Scry versus Scry

[Traab]

Had a paradox question I wanted to ask. One of the big things that gets mentioned a lot in big battle setups is either the good guys or the bad guys being able to scry, divine, or otherwise KNOW in advance what the other guy is planning to do. So that epic wizard is fully aware of not only that a party is coming to kill him, but who they are, what they are capable of and maybe even what their plan is. But what happens when that goes both ways? That wizards scrys the party, then the party wizard scrys the bbeg. Both alter their plans based on what they saw, but that invalidates the initial scry (for future reference, i say scry to include all manner of magically spying and information gathering on current and future events) So are we stuck in a recursive loop? Is scrying and such now only useful for canceling out the other guys attempt to tell what your plans are? Am I making any sense whatsoever? Or have I missed some very important information?

[Urpriest]

With Scrying itself, it's just like counterintelligence in reality. You know that he knows that you know...you both alter your plans, improvise as much as possible, and assume the other person knows almost everything about you.

With Divination and the like, I always try to make my responses open-ended enough to cover the opponent's capabilities, including their ability to use Divination themselves.

[Fouredged Sword]

Well, you get into an argument about single and multipass time travel.

Ok, so scrying is a form of time travel. Information from the future is sent into the past. This can violate causality, and one of several things happen.

A - Multipass causality - The universe runs a query that ask a question of the future. It runs the program on fast forward and sees what happens, then rewinds to send the answer back to the asker. This means that asking a question changes the answer, and you only get the answer that was valid before you asked the question. The universe runs another pass each time you ask it the question again, providing possibly inconsistent answers depending on if the question effects the answer. A sufficiently advanced computer could preform this type of calculation. This also requires an arbetrary point of questioning that divides the future from the past and treats freewill as only in existence as it relates to scrying.

B - Single pass causality - The universe does what it does for the first example, but it takes into account the answer being provided. This means that the answer returned is included into the calculation. This is impossible to actually run in any complexity in real life. It treats all of time as if it was the past and all actions as fixed. It glosses over self contradictory actions and other possibilities as people try to game the system. This also interestingly enough discounts freewill and assumes all actions as fixed, and choices as only illusions.

See harry potter and the methods of rationality as a good reference. Harry potters exploration of the time turner is a wonderful explanation of single pass causality.

[Story]

See harry potter and the methods of rationality as a good reference. Harry potters exploration of the time turner is a wonderful explanation of single pass causality.

And Achron and Primer are good examples of multipass models with adversarial time travelers. Hint: it gets confusing, very very, fast.

[Frosty]

Is Archon and Primer a book?

[Story]

Achron is a videogame, Primer is a movie. They're both awesome, as is HPMoR.

[WebTiefling]

Scry itself is just a view of what is currently happening. Employ Scry blocking techniques and Illusions for fun and games.

Divination is where the future starts coming into play. There you have the max 90% accuracy factor, which can be gotten around with multiple castings. But, the answers are less than obvious and tend to be fuzzy.

This will help avoid the headache-inducing cycles of future-telling vs future-telling.

The other technique is to have the divinations report what the "current" state of the future is. Other events may change the future, but at the time Divination is cast it tells the future assuming no more future-viewing techniques are used to alter the future.

Party @ 8:15 AM: Divination on killing BBEG today say Fire is the key to defeating your enemy. Great! Let's burn him!

BBEG @ 8:20 AM: Divinations for today say Fire is a threat to my existence. Ok, Persist Immunity to Fire, and double the guards.

Party @ 8:25 AM: Final Divination check before going! Uh oh, they changed. Now they say the way is blocked by many people. Get the Mass Charm spell out!

BBEG @ 8:30 AM: My trusted protectors will be my downfall?! Break out the mass anti-enchantment techniques and prep a ton of summoning elementals.

etc, etc, etc

Until someone runs out of Divination spells.

[Deophaun]

But what happens when that goes both ways? That wizards scrys the party, then the party wizard scrys the bbeg.
The correct way to deal with this is, when you see a wizard spend an hour gesturing at a mirror, you walk over and stab him. (Because in a great screw up, scrying needs line of sight and line of effect)

[WebTiefling]

The correct way to deal with this is, when you see a wizard spend an hour gesturing at a mirror, you walk over and stab him. (Because in a great screw up, scrying needs line of sight and line of effect)

Scrying doesn't need Line of Sight that I can tell. Technically, neither does it need line of effect, though thickness of things can block you. You can scry on someone in a sealed room, though the handy trick of lead lining or having the room truly under a bunch of feet of stone can also work.

Just having the room 100 feet down, but with a tunnel leading down and a sealed wooden door doesn't stop scrying.

Handy-dandy scrying-proof room? Passwall into a completely buried room that is completely lined with lead, a few inches of iron, and several feet of stone. Release the Passwall spell, and you are now scry-proof. (of course, you can't get out of there without Passwall either, though.)

[Urpriest]

Scrying doesn't need Line of Sight that I can tell.

It would have to explicitly say it doesn't. Spells by default require line of effect.

[ddude987]

scrying says "at any distance". Since the game knows you cannot see infinite distance this line voids the requirement of line of sight.

[WebTiefling]

It would have to explicitly say it doesn't. Spells by default require line of effect.


You can see and hear some creature, which may be at any distance.

No LOS limitations. The specific mention of "any distance" overrules the general quality of spells needing LOS or LOE.

Edit: Swordsaged!

[ddude987]

Edit: Swordsaged!

my first swordsage :smallcool:

[Urpriest]

scrying says "at any distance". Since the game knows you cannot see infinite distance this line voids the requirement of line of sight.


No LOS limitations. The specific mention of "any distance" overrules the general quality of spells needing LOS or LOE.


You can see infinite distance, actually, you just take substantial penalties to Spot. Besides, LOE doesn't care about distance. Scrying allows the target to be any distance away, that doesn't mean it allows there to be a blockage in between.

[Steward]

You can see infinite distance, actually, you just take substantial penalties to Spot. Besides, LOE doesn't care about distance. Scrying allows the target to be any distance away, that doesn't mean it allows there to be a blockage in between.

Does this mean that RAW scrying doesn't really work then? I mean, the whole point of scrying is so that you can spy on people or things that are far away from you. If blockages (ie walls, trees, etc.) stop it, then the spell itself is pretty much worthless, right? Now, I don't think any games that allow scrying would ever apply this rule this way, but you do raise a very interesting point about how line of sight works in this game.


Ok, so scrying is a form of time travel. Information from the future is sent into the past. This can violate causality, and one of several things happen.

I'm having a hard time understanding what this means too. Scrying is basically a magical form of surveillance, right? You can spy on some far away creature as stated:


You can see and hear some creature, which may be at any distance.
[...]
If the save fails, you can see and hear the subject and the subject’s immediate surroundings (approximately 10 feet in all directions of the subject). If the subject moves, the sensor follows at a speed of up to 150 feet.

I mean, you don't have to violate causality here, right? It's kind of like pulling up a live CCTV feed of someone else's house on your laptop. It's creepy, sure, but not that horrific.

[Deophaun]

scrying says "at any distance". Since the game knows you cannot see infinite distance this line voids the requirement of line of sight.
As Ur Priest has stated, you can see at infinite distance. Spot checks are only called if the target is hiding or there are circumstances that might prevent you from noticing the target. If none of these apply, then yes, you can see the Pegasus galaxy with D&D's rules.

Does this mean that RAW scrying doesn't really work then? I mean, the whole point of scrying is so that you can spy on people or things that are far away from you. If blockages (ie walls, trees, etc.) stop it, then the spell itself is pretty much worthless, right?
By RAW, scrying is worthless for just that reason. Look at clairvoyance/clairaudience. It contains clauses to remove LoS and LoE consideration. Scrying does not.

Now, RAI? I think we can safely say scrying should allow you to peak in on an Efreeti lord in the City of Brass from the safety of a basement in Waterdeep, and that's how everyone plays it. Hence the reason that the remark that sparked this was labeled as sarcasm.

[Steward]

Ah, that makes sense! Thanks! Honestly, I wonder if it's possible to make a system as convoluted as D & D spellcasting without running into a thousand issues like this. I guess that's why they gave us Dungeon Masters!

(I still can't find the sarcasm tag though.)

[ryu]

Ah, that makes sense! Thanks! Honestly, I wonder if it's possible to make a system as convoluted as D & D spellcasting without running into a thousand issues like this. I guess that's why they gave us Dungeon Masters!

(I still can't find the sarcasm tag though.)

It's in color codes. Click the little dropdown arrow next to the uppercase A to the right of fonts and sizes to see the basic list of colors. I also use light green for being snarky and am slowly trying to make it catch on the same way sarcasm blue did.

[TuggyNE]

Ah, that makes sense! Thanks! Honestly, I wonder if it's possible to make a system as convoluted as D & D spellcasting without running into a thousand issues like this. I guess that's why they gave us Dungeon Masters!

Sure it is. You just need attention to quality control.

Now, of course, actually eliminating all glitches is beyond practicality, but the vast majority of problems in D&D could have been solved with another ten-twenty man-hours of spot-checking, often much less.

[ryu]

Sure it is. You just need attention to quality control.

Now, of course, actually eliminating all glitches is beyond practicality, but the vast majority of problems in D&D could have been solved with another ten-twenty man-hours of spot-checking, often much less.

Now now. I'm pretty sure if the playerbase got together and methodically belted out every single glitch in the rules known to exist and got genuine intentional answer to all the ambiguous stuff we could have a perfectly air-tight game in approximately three centuries.

[TuggyNE]

Now now. I'm pretty sure if the playerbase got together and methodically belted out every single glitch in the rules known to exist and got genuine intentional answer to all the ambiguous stuff we could have a perfectly air-tight game in approximately three centuries.

Sure.

Thing is, though, intentionally designing a system with an eye to such potential glitches is far and away faster and more efficient than attempting to wedge solutions in after the fact, as a glance at the literature of developing reliable software systems* will indicate. It also gives you much better results. Of course, it's not free; it requires a lot of extra up-front time, depending on exactly how much effort you put into planning for potential bugs, but there's pretty wide latitude for increasing up-front planning without really increasing lifetime costs (since errata, FAQ, clarification articles, new books to fix rules holes, and so forth would be lessened or eliminated, and since books without flaws might reasonably sell at least a bit better).


*Example chosen because it's more or less in my field and I have some direct professional experience with it. It's also fairly comparable; other such fields would include standards development, legislation, and probably some that I'm not thinking of.

[ryu]

Sure.

Thing is, though, intentionally designing a system with an eye to such potential glitches is far and away faster and more efficient than attempting to wedge solutions in after the fact, as a glance at the literature of developing reliable software systems* will indicate. It also gives you much better results. Of course, it's not free; it requires a lot of extra up-front time, depending on exactly how much effort you put into planning for potential bugs, but there's pretty wide latitude for increasing up-front planning without really increasing lifetime costs (since errata, FAQ, clarification articles, new books to fix rules holes, and so forth would be lessened or eliminated, and since books without flaws might reasonably sell at least a bit better).


*Example chosen because it's more or less in my field and I have some direct professional experience with it. It's also fairly comparable; other such fields would include standards development, legislation, and probably some that I'm not thinking of.

Yes, but see your brilliant plan has one simple flaw. It is far less hilarious as a mental image.

[Pickford]

Scry states it can be cast on targets that are on other planes which supercedes the line of effect rule (in that LoE is far more general).

This would seem to function in the same way that Planar Binding (Or Gate) does. They shouldn't work, assuming the LoE actually matters, but they do...because. :)

[Beige Dragon]

Huh. The way I've always seen be "Scry" is basically, magically spying on someone, in order to learn what they plan to do. I never knew it was supposed to be like, magic premonitions.

[WebTiefling]

Scry states it can be cast on targets that are on other planes which supercedes the line of effect rule (in that LoE is far more general).

This would seem to function in the same way that Planar Binding (Or Gate) does. They shouldn't work, assuming the LoE actually matters, but they do...because. :)

I agree with you!

However, just to take the worst possible interpretation...

As long as you are scrying across planar boundaries, then LOE doesn't matter. It doesn't say that LOE doesn't matter when you're scrying on the same plane!

Ta da! :smallbiggrin:

[Pickford]

I agree with you!

However, just to take the worst possible interpretation...

As long as you are scrying across planar boundaries, then LOE doesn't matter. It doesn't say that LOE doesn't matter when you're scrying on the same plane!

Ta da! :smallbiggrin:

Heh, I think this highlights the problem of what happens when people deliberately cease to employ common sense and fun in reading the game rules. :smalltongue:

What other rules can we deliberately sabotage?

[Deophaun]

Scry states it can be cast on targets that are on other planes which supercedes the line of effect rule (in that LoE is far more general).
No. It states that targets on another plane get a bonus to their saving throw. So you're next to a portal, see a demon on the other side, spend an hour casting scrying, and he gets a bonus. That's it.

[WebTiefling]

No. It states that targets on another plane get a bonus to their saving throw. So you're next to a portal, see a demon on the other side, spend an hour casting scrying, and he gets a bonus. That's it.

Brilliant! In order to use a 4th level spell as stated in the rules, you have to use a 9th level spell first in such a way that the 4th level spell is useless! Awesome!!!

:smalleek:

[Killer Angel]

Had a paradox question I wanted to ask. One of the big things that gets mentioned a lot in big battle setups is either the good guys or the bad guys being able to scry, divine, or otherwise KNOW in advance what the other guy is planning to do. So that epic wizard is fully aware of not only that a party is coming to kill him, but who they are, what they are capable of and maybe even what their plan is. But what happens when that goes both ways? That wizards scrys the party, then the party wizard scrys the bbeg. Both alter their plans based on what they saw, but that invalidates the initial scry (for future reference, i say scry to include all manner of magically spying and information gathering on current and future events) So are we stuck in a recursive loop? Is scrying and such now only useful for canceling out the other guys attempt to tell what your plans are? Am I making any sense whatsoever? Or have I missed some very important information?

Well, first of all, Scrying is immediate, so it gives you infos about the current moment.
Divination, Commune and similar spells, give effectively infos about the future, but even them are subject to changes.
If the question "is our target going to flee?" receive a NO as answer ('cause he doesn't know you're after him), you can't really expect to still find him in the warehouse, if you start searching for him crying out loud in the street.
Plus, “Unclear” is a legitimate answer. If the BBEG is still planning what do do, or if some of its actions will be triggered only by certain happenings, the answer to your divinations, will be "uncertain".

[Deophaun]

Brilliant! In order to use a 4th level spell as stated in the rules, you have to use a 9th level spell first in such a way that the 4th level spell is useless! Awesome!!!

:smalleek:
This is why, by RAW, scrying doesn't work. It's also why no one plays it by RAW, instead inventing rules like "scrying can target things across planes all on its own."

[Pickford]

This is why, by RAW, scrying doesn't work. It's also why no one plays it by RAW, instead inventing rules like "scrying can target things across planes all on its own."

Well, that or the 'any range' completely invalidates LoE OR LoE actually naturally exists between planes.

Those are both entirely plausible interpretations given how loosely you've applied the rules as well :smallsigh:

[Deophaun]

Well, that or the 'any range' completely invalidates LoE OR LoE actually naturally exists between planes.
Why the heck would either of those apply? Range has nothing to do with LoE.

[Pickford]

Why the heck would either of those apply? Range has nothing to do with LoE.

Actually the defined ranges, Unlimited dictates anywhere on the same plane. Therefore 'any' is actually broader than Unlimited, it would apply to anywhere on any Plane.

[Deophaun]

Actually the defined ranges, Unlimited dictates anywhere on the same plane. Therefore 'any' is actually broader than Unlimited, it would apply to anywhere on any Plane.Or "any" is any of the list of defined ranges. Without "any" being defined as "less limited than unlimited," unlimited pretty much covers it.

Anyway, it still doesn't matter what they put in the range category, as, I will repeat, very, very slowly this time.

Line.
Of.
Effect.
Has.
Nothing.
To.
Do.
With.
Range.

Unless you're going to argue that Range: Medium means that you automatically have Line of Effect to everything in Medium range.

[Pickford]

Or "any" is any of the list of defined ranges. Without "any" being defined as "less limited than unlimited," unlimited pretty much covers it.

Anyway, it still doesn't matter what they put in the range category, as, I will repeat, very, very slowly this time.

Line.
Of.
Effect.
Has.
Nothing.
To.
Do.
With.
Range.

Unless you're going to argue that Range: Medium means that you automatically have Line of Effect to everything in Medium range.

I'm arguing that Unlimited range specifically defines an acceptable target as one being on the same plane of existence. Whereas 'Any range' is broader, this negates LoE entirely.

[Deophaun]

I'm arguing that Unlimited range specifically defines an acceptable target as one being on the same plane of existence. Whereas 'Any range' is broader, this negates LoE entirely.
Then Medium range negates LoE entirely within Medium range, which it doesn't.

[Pickford]

Then Medium range negates LoE entirely within Medium range, which it doesn't.

Any range isn't one of those ranges, so your point does not hold.