Why Find a Path does not work?

[cloudland]

In #837 Durkon tried Find the Path, but it does not work. In the next strip Roy mentioned that divination is blocked, so it might seems like True Seeing is blocked too. But as recent strip revealed, True Seeing work just fine, so Roy is wrong about divination being blocked. So what could be the reason for the spell not working???
I have a few ideas:
-He tried to cast it to find the path to where Girard clan live. It did not work because they are all dead, and the final panel in #841 is not an illusion.
-He tried to cast it to find the path to where the gate is. The gate is somehow plane shifted to somewhere else.
-Divination is indeed blocked, and what True Seeing currently revealed is part of the illusion.
What do you think?

[Need_A_Life]

Likely because the Draketooths would need a way to find the entrance themselves, without banging their heads.
Or because Find the Path is easier to counter than True Seeing (dubious Invisible Spell Metamagic effects not withstanding)?

Or maybe, just maybe, the Giant decided that this was more dramatic?

[Grey Watcher]

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/findThePath.htm

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/trueSeeing.htm

The only thing I can see in the spell descriptions themselves are that Find the Path only guides you to a "location" and "not a creature or object at a location". So using FtP to find Girard or the Gate wouldn't work. And using it to get "out of the maze" would just lead them back to the entrance. So... Durkon just pulled out a spell that woudn't have worked, even without magical interference?

[factotum]

I'm not sure why something that affects Find the Path would also affect True Seeing...different spells with different effects.

[Grey Watcher]

While I can't recall which ones they are, I know many spells are explicitly fluffed as "I ask my god for advice/directions". I guess Rich is putting Find the Path into that category, while True Seeing is not.

[cloudland]

@factotum: Find a path is divination. True Seeing is also divination. If True Seeing work, then Roy's probably wrong about divination is being blocked. That means there is some other reason why it is blocked.
@Grey: it's hard to specify what it means by "location", but I sort of assume that it have to be at least can be specified without knowing its absolute position (ie. the location can be specified using other method, such as who live there, or what object is there) otherwise Durkon seems to have use a spell that is bound to fail no matter what, which open the question of why Durkon even cast it in the first place.

[Petey7]

Durkon probably tried to Find the Path to Girard's Gate, which is commonly spoken of as if it was a location rather than an object. Also, I am currently unaware of any spells that could block divination, and only divination, in a large area, but there are spells that could keep a single object or small location from being located by divination. If Girard's gate and/or the immediate are protected from divination, then it seem logical the Find the Path would fail, even if where you are currently located is not blocked from divination.

Something from the entry for Discern Location caught my eye. It says "Nothing short of a mind blank spell or the direct intervention of a deity keeps you from learning the exact location..." Which to me means that it would not be unreasonable to assume that the gods would intervene to keep anyone from using magic (especially divine magic) to locate on the rifts/gates.

[Lord_Gareth]

Find the Path is divination with a target ('a location'), whereas True Seeing is a spell that affects only the caster. Girard warding his home against divinations wouldn't affect True Seeing because True Seeing isn't affecting the area; it's affecting Durkon.

[AlexanderRM]

Find the Path is divination with a target ('a location'), whereas True Seeing is a spell that affects only the caster. Girard warding his home against divinations wouldn't affect True Seeing because True Seeing isn't affecting the area; it's affecting Durkon.

That makes sense.

I'm fairly sure that many things (such as Mind Blank) block attempts to locate the thing or person, scry on them from afar, or use Detect spells on them, but don't allow them to go around invisibly without being detected by True Seeing or See Invisibility (If Mind Blank *did* do that, then with a bit of persist spell abuse... actually, just use of Persist Spell could get you Invisibility + Mind Blank since Mind Blank has a 24 hour duration; however, a bit of metamagic reduction could also get a persisted Greater Invisibility- could get you the effects of a Ring of Sequestering at non-epic levels.).

My assumption would be that the whole place is blocked by such an effect, so that illusions can still be seen through, but you can't use magical information gathering. Or what Lord_Gareth said, which I guess would be a better way of explaining this in the rules... yeah, I guess that is basically how it works.

[ericgrau]

There are a dozen spells to protect against long range divinations so it's not inconceivable that an epic illusionist making his special maze could stop it even with a custom non-epic spell.

[SavageWombat]

There's no rules basis for this, but you could imagine that Find The Path is sort of like scrying, in that you're looking for something far away and receiving information. The protections might block that kind of spells but leave direct spells like True Seeing alone.

[Tulya]

Find the Path is much the same as True Seeing, cast on a creature rather than acting directly upon what it attempts to divine information from. Nevertheless, it does attempt to divine information, and should be similarly blocked by the optional Conceal spell seed effect on a failed caster level check if the region is protected. And presumably, Girard coated that small portion of the desert in that Conceal effect. Nale's description of scrying and eliminating every single location in the desert except the Windy Canyon suggests as much.

Edit: Misread it. Well, still... It is an opposed caster level check, ignoring that Rich isn't necessarily restricting himself to any preset rules or guidelines. Durkon is high enough level that he might reasonably beat the check sometimes, while failing at others.
The success and failure of Dispel checks often come down to whatever is most dramatically appropriate, after all.