3rd Ed Wizards and divinations [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

sleepyphoenixx

2016-07-19, 11:22 AM

This line of thinking always assumes:

1) A certain level of play
2) That each wizard has the exact same spells available to them
2A) That each wizard is going to use this method and if they dont that they are being played "wrong"
3) That appropriate time is available for these preparations to be taken
3A) That once a piece of information is gathered that the circumstances around that information never change
4) That people in a world where all of the above are a "given" dont actually take any actions to prevent the above from working
Every complaint here except 1 is biased or completely useless.
2)Wizards can choose which spells they take at level up. They get enough of them that taking a few divinations hardly hurts, even if those divinations were totally useless (they're not), and most of the really good ones are core.
2A) I wouldn't say wrong. But "not at full effectiveness" certainly applies. Note that this is in no way a judgement. If it was nobody would ever play anything but a full caster.
3) Time isn't always available, but i find it hard to believe that it never is. And when it is proper divinations are invaluable. See also 2 - wizards are expected to take situational spells, it's their thing.
3A) Obviously you divine things that are fairly persistent. If you're planning to assault a fortress tomorrow you can be fairly sure that the defenses are going to still be as you divined them. Of course proper use of divination includes acting on the information you gather while it's still relevant. This should be obvious.
4) People do take actions to prevent divinations - that's half of what Mind Blank does, and Mordenkainen's Private Sanctum, Nondetection and similar things are all useful spells. But protecting any and all information that would be useful to an attacker from being divined is incredibly complex and expensive, and some spells (Contact other Plane is a prime example) are nearly impossible to defend against completely.
Warding a whole castle against divinations consumes tons of gold, and that's in addition to all the other defenses you'll want. Protecting all your minions, their homes and their possessions from being scryed is possible in theory, but in practice it's nearly impossible to afford.

If you do play in a game with extensive use of divination (and your DM has his NPCs abide by the restrictions instead of just handwaving them knowing) there will be a lot of information warfare going on with players and NPCs trying to successfully use divinations and deny their enemies the same.
It's certainly not for everyone, but it's no less valid a playstyle than classic dungeoncrawling. Some people enjoy it.
It also doesn't mean you have to choose between "no divinations at all" and "everyones a paranoid voyeur wizard". You can choose any point in between, and quite a few parties can benefit from at least some intelligent divination use.

If worlds actually worked like this, there would be nothing but wizards in the world and each would never step outside his fabulously fortified magical demense.
Don't be dense. Information warfare happens in the real world too and yet we are not all spies.
It's hardly surprising that 99% of people will quite simply be irrelevant for anyone capable of casting high level spells, divinations or not. Or pawns, if they're unlucky.
Anything relevant at that level will simply be protected against divinations the same way high-level enemies protect themselves against other threats in games that are less divination-heavy.

Elder_Basilisk

2016-07-19, 12:02 PM

I think that a more nuanced way to express the criticism is that it assumes a certain style of play.

It's well and good to take a week to scry and cast legend lore and contact other plane (though Contact Other Plane is a pretty risky spell both due to the risk of losing spellcasting ability for multiple weeks and the risk of false or random answers--and my impression is that a false answer usually has a lot more potential to harm you than a true answer has to help you) if you are in a sandbox style campaign where the action is primarily driven by the characters and (especially) if the opponents are essentially static like they usually are in Bethesda style open world CRPGs.

On the other hand, if opponents are not static, there is a significant risk that your scrying will be detected (it's not hard and there is a relatively low level for detecting scrying and another relatively low level one for false visions) or blocked (Mordenkeinen's Private Sanctum, etc), or that certain foes (probably the ones you care about) won't show up at all (Mind Blank should be an "always active" spell for anyone who has access to it in this kind of campaign). Now, this can lead to a style of campaign that is all about information warfare and catspaws and proxies and dispelling sanctums and wards if you enjoy that kind of thing but my impression is that, RAW, the information warfare defense spells and abilities (especially mind blank) are much stronger than the information gathering abilities, so you may be back to square one as soon as level 8 spells become available. (Mind Blank has the potential to make this kind of information gathering counter-productive since you could scry the bad guys' lair and hypothetically see a fighter talking to his orc lieutenants, then teleport in and discover that there's actually an ancient dragon and three 20th level wizards who didn't show up because of their mind blank spells. If you prepped your strike on the assumption that the fighter talking to a pair of orc lieutenants were what you were going to face, you could be in serious trouble).

But, regardless of that, that style of information gathering is of pretty limited utility in a lot of plot-driven campaigns where your challenges are not really self-selected and known in advance or where there is a pretty strict time limit. For example, in Age of Worms, one of the high level adventures kicks off when you see another party of (evil) adventurers on a boat, going to an island. You can start casting your divination spells then if you feel like it, but you really need to head there yourselves so that you can beat them to the quest items. And until you get there, you don't know what the quest challenges are going to be so you can't start scrying them. (Also, even if you did start your divination game, you're unlikely to find out more than you already know from previous non-hostile encounters with them and the initial plot-starting scrying. OK, he's a cleric of Vecna and there's an Efreet and a sneaky dude, and he can summon or bind devils if he feels like it (just like any other cleric). Getting any more than that is going to be tricky and if you try to cleverly prepare for their specific abilities, you run very real risks of your preparation making you more vulnerable to what they actually do if you run into one of those "false or random answer" chances on an important question, (Nah, we don't need to prep against death magic--he never uses it), or if they deliberately change their tactics in response to their own divinations (or detection of your divinations). So, even if you knew about the challenges in time to spend days on information gathering (which you don't) and could afford to take days off in the quest (which you can't), trying to prep for the specific individuals rather than the general information handed to you at the outset carries significant risks. Likewise, Red Hand of Doom is too low level for that kind of magic to be readily available and the timeline is fairly exacting so you can't necessarily spend weeks until you manage to land a scry spell on the leader of the enemy army. But even if those things were not true, when you go to Rhest, you don't know what you're looking for so you have no targets for your divinations. When you go to the Ghostlord's lair, you know about the ghost lord, but he's not necessarily the challenge you need to overcome there. Then, the Battle of Brindol comes to you and comes on its own terms. Again, you're not going to be able to know that you will fight Skather and Abiathrax and Kharn, rather than the other high level members of the army and a dozen hill giants. You could theoretically try it in the last dungeon but information warfare available to wizards is of limited value in most of the adventure.

Information gathering through divination is often worthwhile when you try it but it won't enable you to be the Schroedinger's wizard of message board bloviators unless you are playing in a very specific kind of campaign in a couple of particular level bands. (Where the divination spells are available but mind blank is not or where wish can be regularly used for information gathering and where the DM believes that wish used to gather information defeats mind blank (which is not clear RAW)).

Troacctid

2016-07-19, 12:40 PM

Essentially, a wizard can do a lot ahead of time. If the wizard knows that the party needs to go bump off Lord Meanscary, he can scry on Meanscary Manor to learn about its defenses, use contact other plane to get info on the target, and legend lore to glean any other important information.

None of these slots are used during "field work" days so you can hardly call them a waste, and the knowledge so acquired means that the wizard can bring obscure and narrow tools that solve the encounter with a great chance of success. This is especially important in games that are "combat as war" as opposed to the more typical "combat as sport" approach where the party shows up without a plan and works through a dungeon encounter by encounter.
Scry-and-die tactics are all well and good, but they don't prevent you from ever being surprised and they certainly don't guarantee you the perfect spell loadout every day. They're just the high-octane version of sending your familiar ahead as a scout.

sleepyphoenixx

2016-07-19, 12:46 PM

...

You do make some good points, but you also seem to fall into the trap that i've seen here all too often - that using divinations means you have to spend days gathering information first, or you don't use divinations at all. That's simply not true.
Also wizards have the distinct advantage of the Spontaneous Divination ACF. You can simply use any left-over slots at the end of the day to cast divinations and then rest and recover them. Even non-ACF wizards can leave slots free and use them in the evenings for divination if they didn't need them earlier.

As for the difficulty and availability of divination defenses, it's a lot more complicated than what you seem to assume.
It's true that scrying is easily detectable, even if only by people with high spot checks or those capable of casting the relevant defensive spells.
It's also true that Mind Blank will screw most direct forms of divination, but it only protects a single creature and is a high level spell or very expensive item.

But you also have to consider that many high level threats don't have enough spellcasting to cast those defenses or buy those items, and detecting a scrying spell only helps you if you can actually do something about it.
There's also quite a few indirect divinations, stuff like Hindsight and Legend Lore, and it's often a better tactic to target a BBEG's minions or hideouts with direct divinations instead of the BBEG himself (which neatly circumvents a lot of protections) and target the boss more indirectly to get around his precautions.

And even with all those possibilities wizards aren't even the best at the divination game. That spot belongs to psions.

Scry-and-die tactics are all well and good, but they don't prevent you from ever being surprised and they certainly don't guarantee you the perfect spell loadout every day. They're just the high-octane version of sending your familiar ahead as a scout.

Foresight prevents you from being surprised. Scry & die tactics are to surprise others.:smalltongue:

You can also use divinations to find your enemies before they find you. Probe Thoughts, Inquisition, Prying Eyes, Chain of Eyes, Circle Dance, Discern Location... it's said that offense is the best defense, and that's doubly true in D&D. Divination is the school that helps you find your enemies before they come find you.
And as long as you know in advance what you're going to fight (because you're the attacker) you'll be able to prepare your spells accordingly. That's what leaving slots free is for.

That obviously doesn't work against random encounters, but those aren't generally a big threat anyway.
But unless you're regularly attacked out of the blue by people you've never had anything to do with, even indirectly, you can learn about them with the right application of divinations before fighting them. Then you take 15 minutes and prepare the right spells to take them down. That's when you use scry & die tactics.

Elder_Basilisk

2016-07-19, 01:44 PM

You do make some good points, but you also seem to fall into the trap that i've seen here all too often - that using divinations means you have to spend days gathering information first, or you don't use divinations at all. That's simply not true.
Also wizards have the distinct advantage of the Spontaneous Divination ACF. You can simply use any left-over slots at the end of the day to cast divinations and then rest and recover them. Even non-ACF wizards can leave slots free and use them in the evenings for divination if they didn't need them earlier.

I would presume that most wizards leave slots open until the end of the day and then either use them for long term buff spells (greater magic weapon, mage armor, detect scrying, anticipate teleportation, mind blank, etc). Using those slots for divinations is good though it does cut down on the ability to cast tomorrow's extended buffs.

That's not why I expect that detailed information gathering of the kind necessary to make Schroedinger's wizard work takes days. I expect that it takes days because:
A. Most of the spells frequently referenced (scrying for example) have will saves and are subject to lower level interdiction (such as non-detection) which means that you will generally need multiple castings in order to gather useful information.
B. Other spells frequently referenced (such as contact other plane) need multiple castings to gather extensive and reliable information (a 20% false or random answer means that you probably want to get the same answer from two different sources before you can rely on it) and carry non-zero risks of long-term incapacitation (and that will almost certainly come up sooner or later if extensive use of the spell is SOP unless you are also blowing a moment of prescience every casting).
C. Some of the divinations you describe later (prying eyes, etc) are indeed less susceptible to the defenses I mentioned (though prying eyes will not see anyone under mind blank) but they generally have other limitations (prying eyes requires you to be fairly close to the area you are scouting, cannot go through locked doors or walls), etc that will limit the amount of information you can get from them.

As for the difficulty and availability of divination defenses, it's a lot more complicated than what you seem to assume.
It's true that scrying is easily detectable, even if only by people with high spot checks or those capable of casting the relevant defensive spells.
It's also true that Mind Blank will screw most direct forms of divination, but it only protects a single creature and is a high level spell or very expensive item.

But you also have to consider that many high level threats don't have enough spellcasting to cast those defenses or buy those items, and detecting a scrying spell only helps you if you can actually do something about it.

You're right that there are limitations but most of the threats that you care about them will have them or access to some form of them. As doing something about scrying, there are lots of varieties of things you can do about it. You could just shut up and not do anything until the spell expired. You could start deliberately lying in order to give false information. You could leave the room and not come back until the spell expired. You could turn out the lights and wait until the spell expired. You could dispel the sensor, you could cast false vision, etc. Heck, if you use detect scrying which provides name and targeting info on the scryer, you could start counterscrying or sending nightmare spells the caster's way.

Now, every enemy you scry on will not have access to all of those abilities but even the low level shut up and turn out the lights or start spreading misleading information (talking to someone "off camera" who is not really there, describing fake plans to lead scryers into traps, etc) are available to nearly all of them and many of the kind of opponents you want to scry will have access to the nastier and more magical responses either personally or through allies.

There's also quite a few indirect divinations, stuff like Hindsight and Legend Lore, and it's often a better tactic to target a BBEG's minions or hideouts with direct divinations instead of the BBEG himself (which neatly circumvents a lot of protections) and target the boss more indirectly to get around his precautions.

Quite true. Though the indirect targeting cannot give all of the information to be a schroedinger's wizard. It is useful information gathering, not perfect intelligence.

And even with all those possibilities wizards aren't even the best at the divination game. That spot belongs to psions.

But this thread is about wizards, we should probably keep it there.

Foresight prevents you from being surprised. Scry & die tactics are to surprise others.:smalltongue:

You can also use divinations to find your enemies before they find you. Probe Thoughts, Inquisition, Prying Eyes, Chain of Eyes, Circle Dance, Discern Location... it's said that offense is the best defense, and that's doubly true in D&D. Divination is the school that helps you find your enemies before they come find you.
And as long as you know in advance what you're going to fight (because you're the attacker) you'll be able to prepare your spells accordingly. That's what leaving slots free is for.

That obviously doesn't work against random encounters, but those aren't generally a big threat anyway.

Again, this is limited to certain kinds of campaigns where you have an specific (usually self-directed) goal and can plan your actions specifically tailored to accomplish that. In a lot of adventures--not just random encounters--that's not reliably possible. In classic dungeon crawls like the Moathouse or the Temple of Elemental Evil, for example, you may well not have any idea about who the main villains or the henchmen you should be scrying are. You have to explore the moathouse to find out what is there. And even then, there are some tough encounters that you would not know to scry for (such as an advanced grell that attacks you on the elevator) and which will be tougher if you assume that you know about everything in advance. Now spells like prying eyes will be more useful in many of these scenarios, but even they will not reveal everything and even in a best case scenario will probably not enable you to plan the perfect spell list tailored to all the encounters in a dungeon (though you can probably avoid really bad choices--ie if there are lots of undead, you ditch the enchantment spells).

But unless you're regularly attacked out of the blue by people you've never had anything to do with, even indirectly, you can learn about them with the right application of divinations before fighting them. Then you take 15 minutes and prepare the right spells to take them down. That's when you use scry & die tactics.

I think you mean "Scry and fry." Scry and Die is when you try "Scry and Fry" but the target has greater anticipate teleportation up or you missed three quarters of the EL when you scried because they had mind blank up or the target suckered you with a false vision and you ended up teleporting into an active volcano.

eggynack

2016-07-19, 07:39 PM

I would presume that most wizards leave slots open until the end of the day and then either use them for long term buff spells (greater magic weapon, mage armor, detect scrying, anticipate teleportation, mind blank, etc). Using those slots for divinations is good though it does cut down on the ability to cast tomorrow's extended buffs.

I don't see why you can't do both. You're going to want a good number of spells to just be, y'know, the spells they are, because such are the demands of combat. This is true whether you have spontaneous divination or not. From those spells that are necessarily being prepared, some number will likely go unused, because the wizards are few that can be perfectly efficient with their casting (and if you needed more spells, then you probably shouldn't have had so many open slots, so that reinforces my claim if anything). You use those unused spells in the only way you can, by casting divinations, and you use your open slots to do whatever. All upside, in other words.

Elder_Basilisk

2016-07-19, 10:35 PM

I don't see why you can't do both. You're going to want a good number of spells to just be, y'know, the spells they are, because such are the demands of combat. This is true whether you have spontaneous divination or not. From those spells that are necessarily being prepared, some number will likely go unused, because the wizards are few that can be perfectly efficient with their casting (and if you needed more spells, then you probably shouldn't have had so many open slots, so that reinforces my claim if anything). You use those unused spells in the only way you can, by casting divinations, and you use your open slots to do whatever. All upside, in other words.

I think the ACF that lets you spontaneously cast divinations is not especially relevant to the discussion. Yes, it's a great class feature for information warfare style of play, but it's not something that every wizard--or even most wizards would have if it's available, it won't be available in all 3.5 games (core only won't have it and it's probably a maybe in any game that isn't "all published WOTC material) and as far as I know, it's not available at all in Pathfinder. So, assuming that all unused spell slots can be transformed into divinations is probably not valid for a "this is how you play [any] wizard." So, for the most part, I'm going to be addressing a wizard who leaves a large number of spell slots open during the standard day and either fills them with utility spells during the day, or if nothing came up, fills them with long duration buff spells or divinations to cast at the end of the day.

Exactly how many divinations that will net a wizard depends how many spell slots you want to have prepared so that you're ready to go if the many enemies and bad guys in the world pop in unannounced and which divinations and buffs you want to have up. I take it for granted that most wizards will probably want to have half their spell slots filled at any given time* and at least two spells in their highest level, but even if you're willing to live with only one spell available in your highest level slot, you're still going to have stiff competition for those open spell slots at the end of the day. A corollary to this applies even to spellcasters with that ACF: You never know when you're going to be attacked in your sleep, so you probably don't want to dump all of your unused spells into divinations at the end of the day. It's a good idea to leave enough that you can handle at least one tough fight. Combined with a desire for long-term buffs, this will mean that even characters with the spontaneous divination ACF you are talking about will have a limited number of divinations available at the end of each day.

Most of the divinations that we're talking about are fairly high level slots. Prying Eyes is 5th level as is Contact Other Plane (in Pathfinder). Legend Lore is 6th level. Greater Scrying and Vision are 7th level. Discern Location (and greater Prying eyes) are 8th level. For most of a wizard's career there will be some competition for those slots and significant opportunity costs to leaving most of them open. If you've just hit 13th level, you might leave one 7th level slot open, but you probably won't leave two open and 5th and 6th level slots are your bread and butter spells so you can't leave too many of them open either. Now, false image, overland flight and private sanctum are 5th level, greater anticipate teleportation and heart of stone are 6th level and mordenkeinen's magnificent mansion and energy immunity are 7th level. In Pathfinder, greater false vision sits at 7th too. When you hit 15th level and above, Mind Blank is the king of 8th level buff spells and you might want to give it to other party members too so you can spend more slots on mind blank than you will ever have available. Moment of Prescience hangs out at 8th level as well in case there wasn't enough competition for those slots. Screen is there too if False Vision isn't good enough for you. And that's just some of the long duration buff spells at those levels, not including "I'm building my power/doing things in my off days" spells like Wall of Stone, Wall of Iron, Fabricate, Planar Binding, Greater Planar Binding, Create Demiplane (in Pathfinder), etc.

So, you can leave some spell slots open at the end of each day and cast, say, legend lore and greater binding, but if you start trying to run a full suite of divinations every evening with multiple castings of greater scrying, etc you're going to start competing with the long term buffs and defenses that you could otherwise be running in those slots. Heck even planning to cast discern location on a regular basis is one less mind blank you can cast for your party.

*In most games I've played, adventure doesn't wait until it's convenient for you so even if you thought it was going to be an uneventful day of haggling in Greyhawk to get a custom +5 cloak of resistance combined with wings of flying, you could be attacked by powerful enemies or alerted to an imminent threat or opportunity and have to teleport out and deal with it rather than taking an hour to prepare a full suite of adventuring spells. Having a good number of spells prepped lets you weather the storm until you can take that time to prepare.

Thurbane

2016-07-19, 11:05 PM

sleepyphoenixx

2016-07-20, 06:11 AM

I think the ACF that lets you spontaneously cast divinations is not especially relevant to the discussion. Yes, it's a great class feature for information warfare style of play, but it's not something that every wizard--or even most wizards would have if it's available, it won't be available in all 3.5 games (core only won't have it and it's probably a maybe in any game that isn't "all published WOTC material) and as far as I know, it's not available at all in Pathfinder. So, assuming that all unused spell slots can be transformed into divinations is probably not valid for a "this is how you play [any] wizard." So, for the most part, I'm going to be addressing a wizard who leaves a large number of spell slots open during the standard day and either fills them with utility spells during the day, or if nothing came up, fills them with long duration buff spells or divinations to cast at the end of the day.

I disagree on your first point. If you're going into a game as a wizard that wants to make extensive use of divination i think it's safe to assume that you're taking options to improve on that.
Spontaneous Divination is also in CC, and the completes are allowed in most games i've seen. Even for core-only and PF games you can specialize in divination.

Even without that you still seem to have the assumption that you need tons of divinations to get any use out of them. That simply isn't true. You can get a lot of extra information just by casting 1-2 divinations a day, if you do it regularly. Unless you're in a campaign where everything is resolved in a matter of days (possible, but hardly the norm) you have time to narrow down your investigation, and every single bit of information you have before a fight can already help.
Even in very fast-paced campaigns a spell like Probe Thoughts can be worth more than one more buff if you use it on the right person.

A simple example would be capturing an enemy instead of killing him. Then you can use spells like Detect Thoughts, Inquisition or Probe Thoughts to find out who he works for, who the strongest/most important figures in his organization are, what he knows about their plans, what defenses they have and so on. That already gives you additional divination targets. Find out about their whereabouts and defenses, rinse and repeat the above but this time with an officer instead of a mook, who will have more/more detailed knowledge for you to extract.

Also keep in mind that you're usually not operating in a vacuum. Other casters in your party can use information you have divined for their own divination spells, and vice versa.

It's totally cool for groups that enjoy this kind of gameplay, but it kind of bugs me that on a lot of forums, this is the assumed level of optimization at all tables, and if not, you;re somehow playing the game wrong...

I don't think anyone here assumes that all or even most tables are high-op.
It's just that talking about low-mid op is pretty boring once you know what you're doing, and a lot of people have been here for a while so they know their stuff.
There also isn't a lot of discussion to be had when most of the points boil down to "i'd rather cast Fireball or Haste".

Elder_Basilisk

2016-07-20, 09:54 AM

I agree that divinations can be very useful and provide lots of helpful information--especially the hands on divinations of the type you are discussing (probe thoughts, prying eyes, detect thoughts, etc). Where I disagree is that:

A. All divinations all the time is the only way to play an optimized wizard.
An optimized wizard will have some divinations and will use them when appropriate, but always planning to cast ten divinations before bedtime is not the only way to play an optimized wizard. The most bang for your divination spell slot IME comes from those 1-2 divinations. After that there is diminishing returns.

B. (From the original post): A wizard who uses divinations will never be caught off guard by an unexpected threat and will always have the right spell for any situation he finds himself in because... DIVINATIONS!
Even a wizard who uses divinations and finds themselves in situations where they are helpful cannot reasonably expect to never be caught off guard or to be able to perfectly tailor his spell list every day. There will always be unknowns (what did the enemy wizard/cleric prepare today? What monsters will he summon? What's inside the private sanctum? or even just what's in level 2, room 3A? or did I miss a secret door with monsters behind it? Heck, even, "I had no idea he'd crit and drop our fighter; where's a wall of force when I need it?" can change the perfect spell for the situation).

Flickerdart

2016-07-20, 10:07 AM

The thing to remember about divining is that you can never cover the unknown unknowns. A wizard's loadout should be maximum 50% specialized solutions, and 50% spells like glitterdust, black tentacles, alter self, and limited wish that are applicable in a broad range of situations.

Thurbane

2016-07-20, 12:12 PM

I don't think anyone here assumes that all or even most tables are high-op.
Maybe not in this thread, but my general observation of this forum, as well as the other one or two I'm active on, is that a lot of people make that assumption. Maybe I have a perception bias, though.

It's just that talking about low-mid op is pretty boring once you know what you're doing, and a lot of people have been here for a while so they know their stuff.
There also isn't a lot of discussion to be had when most of the points boil down to "i'd rather cast Fireball or Haste".
Those are fair points.

Troacctid

2016-07-20, 01:34 PM

Let's be honest, you can solve a lot of problems with fireballs and hastes.

Thurbane

2016-07-20, 01:48 PM

Let's be honest, you can solve a lot of problems with fireballs and hastes.

True! :smallbiggrin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YDu1k3V4bs

tiercel

2016-07-21, 12:51 AM

Maybe not in this thread, but my general observation of this forum, as well as the other one or two I'm active on, is that a lot of people make that assumption. Maybe I have a perception bias, though.

Those are fair points.

It also seems like a lot of folks focus on play at higher levels than I've commonly, or even ever, seen at gaming tables in real life. Granted, this may be partly my own bias as well -- but when I hear people talk about True Seeing or Mind Blank obviating entire schools of magic, I think, "maybe at campaign end" for tables I've been at, if that. (Also I think "obviate" is a strong term, but that's another discussion.)

Elder_Basilisk has mentioned the opportunity cost of loading up lots of high level spells; the opportunity cost isn't less at lower levels, where you might actually need your spell slots for in-combat use, not for fancy-pants I-blow-all-my-spell-slots-because-nothing-bad-ever-happens-at-night long-term buffs.

Divinations can certainly be handy, but when spending a lot of gaming time at 1st-9th levels, there's only so many divinations - and for that matter, so many spell slots per day. That's not to say that low-to-mid level play is the only playstyle, but when the discussion has Foresight and Mind Blank and Private Sanctum and whatnot from the get-go, it seems like we are leaving out part of the game -- not just "how do/can wizards use divinations?" but "how do they do so as a function of level?"

Fizban

2016-07-21, 05:06 AM

Could any of you please elaborate how exactly do you use divination spells for preparation?

Could you write examples for the specific uses of these spells too please? (Sorry for being hard-headed and thank you for your help & time :) )
The secret is that Wizards are actually pretty bad at it. Clerics have the actual workhorse divinations like Divination, which actually lets you ask a general question about what's gonna happen, and Commune for more specific information. Wizards have only the vastly inferior Contact Other Plane, which is similar to Commune (for "20 questions" as Flickerdart said), except less reliable and requiring other optimization to avoid massive penalties, and they flat cannot ask general questions. Scrying is of dubious use outside of scry-n-die thanks to it's short duration, and there are tons of ways to block it. And Clerics get it one spell level later anyway. That leaves Legend Lore, the drawbacks of which are evident at a glance.

Schrodinger's Cat was meant to point out the absurdity of the theory. Schrodinger's Wizard is the same: if it seems absurd that a Wizard always knows everything because DIVINATIONS!, that's because it is absurd, and anyone who's taking it seriously missed the point. Wizards do not have access to the divinations required to simply ask what's going to happen, and even if they did it still wouldn't guarantee they'd ask the right questions. Cast as many Divinations as you like, the DM can shower you in cryptic responses and your "enemies" can prepare mult-part defenses that return false-positives or just counter divinate you, and that's without bringing in actual anti-divination magic. It's not really a huge deal.

Troacctid

2016-07-21, 05:11 AM

Wizards do technically have pretty easy access to commune via Improved Familiar (imp or quasit).

Fizban

2016-07-21, 06:24 AM

And Arcane Disciple, and Divine Oracle, and Spontaneous Divination, and. . . still gotta jump through hoops though, Clerics get it all natively and Wizards don't.

sleepyphoenixx

2016-07-21, 07:43 AM

Schrodinger's Cat was meant to point out the absurdity of the theory. Schrodinger's Wizard is the same: if it seems absurd that a Wizard always knows everything because DIVINATIONS!, that's because it is absurd, and anyone who's taking it seriously missed the point. Wizards do not have access to the divinations required to simply ask what's going to happen, and even if they did it still wouldn't guarantee they'd ask the right questions. Cast as many Divinations as you like, the DM can shower you in cryptic responses and your "enemies" can prepare mult-part defenses that return false-positives or just counter divinate you, and that's without bringing in actual anti-divination magic. It's not really a huge deal.

If your argument boils down to "but you have to use it properly" and "but the DM can screw you over" you're not actually making much of a case for your point of view.

Now i'm not saying a wizard can learn everything ever with divinations. That's impossible (and would be rather boring). They're also not the best at it (again: psions).
But that doesn't mean wizard divinations aren't useful or "just a tool for the DM to railroad you" (i've seen that argument around too).
You can make a lot of plots more comfortable for yourself and your party with divinations, cutting short lenghty investigations, finding clues and people instead of stumbling around blindly and hoping for DM fiat and getting valuable information on enemy capabilities that might make the difference between victory and a TPK.

Emperor Tippy

2016-07-22, 01:21 AM

Contact Other Planes is one of the best general use divination spells in the game even if you don't go with the "can predict the future" interpretation.

32 Int is enough that you always make the DC 12 Intelligence Check for the Lesser Deity result so you have no risk (you don't auto fail attribute checks on a natural 1) and gets you 60% accuracy.

Now say you are going to explore a forest, so get a map of the forest (and it can be an incredibly crude map, you really just want grid squares on it and semi accurate boundary points).

Then you start with the first round of questions.

"Are there any undead within the area represented by this map?"
"Are there any constructs within the area represented by this map?"
"Are there any dragons within the area represented by this map?"

And so on. Repeat the spell twenty times with the same questions and you should know the true answers to all of those questions with a fair degree of accuracy.

I've accurately mapped every single permanent structure, road, body of water, and local population of an entire nation in a day of game time (thanks to a Mage's Lucubration trap for unlimited spell slots).

---
A foe willing to properly use divination is a very dangerous and difficult challenge to overcome.

torrasque666

2016-07-22, 02:54 AM

-Snip-
Do note that Emperor Tippy is basically the Cthulhu of the boards. He's got a fantastic level of system mastery. He plays at a level of optimization most never come close to imitating. And there are more like him who he plays with, but I'm not sure if they visit these boards.

Diarmuid

2016-07-22, 08:48 AM

32 Int is enough...

...thanks to a Mage's Lucubration trap for unlimited spell slots

A foe willing to properly use divination is a very dangerous and difficult challenge to overcome.

Yes, I've taken those out of context but I think that's a pretty good representation of the other side to what many of us are trying to represent here. 32 Int is something that has never and will likely never exist at any gaming table I've ever been a part of. Spell traps for unlimited spell slots, same thing...heck spell traps of any kind other than ones in a dungeon/castle/etc used as a defense have never been seen at my tables. And that's fine because thats the choice my groups have made. Those that have/use them...I hope they enjoy them and the type of game they represent.

It's the last one, where proposing this is the "proper" way to do something many of us get caught up on. It wasnt directly said, but it implies all other ways are "improper", or "wrong" which is the fallacy.

ryu

2016-07-22, 09:53 AM

Yes, I've taken those out of context but I think that's a pretty good representation of the other side to what many of us are trying to represent here. 32 Int is something that has never and will likely never exist at any gaming table I've ever been a part of. Spell traps for unlimited spell slots, same thing...heck spell traps of any kind other than ones in a dungeon/castle/etc used as a defense have never been seen at my tables. And that's fine because thats the choice my groups have made. Those that have/use them...I hope they enjoy them and the type of game they represent.

It's the last one, where proposing this is the "proper" way to do something many of us get caught up on. It wasnt directly said, but it implies all other ways are "improper", or "wrong" which is the fallacy.

Proper as synonym for ''to best effect'' is an entirely legitimate, and this case accurate use of the term. Does anyone care to argue that that wasn't an extremely powerful use of contact other plane?

Segev

2016-07-22, 10:15 AM

I know spell traps, if used in that fashion, would swiftly be banned by most DMs I've played with.

Elder_Basilisk

2016-07-22, 10:31 AM

Proper as synonym for ''to best effect'' is an entirely legitimate, and this case accurate use of the term. Does anyone care to argue that that wasn't an extremely powerful use of contact other plane?

I'll take that argument on.

I'm not sure how useful the effect (getting a semi-accurate map with a high percentage snapshot of the monsters in each hex at the time of casting) actually is.

A. This has to be viewed in context. In order to get the 32 Intelligence, the wizard must have started with an 18, have a +6 headband, at least 4-5 points from level increases and an inherent bonus of at least +1 (if starting with a 20 Int and level 20) and possibly as much as +4 (starting 18 Int and level 16-19). Assuming a standard level of wealth (any DM who allows infinite spells via resetting spelltraps may also allow infinite wealth or wish shenanigans but we'll ignore that for now), we have a character who is most likely in the top tier of non-epic play level and abilitywise.

B. With a 10 minute casting time and assuming the character does nothing other than cast contact other plane for 16 hours, he can get 96 castings during the day. We'll assume 20 questions each casting for simplicity and take Tippy's "repeat 20 times per hex" for accuracy standard. (This is assuming that it works. I don't think it's clear that casting the spell multiple times to contact the same lesser deity will trigger a new roll on the "true/false/random/doesn't know" table or that all lesser deities have the same knowledge. I would personally assume that the table is for an appropriate lesser deity, and if you run out of appropriate lesser deities and have to start asking, say the Chultish god of jungles about the details of a tundra in the Spine of the World, you get to use less accurate tables). So that's 96 questions answered to the Tippy degree of accuracy. Since we have a bunch of types--Tippy mentioned Undead, Constructs, and dragons, but there are abberations, outsiders, and a host of other types you might ask about--that one day of work could get you details of the location of 12 types of creatures within eight hexes of the forest.

Now, one might say, that's a lot of work for a small section of the forest and I think you'd be right (personally, as the DM, I'd be tempted to make you actually roleplay the question asking each time--then the other players would solve the problem by physically ejecting you from the game, and even if that didn't happen, you'd probably get bored before you got to the second hex. And that's appropriate, people don't become 20th level wizards so that they can imitate a query bot asking 20 questions in 20 hexes 20 times for 16 hours straight. The only reason we even consider that these days is because we have computers to do it for us) exactly how useful is that information?

If you're a 20th level wizard, you're probably not interested in the 14 bloody skeletons guarding the as yet undiscovered tomb of no-name the 9th level necromancer in hex 11a. The things that you are interested in have a good chance of not showing up at all due to mind blank or of showing false positives. If you are trying to find the lair of the green dragon of the Vesve (legend lore or vision would be a better choice), there is a good chance that she is out hunting or something and you got positives in hex 13x hex 10, 7x hex 11, and 14x hex 12 and 1x hex 14. Does that mean that she's lairing in all of those hexes or that she was hunting and flew between those hexes over the 16 hours you spent casting the spells so that sometimes she was in the hex when you started asking and had left by the time you got to confirmation casting number eight?

If your wizard's ambition is to be the google maps of Greyhawk without the profitability and stock options, I guess it's a good use of contact other plane. But I don't see how that use helps him to never be caught off-guard by an unexpected threat and always have the right spell for the job.

ExLibrisMortis

2016-07-22, 10:50 AM

(personally, as the DM, I'd be tempted to make you actually roleplay the question asking each time--then the other players would solve the problem by physically ejecting you from the game, and even if that didn't happen, you'd probably get bored before you got to the second hex. And that's appropriate, people don't become 20th level wizards so that they can imitate a query bot asking 20 questions in 20 hexes 20 times for 16 hours straight. The only reason we even consider that these days is because we have computers to do it for us)
See, that'd just be bad DMing - for the record, I don't think you would actually go that far - and it shows a big problem with the effectiveness of divinations, and the discussion about them. Many DMs are not willing to quickly hand out critical plot information, even if the relevant expenditure of spell slots should be able to uncover said information. As a result, you get a lot of people saying that divinations aren't as functional as they're made out to be, but that's an OOC issue, not a RAW issue. A cooperative DM, when confronted with a spam-divining player, will either ban/limit divinations (solve it OOC), or use countermeasures and red herrings (solve it IC), while sharing any truly uncovered information liberally and immediately.

I also find it interesting that it's so easy to dismiss the questions, as if you actually need twenty questions per hex (that's Tippy's high-OP game's style, but not the only functional divination use). You don't need a ton of information to decide on your spell selection, because many spells can take care of huge categories of problems. You have your default preparation, and then ask about things that might hard-counter large parts of your list, and about plot-critical targets' whereabouts and defenses. Just asking 'are there non-living creatures in the forest' will inform you enough to prepare something besides enervation, for example. This ties in to what was said further upthread: you only need a couple of spare spells at the end of the day to vastly improve your information position.

Elder_Basilisk

2016-07-22, 11:04 AM

See, that'd just be bad DMing - for the record, I don't think you would actually go that far - and it shows a big problem with the effectiveness of divinations, and the discussion about them. Many DMs are not willing to quickly hand out critical plot information, even if the relevant expenditure of spell slots should be able to uncover said information. As a result, you get a lot of people saying that divinations aren't as functional as they're made out to be, but that's an OOC issue, not a RAW issue. A cooperative DM, when confronted with a spam-divining player, will either ban/limit divinations (solve it OOC), or use countermeasures and red herrings (solve it IC), while sharing any truly uncovered information liberally and immediately.

For the record, in my game, there would not be spelltraps that allow infinite spell slots so the problem would never even start. However, the problem I was pointing out is that Tippy's approach to mitigate the accuracy limitations of contact other plane is feasible in theory and would work if you are a computer but would not be a practical approach for real people who are capable of getting bored. In game, it probably works only because Tippy just has to say, "I cast it twenty times and ask the same questions each time" and the DM replies, "you get answer X 14 times." It's one of the cases where playability shortcuts obscure the non-feasibility of the solution and the non-credibility of the role-playing (for non-obsessive compulsive wizards I guess but there are very few people so compulsive that they're willing to do repetitive tasks like that for 8 hours a day in real life, so a hyper-obsessive wizard who is willing to do that actually reaching 20th level is pretty non-credible).

In any event, the argument was, "no, that is not an extremely powerful use of contact other plane." It manages to combine abuse of the rules on multiple levels with poor role-playing and doesn't even get anything especially useful out of all that effort.

I also find it interesting that it's so easy to dismiss the questions, as if you actually need twenty questions per hex (that's Tippy's high-OP game's style, but not the only functional divination use). You don't need a ton of information to decide on your spell selection, because many spells can take care of huge categories of enemies. You have your default preparation, and then ask about things that might hard-counter large parts of your list, and about plot-critical targets' whereabouts and defenses. Just asking 'are there non-living creatures in the forest' will inform you enough to prepare something besides enervation, for example. This ties in to what was said further upthread: you only need a couple of spare spells at the end of the day to vastly improve your information position.

That's been my position all along. That some divinations can be helpful but that in a well-DMed, dynamic game, divinations will not enable you to be the schroedinger's wizard who is never taken off-guard and always has the perfect spell for the situation.

Quertus

2016-07-22, 03:31 PM

For the record, in my game, there would not be spelltraps that allow infinite spell slots so the problem would never even start. However, the problem I was pointing out is that Tippy's approach to mitigate the accuracy limitations of contact other plane is feasible in theory and would work if you are a computer but would not be a practical approach for real people who are capable of getting bored. In game, it probably works only because Tippy just has to say, "I cast it twenty times and ask the same questions each time" and the DM replies, "you get answer X 14 times." It's one of the cases where playability shortcuts obscure the non-feasibility of the solution and the non-credibility of the role-playing (for non-obsessive compulsive wizards I guess but there are very few people so compulsive that they're willing to do repetitive tasks like that for 8 hours a day in real life, so a hyper-obsessive wizard who is willing to do that actually reaching 20th level is pretty non-credible).

In any event, the argument was, "no, that is not an extremely powerful use of contact other plane." It manages to combine abuse of the rules on multiple levels with poor role-playing and doesn't even get anything especially useful out of all that effort.

Tippy's x20 questions wasn't to map potentially mobile monsters, it was to map roads, towns, structures, rivers, etc in an otherwise unknown area of the world.

Now, Quertus, he'd just use custom spells to view the area from above, find a city, teleport in, and buy a map. But that may be a bit too high-op for most games. :smallwink:

EDIT: and for divinations, we're probably looking at a first level "weal or woe" on the above plan.

EDIT: and, as long as we're looking at RAW abuse, Quertus wouldn't have to go to so much trouble to buy the map. Maps are so cheap that Quertus could pick up a map of anywhere in any small village. :smallwink:

sleepyphoenixx

2016-07-22, 04:00 PM

For the record, in my game, there would not be spelltraps that allow infinite spell slots so the problem would never even start. However, the problem I was pointing out is that Tippy's approach to mitigate the accuracy limitations of contact other plane is feasible in theory and would work if you are a computer but would not be a practical approach for real people who are capable of getting bored. In game, it probably works only because Tippy just has to say, "I cast it twenty times and ask the same questions each time" and the DM replies, "you get answer X 14 times." It's one of the cases where playability shortcuts obscure the non-feasibility of the solution and the non-credibility of the role-playing (for non-obsessive compulsive wizards I guess but there are very few people so compulsive that they're willing to do repetitive tasks like that for 8 hours a day in real life, so a hyper-obsessive wizard who is willing to do that actually reaching 20th level is pretty non-credible).

I wouldn't dismiss it so easily. People in RL spend 8 or more hours a day accumulating and evaluating intelligence data, which is basically what using divinations is. If your life and the lives of your comrades depend on this intel and you're the guy on the team most suited to collect and put together that information (thanks to spell access and high int) then that's your job.

Adventurers aren't a bunch of people sitting around a table, drinking beer and pretending to be wizards and fighters and going out to slay dragons for fun and relaxation. For them that's their jobs, and their jobs are dangerous.

Elder_Basilisk

2016-07-22, 04:20 PM

I wouldn't dismiss it so easily. People in RL spend 8 or more hours a day accumulating and evaluating intelligence data, which is basically what using divinations is. If your life and the lives of your comrades depend on this intel and you're the guy on the team most suited to collect and put together that information (thanks to spell access and high int) then that's your job.

Adventurers aren't a bunch of people sitting around a table, drinking beer and pretending to be wizards and fighters and going out to slay dragons for fun and relaxation. For them that's their jobs, and their jobs are dangerous.

The questions about the role playing aspect is:
A. What kind of people spend 8 or more hours per day accumulating and evaluating sigint data? (Divinations aren't really comparable to Humint--my understanding is that it's usually a different kind of person who goes about accumulating humint data).
A1. Personality and drive. Is it really the same kind of person who would have the motivation and adventurousness to become a 20th level wizard?
A2. Status. Is it the top dog or is it a peon? Typically, boring tasks get shuffled off to low-level analysts while the highest paid and most influential people deal with big picture and enterprise level business (or political) decisions. Is that the kind of job that a Wiz 20 would do himself or would hand off to apprentices? (If this is the kind of world where a Wiz 20 is a lowly peon, OK, but in that case we're not talking about a world that has much in common with D&D as most people play it).

In any event, the real issue for role-playing is not the divinations per se. It's the (extremely) repetitive use of contact other plane to mitigate inherent failure/false positive chance for a relatively trivial and routine objective. The role-playing issue is obscured by the handwavium of "I cast it twenty times, what answers do I get," but IRL only automated processes use that kind of repetition for mundane matters. If I'm building a nuclear bomb, maybe I'd measure 20 times but if I'm building a cabinet--even with expensive hardwoods, it's "measure twice, cut once." (Maybe measure 3 times if my answers don't match. Certainly not measure 20 times, cut once). That's the kind of thing you might do if you are about to face Kyuss in battle as he attempts to ascend to divinity (but you probably don't because you're probably on a tighter time-frame than that). It's not the kind of thing you're going to do in order to create a map.

There's also a big difference between 8 hours a day and 16 hours a day (Or 22 hours per day with a ring of sustenance). If we back down to the more reasonable 8 hours per day, now we're only getting 48 questions verified to the 20th degree so that's 6 hexes per day with 8 creature types questioned. At that rate, it will take quite a while to get a usable map. (A lot less to get a rough map of one creature type (for example, all orcs in the Vesve forest) but now we're talking divinations with a specific purpose rather than divinations to get a generic map).

Quertus

2016-07-22, 04:42 PM

The questions about the role playing aspect is:
A. What kind of people spend 8 or more hours per day accumulating and evaluating sigint data? (Divinations aren't really comparable to Humint--my understanding is that it's usually a different kind of person who goes about accumulating humint data).
A1. Personality and drive. Is it really the same kind of person who would have the motivation and adventurousness to become a 20th level wizard?
A2. Status. Is it the top dog or is it a peon? Typically, boring tasks get shuffled off to low-level analysts while the highest paid and most influential people deal with big picture and enterprise level business (or political) decisions. Is that the kind of job that a Wiz 20 would do himself or would hand off to apprentices? (If this is the kind of world where a Wiz 20 is a lowly peon, OK, but in that case we're not talking about a world that has much in common with D&D as most people play it).

In any event, the real issue for role-playing is not the divinations per se. It's the (extremely) repetitive use of contact other plane to mitigate inherent failure/false positive chance for a relatively trivial and routine objective. The role-playing issue is obscured by the handwavium of "I cast it twenty times, what answers do I get," but IRL only automated processes use that kind of repetition for mundane matters. If I'm building a nuclear bomb, maybe I'd measure 20 times but if I'm building a cabinet--even with expensive hardwoods, it's "measure twice, cut once." (Maybe measure 3 times if my answers don't match. Certainly not measure 20 times, cut once). That's the kind of thing you might do if you are about to face Kyuss in battle as he attempts to ascend to divinity (but you probably don't because you're probably on a tighter time-frame than that). It's not the kind of thing you're going to do in order to create a map.

There's also a big difference between 8 hours a day and 16 hours a day (Or 22 hours per day with a ring of sustenance). If we back down to the more reasonable 8 hours per day, now we're only getting 48 questions verified to the 20th degree so that's 6 hexes per day with 8 creature types questioned. At that rate, it will take quite a while to get a usable map. (A lot less to get a rough map of one creature type (for example, all orcs in the Vesve forest) but now we're talking divinations with a specific purpose rather than divinations to get a generic map).

... Is the person who spent years studying complex magic from arcane tomes the type of person who would studiously gather intel before rushing in to a life and death situation? Is that the kind of person who would generate an accurate map?

Is that really a question? :smallconfused:

I think there might be some RP issues if you answered "no"... :smalltongue:

EDIT: now, once ol Wizard 20 has built the spell engine, does he need to be the one using it to make a map, or can he trust his lazy apprentice to do due diligence in asking the question 20 times while he goes out drinking with his fellow epic adventurers? Given the stated assumptions about human nature, would you trust the success of your life and death million dollar project to the intern? :smallamused:

Elder_Basilisk

2016-07-22, 05:31 PM

... Is the person who spent years studying complex magic from arcane tomes the type of person who would studiously gather intel before rushing in to a life and death situation? Is that the kind of person who would generate an accurate map?

Is that really a question? :smallconfused:

I think there might be some RP issues if you answered "no"... :smalltongue:

It rather depends on who you think spends years studying complex magic. If it's like Alistair Crowley and other RL people who claim to study magic and the paranormal, I'd say there's no correlation at all--to either the studiously gathering intel or generating an accurate map. (Some do and some would; some don't and would not. There are at least as many fools and flakes among the self-proclaimed magical community as in the rest of the world). If you want to equate them more to engineers they would generally want to make an accurate map but would stop well before twenty castings. Maybe three castings to get down to a 1.56% error rate or four castings to get down to a 0.391% error rate. Certainly not twenty.

There's a difference between studiously gathering intel and casting the same ten minute casting time spell twenty times for each hex of the map you are making. Studiously gathering intel is wise. Casting the spell twenty times per two hexes (more or less) is way beyond that. The theory is obviously to mitigate the risk of an incorrect answer but taking the 25% inaccurate rate to the 20th to get down to 9.094947017729 e-11% error rate is ridiculous and well into obsessive-compulsive territory. Most modern physicists stop well before getting to a .0001% error rate. (So the "twenty times" might be appropriate for an insane wizard but would not be normal unless most high level wizards are insane. Which they are in some settings, but probably not in the majority of D&D games). After only a few castings, the error rate is dwarfed by the limitations of the process itself--the generality of the questions, etc.

And this is a side note to a side note to a side note anyway. Bottom line: "no, it is not an extremely powerful use of contact other plane." None of the people who nitpick my contentions about the ridiculousness of the process have defended it as a powerful use of contact other plane. It's a ridiculously extravagant expenditure of time and resources for what you get out of it (a map).

Emperor Tippy

2016-07-22, 05:41 PM

For the record, in my game, there would not be spelltraps that allow infinite spell slots so the problem would never even start.
A level 20 wizard with 32 Int has 26 5th level or higher spell slots to use per day. Even without using any of the ways to regain spell slots (or increase the number you have), that is still sufficient for proper divination.

However, the problem I was pointing out is that Tippy's approach to mitigate the accuracy limitations of contact other plane is feasible in theory and would work if you are a computer but would not be a practical approach for real people who are capable of getting bored. In game, it probably works only because Tippy just has to say, "I cast it twenty times and ask the same questions each time" and the DM replies, "you get answer X 14 times." It's one of the cases where playability shortcuts obscure the non-feasibility of the solution and the non-credibility of the role-playing (for non-obsessive compulsive wizards I guess but there are very few people so compulsive that they're willing to do repetitive tasks like that for 8 hours a day in real life,
Doing repetitive tasks for eight hours a day is what the vast majority of the adult population of the US does to survive.

so a hyper-obsessive wizard who is willing to do that actually reaching 20th level is pretty non-credible).
No, the only way someone reaches level 20 is by being hyper-obsessive and willing to do things like spend two months doing nothing but casting Contact Other Planes before undertaking some quest.

That's been my position all along. That some divinations can be helpful but that in a well-DMed, dynamic game, divinations will not enable you to be the schroedinger's wizard who is never taken off-guard and always has the perfect spell for the situation.
No, in a well-DMed, dynamic game, failure to properly utilize divination's and appropriate planning will result in your party suddenly and repeatedly dying to enemies that they are totally unprepared for and to foes that have attacked them without warning or notice at exactly the worst possible time for the party.

To be "Schrodinger's Wizard" you need to learn proper spell slot selection and utilization techniques along with the most holy of capabilities; Wish Emulated Spell Engine.

In any event, the real issue for role-playing is not the divinations per se. It's the (extremely) repetitive use of contact other plane to mitigate inherent failure/false positive chance for a relatively trivial and routine objective. The role-playing issue is obscured by the handwavium of "I cast it twenty times, what answers do I get," but IRL only automated processes use that kind of repetition for mundane matters. If I'm building a nuclear bomb, maybe I'd measure 20 times but if I'm building a cabinet--even with expensive hardwoods, it's "measure twice, cut once." (Maybe measure 3 times if my answers don't match. Certainly not measure 20 times, cut once). That's the kind of thing you might do if you are about to face Kyuss in battle as he attempts to ascend to divinity (but you probably don't because you're probably on a tighter time-frame than that). It's not the kind of thing you're going to do in order to create a map.
It is the kind of thing that you are absolutely going to do if you have the capability and you will be risking your life on the results.

There's also a big difference between 8 hours a day and 16 hours a day (Or 22 hours per day with a ring of sustenance). If we back down to the more reasonable 8 hours per day, now we're only getting 48 questions verified to the 20th degree so that's 6 hexes per day with 8 creature types questioned. At that rate, it will take quite a while to get a usable map. (A lot less to get a rough map of one creature type (for example, all orcs in the Vesve forest) but now we're talking divinations with a specific purpose rather than divinations to get a generic map).
Except its far more than 6 hexes. Your initial questions cover the entire map. So "Are there any Dragons in the area covered by this map?" comes back "No" and then you need never ask about any of the hexes individually.

----
You can also pawn off the entire divination process onto magical AI's. A Simulacrum of an Air Weird has at will, Free Action, Contact Other Planes. A Simulacrum of yourself or Ice Assassin's of Ice Assassin's of yourself can also handle the divination's.

A level 20 Wizard who is willing to take the time and effort can keep the entire planet under virtually real time divination assisted surveillance.

Elder_Basilisk

2016-07-22, 06:13 PM

I'm glad to learn that you are employing a more effective search algorithm with the questions and more task offloading to minions than your initial post implied Tippy. Casting it yourself? Not really credible. Offloading it to a simulacrum or an ice assassin? Totally credible. That kind of thing is what minions are for.

That said, I don't think that your idea of a well DMed game and my idea of a well DMed game have much of anything in common. And I don't think that your idea of such has much in common with most of the games out there. Then again, I actually agree with not being Schroedinger's wizard because DIVINATION (wish emulated spell engine is an entirely different kettle of fish).

Emperor Tippy

2016-07-22, 06:20 PM

I'm glad to learn that you are employing a more effective search algorithm with the questions and more task offloading to minions than your initial post implied Tippy. Casting it yourself? Not really credible.
Casting it yourself is perfectly credible, it is just that there exist more efficient means to gain the same result.

Offloading it to a simulacrum or an ice assassin? Totally credible. That kind of thing is what minions are for.
For some reason people on this forum seem to frown upon making use of minions.

Eldariel

2016-07-22, 06:38 PM

For the record, in my game, there would not be spelltraps that allow infinite spell slots so the problem would never even start. However, the problem I was pointing out is that Tippy's approach to mitigate the accuracy limitations of contact other plane is feasible in theory and would work if you are a computer but would not be a practical approach for real people who are capable of getting bored. In game, it probably works only because Tippy just has to say, "I cast it twenty times and ask the same questions each time" and the DM replies, "you get answer X 14 times." It's one of the cases where playability shortcuts obscure the non-feasibility of the solution and the non-credibility of the role-playing (for non-obsessive compulsive wizards I guess but there are very few people so compulsive that they're willing to do repetitive tasks like that for 8 hours a day in real life, so a hyper-obsessive wizard who is willing to do that actually reaching 20th level is pretty non-credible).

I'd like to point out that vast majority of most gaming days is in fact not played and things are still assumed to happen. Nobody spends 24 hours per each individual character for each in-game day - that is mostly just a waste of time and such a game would barely progress. Most I've seen is a couple of hours of fluff-play and the actual encounters per day; and that's rather extreme. Most groups I've played would rather progress the world events than enjoy the scenery and interact with the smallfolk for more than ~30 mins of real time. To that end, I posit requiring the unnecessary microing of what the rest of the table (and the player himself) would most likely consider boring is not really showing how infeasible such an activity is in-game. It is essentially trying to prevent an in-game decisions through metagame sanctions: you're saying "your character can do that but you will have to waste all our time IRL doing it each time, and bore the other players to death". I don't think that's a good way to solve problems in-game; in-game taking a day for preparations seems completely normal (buying supplies, planning, meeting important people, preparing the right spells, divination, etc.) but those are generally not the focus days of a game.

Elder_Basilisk

2016-07-22, 07:05 PM

I'd like to point out that vast majority of most gaming days is in fact not played and things are still assumed to happen. Nobody spends 24 hours per each individual character for each in-game day - that is mostly just a waste of time and such a game would barely progress. Most I've seen is a couple of hours of fluff-play and the actual encounters per day; and that's rather extreme. Most groups I've played would rather progress the world events than enjoy the scenery and interact with the smallfolk for more than ~30 mins of real time. To that end, I posit requiring the unnecessary microing of what the rest of the table (and the player himself) would most likely consider boring is not really showing how infeasible such an activity is in-game. It is essentially trying to prevent an in-game decisions through metagame sanctions: you're saying "your character can do that but you will have to waste all our time IRL doing it each time, and bore the other players to death". I don't think that's a good way to solve problems in-game; in-game taking a day for preparations seems completely normal (buying supplies, planning, meeting important people, preparing the right spells, divination, etc.) but those are generally not the focus days of a game.

The idea that, because I don't force the players to roleplay the purchase of their thirty day's rations for an expedition, I am somehow obligated to deal with 1920 contact other planes questions per in-game day in a way that is convenient to the player is beyond asinine.

Eldariel

2016-07-22, 07:09 PM

The idea that, because I don't force the players to roleplay the purchase of their thirty day's rations for an expedition, I am somehow obligated to deal with 1920 contact other planes questions per in-game day in a way that is convenient to the player is beyond asinine.

Why would you be obliged to answer those questions individually? You know what the general result is, rolling for miss chance. You don't play army fights by having each individual unit roll a d20 for attack each turn either. When numbers begin to get big, be it rolling 1000 attacks or asking 1000 questions, it's not only convenient, but nigh' necessary to use shortcuts. The fact that you use shortcuts out of game to facilitate the functioning of the game doesn't mean such events can't take place in-game.

Quertus

2016-07-22, 07:14 PM

It rather depends on who you think spends years studying complex magic. If it's like Alistair Crowley and other RL people who claim to study magic and the paranormal, I'd say there's no correlation at all--to either the studiously gathering intel or generating an accurate map. (Some do and some would; some don't and would not. There are at least as many fools and flakes among the self-proclaimed magical community as in the rest of the world). If you want to equate them more to engineers they would generally want to make an accurate map but would stop well before twenty castings. Maybe three castings to get down to a 1.56% error rate or four castings to get down to a 0.391% error rate. Certainly not twenty.

There's a difference between studiously gathering intel and casting the same ten minute casting time spell twenty times for each hex of the map you are making. Studiously gathering intel is wise. Casting the spell twenty times per two hexes (more or less) is way beyond that. The theory is obviously to mitigate the risk of an incorrect answer but taking the 25% inaccurate rate to the 20th to get down to 9.094947017729 e-11% error rate is ridiculous and well into obsessive-compulsive territory. Most modern physicists stop well before getting to a .0001% error rate. (So the "twenty times" might be appropriate for an insane wizard but would not be normal unless most high level wizards are insane. Which they are in some settings, but probably not in the majority of D&D games). After only a few castings, the error rate is dwarfed by the limitations of the process itself--the generality of the questions, etc.

And this is a side note to a side note to a side note anyway. Bottom line: "no, it is not an extremely powerful use of contact other plane." None of the people who nitpick my contentions about the ridiculousness of the process have defended it as a powerful use of contact other plane. It's a ridiculously extravagant expenditure of time and resources for what you get out of it (a map).

As an engineer*, let me just say, there are plenty of engineers out there who would not put in due diligence. In D&D, they would die. Someone who has watched this happen would easily become Tippy level OCD on redundancy, especially if you factor in that most D&D wizards don't have ranks in knowledge mathematics to know exactly how safe 3x or 4x divination redundancy makes you.

*programmer, I'm guessing that qualifies.

A level 20 wizard with 32 Int has 26 5th level or higher spell slots to use per day. Even without using any of the ways to regain spell slots (or increase the number you have), that is still sufficient for proper divination.

Doing repetitive tasks for eight hours a day is what the vast majority of the adult population of the US does to survive.

No, the only way someone reaches level 20 is by being hyper-obsessive and willing to do things like spend two months doing nothing but casting Contact Other Planes before undertaking some quest.

No, in a well-DMed, dynamic game, failure to properly utilize divination's and appropriate planning will result in your party suddenly and repeatedly dying to enemies that they are totally unprepared for and to foes that have attacked them without warning or notice at exactly the worst possible time for the party.

To be "Schrodinger's Wizard" you need to learn proper spell slot selection and utilization techniques along with the most holy of capabilities; Wish Emulated Spell Engine.

It is the kind of thing that you are absolutely going to do if you have the capability and you will be risking your life on the results.

Except its far more than 6 hexes. Your initial questions cover the entire map. So "Are there any Dragons in the area covered by this map?" comes back "No" and then you need never ask about any of the hexes individually.

----
You can also pawn off the entire divination process onto magical AI's. A Simulacrum of an Air Weird has at will, Free Action, Contact Other Planes. A Simulacrum of yourself or Ice Assassin's of Ice Assassin's of yourself can also handle the divination's.

A level 20 Wizard who is willing to take the time and effort can keep the entire planet under virtually real time divination assisted surveillance.

Well, one could reach level 20 simply by not being in such a game. :smallwink: Or one could take the route my signature character did, and rely on competent allies. Quertus is very competent in his niche - that niche just doesn't happen to be combat. He isn't even particularly competent in his choice of questions when using divisions. Of course, he has more custom sights than most 20th level wizards have spells, and about the only way to be more versatile and adapt faster than he does would involve things like contingent plane shift to fast time plane to rememorize spells. :smalltongue:

I'd love to be involved in games that run at you level of RAW, no kiddie gloves. But I think there are alternatives to your stated requirements, even in such a game. See Quertus' methods of getting the same map.

Besides, in such a game, wouldn't something have been using divinations to kill your characters off long before they became a CR appropriate threat? :smalltongue:

And thank you for pointing out just how credible a modern workday is.

ryu

2016-07-22, 09:13 PM

As an engineer*, let me just say, there are plenty of engineers out there who would not put in due diligence. In D&D, they would die. Someone who has watched this happen would easily become Tippy level OCD on redundancy, especially if you factor in that most D&D wizards don't have ranks in knowledge mathematics to know exactly how safe 3x or 4x divination redundancy makes you.

*programmer, I'm guessing that qualifies.

Well, one could reach level 20 simply by not being in such a game. :smallwink: Or one could take the route my signature character did, and rely on competent allies. Quertus is very competent in his niche - that niche just doesn't happen to be combat. He isn't even particularly competent in his choice of questions when using divisions. Of course, he has more custom sights than most 20th level wizards have spells, and about the only way to be more versatile and adapt faster than he does would involve things like contingent plane shift to fast time plane to rememorize spells. :smalltongue:

I'd love to be involved in games that run at you level of RAW, no kiddie gloves. But I think there are alternatives to your stated requirements, even in such a game. See Quertus' methods of getting the same map.

Besides, in such a game, wouldn't something have been using divinations to kill your characters off long before they became a CR appropriate threat? :smalltongue:

And thank you for pointing out just how credible a modern workday is.

Now see this is why it's so important to control the flow of information. My safe minimum for information control is vecna blooded, cycle the vecna blooded off and back on once a day, constant mindblank specifically keyed to prevent only mind magic that isn't your own, and a stream of contingent mindrapes to control what you yourself know at any given time. It started when we learned to fear divinations. It continued when we found ways to gather information that didn't require divinations. It got hilarious when we started thinking of counters to THOSE strats.

Elder_Basilisk

2016-07-22, 10:50 PM

Perhaps we should pull the thread a little ways back on track and follow Tiercel's suggestion to examine how wizards might use divinations helpfully at various levels.

This might be a good format:

Level
Key divinations to use:
-During the adventuring day

What divinations will you typically use during an adventuring day

-Prep Day or Fill empty slots at the end of the day

What divinations would you typically use to specifically prepare for a quest or would use to fill up a few empty slots at the end of a day.

-Spam

What divinations are useful to spam--either during the day or at the end of an adventuring day

For example:

Character Level 1

Key Divinations to Use:
-During the adventuring day

Detect magic: to locate magic loot and find poorly constructed magic traps (clever magical trapmakers will use Nystul's magic aura to hide the magic auras)

Prep Day or Fill empty slots at the end of the day

Identify to figure out magic items
Comprehend Languages to translate books/documents

spam
In 3.5, you don't have enough spell slots to spam anything at early levels, but in pathfinder, you can spam detect magic as you work your way through a dungeon.

Character Level 3

Key Divinations to Use:
-During the adventuring day

Detect undead (lvl 1) might be used in a kind of "track down the vampire" intrigue adventure but you're pretty low level to be encountering vampires.
Detect thoughts: to aid with interrogation or surreptitious information gathering (if you are confident in your DCs)
Locate Object: in theory, this might be useful if you are looking for a particular object that is not warded against magic (or in a lead-lined box) and you know the location to within a city block or two. For example, you are looking for one crate in a large warehouse that contains the drug wraithblood or you know that a spy put a message in a bottle and hid it in the king's wine cellar but you don't have time to examine each of the 1500 bottles in the wine cellar for the message.

Prep Day or Fill empty slots at the end of the day

There aren't really any new spells that this will be useful with.

spam
Detect thoughts might be spammable if you have a lot of people to interrogate.

At level 1 and 3, other than detect magic, most of the divinations are highly situational and are probably only worth preparing if you know you have a use for them, though you can leave a slot open and fill it with alarm if you don't need anything in particular during the day and don't have any books to translate or items to identify. In Pathfinder, you can do the same, but you may also be able to use a bonded item for some divinations at the end of the day if you haven't used its power during the day.

Darth Ultron

2016-07-23, 07:48 AM

That's been my position all along. That some divinations can be helpful but that in a well-DMed, dynamic game, divinations will not enable you to be the schroedinger's wizard who is never taken off-guard and always has the perfect spell for the situation.

I agree. At best, divinations will allow you to easily take out about one third of your foes and give you a bit of help vs the other third, and do nothing for that last third.

Though divination really run into the Rules vs Reality problem. Basically that the Rules were made up by some wacky people years ago and just don't make much sense unless your just playing a quick game in a basement somewhere where people are just having fun looting dungeons and killing dragons.

... Is the person who spent years studying complex magic from arcane tomes the type of person who would studiously gather intel before rushing in to a life and death situation? Is that the kind of person who would generate an accurate map?

Is that really a question? :smallconfused:

Sadly this type of character only exists in fluff. The horrible 3X rules let anyone just be a demi god and with no ''years of study'' or any more effort then ''I do what page 77 says''.

Telok

2016-07-23, 03:18 PM

I've been in three games (same group too) that ended in TPKs because the party reached 13th or 15th level and only two of us had any counters for divination or teleportation. The other four love doing scry-and-die but can never get it through their heads that it works both ways. Naturally the last people to die are the two of us with real defenses, the others always just have magic arms, armor, and resistance gear.

I've come to the conclusion that some people simply can't play D&D past 10th level unless the DM castrates the opposition. Scrying is part of this, once those spells come online anyone with 12+ int/wis is using them and fighting those people requires taking that into account. It doesn't even require Tippy levels of effort, semi-regular use of Augury, Divination, Scrying, and Legend Lore are completely effective against mundanes and anyone who isn't willing to invest in defenses or counters. That's before you get into psicrystals and mouse familiars with stealth buffs and hide in plain sight abilities, social engineering on minions and lieutenants, or plain old spying and bribery.

nedz

2016-07-23, 04:15 PM

Tiktakkat

2016-07-23, 04:39 PM

A level 20 wizard with 32 Int has 26 5th level or higher spell slots to use per day. Even without using any of the ways to regain spell slots (or increase the number you have), that is still sufficient for proper divination.

Okay.
But a 9th level wizard with a 24 Int has . . . 2 5th level spell lots to use per day.

No, the only way someone reaches level 20 is by being hyper-obsessive and willing to do things like spend two months doing nothing but casting Contact Other Planes before undertaking some quest.

Which means he will take 26 months doing nothing but casting Contact Other Plane to get the same amount of information.
Wait . . . he would only be guaranteed success on the Int check contacting an elemental plane, dropping the truth factor by almost half, meaning he would need more than 48 months.

No, in a well-DMed, dynamic game,

If the game is dynamic, the quest is not likely to wait 2 months, let alone 4 years, while such divinations are being cast.

So . . . how did that 20th level wizard actually survive from 9th level to 20th level?
More importantly, how exactly did he survive from 1st level to 9th level without any access to contact other plane?

Eldariel

2016-07-23, 05:14 PM

The real problem with Tippy's approach is that the other side could be doing this also and the persons of actual interest will have defences against it - so it becomes pointless.

In real games players only normally bother with divinations when presented with a problem to be solved and the issue is knowing that you need to know something - the unknown unknowns problem mentioned up thread.

Now I have done similar things to Tippy's suggestion using Commune with Nature (Druid 4) and it worked quite well - but that spell is designed to handle the use case Tippy suggested, so it's much less onerous. I've also done it in other game systems too - but that's not really relevant.

Real games also normally fade before high levels because not everyone is playing the same game - i.e. Tiers etc. - and the party becomes unbalanced; but this isn't really the question.

This is an awful lot of expectations about how real games are with nothing but personal, anecdotal experience. I've played plenty of games controlled for tiers, that is designed around overall party balance throughout the level range. I've also played plenty of games starting on high levels. And I'm not the only one: you could probably ask about anyone frequenting minmaxboards or old 339 and get similar experiences. Which is not to say that things you describe never occur. I'm however not convinced they're necessarily quite as ubiquitous as extrapolating the statements here would lead one to assume.

torrasque666

2016-07-23, 05:19 PM

This is an awful lot of claims about how "real games" are with nothing but personal, anecdotal experience. I've played plenty of games controlled for tiers, that is designed around overall party balance throughout the level range. I've also played plenty of games starting on high levels. And I'm not the only one: you could probably ask about anyone frequenting minmaxboards or old 339 and get similar experiences. Which is not to say that things you describe never occur. I'm however not convinced they're necessarily quite as ubiquitous as extrapolating the statements here would lead one to assume.

To be fair, the types who play those games are probably less likely to visit or seek out optimization boards like this or minmax. Thus the population is skewed away from those players that the anecdotes in question would be similar to.

Darth Ultron

2016-07-23, 05:52 PM

To be fair, the types who play those games are probably less likely to visit or seek out optimization boards like this or minmax. Thus the population is skewed away from those players that the anecdotes in question would be similar to.

Very true.

King of Nowhere

2016-07-23, 07:06 PM

sorry for the intrusion, because it is clear that you guys know this stuff much better than me (I generally get my pcs to join organizations that provide, among others, scrying protection and information gathering, while assuming that the most important stuff will be shielded; so I just handwave it by saying "divinations and spies discovered X, now you have to investigate further on your own"), but I have a question on contact other planes:

namely, aren't those powerful beings on other planes going to be pissed if high level wizards pop in all the time to ask them questions?

because, I don't know about you, but if I had a wizard popping in a few times a day (which seems a reasonable statistical estimate based on the amount of high level wizards in the world who use contact other planes, and the amount of extraplanar beings that are contacted in this way), I'd either chase them away, or ask them some payment.

But in the end, I think there are enough moves and countermoves that you can consider spying (magical or nonmagical) as akin to a game of chess: sure, a sufficiently skilled chessplayer never get surprised because he always sees ahead and plan advance; except that no one is perfect, and so a sufficiently skilled opponent will manage to surprise him with something he hadn't seen every one in a while. So, even the best wizard using all the divinations in the world can be occasionally surprised. Still better than not using those divinations and being surprised all the time, though.

Troacctid

2016-07-23, 07:14 PM

namely, aren't those powerful beings on other planes going to be pissed if high level wizards pop in all the time to ask them questions?
Probably not. It's not like it's the same being being contacted all day long by every wizard. There are a lot of extraplanar entities.

ExLibrisMortis

2016-07-23, 07:17 PM

because, I don't know about you, but if I had a wizard popping in a few times a day (which seems a reasonable statistical estimate based on the amount of high level wizards in the world who use contact other planes, and the amount of extraplanar beings that are contacted in this way), I'd either chase them away, or ask them some payment.
This is one of those weird cases where the fluff and crunch don't mesh without some non-official wrangling, especially if you're talking about deities. The spell doesn't mention any payment, so it doesn't require anything (besides spell energy, which may be considered payment of sorts), but you're right that most deities would be drowned in requests. For example, there are several infinite planes, which would be expected to have infinite numbers of diviners - any deity would be hard-pressed to answer them all, if they were just the stat blocks in Deities & Demigods (which are really low-power, for beings supposedly in complete command of entire planes and conceptual domains).

Personally, I see two ways out of this:
1) Deities' minds are just that all-encompassing. They can answer prayers and grant spells to practically any number of followers, and contact other plane/commune is just an improved sort of prayer.
2) Spells that contact deities form a facsimile of the personality and knowledge of the relevant deity. This information is accessible to spellcasting somehow, either made available by the deity, or woven into the fabric of the universe, as part of how deities 'are' their domain , or in whatever other way you prefer.

In the case of powerful non-deities (genies, mostly), it's much easier, because there are usually huge/infinite numbers of them anyway.

King of Nowhere

2016-07-23, 07:32 PM

Personally, I see two ways out of this:
1) Deities' minds are just that all-encompassing. They can answer prayers and grant spells to practically any number of followers, and contact other plane/commune is just an improved sort of prayer.
2) Spells that contact deities form a facsimile of the personality and knowledge of the relevant deity. This information is accessible to spellcasting somehow, either made available by the deity, or woven into the fabric of the universe, as part of how deities 'are' their domain , or in whatever other way you prefer.

Yeah, those are good ways to deal with it. Though myself, preferring worlds with lower levels of munchkining, would go for
3) If you cast those kind of spells too often, the contacted entity will make sarcastic remarks and stop giving you answers.

EDIT: oh, maybe I like more
3a) If you cast those spells too often, the contacted entity will ask you to undertake a sidequest for them in payment.

Which would give interesting roleplaying limitations. Sure, you can gather a lot of information by saying "I cast this spell 100 times". And sure, the DM can block you by asking to roleplay each question, which would be boring for all. But asking you to go fight something unrelated? that would still make thhose spells costly in real time, but without making it boring. And suddenly the party would have to decide if the information is worth the time and risk of collecting them, giving more opportunities for meaningful choices.

Eldariel

2016-07-23, 08:20 PM

Yeah, those are good ways to deal with it. Though myself, preferring worlds with lower levels of munchkining, would go for
3) If you cast those kind of spells too often, the contacted entity will make sarcastic remarks and stop giving you answers.

My own preferred solution if I wanted to make things a little bit more interesting would be to assume you get the same answer to the same question each time. That is, if the entity chooses to lie about such a question it'll probably keep telling the same lie every time. This forces contacting multiple deities and cross-referencing, which is far less reliable. But certainly, I don't think one could reasonably assume that the deity's consciousness is much engaged in such an affair. A small portion, perhaps, but to do what a deity does the mind has to be beyond anything we could imagine in terms of scope and processing power. On the other hand, we know normal deities are far from omnipotent so chances are there's still some kind of a limitation to a deity's mind - thus I'd only assume the only sensible protocol is investing minimal resources in trivial affairs. Given how comparatively insignificant mortals are in the grand scheme of things, I doubt a deity would actually pay a particular one much heed.

Every arcane caster with access to level 5+ spells can cast the spell after all and as stated, that's a lot of creatures (humanoids are one thing but there are particularly Elemental Weirds, Ethergaunts and such which do it naturally) - thus any individual request, even hundredfold, would drown in there. However, if a deity chooses to give an answer, it would stand to reason she systematically give that answer to the same question - hence that being my choice. But that does not change much of course; there are plenty of deities to ask. In my games I alter all spells like these that work with tables/fixed checks to be a bit less safe though (same applies to Planar Binding/Gate/etc.).

Darth Ultron

2016-07-23, 10:00 PM

namely, aren't those powerful beings on other planes going to be pissed if high level wizards pop in all the time to ask them questions?

There are two answers here, depending on the mindset:

1.No. Page X does not say anything about that, so by the Rules, it does not happen. The spells in the book are for you to use, at will, any way you want to, unless a rule says something.

2.Yes. If you can ignore the rules and have a living bearhing game world. Any cosmic being does not mind a call for information once in a while, but a overly demanding needy spellcaster will be dealt with.

Quertus

2016-07-23, 11:21 PM

Flickerdart

2016-07-25, 09:40 AM

Why should a deity resent contact from commune any more than, for example, the GiantITP.com web server resents my browser's HTTP request?

Segev

2016-07-25, 10:03 AM

It's possible - thought not required - that contact other plane and commune don't actually demand conscious attention from the entities queried, but instead use divination magic to simply access their knowledge directly. In essence, allowing the caster to share the knowledge of the entity on the subject.

That does seem somewhat belied, however, by the possibility that the entity will lie.

torrasque666

2016-07-25, 10:50 AM

Why should a deity resent contact from commune any more than, for example, the GiantITP.com web server resents my browser's HTTP request?
429 Errors. All I gotta say. And unlike a web server, a deity is a sentient being with their own personality. Vecna for example, might really hate it if you try and weasel the unknown out of him.

Flickerdart

2016-07-25, 10:59 AM

429 Errors. All I gotta say. And unlike a web server, a deity is a sentient being with their own personality. Vecna for example, might really hate it if you try and weasel the unknown out of him.
The gods aren't just powerful humans. They are how the universe functions. Vecna's personality is what it is, but it doesn't change his role in the cosmology and the duties he performs.

Elder_Basilisk

2016-07-25, 11:45 AM

The gods aren't just powerful humans. They are how the universe functions. Vecna's personality is what it is, but it doesn't change his role in the cosmology and the duties he performs.

That's a rather setting dependent contention there--and in most published settings, the gods actually are depicted as powerful (and immortal) humans in the style of Greek or Roman gods in Bullfinch's mythology or the Norse gods in the sagas. The various ascended gods--many of whom are literally powerful humans or elves etc--or attempted ascendancies simply reinforce this. Vecna, Iuz, Myrlund, Zagyg, Mayaheine, and Kyuss in Greyhawk, Midnight, Kelemvor, Cyric, and Shevarash in FR, Aroden, Iomedae, and Cayden Cailean in Golarion are all examples of this. In fact, in FR, with the exception of Mystra/Midnight, many of the gods' duties are clearly optional since they are often presented as shirking them or as having shirked them in the past. While magic works differently without Mystra, nothing kept the elves from hating drow or taking vengeance before Shevarash ascended and if Shevarash were to die tomorrow and have Githyanki turn his corpse into an astral fortress, elves would be able to go on killing drow and taking vengeance unless they got their powers from him. Likewise, in Greyhawk, it's not as though no one could keep secrets or have knowledge until Vecna ascended and if he were somehow displaced and slain or returned to merely being an archlich, people would go on having secrets and using magic.

Flickerdart

2016-07-25, 12:16 PM

That's a rather setting dependent contention there--and in most published settings, the gods actually are depicted as powerful (and immortal) humans in the style of Greek or Roman gods in Bullfinch's mythology or the Norse gods in the sagas. The various ascended gods--many of whom are literally powerful humans or elves etc--or attempted ascendancies simply reinforce this. Vecna, Iuz, Myrlund, Zagyg, Mayaheine, and Kyuss in Greyhawk, Midnight, Kelemvor, Cyric, and Shevarash in FR, Aroden, Iomedae, and Cayden Cailean in Golarion are all examples of this. In fact, in FR, with the exception of Mystra/Midnight, many of the gods' duties are clearly optional since they are often presented as shirking them or as having shirked them in the past. While magic works differently without Mystra, nothing kept the elves from hating drow or taking vengeance before Shevarash ascended and if Shevarash were to die tomorrow and have Githyanki turn his corpse into an astral fortress, elves would be able to go on killing drow and taking vengeance unless they got their powers from him. Likewise, in Greyhawk, it's not as though no one could keep secrets or have knowledge until Vecna ascended and if he were somehow displaced and slain or returned to merely being an archlich, people would go on having secrets and using magic.

You assume, again, that godly things are something that deities do, rather than are. Sure, there were secrets before Vecna, and there will be secrets after Vecna. This is because gods do not create portfolios. Otherwise every Tom, Drizz't, and Harry could decide to become a god by making a new portfolio for themselves.

Elder_Basilisk

2016-07-25, 01:21 PM

You assume, again, that godly things are something that deities do, rather than are. Sure, there were secrets before Vecna, and there will be secrets after Vecna. This is because gods do not create portfolios. Otherwise every Tom, Drizz't, and Harry could decide to become a god by making a new portfolio for themselves.

Not sure where you get that idea. It's certainly not in the RAW which is pretty much silent on whether domains represent things that gods do, things that gods are supposed to (but may not actually) do, things that gods are, or things that worshippers associate with gods regardless of whether or not they actually do or are them. The only thing the RAW seem to indicate for domains is that they are available for clerics to select and gain spells from. (And in pathfinder, the various heretic archetypes that allow domains not normally granted by the deity indicate a certain level of subjectivity to the various deities' domains since a deity does not need to have a domain in order to grant it to his followers).

The depictions in D&D fiction and setting sourcebooks as well as the legends, myths, and literature that form D&D's source material give the opposite impression. Certainly every depiction I have read gives deities a lot more agency than an computer server.

Not that it's really relevant except in a sidenote to a sidenote to a sidenote kind of way. Domains don't have anything to do with Contact Other Plane in the RAW which does not distinguish between deities except by status (lesser, greater, etc). As I stated before, I think it is a reasonable DM interpretation that the table assumes the appropriate deity (by worshippers, domains, etc) is contacted (and that inappropriate deities would use different percentages), but that's not strictly RAW. By strict RAW, whether you ask Pelor about the sunlight, Hextor about the seasons, or Mayaheine about the tensile strength of darkwood, it's a percentile chance based on greater/lesser/etc deity and nothing more. It's also a perfectly reasonable DM call to say that repeating a question to any entity will give the same answer every time and that a deity (or other entity) could be annoyed by frequent, repeated, or inane questioning.