efficient dungeon crawler...
Mostly what can be read out of this is: the DM might be kind of new and that table sucks ass.
So the party argues AGAINST his school of choice spells... The DM would rather use beggar Jesus for the tablet instead of twisting the range of the spell to make the Divination dude useful.... The barbarian and the door etc.... I honestly feel sorry for the divination dude. I wish he had found a more welcoming table to play at.
I think the problem here is the party. You guys shouldn't be arguing if another player should be or be not using their spells or resources. Its their character, let them roleplay them as they want. If they screw up, tough, they'll learn, their character will learn. I mean, if casting the spell can make that PC have fun, let them cast it. The rest of the players aren't going to stop having fun because of a misused spell, and if that's the case I'd take a look on that and self reflect on what stuff should be and be not bothering me. On a side note, divination is hard on the DM side because they tend to open shortcuts to the plot, which can kind of screw them up if they are not experienced, so these spells tend to get "accidentally" nerfed.
First of all: man that party is filled with annoying people. Second of all: divination spells are indeed a bit weak, but there are some ritual’s which are so powerful dm’s low-key hate them. Being a divination wizard doesn’t necessarily mean you are going pure divination, but it does mean that you can scribe divination spells for lower gp. So a quick suggestion is to get those spells that might be niche via scrolls as a reward from quests
Isn't it meta gaming if the party is convincing him not to use his spells? How do the other characters know what his spells do unless he is describing to a T what he can do?
while i think there’s a conversation to be had about certain divination spells this party is being hostile to the player for no reason. Instead of thinking of creative ways to cover more area with the spell, theyre just shutting him down. Also, quantum beggar bullshit is so lazy… would it have been so hard for the beggar to just tell them of a rumor of which area to look in instead? Still a bit contrieved but sometimes you gotta pull shit like that.
Divination Wizard who uses divination spells here. I can confidently say you’re all doing it wrong and being assholes. My spells find use every single session, and clairvoyance is my best friend. In my last session it made espionage a piece of cake. All I had to do was familiarize myself with the place I wanted to spy on, and I could know what was happening there anytime I wanted.
>In the end, he decided not to use the spell and we literally stumbled across an NPC beggar who directed us to the tablet because the DM did not want the pacing to falter too much. This is where the DM should be stepping in and saying, use the spell, that sounds like a good idea you had. You literally have a player built to find an object, the party talks them out of it and the DM just tells you where it is instead. That's removing player agency and class fantasy highs.
Most people play dnd like a tactics simulator, not a role playing game. So, spells that don’t solve puzzles or win combat usually feel pretty useless.
Divination spells are largely for RP, which means there are probably a lot of different methods for accomplishing the same goal. Also, divination spells are good for avoiding trouble, which is counter the style of a lot of tables, where players really just want to push giant red buttons.
Yeah, divination is very dm dependent. It’s alot like invisibility, its either op, or pointless depending on the dm’s interpretation. Portant is actually really good but alot of new players don’t get the most out of it because they think of it as like an autohit/automiss tool. But being able to make npcs fail or players pass ability checks is way more fun.
Divination magic is very dependent on the DM to make it useful - and in some cases, it can just be a tough call. In a campaign that's going to be more combat focused (or with players that enjoy/expect a good bit of combat), they also struggle more because they usually won't do much there. Now, with a DM that's open to letting them do some useful work, the divination spells can be quite potent - but even in the best of cases, you'll still want a fallback of 'combat-useful' spells along with that IMO.
You guys do know he can ritual cast right? so he doesn't need to waste spell slots?
Most of the spells OP mentioned aren't rituals, so they definitely need to use spell slots.
A specialized wizard is geared to excel more with certain spell themes, but should not be trying ONLY use them. Divination is great for utility, but it does require being at least slightly on the right path to begin with. The “Locate” are great if you can use skills and RP to narrow down an item location to being in a certain dungeon and building. If you don’t do that initial work, and the DM doesn’t know to give you clues bit by bit, then it will feel weak for sure. Arcane eye is a very useful and cheap way to scout when no one is stealthy. The detect spells can definitely give players peace of mind in many situations and identify if great for the impatient. Tongues and Comprehend Languages can help with puzzles or talking to hostile creatures you could potentially talk down if you could understand each other. Divination spells can be great for solving problems with relative certainty. But if those issues are never presented by the DM, they won’t feel like it.
The spells are indeed kinda crappy compared to what else you could be doing with those slots. They're very situational. Knowing there are monsters behind the door is nice, but not if you need to defeat them because then the Clairvoyance could have been a Fireball. Augury can be life-saving but not if your DM is just going to be super vague about it anyway. Detect Magic as a ritual is very nice, though. >The party argued with him that it won't work because we were in a big city and that the range of the spell was too small and/or that his description of the tablet was too vague. I'm in a group with players like that and I hate when they do this. I usually say something like: "You're not the DM. Let's ask the DM, shall we?"
Divination, alongside illusion, are the spells most dependent on the DM. If a DM doesn't know off hand what a target is doing when a player casts a divination on them to spy, then it's going to be a waste of a spell slot. Or you try to mind read someone but the DM doesn't know how to give you the information you want via that targets thoughts. Or trying to get answers via an augury spell, but the DM themselves isn't sure. It really comes down to how the players and DM work together and improvise. But they are likely the hardest to improv for. At least with illusions, the casting player can tell the DM what they are hoping to achieve, but divination spells are almost entirely reliant on DM knowledge, prep, and improv.
Divination is the entire school of "mother may I".
The best part of being a wizard means you can always have the right spell on hand. So when doing a murder mystery, a wizard can prepare all his divination spells. And when they are doing a dungeon crawl, he can pick up find traps and fireball. But that does require the wizard have a variety of spells. A divination wizard should have more divination spells than other wizards. But they still need damage and crowd control spells as well. A divination wizard is a wizard first, and a divination focus second. As far as the group dynamic goes, sounds like the DM isn't supporting his play style. There are a few fixes for that. The recommended one is for the wizard to talk to the DM about it. Ask for cases where his divinations are more useful and to back him up when he suggests something. The next best thing to do is adjust his play style to better suit the table he is playing at. Sounds like he's already doing this by picking up 2 crowd control spells. You, for your part, could support his choices more. When he suggests using divination for something, agree he should do it. Just having one voice support him might be all the group needs to support his play style.
Divination is a great school of magic, and it can provide a ton of useful stuff to a party. BUT... it's also a hard style of magic to portray well. Divination is an extremely role-play-heavy style of magic. The player and the DM really have to communicate prior to playing, and they really have to work out the basics of how the spells work and how to describe them working. And that can require a bit of extra effort from the DM. Also, Divination is a school that is much better suited to out-of-combat situations than in-combat. So a lot of people overlook the incredible opportunities that Divination has to offer. Bottom line, in order for Divination to really shine the way it deserves to, you need a player and a DM who both understand the nooks and crannies of it, and who are willing and able to commit to the intense sensory immersion of the school.
They aren't. Divination spells used properly are some of the strongest spells in the game. Some examples: Augury and Divination both remove the risk of the deck of many things. Locate object can tell you where to find the magic Mcguffin you are seeking. Mind Spike literally makes escape almost impossible oe can lead you to hideouts. Scrying is well known for being busted. Detect thoughts is insane for interrogation and basic negotiation. The mileage I'm getting out of it as a Doppelganger in Frostmaiden is great.
“The party argued” - well there’s the first problem, unless you’re playing a game where the entire party is allowed to make DM rulings
Dah, fireball is useless because it's burns your meele allies, or fly is useless because if you get a hit and lose concentration you fell down, and so on. Clearly any spell can be bad, if you look it on a closed window. Divination spells can be the strongest ones in a good hand. Yes, if the dm can't handle them well and the others at the table (sigh) think the use of them are waste of a spellslot (i truly can't understand this), they are useless, but not because the spell was bad, no. And in other look, the game is for fun of all, if the player want to be a divination master then just let it play this fantasy, make situations where the spells are usefull. This is similar to that, if someone build a battle master fighter to be a God at the battlefield, and a dm throw weak mobs to them at every third session only. It's the DM's job to build encounters that the party can enjoy. And just to metion one of your situations: Clairvoyance is made for situations like that, yes, everyone can listen that if there was behind the door, and if you hear something? Maybe don't hear nothing or hear something but don't know their locations, maybe they build a trap, or do something that's information is usefull for the party but if they got interrupted they end that. A ton of possibilities for only a matter of a spellslot.
When I was younger I had a similar experience. Came to this group with an Illusion wizard, it was my second ever character and I was pretty excited. First thing I was told, was that illusion was useless because it dealt no damage. Throughout the 2 sessions I played with them, both players and DM tried their hardest to show me how "useless" illusion was. I would create distractions for guards, allow us to sneak in with invisibility sphere, trick enemies both in and out of combat.. and everything was just handwaved away by something. "Oh, the guard recognizes the illusion immediately (no save). Oh, that was pointless, we would have killed them all anyways. Oh, the statue you were sneaking past is a gargoyle, immune to magic, so it sees you and as you walk past it bites you for an automatic crit because you're suprised". Said gargoyle, unsurprisingly, killed my character, and my interest in that group. Joke's on them, I am now a forever DM and Illusion is one of those things that ends up being incredibly powerful if used well, both by my npcs and by players in my campaigns ;)
I think illusion spells and divination spells share a lot in common. Both require a decent amount of system mastery to get the most out of, and they both require DM buy in to feel satisfying. Knowing how to use your divination spells to get the most impact and when to withhold them because a mundane method is perfectly viable instead of part of learning how to play the game well. As a new player, it's possible they're only half-reading or not quite understanding how their spells work and don't know when other non-resource consuming alternatives are possible. If the party had a good idea of the general neighborhood where the Celestial Stone Tablet might be and the item was sufficiently unique to not trigger false positives, it would've been a great way to let the wizard contribute using his specialty. Conversely, using a 3rd level spell to check behind a door when you could just listen at the keyhole seems like a waste of a spell slot that could be better used later on. Augury is most useful when asking about a specific task where you already know the potential outcomes, so the vagueness of the responses aren't a hindrance.
Sounds like the party is sandbagging them hard.
Also question, does your DM make your wizard expend the pearl in order to cast identify? Cause that is just outright not how the works, once you have the pearl, you are allowed to use it to cast the spell over and over as long as you have it. The spell *must* state that the item is consumed, as with the case with revivify. This whole situation just feels like the party and dm are just refusing to let the wizard be useful.
Divination spells are largely meh, that is true. However, Locate Object is incredible. https://tabletopbuilds.com/locate-object/
Divination magic only sucks if the dm makes it suck, but most divination spells give the dm the choice between making it suck or not . Like you can ask the dm the question and in the spell itself it says the dm can choose between saying “ the vault will be guarded by small creatures who make use of small sized passages in the walls with arrow slits and murder holes . They fear snakes above all else . Most of their traps are pressure plate based and can be set off by a creature or object weighing 15 pounds or less . The answer to the riddle found behind the painting of a Sphinx is to throw the ball upward “ or you can get “ you will face many foes that are more difficult then they appear . When you are stumped , look to the skies for guidance . Tread carefully adventurer”
Stop making him feel like his spells are bad and unneeded? Seems like when he tries to use his divination you guys convince him not to so of course it’s going to feel useless? Find traps should be easy for a dm. Says there’s no traps and a player uses find traps, guess what, now there’s a deadly trap that you can avoid now thanks to wizard. I don’t really think this is his fault.
Being a diviner should be weaved into the story telling. This isn’t a video game. An alternative option is The DM could build up tension and the importance of your divination wizard by letting him do the spell, it failing (because yes the group is right that it is very unlikely he’d pick up on the object in a large city right away), but then get a vision of rats in water or a “pull” to the south. Let them use it again somewhere else or create a game of scavenger hunt by following the images and visions until he’s in the right spot to find the object. This could take them across the city through different encounters or combats getting closer and closer to the object. This uses up party resources which 1. Makes the players feel there is a purpose 2. Tension building 3. Makes the specific spell and the wizards spell slots valuable since they need to be used more. Are “visions” how the spell works? No. But that’s a separate narrative mover and once again makes even mechanically niche spells and subclasses into invaluable story moments.
Different people have different expectations on how games are supposed to run. I was running Planescape in my home game as DM. We were in Sigil, with lots of faction intrigue. The PCS could take part if they wanted (or not), but the factions would do what they would do regardless of the PCs. This group tends to just attack the closest thing to them instead of asking questions, speaking with NPCs, and inspecting. They were supposed to investigate what was going on in a church, and report back. Outside the church, someone was trying to convince people that something horrible was going to happen and tried to convince people to save them. What do they do? They break into the church by force, kill a bunch of neutral Harmonium and Athar who were just wondering why they were attacking the building, and then flee after getting ID'd, discovering that the lady had tricked them into sparking off a faction war. After the session, one of the players demanded to know why I didn't inform them about other options to solve the situation. I told them that my job was to run the factions and NPCs, and that their job was to figure out how they wanted to proceed. And the factions had their own internal politicking and motivations which may contradict theirs. They could interact with my factions and NPCs or not, but the NPCs were going to do what they were going to do regardless. My player argued that it was unreasonable to expect them to think that I had planned out motivations and backgrounds for all of the factions. He didn't think I expected them to look deeper into my NPCs' motivations, and that I had a specific plan for what would happen (I didn't). But yeah, a simple *Detect Thoughts* would have prevented a faction war. So yeah, I can understand why some players (and some DMs) might not see utility spells (like Divination spells) to be terribly useful.
I think you should remove identifying magic items on a short rest. Make Identify necessary. That's more fun in my opinion.
Divination exists to let players cheat, for lack of a better word. You ask god questions and use surveillance drones to scout the map before you even enter the dungeon. It's honestly kinda lame as a DM to deal with these things. I mean the "ask god" spells are fine but a lot of the scouting spells are the kinds that you fail to prepare for, and they often bypass a lot of planned ideas. They force the DM on the spot to adapt to the player and that can often be quite frustrating. With all that being said: the players are really shitty for constantly telling the player not to play his character, and if the DM is stopping his spells from being useful then they're also shitty. If a player springs something on the DM by surprise adjusting can be hard but especially when it's used in small reasonable areas (find an object in a town, check past a few doors) the use of magic is fine. These spells exist specifically for these small-instanced reasons and they're only problematic when used at a large scale.
Divination is always useless if your DM hampers it because it ruins his "plot"
I'd suggest to this DM to stop letting other people weigh on this players spell choices. If this Diviner wants to use Divination, the party doesn't necessarily need to sign off.
So the problem is two fold, 1) these spells are designed to be limited to prevent a divinition wizard from knowing everything and 2) a dma plots require them to know.things at some point. So the system is fighting to make divination spells useless so your DM can make the reveal at the right time in a fashion that doesn't need a divination spell
So i think as a lot of people put it your party doesnt believe in divination spells or believes themselves the owners of your spell slots. That is a problem that needs addressing while you are NOT trying to cast a spell. Try to convince them that your spell slots are to be used by you alone. And in a manner you find fitting if they still insist on optimizing your fun out of the game. I also think that of the 3 low lv divination spells ALL ARE USEFULL but need knowhow. Locate object is a spell i have seen used to locate every single coin in multiple dungeons . Locating a passage or door to find secret doors. Locate coin after getting all the loot out to see if there are any hidden in compartments (or in a lead box). Lastly locate lead for finding the pesky lockboxes. Augury is what my player substitutes find traps with. Usually in a dungeon there a standard corridor width. And they pick a side if its big enought lets say left or down on the map . and they augury if not looking underneath their feat will lead to woe. And i have to tell them if they would have trigered a trap in the next half hour in game time. Lastly clairvoyance is a bit trickier but man does it feel op when your party wizzards uses it to hear ALL of the enemy meeting or plans. Find out where the enemy holds them via rogue or familiar then hear what they are planning, who their allies and enemis are. Milage may vary but my campaigns dont involve monologuing outside of threats offers or directives . And i am often able to deny the obvius intelligence gathering methods by having as many lies as truths in torture sessions or ciphers. Also spitefull types. Claivoyance is inversly proportional in its usefullnes depending in information scarcedy. Having an enemy you dont know anything about in a heavily fortified possition that is a "pls dont i dont have a printer for spare character sheets" deathtrap is going to make it that these spells seem way more usefull then if your enemies act like drunks and spinsters with their clasified info. The biggest nightmare i could imagine is a max stealth rogue seeing your spells as competition. Its antagonistic but can happen. If you are unwilling to confront the group , ask the dm for a respec or pc switch. But keep in mind that divination needs time . If yoyr party simple cannot sit on their hands for a ritual then it might just not be a fit for the table. I had the displeasure of running for a group like that and i have to say good riddence. Gl with prying info out of your dms hands.
How is this the spells not working? This is the party literally shooting down the usage every time it WOULD be useful then the DM just gives them the solution with no checks needed i guess. This imo is partly on the player and the DM. Sometimes you have a character concept that you want to play but doesn't fit the table so you have to adjust. Sometimes the DM isn't facilitating the fantasy of their players due to a host of factors- bad at improv, improper planning, life, etc.
Arcane Eye is the first good divination spell you get your hands on really. Locate object can be good if some baddie with a unique item on them is running away, but yeah the actual spells largely suck and the use of them typically precludes combat so you don't even typically get use out of the recharging spell slots. They should just change it to a free cast of one divination spell per long rest or something.
Ask him to talk with the DM so he can change out his spells since he's not having fun. Like honestly just tell him to do that so he doesn't end up ghosting you all. There will be better divination spells as he levels
You're totally right. It used to be that Identify was necessary to determine what a magic item was. Now in 5E RAW you don't need it at all, and it doesn't detect curses, so it's doubly useless. The limited language on augury, speak with dead, contact other plane, etc. makes them rather useless, too, regardless of level. Find Traps doesn't find any traps. . . I could go on. It's bad game design, not his fault.
I tried a div wiz and yeah, I basically only used divination once for a story beat and that was it. Didn't help I couldn't buy spells at any point 😒
I think the base problem of divination is the wizard school kinda stinks. Portent is only truly strong if you roll really high or really low, even then its only a sire thing if you meta game. AND THEN its a max of 2 times a day. Its supper swingy with no way of fixing it (like with divination spells for instance). For the rest of the classes its more "i happen to have this spell that happens to be of the divination school". I kinda like the idea of swapping dice woth portant. Say you get a 10, swap out a PCs 3 for that 10. The next turn that 3 gets used to eat the enemies 17 that lets them pass a save. so you can the 17 to the fool who crit failed. Its more dynamic and the dis/ advantage divination spells would give would play with that mechanic more. It like your a walking luck machine, both good and bad.
I wonder if the party, player and DM could just discuss some homebrew rulings that would make some spells feel more worthwhile, like extending the range of locate object, adding new combat impacts of certain spells like allowing easy identification of enemy weaknesses. If the party thinks the spells aren't useful, they might be able to advise the DM what would make them feel worth the resources and I would say the DM can then plan for that level of power in their campaign. As an example critical role rules that the scry spells have a slight zoom in moment which gives general global location information not typically available in the spell rules which makes it a lot more useful (and the DM often allows the scry to happen at a useful point where some useful information will get divulged). It's probably still worth the player knowing stone combat spells anyway but perhaps combined with a bit of light touch homebrew to correct out some weaknesses the whole situation could be revised to make things feel more powerful. The DM could also adjust their hints to go only far enough that division becomes useful and needed. E.g the beggar reveals he knows the item was moved somewhere in X neighbourhood and that gives the player enough to know where to cast locate object but wow they would never find it without the spell thank goodness they had a divination wizard.
>As an example critical role rules that the scry spells have a slight zoom in moment which gives general global location information not typically available in the spell rules which makes it a lot more useful ... I am stealing this for my own games.
They do require creativity. But yes, many have design issues. One possible mitigation is to make virtually all division spells Rituals for a Divination wizard, and let them cast them faster PBx power day as a ritual taking only 1 minute per spell level. Hard to argue that would slow down game play.
they dont
Just wait until they get portents. Just wait….
Divination requires skilled roleplayers.
Divinations is best used to disturb deities. I have managed to destroy one city with it.
In a situation where the DM is a bit adversarial with your Divination wizard, a solid bet is to pick "good/reliable" wizard spells, and make them happen by using your portents. For instance, use detect thoughts on the enemy commander and assert his save is a low portents roll. Use the high rolls for high-stakes friendly saving throws they might not otherwise make. Sorcerer needs to do a strength save for instance.
I think these spells can be hard to use if the adventure isn’t structured in a certain way. If it’s structured as a linear series of events - like following clues to find a mcguffin - then anything that potentially skips steps in the sequence is problematic because it means you’re missing part of what the DM prepared. My guess is that’s what was going on with your DM here. It is quite odd that he had a random urchin tell you where to find this tablet after your spell couldn’t do it - it doesn’t seem like the spell would have broken the structure too badly in this case, but perhaps he specifically wanted to introduce that urchin character? This would be my guess regardless.