How to Information Warfare with divinations (no vecna-blooded)?

[Jowgen]

It has occured to me that I have no idea how two opposing nations/organizations/groups with access to varying levels of divination and anti-divination magics could engage in effective information warfare. As far as I know, the number of spells/effects that can be used to gather information on one's enemies far exceeds that of protective measures.

There are some relatively effective scrying-counters, but against everything else, nondetection is unreliable with its CL-check and Mindblank is pretty high level. Could someone explain to me how you're supposed to keep secrets and feed misinformation to your enemy when said enemy can e.g. simply go ask their nigh-omniscient deity for answers?

Sorry if this is a basic optimization issue I should really be familiar with.

[W3bDragon]

Detect Scrying is a pretty solid counter. It doesn't stop scrying, but you immediately know you're being scryed upon with no caster level check or saving throw. 21k GP nets you a 50 charge wand, which should cover most of any organization's top secret meetings for quite a while.

This of course doesn't address Contact Other Plane, but that spell is generally risky and finnicky, so its difficult to rely on its answers in serious life or death organization wide or country wide issues.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Stationary divination defense is easier and lower level than mobile options.
Mordenkainen's Private Sanctum is the big example, and there's also various kinds of wondrous architecture in the SBG.

A lot of the lower level divinations are also very limited, especially those without the scrying descriptor.
Most of them can be blocked by lead sheeting, are limited in range, require you to have already seen the target, are vague or have a chance to fail.

As for Contact other Plane, not only is the chance for intelligence decrease pretty high for most casters, you also only get one word answers.
So there's a good chance for your casters to become useless for several weeks and unless you already have a good idea what questions to ask the spell isn't all that useful to you. Even if you do it does have some rather sharp limits.
And that doesn't take into account that the entity contacted lies to you or makes up an answer, which even greater deities do. Or just gets annoyed and answers everything with "maybe".

So a group/organization can supplement their intelligence gathering with divinations, but if their enemies are roughly equal in level and not complete morons they'll need some old-fashioned spies as well.

[Jormengand]

Be psionic, use clairsentience powers, take at least 6 levels of slayer to be immune to divinations and clairsentiences. Psion 8/Slayer 6 is good at high levels, though you may want to take wilder to get in faster (Wilder 6/Slayer 6 or Wilder 4/Ranger 1/Slayer 6, though Psion 2/Ranger 3/Slayer 6 is possible if you're desperate to have that ability by level 11). For additional funsies, be invisible because you're immune to see invisibility and true seeing.

[Troacctid]

If you're a dragon, you could play Xorvintaal. A player's future moves in the game are automatically inscrutable.

[Anthrowhale]

Be psionic, use clairsentience powers, take at least 6 levels of slayer to be immune to divinations and clairsentiences. Psion 8/Slayer 6 is good at high levels, though you may want to take wilder to get in faster (Wilder 6/Slayer 6 or Wilder 4/Ranger 1/Slayer 6, though Psion 2/Ranger 3/Slayer 6 is possible if you're desperate to have that ability by level 11). For additional funsies, be invisible because you're immune to see invisibility and true seeing.

This seems best with Ardent 4/Ranger 1/Slayer 6 so the dead levels do not reduce the maximum power known.

[Darth Ultron]

Could someone explain to me how you're supposed to keep secrets and feed misinformation to your enemy when said enemy can e.g. simply go ask their nigh-omniscient deity for answers?

In most settings deity's are not ''nigh-omniscient''. They know a lot, but not ''everything''. And most deity's won't know a lot of ''mundane'' information anyway.

No Core there are some anti divination spells and items, and beyond core there are tons more. But note Core does have some really useful ones too. Namely illusions. You scry on a area and see ''100 half gold dragon troops'', that are an illusion. And ''scrying'' sure does not count as ''interaction'' for most DMs. And illusions, along with ''real fake stuff'' can go a long way (real fake stuff is a very, very real element in war...)

Transmutation is another great way to hide from scrying. ''The field only has five guards, a wizard and ten dogs''.....except all ten dogs are guards or wizards or dragons or whatever....

And when you get to ''mid to high level'' your talking about castles on other planes, anti magic areas, time travel and so forth. And the ''dirty tricks'' are countless....for example, bringing dead allies back to life. Every divination in the world will tell you the town of Hope has 25 fighters....not counting the powerful, high level ones six feet under...waiting to come back.

And don't forget the ''cold war'' to take out the foes diviners and such too....

[Jowgen]

Okay, so scrying is easily handled, and can be taken advantage of by using clever illusions, although that falls flat once a True Seeing crystal ball or similar comes into play. I do like the transmutation and keeping dead warriors on hand ideas though, those seem like pretty solid deceptions.

In terms of deities, they might not know everything, but their Remote Sensing ability is effectively impossible to counter and can very easily reach just about anywhere that might matter. Sure, a deity might not choose to use this one standard action to provide a correct answer a direct query from a follower using Commune; but that is not a secure thing to bank on.

Other spells that seem hard to counter would be the less powerful Divination, Legend Lore, Identify Transgressor, Commune with Nature/Earth/City, and Lay of the Land.

[danielxcutter]

Once you get Mind Blank, you can thumb your nose at most of the divinations in the game. Psions get Personal Mind Blank as well, a 7th-level power that can only be used on yourself.

[Jormengand]

Other spells that seem hard to counter would be the less powerful Divination, Legend Lore, Identify Transgressor, Commune with Nature/Earth/City, and Lay of the Land.

Pretty sure that those are all "devices, powers, and spells that reveal location", except for Identify Transgressor, which can be defeated by not having a name. So, be a nameless slayer and laugh. Alternatively, mind blank as noted above just completely makes you immune to divinations, and of course slayers can cast manifest it.

[danielxcutter]

Pretty sure that those are all "devices, powers, and spells that reveal location", except for Identify Transgressor, which can be defeated by not having a name. So, be a nameless slayer and laugh. Alternatively, mind blank as noted above just completely makes you immune to divinations, and of course slayers can cast manifest it.

Technically you're talking about Cerebral Blind, and the enchantment immunity part is called Cerebral Immunity. Both only work while you're psionically focused, though. Still, if you're not a Psychic Warrior you'll likely have access to Mind Blank anyways, and Psywars get Personal Mindblank as a 6th-level power.

[Darth Ultron]

Other spells that seem hard to counter would be the less powerful Divination, Legend Lore, Identify Transgressor, Commune with Nature/Earth/City, and Lay of the Land.

Those spells offer only limited intelligence and a lot of the time you ''need to ask the right question''. Legend lore only works for ''legendary'' things, so you can't focus it on ''the present'', and even if you some how rule it does it gives ''legends'' like ''Korn is a powerful warrior with a flaming sword of fire!''.

You might note that illusions will fool the ''commune'' spells....depending on the DM. They ''should'', as if the Nature/Earth/City ''somehow'' sees a red dragon it can say ''I saw a red dragon'', then it would also ''see'' an illusion of a red dragon....and not have true sight. The Nature/Earth/City can also be fooled by ''five year old tricks''......like having the same 25 trolls walk by and then teleport them back to walk by again. The Nature/Earth/City will think ''oh 500 trolls walked by'', when it was the same 25 lots of times.

[Jormengand]

Technically you're talking about Cerebral Blind, and the enchantment immunity part is called Cerebral Immunity. Both only work while you're psionically focused, though.

Yes, I'm aware of this? I didn't mention either of them by name. :smallconfused:

Also, there are vanishingly few, if any effects that can remove your psionic focus without your say-so, and if necessary you can take the feat that gives your psicrystal a second focus.

[danielxcutter]

Yes, I'm aware of this? I didn't mention either of them by name. :smallconfused:

Also, there are vanishingly few, if any effects that can remove your psionic focus without your say-so, and if necessary you can take the feat that gives your psicrystal a second focus.

You said that Slayers could manifest Mind Blank, which is different as having it as a class feature. Could be just a misunderstanding, though.

Also, it might be better to just use Mind Blank rather than risk forgetting to be psionically focused and let your guard down. Psicrystal Containment, which is what you're talking about, could take care of that.

[Stealth Marmot]

To be perfectly honest, the best defense against people peeking in during a meeting is standard soundproofing and an anti-magic field.

As far as using deities to look in, I'm pretty sure that deities will probably get annoyed by being called every few minutes to say "Can you look at this? How about this?"

What's more, in order to ask questions, you need proper context. You have to specifically ask for information that you need, and if you don't already know the context of what you are looking for you can't ask the right question. If you just ask the deity in question "When will our enemy next attack?" Then the deity will probably roll their eyes and say "Sometime."

See, you need to define the type of attack, what constitutes an attack, where they will attack, whether it is a military, economical, espionage, diplomatic, or even CULTURAL attack.

You need to know the names of key players, you need to know who their generals are, who their high ranking officials are, and which ones are puppets and which ones are actual power players. You need to know who the behind the scenes players are. You need to know their weak points and points you can attack, and you need to know your OWN weak points and potential points of attack. You need to know where spies or other espionage tactics may be going on in your own kingdom. You need to know what sorts of possible options there are for sabotage, spying, or other forms of espionage. You need to know as much about your side's weaknesses as your enemies.

The long and short of it is, divination magic is useful, but not a cheat code for God Mode intelligence.

In order to have proper intelligence, you have to have competent spymasters organizing intelligence, keeping records, keeping their records up to date, using divination magic if necessary but mostly using informants. Spies gather info mostly through informants, spying on places, overhearing things, using social engineering, bribery, stealing necessary documents, and even interrogation.

If agents have the ability to use divination magic, it makes them more effective, but you need agents, you need organization, you need context, and you need strategy.

[Jormengand]

You said that Slayers could manifest Mind Blank, which is different as having it as a class feature. Could be just a misunderstanding, though.
Slayers have the Cerebral Blind class feature. Also, Slayers can usually manifest Mind Blank. Neither of these is in contradiction to the other.


Also, it might be better to just use Mind Blank rather than risk forgetting to be psionically focused and let your guard down. Psicrystal Containment, which is what you're talking about, could take care of that.

Given that there's nothing that can stop you being psionically focused when you become psionically focused, I don't see this as an issue anyway.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Info wars are conducted the same way they are IRL now and likely will be in the near future. You just need to be familiar with the limitations of the divinations themselves and exploit them. I'll now address CoP in particular.

CoP's access to deific senses is -far- from infallible. Even before you consider the far reach and potential prescience of those senses, they're limited to only a handful of remote viewings at any time and have interests of their own. Some wizardly schmuck asking about something you're too busy to worry about doesn't warrant looking into it, it warrants "I dunno."

Then you consider the actual limits of the deific senses; they don't universally have true-seeing and can be fooled by the same illusions (don't forget mundane misdirection) as scrying. That alone puts a pretty significant dent in the spell. They have perfect knowledge of their portfolio but not necessarily to things that correlate to that portfolio or things that are merely nearby to elements of that portfolio.

Remote viewing must be centered on a deity's worshipers, shrines, artifacts, or other things related directly to that deity or his portfolio. Pick the wrong deity, you get no useful information.

Deities have agendas and can -lie- to the caster or tell him the truth in a misleading way to nudge things in a direction he wants things to go. Even if they don't have a particular agenda that you can contribute to directly, they still resent the contact and can mislead you just out of sheer spite. All of the above presuming their information is 100% accurate to begin with which, unless it's a direct element of their portfolio, rather than something nearby, is far from guaranteed.

Deities' remote viewing ability can be -blocked- by other deities if the target of that remote viewing is of significant interest to them and the latter deity is of higher rank. If your contacted deity is blocked, he cannot have useful information to give you.

I'll leave off getting into the whole rationale behind it and simply state that the ability of greater deities to see into the future can be rendered imperfect by imparting that knowledge. Simply by asking the deity about the future you can damage the veracity of the information it gives. (More importantly, this is basically impossible to adjudicate without breaking out the rail-ties.)

bottom line: CoP is a -long- way from perfect recon. It's just one more source.

[Crake]

Psychic warriors get personal mind blank as a 6th level power, ML11 requirement. Artificers can craft things 2 levels earlier, meaning you can craft an item of continuous, personal mind blank at level 9, for 33,000gp and 2640xp (ML11*power level 6*2000gp continuous/2, 24 hour duration = 66,000gp market value).

If personal divination immunity is a big factor for you, level 9 WBL is 36,000gp, so you can afford that for yourself (and nothing else :smalltongue:) assuming you have a friendly level 9 artificer around. If not, level 11 with an artificer cohort can easily afford it without needing to invest into slayer.

Funnily enough, level 9 is also when private sanctum comes online

[daremetoidareyo]

There would be a national premium on "live my nightmare" spelltouched. Entire burocracies would be put in place for a steady stream of spelltouched. One kingdom would get all Tuskegee experiment with its most betrodden castes while another makes deals with night hags.

Spelltouched folks could charge 100s of GP depending on charisma.

[Melcar]

It has occured to me that I have no idea how two opposing nations/organizations/groups with access to varying levels of divination and anti-divination magics could engage in effective information warfare. As far as I know, the number of spells/effects that can be used to gather information on one's enemies far exceeds that of protective measures.

There are some relatively effective scrying-counters, but against everything else, nondetection is unreliable with its CL-check and Mindblank is pretty high level. Could someone explain to me how you're supposed to keep secrets and feed misinformation to your enemy when said enemy can e.g. simply go ask their nigh-omniscient deity for answers?

Sorry if this is a basic optimization issue I should really be familiar with.

In one of our campaigns, we use mundane agents. A mix of rogue, spymasters and experts to infiltrate and place forged documents of the "right" (false) information. Some of the infiltrations might be at the political level, which in turn affects the political process which in turn drips down through society. We have set up a whole department of covert operations which include a domestic and foreign intelligence service as well as a special operations group which include assassins for those pesky politicians who wont do what we say. We call them "The Long Knives" they only operate at night!

We try to keep most of that kind of clandestine intelligence activities at the mundane or low magic level for simplicity and because it works quite well. It also has a smaller footprint than magic and is harder to trace.

[Stealth Marmot]

(stuff)
bottom line: CoP is a -long- way from perfect recon. It's just one more source.

Well stated, this is along the lines I was saying as well. Divination magic is useful, but not the alpha and omega of good intelligence. I would mention if you do want to use CoP, you better know who you are contacting and that they are on your side. This means that it would be likely that if there is a god of secrets, any intelligence group worth their salt are going to be doing what they can to gain their favor.

Plus they would have to know what question to ask in the first place.

It's worth noting that different cities and states probably have the favor of different deities, so if you ask your deity to look into something for you, another deity might interfere saying "back off" or just plain block it.

I also want to repeat that gods are, at least normally, aloof and sometimes haughty about mortal affairs. You can imagine a deity being asked a bunch of intelligence questions might start getting real irritated that the kingdom can't handle their own intelligence gathering. Plus deities would want to make sure you know they don't work for YOU or work under YOUR schedule or agenda.