The All-Seeing Eye

[Doctor Despair]

So I just considered a character idea based around seeing everything, regardless of mundane or magical means of obscuring things. I was wondering what ideas the Playground might have tossing around! What abilities, spells, class features, etc. would this character need? Here are some things I've thought of so far:

- Truesight, but possibly at-will or use-activated to avoid the Invisible Spell metamagic conundrum.
- Wish for Dweomersight from the Balhannoth and Sense Magic from the Mageripper Swarm, mmiv
- Darkvision
- High spellcraft, spot, etc. Item familiar, +30 item-boosting, all the usual tricks.
- Access to Greater Scrying, all the Detect X, Foresight, other divination spells. Legend Lore?

What other abilities are more or less required and/or useful, and what is the earliest level we can get them by?

[ben-zayb]

Dispassionate Watcher of Chronepsis from Draconomicon has the 9th level ability Clearsight, which is an Extraordinary ability similar to True Seeing but also sees through mundane disguise. Unfortunately, without HD cheese, it's hard to get the ability pre-Epic.

[Doctor Despair]

Dispassionate Watcher of Chronepsis from Draconomicon has the 9th level ability Clearsight, which is an Extraordinary ability similar to True Seeing but also sees through mundane disguise. Unfortunately, without HD cheese, it's hard to get the ability pre-Epic.

Lots of interesting abilities here! Could be a nice progression if this character was being used in a campaign moving to epic. The "discern lies" it grants is also interesting, but at that level I feel like the "non-deity" clause could become problematic, haha.

[Werephilosopher]

Touchsight modified with Burrowing Power to extend it through solid objects and Transdimensional Power to get incorporeal and ethereal stuff is pretty neat for "seeing" just about everything around you.

[Falcon X]

Here's a staple: http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Robe_of_Eyes

[nedz]

Arcane Sight
Clairvoyance, Clairaudience
Scrying and Detect Scrying
Foresight

Basically almost all of the divination spells.

[ATHATH]

There is a poorly written (like most of that section of ToM) Truenamer Utterance that gives you Blindsight out to an unspecified radius, I think.

Wasn't there an ability out there that let you teleport to any location that you can see?

[Doctor Despair]

Wasn't there an ability out there that let you teleport to any location that you can see?

I think Binders get that with a vestige, maybe? Not Tenebrous though, that scales with level.

[TIPOT]

A warlock might be a good chassis for this idea. Just take the eye/scouting invocations, charm and dip mindbender so you can take the mindsight. You can have access to blindsight, arcane eye at will, scent, see invisibility, darkvision and see though magical darkness as well.

[Irk]

What if you set up some sort of Spell Clock or resetting magical trap to cast a Reach Spell Chain Spell Chain of Eyes? Just lob out Chain of Eyes, and when someone being affected by the spell bumps into someone else, transfer the vision effect. Sooner or later you have the entire zone you're watching infected. It wouldn't last, but you could use it to establish total surveillance over a town or even a city.

Like an invisible sort of plague that jumps from person to person, letting you have access to the vision of everyone and anyone whenever you want. A magical trap or spell clock would let you always be spreading it, and you would always have this massive radius of "vision drones" or something. I don't know. It's new, I guess?

Text of Chain of Eyes:


You can use another creature's vision instead of your own. While this spell gives you no control over the subject, each time it comes into physical contact with another living being, you can choose to transfer your sensor to the new creature. During your turn in a round, you can use a free action to switch from seeing through the current creature's eyes to seeing normally or back again.

Each transfer attempt allows the new target a saving throw and spell resistance. If a target resists, the spell ends.

You'd have to boost saves and caster level a lot, but once you got it going, no one would even know they were being infected, I imagine.

[Graypairofsocks]

While it is most likely not useful to you, I feel like I should mention these:
There is a Salient Divine Ability which gives true seeing and ability to see through disguises.
There is another one which makes you auto succeed on any bardic knowledge or lore check.

[Inevitability]

Shameless self-promotion, but check out the Brightness link in my signature.

[sleepyphoenixx]

You can get pretty much all the vision modes you want by being a druid.
Dragon Wild Shape (Deep Dragon) grants you (Su) True Seeing.
Aberration Wild Shape lets you take the form of a Balhannoth and, with the City-Shape ACF, the Mageripper Swarm. Be a Half-Giant to easily qualify for Metamorphic Transfer.
You can also shift into a Thoon Elder Brain for 1 mile telepathy and qualify for Mindsight.

Add to that tons of ways to get Blindsight, Tremorsense, Darkvision and high racial bonuses to spot/listen, various spells to boost them even further, wisdom as a primary stat and a decent array of divinations (which you can further enhance by being an Arcane Hierophant to get wizard spells too).

Best of all? You're still a druid.

[Arael666]

What if you set up some sort of Spell Clock or resetting magical trap to cast a Reach Spell Chain Spell Chain of Eyes? Just lob out Chain of Eyes, and when someone being affected by the spell bumps into someone else, transfer the vision effect. Sooner or later you have the entire zone you're watching infected. It wouldn't last, but you could use it to establish total surveillance over a town or even a city.

Like an invisible sort of plague that jumps from person to person, letting you have access to the vision of everyone and anyone whenever you want. A magical trap or spell clock would let you always be spreading it, and you would always have this massive radius of "vision drones" or something. I don't know. It's new, I guess?

Text of Chain of Eyes:



You'd have to boost saves and caster level a lot, but once you got it going, no one would even know they were being infected, I imagine.

I always read that spell as you having one sensor that you can hop from person to person by means of touch. That means, once you hop to another person, you lose the sight of the previous subject, in other words, you can only have sight from one person at a time.

[ATHATH]

@Spell Clocks: Wouldn't that just give the Spell Clock vision, and not you?

Due to poor wording, a dip in Paragnostic Apostle can double your class-based bonuses to Bardic Lore.

[Doctor Despair]

A warlock might be a good chassis for this idea. Just take the eye/scouting invocations, charm and dip mindbender so you can take the mindsight. You can have access to blindsight, arcane eye at will, scent, see invisibility, darkvision and see though magical darkness as well.

Decent for a low-level campaign where you won't ever need the Balhannoth sense magic and whatnot. Just need to grab a wand of truesight for the occasional need there :) I didn't see where Warlock invocations give blindsight or arcane eye though? Maybe I just glanced at the wrong source.

What if you set up some sort of Spell Clock or resetting magical trap to cast a Reach Spell Chain Spell Chain of Eyes? Just lob out Chain of Eyes, and when someone being affected by the spell bumps into someone else, transfer the vision effect. Sooner or later you have the entire zone you're watching infected. It wouldn't last, but you could use it to establish total surveillance over a town or even a city.

Like an invisible sort of plague that jumps from person to person, letting you have access to the vision of everyone and anyone whenever you want. A magical trap or spell clock would let you always be spreading it, and you would always have this massive radius of "vision drones" or something. I don't know. It's new, I guess?

Text of Chain of Eyes:



You'd have to boost saves and caster level a lot, but once you got it going, no one would even know they were being infected, I imagine.

That sounds like a great thematic idea for an early-campaign villain!


While it is most likely not useful to you, I feel like I should mention these:
There is a Salient Divine Ability which gives true seeing and ability to see through disguises.
There is another one which makes you auto succeed on any bardic knowledge or lore check.

I am shooting for an as-early-as-possible type build, since after a certain point the answer to this question just becomes "be a wizard", haha. Though the ability to see through mundane disguises would be a good keystone ability for this build if ever it reached godhood (or if the campaign allowed for a wish from a greater deity or something).


You can get pretty much all the vision modes you want by being a druid.
Dragon Wild Shape (Deep Dragon) grants you (Su) True Seeing.
Aberration Wild Shape lets you take the form of a Balhannoth and, with the City-Shape ACF, the Mageripper Swarm. Be a Half-Giant to easily qualify for Metamorphic Transfer.
You can also shift into a Thoon Elder Brain for 1 mile telepathy and qualify for Mindsight.

Add to that tons of ways to get Blindsight, Tremorsense, Darkvision and high racial bonuses to spot/listen, various spells to boost them even further, wisdom as a primary stat and a decent array of divinations (which you can further enhance by being an Arcane Hierophant to get wizard spells too).

Best of all? You're still a druid.

Seems like a fun way to get access to any one of the abilities at need! More useful in the sense that druids are awesome, though perhaps less so in the sense that you wouldn't have all of them up as once. At least, as I understand it. How does Metamorphic Transfer function with continuous abilities, such as the Balhanoth's Dweomersight, since the Transfer typically places limits on the number of uses you get?

[Irk]

I always read that spell as you having one sensor that you can hop from person to person by means of touch. That means, once you hop to another person, you lose the sight of the previous subject, in other words, you can only have sight from one person at a time.


Yes, so the idea is that you chain the spell, and have a spell clock constantly churning them out so even when the sensor makes the jump, someone else will have already been infected, and the person who offloaded their sensor will just run into another person who has a sensor. It's like a tub that's both filling faster than it's draining, and stops draining once it's full.