My Opinion On Divination Spells

[Bartmanhomer]

I was checking out the Divination Spells on D&D Wiki and all of these divination spells are kind of lame in my opinion. Like Read Magic spell for example. Why does that even exist? Any wizard can read a spellbook. You don't even need that spell for it. Another example Detect Secret Doors. It's a useless spell. Also there's no direct damage and protective spells for divination. And you can't even banned divination school for it. Divination Spells are the worst spells in D&D 3.5. What do you think of this topic? :mad:

[Venger]

I was checking out the Divination Spells on D&D Wiki and all of these divination spells are kind of lame in my opinion. Like Read Magic spell for example. Why does that even exist? Any wizard can read a spellbook. You don't even need that spell for it. Another example Detect Secret Doors. It's a useless spell. Also there's no direct damage and protective spells for divination. And you can't even banned divination school for it. Divination Spells are the worst spells in D&D 3.5. What do you think of this topic? :mad:

don't look on dandwiki, it's full of terrible untagged homebrew

there are some spells in divination that enhance or grant the ability to do damage, such as healer's vision. it's also where a great deal of important utility such as being able to see invisible enemies comes from with spells like see invisibility and true sight.

this is to say nothing of scrying which has a whole strategy (scry and die) built around it assuming your gm doesn't cheat.

divination may not deal a lot of hit point damage, but who cares? hit point damage is best left to the party brute, not the primary caster

the weakest school is easily enchantment, since it's more or less wholly nullified by a 1st level spell.

[Kayblis]

I disagree wholeheartedly. You're looking at low level spells(level 0 and 1 respectively). These spells aren't supposed to be gamechangers, like anything from levels 0 and 1. They're utility, utility pretty much everyone needs from time to time, even if it's just for a scroll to use when secret doors are known to be present in a given setup.

Just to drive my point home, those are some spells by level:
0 - Detect Magic, a common must-have for everyone.
1 - Guided Shot/True Strike/Targeting Ray/True Casting, some spells to aid your to-hit with attacks and bypassing SR. Scholar's Touch lets you read entire libraries in a day. Some are Swift actions, which means you don't waste your main actions.
2 - Chain of Eyes for espionage, Detect Toughts for information you're not getting through talk. Sense Weakness to cast before sleeping.
3 - Unluck to force an opponent to reroll EVERY DIE HE ROLLS and take the worse result. Tongues for your language barriers with anything that talks. Clarivoyance is your first real Scry-esque spell. Arcane Sight lets you see anything, including invisible people, with either a magic effect(like, say, the invisibility spell cast on it) or carrying magic items.
4 - Scrying to gather information, half the work of a Scry-n'-fry tactic. Assay Spell Resistance as a swift action is great for higher levels. Know Vulnerabilities to justify any metagaming and gather info on any enemy you personally don't know.
I think you get the idea.

Divination is not the school you'll use to whack at your opponents. It's the school that will let you know how, when and how much to whack said opponent. Its help comes in the kind of "strike by the sunset, when the guards are switching shifts, and focus on the little one because he's the real danger", instead of more d6 of damage and more allies, which other schools specialize on.

[ZamielVanWeber]

The reason, the only reason, that you cannot ban Divination is because Read Magic was moved from Universal to Divination. In 3.0 it was possible to ban Divination depending on your school (specialization worked oddly in 3.0).

[Venger]

Read Magic automatically bypasses the need for Spellcraft checks to identify scrolls or spells in other spellbooks. If you fail those checks, you have to wait 24 hours to try again. This makes the spell incredibly useful.


The Search DC to find a secret door is typically 20 or 30, which isn't exactly a cakewalk when you're pressed for time.


Not in the SRD, but True Strike does grant a +20 insight bonus to a single attack roll. It's not direct damage, but it's handy.


A valid complaint.


I'd say that Detect Magic, Detect Scrying, Detect Thoughts, Identify, See Invisibility, are Scrying are far from the worst spells.
true strike is on the srd (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/trueStrike.htm)

The reason, the only reason, that you cannot ban Divination is because Read Magic was moved from Universal to Divination. In 3.0 it was possible to ban Divination depending on your school (specialization worked oddly in 3.0).

In 3.0, depending on what school you picked to specialize in, your banned schools were pre-selected for you. varying between schools, some also had to give up more schools than others. it was a mess:

abj:
1) conj, ench, evoc, illus, or trans
2) both div and necro

conj:
1)evocation or
2) any 2 of the following 3: abj, ench, illus
3) trans
4) any 3 schools

div: ban any one school

ench:
1) either abj, conj, evoc, illus, or trans,
2) both div and necro

evoc:
1) conj
2) any 2 of the following 3: abj, ench, illus,
3) trans
4) any 3 schools

illus:
1) either abj, conj, ench, evoc, or trans
2) both div and necro

necro: ban any one school

trans:
1) conj
2) evoc
3) any 2 of the following 3: abj, ench, ill,
4) any 3

[Eldariel]

Read Magic is useful early on. Later still for Sorcs. Detect Magic is always useful and one of the only means for level 1 characters to detect and find Invisible things (high enough Spot is nigh' impossible to come by). Later on, spells like Scry and Contact Other Plane can give you information that's literally impossible to come by otherwise, and in the world information is power. Basically every quest is easier to solve if you can ask the right questions and find out the answers.

Not to mention Scry can give you sufficient information to Teleport meaning suddenly nobody is safe from you; instead of you having to travel to their location you can just Scry a target you wish to find or gank and teleport nearby, surprise them and carry them away in a coffin/soul trapped in a Thinaun weapon/Magic Jar/etc.


Sure, you would never prepare Detect Secret Doors or the like but having scrolls available for when you need them can be a huge gamechanger that goes from wasting your trip to the dungeon to enabling you to find your target item/location.

[Sam K]

"Detect troll" as an SLA is pretty useful...

[Eldariel]

"Detect troll" as an SLA is pretty useful...

That would be the case normally but this is a BMH thread.

[ZamielVanWeber]

I forgot about this but Divination possesses an amazing defensive spell in core: Foresight.

[weckar]

That would be the case normally but this is a BMH thread.
I think you just gave the best argument for why divination is useless. "Detect Troll" is entirely unneeded :smallamused:

[Bartmanhomer]

"Detect troll" as an SLA is pretty useful...

I'm no troll. So stop assuming that I am one. I just make a thread to expressed my opinion on divination spells. What you said is very unnecessary. :mad:

[weckar]

I just make a thread to expressed my opinion on divination spells.
I'm sorry, but that's really the problem. "Expressing your opinion" is hardly the point of a discussion thread, especially as an opening post.

[Sam K]

I'm no troll. So stop assuming that I am one. I just make a thread to expressed my opinion on divination spells. What you said is very unnecessary. :mad:

What? 90% of all billy goat deaths is related to crossing troll-infested bridges! That SLA can save countless lives!

[NickTheGreek3]

I was checking out the Divination Spells on D&D Wiki and all of these divination spells are kind of lame in my opinion. Like Read Magic spell for example. Why does that even exist? Any wizard can read a spellbook. You don't even need that spell for it. Another example Detect Secret Doors. It's a useless spell. Also there's no direct damage and protective spells for divination. And you can't even banned divination school for it. Divination Spells are the worst spells in D&D 3.5. What do you think of this topic? :mad:

You say that the Divination school is lame. It's not.
It doesn't have "damage and protective spells"? Why should it? Evocation specializes in damage, abjuration in defence and Necromancy in debuffing and undeath. Divination specializes in information. Information that can be crucial for your party's success. Some useful spells that come to mind are: Scrying, Locate Object/Creature, Tongues/Comprehend Languages. Read Magic can identify the spells scribed onto scrolls without triggering them. Also, Identify. True Strike, for when you really want to hit your target. See Invisibility for that pesky mage with Greater Invisibility. Detect Magic and Detect Evil are of the Divination school. Detect Secret Doors, while situational, is useful when your party has no dwarf or elf in it. All those spells are 4th level and below.

As you can see, while it's probably not a very good school to specialize in, Divination is far from lame.