Doctor Despair
2021-08-28, 11:48 PM
I've seen folks discuss using divination as a secondary tech to plan which spells to prepare, but I've always wondered: exactly how much support could there possibly be for forcing the DM to predict the future? As it turns out: a lot of fluff, but a few solid pieces of crunch.
Immediate-Term:
Red Falcon Paladin 2: Brilliant Strategy allows the character to predict the immediate actions of her enemies and her best options to take advantage of those actions as an immediate action 1 + 1/2 class level times per day. This grants an insight bonus to AC equal to her charisma for 1 round.
Jordain Vizier 2: Combat Insight allows the character to predict an opponent's next move to "some extent," granting a +1 insight bonus on attack rolls and a +1 dodge bonus to AC, increasing to +2 at level 4.
Divine Mind 1: The Time mantle grants allies within the aura the ability to see just a moment into the future, increasing their reaction time. This grants a +2 to initiative checks and a +1 on reflex saves.
True Strike (Divination): This allows the character to, as a standard action, gain temporary, intuitive insight into the immediate future during their next attack (within the next round), gaining a +20 insight bonus to the attack and ignoring concealment miss chance.
Sure Strike (Divination): This allows the character to, as a swift action immediately before an attack roll, gain a fleeting glimpse into the future to guide their impending attack, gaining a +1 insight bonus / 3 caster levels on the attack.
Eyes of the Oracle (Divination): This allows the character to, as a standard action, see into the future for 1 round/level to slightly anticipate their opponents' next moves, granting a +2 insight bonus to AC and reflex saves (+3 if you're dragonblooded) and, at the end of your turn, ready a standard action regardless of the number of actions taken that round. If you take the readied action, the spell ends immediately.
Foresight (Divination): This allows the character to, for 10 minutes/level, gain instantaneous warnings of impending danger or harm to the subject of the spell, preventing flat-footedness, giving general ideas of how best to protect yourself, and granting a +2 insight bonus to AC and reflex saves.
Dark Foresight (Invocation): As Foresight, but at will; still only accessible in the late-game
Most of these abilities are fluff for simple mechanical bonuses. Foresight alone has a separate clause that can yield new information (e.g. how best to protect yourself from the imminent danger), but as a 9th level spell, it's relatively inaccessible until very late in the campaign.
Short-Term:
Sign (Divination): This allows the character to see the future in billowing smoke for a brief moment, granting a +4 on their next initiative check.
Augury (Divination): With 70-90% accuracy, the character receives divine insight into whether a particular action will bring good or bad results in the next half-hour: weal (good), woe (bad), weal and woe (both), nothing (neutral). A failed roll returns the "nothing" result.
Medani Prophet 2: Blood Augury lets the character convert least dragonmark charges into auguries.
Olin Gisir 2: Signs and Portents allows the character to use augury 3x/day.
Dungeon Delver 3: Augury allows the character to use augury as a free action once per day per three class levels.
Watch Detective 4: Once per day (or twice at 7th, thrice at 10th level), Deductive Augury allows the character to make an assertion. 70% +1/level, the player will be told if the assertion is true or untrue, but with no explanation. On a failed roll, no information is given. This can give insight into the future so long as the DM believes there is enough information for the character to make an educated guess.
Sybil 3: Riddle (Conundrum) allows the character to give a simple riddle 1x/day/class level. A successful answer grants an augury spell with no chance of failure. An unsuccessful answer causes the questioner to take 1 point of damage to an ability score of the sybil's choice.
Seer (General): This allows the character to use augury as an SLA 1/day as a full-round action, but the distance into the future is limited to 10 minutes. It provides a +1 luck bonus to listen, search, sense motive, and spot until you use the SLA.
Omen of Peril (Divination): With 70-90% accuracy, the character receives divine insight into the safety of their journey for the next hour: safety, peril (normal challenges), or great danger (over-CR'd enemies or traps). Failure gives a wrong result.
Augury seems to be the default for short-term divinations, with most other spells and abilities imitating it to some extent (with the exception of Sign, a fluff-for-mechanics spell). Seer is notable for converting a feat slot directly into an augury SLA, but the feat tax for Divine Fervor is a little punishing; the free-action augury from Dungeon Delver is cute, although the rest of the class is somewhat unhelpful. Olin Gisir and Sybil grant the most bang for their buck, so to speak, with regard to Augury uses here. It's especially nice that they grant them as SLAs, as that waives the gold cost for spamming augury repeatedly.
Medium-Term (Less than 1 day):
Precognitive Visions (Abyssal Heritor): This allows the character to see "possible futures" for each day, granting floating +1 insight bonuses to AC, attacks rolls, initiative checks, a type of saving throw, or a specific skill equal to 1/2 the number of AH feats the character has (min 1). These also grant intrusive hallucinations of these visions.
Zerth Cenobite 4: Precognition allows the character to "glimpse fragments of potential future events," granting a +2 insight bonus to any attack roll, damage roll, saving throw, or skill check 1/day after making the roll (or 2/day at 7th level).
These are more fluff to justify minor mechanical bonuses, just as the immediate-term abilities were. The fluff isn't even particularly fitting for someone trying to see the future, either, considering they allow you to see possibilities instead of a concrete answer.
Long-Term:
Medani Prophet 1: Prophetic Vision allows the character to receive powerful images of the past and future (the frequency and nature of which are determined by the needs of the campaign). The visions often connect to the character's current location, and require a DC15 will save or be stunned for 1d4 rounds if they arrive while the character is awake.
Dreamtelling (General): With a DC 20-45 Knowledge (the planes) DC, the character can interpret the symbolism of a dream to get information about the future. Meeting the DC grants information equal to an augury spell. Exceeding the check by 10 grants information equal to a divination spell; exceeding it by 20 grants information equal to a commune spell (leading to a 20-65 range for the DC).
Weather Eye (Divination): Predict the weather up to one week into the future, and any spells or abilities in effect that will alter it in a 1 mile + 1 mile/level radius around you.
Cataclysm Mage 1: Personal Prophecy is technically a self-fulfilling prophecy; at 1st, 4th, 7th, and 10th levels, the mage receives a prophecy for something that is to happen to the mage from a table. There is a small bonus for fulfilling them, and an optional harsh penalty (barring class advancement) for not fulfilling them.
Visionary Seeker 2: Spell Mimic technically allows the Seeker to cast any of the future-telling spells 1/day, or 2/day at level 6, or 3/day at level 10.
Prophet of Erathaoi 1: Ecstasy allows the character to have a chance to reproduce a divination spell or a commune spell once per day per class level, but has a 7/9 chance to do some other unrelated effect.
Taint: Gaining mild depravity can cause you to have the Prophetic effect, granting you the penalties of continual nightmares. You profess a different prophecy 1x/week to everyone you meet. There is a 10% chance the prophecy is true. There is no limit to how far in the future this might reach, and the accuracy of a prophecy might be able to be confirmed using other divination. This requires your DM to be using taint rules however.
Divination (Divination): With 70-90% accuracy, the character receives a piece of advice (a short phrase, rhyme, or omen) in reply to a question concerning a specific goal, event, or activity that is to occur within one week. Unlike Augury, you know if the spell failed.
Sybil 5: Riddle (Mystery) allows the character to generate a moderately challenging riddle 1x/day/class level. A successful answer yields the benefits of a divination spell with no chance of failure. An incorrect answer causes 2 points of temporary ability damage to a score of the sybil's choice for the questioner.
Medani Prophet 4: Medani Guidance lets the character convert lesser dragonmark charges into divinations.
Earth Dreamer 2: The Earth Dream ability allows the character to use divination 1/day so long as the question regards mountains in some way.
Commune (Divination): For 1 round/level, you can ask your deity--or agents therof-- 1 yes or no question per caster level. The answerer may not know the answer, so will return "unclear." If a yes or no would be misleading or contrary to the deity's interest, a short phrase (5 words or less) may be given as an answer instead. The distance into the future this can reach depends on the deity contacted's divine rank; deities can sense one week into the future and past for every divine rank they have.
Omniscient Whispers (General) converts a feat slot into a commune, but leaves you exhasted afterward.
Sybil 7: Riddle (Koan) allows the character to generate a challenging riddle 1x/day/2 class levels (rounded down). A successful answer yields the benefits of a commune spell cast to contact a powerful extraplanar philosophical being. An unsuccessful answer causes 2 points of temporary ability damage to each ability score of the questioner.
Improved Familiar (General): Imps get access to a commune-like ability 1/week, so as your familiar, you should too. Ymmv on the reliability of the answers, however, as you are not the questioner, nor do you know who the imp will ask.
Contact Other Plane (Divination): Acting as a weaker Commune, but without the XP cost, and with the ability to contact any deity you prefer. There are edge cases where this might be able to pry desired information about the future from an unrelated deity that you might otherwise struggle to find.
Dragon Prophet 1: Constellation Power (Chronepsis) allows the character to use commune 1/week, but to communicate with the power of the draconic Prophecy instead of a deity; this is arguably less likely to return "answer unclear." It also grants a +2 insight bonus to sense motive as you have frequent premonitions about what people or creatures mean to say before they speak (making this also immediate).
Divine Agent 5: Commune, surprisingly enough, allows the character to use commune 1/week. At the 8th level, Audience allows the character to use a double-duration commune by meeting up with their deity.
Dragon Shaman 14: Commune with Dragon Spirit grants the ability to use commune to ask 1 question/3 class levels of your dragon totem 1x/7 days.
Sapphire Hierarch 1: Consultation allows the character to use commune to ask questions of the Saphire Eidolon, but only 3 times ever for each class level you reach and, upon reaching the 10th level, 1x/month.
Long-term future-telling offers a lot more in the way of options. Cataclysm Mage is kind of a meme, and Weather Eye is super narrow, but Medani Prophet is a valuable include because, while there's no mechanical way to force a vision, there's also no hard limit on the number of or frequency of visions you have. This sort of build is only viable with a DM willing to play along, so giving them a vehicle to give you as many hints as they want is no small thing. This, of course, requires you to be a half-elf to meet the prerequisites. Additionally, the class lets you convert dragonmark SLAs into additional divinations. Dreamtelling offers seemingly unlimited uses of augury, divination, and commune, limited only by the amount of people you can get to sit down and describe their dream to you.
Sybil offers as many as 25 uses of augury, divination, and commune, but doesn't advance casting; if every other level advanced casting, you'd lose out on 2 Auguries, 2 divinations, and 19 communes by going straight sybil, meaning the net swing by going straight sybil is +8 auguries, +8 divinations, -14 communes. This is a net gain in spells and, notably, dodges the XP cost associated with casting the commune spells; additionally, being able to get the augury and divinations with no chance of failure is nothing to scoff at, increasing the number of successful divinations each day, and the class also reduces the casting time to a standard action. We do miss out on communes, assuming we wanted to spend all our spell slots and thousands of xp each day casting them, but those are also limited by what the extraplanar being wants us to know.
Notably, the class conveys benefits for a correct answer, and penalties for an incorrect answer, but does not specify how many answers may be given to any given riddle. With a means to mitigate the penalties, you should be able to check answers to riddles without fear of wasting the charge.
Sybil offers a lot as it comes to future-telling effects, but has some steep requirements -- notably, that we have an innate spell-like divination ability. The consensus online seems to be that this should be a racial ability, so that narrows things down considerably. There are a number of races that offer a racial divination SLA:
Uldra
Rock Gnome
Air Gnome
Aquatic Gnome
Arctic Gnome
Desert Gnome
Forest Gnome
Ice Gnome
Jungle Gnome
Wavecrest Gnome
Kobold or Changeling (Rite of Draconic Passage) [Debatable]
Spirit Folk (Bamboo/River)
Lesser Deepwyrm Drow
Deepwyrm Half-Drow
Zenythri
Jermlaine
Dragon, wyrmling brass
Elf, ghost
Extaminar
Laika
Xvart
Yan Ti Pureblood
With that said, as Half-Elf doesn't appear on that list (for Medani Prophet), a template that offers a divination SLA would be ideal.
Alu-Demon
Half-Celestial
Half-Doppelganger
Half-Fey
Half-Illithid
Half-Janni
Half-Undead (Fetch)
Half-Undead (Gheden)
Phrenic (with psionics-magic transparency)
Ti-Khana
Woodling
Of these, Half-Fey and Phrenic come in at the lowest level adjustment (+2), making them somewhat palatable with buy-off rules in play. As such, a Half-Fey Half-Elf or Phrenic Half-Elf might be ideal for such a future-teller. Phrenic is definitely the stronger template, as it offers 10 + HD power/spell resistance, but as it's not a given that a DM will agree that clairsentience PSAs will qualify as divination SLAs for the purposes of prerequisites, let's use Half-Fey:
Pythia, Seer to Aureon
https://64.media.tumblr.com/127fcbd11b94125c4c90d84c765cc419/tumblr_nm9qetrRjh1qeijvdo6_r1_250.gifv
Half-
Fey
Half-Elf
LA
+2
Stat
Array
After Racial/ Template Modifiers
4th
8th
12th
16th
20th
Final
Str
8
8
-
-
-
-
-
8
Dex
8
10
-
-
-
-
-
10
Con
12
10
-
-
-
-
-
10
Int
14
14
-
-
-
-
-
14
Wis
18
20
+1
+1
+1
+1
+1
25
Cha
14
18
-
-
-
-
-
18
HD
Class
Feat
Class Feature
Notes
1
Cloistered Cleric
Least Dragonmark (Mark of Detection)
Turn or rebuke undead, Lore, Knowledge/Oracle/Magic domain, Bonus spells known
Omen of Peril is our introduction to fortune telling, and racial charm person at will helps us serve as a potent party face. Our racial hypnotism, faerie fire, and glitterdust will also help us to be relevant in combat. Our native flyspeed will come in handy for scouting, too.
2
Cloistered Cleric
-
-
-
3
Cloistered Cleric
Dreamtelling
-
With the addition of Dreamtelling, we now have a chance to get the benefits of a future-telling spell once for each member in your party (or more if you can line up cheap mooks who will honestly relay their dreams). The lowest DC to read the future is 20, potentially granting a free augury with a medium roll. At this level, augury's 25gp is still a pretty decent hit to our wallet, so the free option is valuable. We also get the ability to actually cast augury with our second level spell slots (with 76% accuracy). Racial sla sleep grants us another combat option, too, as does enthrall for out of combat challenges.
4
Cloistered Cleric
-
-
-
5
Cloistered Cleric
-
-
Our racial SLAs advance again, granting us protection from law, Tasha's hideous laughter, and suggestion.
6
Visionary Seeker
Lesser Dragonmark (Mark of Detection)
Divination expertise
We get a small bump in our divination caster level, bringing us up to an 80% chance of success for those spells when we do cast them.
7
Medani Prophet
-
Heir's mark, Keen insight, Prophetic vision
Racial SLA's advance again, granting confusion and emotion. More importantly, we can now receive any number of prophetic visions from the DM, allowing for in-game updates on secrets and plot! We also get access to actual Divination, letting us peer a week into the future. This is probably the first real spike in utility for the build, and it is the first of many.
8
Medani Prophet
-
Improved dragonmark, Blood augury
We now have have 4 uses of our least dragonmark, and 2 uses of our lesser dragonmark. Additionally, we can burn our least dragonmark charges for auguries! This is notable because not only does it dodge the gold cost for augury, it also reduces the casting time from 10 rounds to 1 round, greatly increasing its tactical usage.
9
Medani Prophet
Empower Spell-Like Ability (Hypnotism)
Dragon's shield
Hypnotism is the only SLA we have with a variable numeric component. If we can convince the DM that Augury's percentile roll is a variable numeric component that can be empowered, then that could be overwhelmingly positive for the build, but how we handle a percentile of greater than 100% would also affect its utility. We also get eyebite and lesser geas as racial SLAs here!
10
Medani Prophet
-
Improved dragonmark, Medani guidance
We get an extra use for our least and lesser dragonmarks (meaning an extra augury), and now we can burn a use of a lesser dragonmark to use divination! This gives us 3 "free" divinations/day, also dodging the gold cost, and reducing the cast time from 100 rounds to 1 round, making it a huge boon to our precognition.
11
Sybil
-
Divine insight
Dominate person and hold monster come online as racial SLAs
12
Sybil
Greater Dragonmark (Mark of Detection)
Reclusive insight
Greater Dragonmark bumps our caster level up to 14 for the purposes of augury and divination, raising their accuracy, and gives us 1 extra use each for our least and lesser dragonmark!
13
Sybil
-
Riddle: Conundrum
We get 3 extra uses of augury (1/level) with no chance of failure, but with the chance to damage the questioner. Additionally, we get to annoy our party members with riddles. I see this as an absolute win. On a more serious note, we can use our at-will charm person to bully commoners or other random NPCs into asking the questions we'd like to know the answer to, making the Half-Fey template a compelling choice over the Phrenic template at this level. Lesser Geas gives us a potent form of control to start practicing minionmancy or, notably, a way to force an NPC to ask the questions we want asked when charm person doesn't seem to be potent enough. Failing that, we have access to Sheltered Vitality to protect us or the party if we have to ask the questions ourselves. In any event, these uses are also SLAs, so they avoid the cost and the cast time, just as the dragonmark conversions do. We also get mass invisibility as a racial SLA.
14
Sybil
-
Lesser geas, Mysterious lore
Mysterious Lore doesn't seem to stack nicely with our Lore from Cloistered Cleric, sadly. Lore is identical to bardic knowledge, but is not bardic knowledge; Mysterious Lore stacks with any levels in bard or loremaster, of which we have none.
15
Sybil
Practiced Spellcaster
Riddle: Mystery
Practiced Spellcaster ups our caster level for our divinations from spellslots. Mystery gives us 5 uses of divination (1/level) with the same limitations as Conundrum. Again, Charm Person at will and Sheltered Vitality will let us peer into the future at our leisure. We also get geas/quest and mass suggestion as racial SLAs!
16
Sybil
-
Geas/quest
A no-saving throw ability to force folks to ask the questions we want answered? And it's an SLA, so it's only a standard action? Sign us up! In a way, this is the peak for the combat utility of this build. If the target shares a language with us and isn't immune to enchantments, compulsions, or mind-affecting at this level, they immediately become a liability to their party.
17
Sybil
-
Riddle: Koan
Here, we get access to 3 more commune spells/day (1x/day/2 class levels). This avoids the XP cost and, as an SLA, also takes only a standard action to cast. We also bring insanity and mass charm online as racial SLAs.
18
Sybil
Magic Sensitive
Riddle: Enigma
We take Magic Sensitive primarily to pump our divination DC. There's probably a stronger feat option, but reserve feats never feel awful to take.
19
Sybil
-
Limited wish
Limited wish is powerful for obvious reasons, but also offers the means to foretell the future under the "produce any other effect" line. If commune is a 5th level spell, and limited wish can produce the effects of 6th level spells, it should be able to produce a slightly stronger effect than commune. Failing that, it can also produce a standard-action geas effect that doesn't have the mind-affecting tag... On the subject of save or lose effects, Otto's Irresistible Dance comes online as a racial SLA here, too.
20
Sybil
-
Riddle: Apocrypha
-
What's the end result here? A very annoyed DM, I'm sure. Negating the gold and XP costs of divinations and reducing the cast times down to 1 standard makes them a lot easier to spam, and Sybil's mechanisms to discourage this are fairly easily circumvented. This opens up a lot of roleplay avenues, and easily lends itself to a driving motivation for the character: to acquire divine ranks and gain portfolio sense! Regardless, even if the DM won't stomach this character as a player in the campaign, it's also very potent as an NPC in your own campaigns should you need to give the party any hints.
Please share any thoughts or suggestions! I'm particularly interested in any additional spells, feats, or class features that would seem to allow a character to learn about the future that I may have missed. I tried to be comprehensive, but there's always a few that slip through the cracks!
Immediate-Term:
Red Falcon Paladin 2: Brilliant Strategy allows the character to predict the immediate actions of her enemies and her best options to take advantage of those actions as an immediate action 1 + 1/2 class level times per day. This grants an insight bonus to AC equal to her charisma for 1 round.
Jordain Vizier 2: Combat Insight allows the character to predict an opponent's next move to "some extent," granting a +1 insight bonus on attack rolls and a +1 dodge bonus to AC, increasing to +2 at level 4.
Divine Mind 1: The Time mantle grants allies within the aura the ability to see just a moment into the future, increasing their reaction time. This grants a +2 to initiative checks and a +1 on reflex saves.
True Strike (Divination): This allows the character to, as a standard action, gain temporary, intuitive insight into the immediate future during their next attack (within the next round), gaining a +20 insight bonus to the attack and ignoring concealment miss chance.
Sure Strike (Divination): This allows the character to, as a swift action immediately before an attack roll, gain a fleeting glimpse into the future to guide their impending attack, gaining a +1 insight bonus / 3 caster levels on the attack.
Eyes of the Oracle (Divination): This allows the character to, as a standard action, see into the future for 1 round/level to slightly anticipate their opponents' next moves, granting a +2 insight bonus to AC and reflex saves (+3 if you're dragonblooded) and, at the end of your turn, ready a standard action regardless of the number of actions taken that round. If you take the readied action, the spell ends immediately.
Foresight (Divination): This allows the character to, for 10 minutes/level, gain instantaneous warnings of impending danger or harm to the subject of the spell, preventing flat-footedness, giving general ideas of how best to protect yourself, and granting a +2 insight bonus to AC and reflex saves.
Dark Foresight (Invocation): As Foresight, but at will; still only accessible in the late-game
Most of these abilities are fluff for simple mechanical bonuses. Foresight alone has a separate clause that can yield new information (e.g. how best to protect yourself from the imminent danger), but as a 9th level spell, it's relatively inaccessible until very late in the campaign.
Short-Term:
Sign (Divination): This allows the character to see the future in billowing smoke for a brief moment, granting a +4 on their next initiative check.
Augury (Divination): With 70-90% accuracy, the character receives divine insight into whether a particular action will bring good or bad results in the next half-hour: weal (good), woe (bad), weal and woe (both), nothing (neutral). A failed roll returns the "nothing" result.
Medani Prophet 2: Blood Augury lets the character convert least dragonmark charges into auguries.
Olin Gisir 2: Signs and Portents allows the character to use augury 3x/day.
Dungeon Delver 3: Augury allows the character to use augury as a free action once per day per three class levels.
Watch Detective 4: Once per day (or twice at 7th, thrice at 10th level), Deductive Augury allows the character to make an assertion. 70% +1/level, the player will be told if the assertion is true or untrue, but with no explanation. On a failed roll, no information is given. This can give insight into the future so long as the DM believes there is enough information for the character to make an educated guess.
Sybil 3: Riddle (Conundrum) allows the character to give a simple riddle 1x/day/class level. A successful answer grants an augury spell with no chance of failure. An unsuccessful answer causes the questioner to take 1 point of damage to an ability score of the sybil's choice.
Seer (General): This allows the character to use augury as an SLA 1/day as a full-round action, but the distance into the future is limited to 10 minutes. It provides a +1 luck bonus to listen, search, sense motive, and spot until you use the SLA.
Omen of Peril (Divination): With 70-90% accuracy, the character receives divine insight into the safety of their journey for the next hour: safety, peril (normal challenges), or great danger (over-CR'd enemies or traps). Failure gives a wrong result.
Augury seems to be the default for short-term divinations, with most other spells and abilities imitating it to some extent (with the exception of Sign, a fluff-for-mechanics spell). Seer is notable for converting a feat slot directly into an augury SLA, but the feat tax for Divine Fervor is a little punishing; the free-action augury from Dungeon Delver is cute, although the rest of the class is somewhat unhelpful. Olin Gisir and Sybil grant the most bang for their buck, so to speak, with regard to Augury uses here. It's especially nice that they grant them as SLAs, as that waives the gold cost for spamming augury repeatedly.
Medium-Term (Less than 1 day):
Precognitive Visions (Abyssal Heritor): This allows the character to see "possible futures" for each day, granting floating +1 insight bonuses to AC, attacks rolls, initiative checks, a type of saving throw, or a specific skill equal to 1/2 the number of AH feats the character has (min 1). These also grant intrusive hallucinations of these visions.
Zerth Cenobite 4: Precognition allows the character to "glimpse fragments of potential future events," granting a +2 insight bonus to any attack roll, damage roll, saving throw, or skill check 1/day after making the roll (or 2/day at 7th level).
These are more fluff to justify minor mechanical bonuses, just as the immediate-term abilities were. The fluff isn't even particularly fitting for someone trying to see the future, either, considering they allow you to see possibilities instead of a concrete answer.
Long-Term:
Medani Prophet 1: Prophetic Vision allows the character to receive powerful images of the past and future (the frequency and nature of which are determined by the needs of the campaign). The visions often connect to the character's current location, and require a DC15 will save or be stunned for 1d4 rounds if they arrive while the character is awake.
Dreamtelling (General): With a DC 20-45 Knowledge (the planes) DC, the character can interpret the symbolism of a dream to get information about the future. Meeting the DC grants information equal to an augury spell. Exceeding the check by 10 grants information equal to a divination spell; exceeding it by 20 grants information equal to a commune spell (leading to a 20-65 range for the DC).
Weather Eye (Divination): Predict the weather up to one week into the future, and any spells or abilities in effect that will alter it in a 1 mile + 1 mile/level radius around you.
Cataclysm Mage 1: Personal Prophecy is technically a self-fulfilling prophecy; at 1st, 4th, 7th, and 10th levels, the mage receives a prophecy for something that is to happen to the mage from a table. There is a small bonus for fulfilling them, and an optional harsh penalty (barring class advancement) for not fulfilling them.
Visionary Seeker 2: Spell Mimic technically allows the Seeker to cast any of the future-telling spells 1/day, or 2/day at level 6, or 3/day at level 10.
Prophet of Erathaoi 1: Ecstasy allows the character to have a chance to reproduce a divination spell or a commune spell once per day per class level, but has a 7/9 chance to do some other unrelated effect.
Taint: Gaining mild depravity can cause you to have the Prophetic effect, granting you the penalties of continual nightmares. You profess a different prophecy 1x/week to everyone you meet. There is a 10% chance the prophecy is true. There is no limit to how far in the future this might reach, and the accuracy of a prophecy might be able to be confirmed using other divination. This requires your DM to be using taint rules however.
Divination (Divination): With 70-90% accuracy, the character receives a piece of advice (a short phrase, rhyme, or omen) in reply to a question concerning a specific goal, event, or activity that is to occur within one week. Unlike Augury, you know if the spell failed.
Sybil 5: Riddle (Mystery) allows the character to generate a moderately challenging riddle 1x/day/class level. A successful answer yields the benefits of a divination spell with no chance of failure. An incorrect answer causes 2 points of temporary ability damage to a score of the sybil's choice for the questioner.
Medani Prophet 4: Medani Guidance lets the character convert lesser dragonmark charges into divinations.
Earth Dreamer 2: The Earth Dream ability allows the character to use divination 1/day so long as the question regards mountains in some way.
Commune (Divination): For 1 round/level, you can ask your deity--or agents therof-- 1 yes or no question per caster level. The answerer may not know the answer, so will return "unclear." If a yes or no would be misleading or contrary to the deity's interest, a short phrase (5 words or less) may be given as an answer instead. The distance into the future this can reach depends on the deity contacted's divine rank; deities can sense one week into the future and past for every divine rank they have.
Omniscient Whispers (General) converts a feat slot into a commune, but leaves you exhasted afterward.
Sybil 7: Riddle (Koan) allows the character to generate a challenging riddle 1x/day/2 class levels (rounded down). A successful answer yields the benefits of a commune spell cast to contact a powerful extraplanar philosophical being. An unsuccessful answer causes 2 points of temporary ability damage to each ability score of the questioner.
Improved Familiar (General): Imps get access to a commune-like ability 1/week, so as your familiar, you should too. Ymmv on the reliability of the answers, however, as you are not the questioner, nor do you know who the imp will ask.
Contact Other Plane (Divination): Acting as a weaker Commune, but without the XP cost, and with the ability to contact any deity you prefer. There are edge cases where this might be able to pry desired information about the future from an unrelated deity that you might otherwise struggle to find.
Dragon Prophet 1: Constellation Power (Chronepsis) allows the character to use commune 1/week, but to communicate with the power of the draconic Prophecy instead of a deity; this is arguably less likely to return "answer unclear." It also grants a +2 insight bonus to sense motive as you have frequent premonitions about what people or creatures mean to say before they speak (making this also immediate).
Divine Agent 5: Commune, surprisingly enough, allows the character to use commune 1/week. At the 8th level, Audience allows the character to use a double-duration commune by meeting up with their deity.
Dragon Shaman 14: Commune with Dragon Spirit grants the ability to use commune to ask 1 question/3 class levels of your dragon totem 1x/7 days.
Sapphire Hierarch 1: Consultation allows the character to use commune to ask questions of the Saphire Eidolon, but only 3 times ever for each class level you reach and, upon reaching the 10th level, 1x/month.
Long-term future-telling offers a lot more in the way of options. Cataclysm Mage is kind of a meme, and Weather Eye is super narrow, but Medani Prophet is a valuable include because, while there's no mechanical way to force a vision, there's also no hard limit on the number of or frequency of visions you have. This sort of build is only viable with a DM willing to play along, so giving them a vehicle to give you as many hints as they want is no small thing. This, of course, requires you to be a half-elf to meet the prerequisites. Additionally, the class lets you convert dragonmark SLAs into additional divinations. Dreamtelling offers seemingly unlimited uses of augury, divination, and commune, limited only by the amount of people you can get to sit down and describe their dream to you.
Sybil offers as many as 25 uses of augury, divination, and commune, but doesn't advance casting; if every other level advanced casting, you'd lose out on 2 Auguries, 2 divinations, and 19 communes by going straight sybil, meaning the net swing by going straight sybil is +8 auguries, +8 divinations, -14 communes. This is a net gain in spells and, notably, dodges the XP cost associated with casting the commune spells; additionally, being able to get the augury and divinations with no chance of failure is nothing to scoff at, increasing the number of successful divinations each day, and the class also reduces the casting time to a standard action. We do miss out on communes, assuming we wanted to spend all our spell slots and thousands of xp each day casting them, but those are also limited by what the extraplanar being wants us to know.
Notably, the class conveys benefits for a correct answer, and penalties for an incorrect answer, but does not specify how many answers may be given to any given riddle. With a means to mitigate the penalties, you should be able to check answers to riddles without fear of wasting the charge.
Sybil offers a lot as it comes to future-telling effects, but has some steep requirements -- notably, that we have an innate spell-like divination ability. The consensus online seems to be that this should be a racial ability, so that narrows things down considerably. There are a number of races that offer a racial divination SLA:
Uldra
Rock Gnome
Air Gnome
Aquatic Gnome
Arctic Gnome
Desert Gnome
Forest Gnome
Ice Gnome
Jungle Gnome
Wavecrest Gnome
Kobold or Changeling (Rite of Draconic Passage) [Debatable]
Spirit Folk (Bamboo/River)
Lesser Deepwyrm Drow
Deepwyrm Half-Drow
Zenythri
Jermlaine
Dragon, wyrmling brass
Elf, ghost
Extaminar
Laika
Xvart
Yan Ti Pureblood
With that said, as Half-Elf doesn't appear on that list (for Medani Prophet), a template that offers a divination SLA would be ideal.
Alu-Demon
Half-Celestial
Half-Doppelganger
Half-Fey
Half-Illithid
Half-Janni
Half-Undead (Fetch)
Half-Undead (Gheden)
Phrenic (with psionics-magic transparency)
Ti-Khana
Woodling
Of these, Half-Fey and Phrenic come in at the lowest level adjustment (+2), making them somewhat palatable with buy-off rules in play. As such, a Half-Fey Half-Elf or Phrenic Half-Elf might be ideal for such a future-teller. Phrenic is definitely the stronger template, as it offers 10 + HD power/spell resistance, but as it's not a given that a DM will agree that clairsentience PSAs will qualify as divination SLAs for the purposes of prerequisites, let's use Half-Fey:
Pythia, Seer to Aureon
https://64.media.tumblr.com/127fcbd11b94125c4c90d84c765cc419/tumblr_nm9qetrRjh1qeijvdo6_r1_250.gifv
Half-
Fey
Half-Elf
LA
+2
Stat
Array
After Racial/ Template Modifiers
4th
8th
12th
16th
20th
Final
Str
8
8
-
-
-
-
-
8
Dex
8
10
-
-
-
-
-
10
Con
12
10
-
-
-
-
-
10
Int
14
14
-
-
-
-
-
14
Wis
18
20
+1
+1
+1
+1
+1
25
Cha
14
18
-
-
-
-
-
18
HD
Class
Feat
Class Feature
Notes
1
Cloistered Cleric
Least Dragonmark (Mark of Detection)
Turn or rebuke undead, Lore, Knowledge/Oracle/Magic domain, Bonus spells known
Omen of Peril is our introduction to fortune telling, and racial charm person at will helps us serve as a potent party face. Our racial hypnotism, faerie fire, and glitterdust will also help us to be relevant in combat. Our native flyspeed will come in handy for scouting, too.
2
Cloistered Cleric
-
-
-
3
Cloistered Cleric
Dreamtelling
-
With the addition of Dreamtelling, we now have a chance to get the benefits of a future-telling spell once for each member in your party (or more if you can line up cheap mooks who will honestly relay their dreams). The lowest DC to read the future is 20, potentially granting a free augury with a medium roll. At this level, augury's 25gp is still a pretty decent hit to our wallet, so the free option is valuable. We also get the ability to actually cast augury with our second level spell slots (with 76% accuracy). Racial sla sleep grants us another combat option, too, as does enthrall for out of combat challenges.
4
Cloistered Cleric
-
-
-
5
Cloistered Cleric
-
-
Our racial SLAs advance again, granting us protection from law, Tasha's hideous laughter, and suggestion.
6
Visionary Seeker
Lesser Dragonmark (Mark of Detection)
Divination expertise
We get a small bump in our divination caster level, bringing us up to an 80% chance of success for those spells when we do cast them.
7
Medani Prophet
-
Heir's mark, Keen insight, Prophetic vision
Racial SLA's advance again, granting confusion and emotion. More importantly, we can now receive any number of prophetic visions from the DM, allowing for in-game updates on secrets and plot! We also get access to actual Divination, letting us peer a week into the future. This is probably the first real spike in utility for the build, and it is the first of many.
8
Medani Prophet
-
Improved dragonmark, Blood augury
We now have have 4 uses of our least dragonmark, and 2 uses of our lesser dragonmark. Additionally, we can burn our least dragonmark charges for auguries! This is notable because not only does it dodge the gold cost for augury, it also reduces the casting time from 10 rounds to 1 round, greatly increasing its tactical usage.
9
Medani Prophet
Empower Spell-Like Ability (Hypnotism)
Dragon's shield
Hypnotism is the only SLA we have with a variable numeric component. If we can convince the DM that Augury's percentile roll is a variable numeric component that can be empowered, then that could be overwhelmingly positive for the build, but how we handle a percentile of greater than 100% would also affect its utility. We also get eyebite and lesser geas as racial SLAs here!
10
Medani Prophet
-
Improved dragonmark, Medani guidance
We get an extra use for our least and lesser dragonmarks (meaning an extra augury), and now we can burn a use of a lesser dragonmark to use divination! This gives us 3 "free" divinations/day, also dodging the gold cost, and reducing the cast time from 100 rounds to 1 round, making it a huge boon to our precognition.
11
Sybil
-
Divine insight
Dominate person and hold monster come online as racial SLAs
12
Sybil
Greater Dragonmark (Mark of Detection)
Reclusive insight
Greater Dragonmark bumps our caster level up to 14 for the purposes of augury and divination, raising their accuracy, and gives us 1 extra use each for our least and lesser dragonmark!
13
Sybil
-
Riddle: Conundrum
We get 3 extra uses of augury (1/level) with no chance of failure, but with the chance to damage the questioner. Additionally, we get to annoy our party members with riddles. I see this as an absolute win. On a more serious note, we can use our at-will charm person to bully commoners or other random NPCs into asking the questions we'd like to know the answer to, making the Half-Fey template a compelling choice over the Phrenic template at this level. Lesser Geas gives us a potent form of control to start practicing minionmancy or, notably, a way to force an NPC to ask the questions we want asked when charm person doesn't seem to be potent enough. Failing that, we have access to Sheltered Vitality to protect us or the party if we have to ask the questions ourselves. In any event, these uses are also SLAs, so they avoid the cost and the cast time, just as the dragonmark conversions do. We also get mass invisibility as a racial SLA.
14
Sybil
-
Lesser geas, Mysterious lore
Mysterious Lore doesn't seem to stack nicely with our Lore from Cloistered Cleric, sadly. Lore is identical to bardic knowledge, but is not bardic knowledge; Mysterious Lore stacks with any levels in bard or loremaster, of which we have none.
15
Sybil
Practiced Spellcaster
Riddle: Mystery
Practiced Spellcaster ups our caster level for our divinations from spellslots. Mystery gives us 5 uses of divination (1/level) with the same limitations as Conundrum. Again, Charm Person at will and Sheltered Vitality will let us peer into the future at our leisure. We also get geas/quest and mass suggestion as racial SLAs!
16
Sybil
-
Geas/quest
A no-saving throw ability to force folks to ask the questions we want answered? And it's an SLA, so it's only a standard action? Sign us up! In a way, this is the peak for the combat utility of this build. If the target shares a language with us and isn't immune to enchantments, compulsions, or mind-affecting at this level, they immediately become a liability to their party.
17
Sybil
-
Riddle: Koan
Here, we get access to 3 more commune spells/day (1x/day/2 class levels). This avoids the XP cost and, as an SLA, also takes only a standard action to cast. We also bring insanity and mass charm online as racial SLAs.
18
Sybil
Magic Sensitive
Riddle: Enigma
We take Magic Sensitive primarily to pump our divination DC. There's probably a stronger feat option, but reserve feats never feel awful to take.
19
Sybil
-
Limited wish
Limited wish is powerful for obvious reasons, but also offers the means to foretell the future under the "produce any other effect" line. If commune is a 5th level spell, and limited wish can produce the effects of 6th level spells, it should be able to produce a slightly stronger effect than commune. Failing that, it can also produce a standard-action geas effect that doesn't have the mind-affecting tag... On the subject of save or lose effects, Otto's Irresistible Dance comes online as a racial SLA here, too.
20
Sybil
-
Riddle: Apocrypha
-
What's the end result here? A very annoyed DM, I'm sure. Negating the gold and XP costs of divinations and reducing the cast times down to 1 standard makes them a lot easier to spam, and Sybil's mechanisms to discourage this are fairly easily circumvented. This opens up a lot of roleplay avenues, and easily lends itself to a driving motivation for the character: to acquire divine ranks and gain portfolio sense! Regardless, even if the DM won't stomach this character as a player in the campaign, it's also very potent as an NPC in your own campaigns should you need to give the party any hints.
Please share any thoughts or suggestions! I'm particularly interested in any additional spells, feats, or class features that would seem to allow a character to learn about the future that I may have missed. I tried to be comprehensive, but there's always a few that slip through the cracks!