Locate Object is Very Good

[solidork]

I've been playing a Paladin for the last six months or so, and the thing that has surprised me the most is how incredible Locate Object is. No one in our group has ever made much use if it before, but its been very useful in almost everything we've done so far.

Paladins don't get too much to help in investigations/exploration, but this spell alone sets you ahead of many. Its a spell that I almost always prepare.

Our first adventure involved trying to protect a village from a undead witch that made heavy use of invisibility and teleportation, and the only reason we were able to go on the offensive was that I got a good look at her spellcasting focus in our first encounter.

Later I was able to track the spread of a printed political pamphlet through a city, pinpoint the presence of a specific poison in a noble's manor and track down an infected werewolf in a major city before he spread the curse any further.

In our current arc, we're trying to cure a city overrun by werewolves and I anticipate that its going to be very useful locating the silver we need to make more of the cure. It hasn't come up yet, but I'm thinking about getting some unique tokens that I can use as tracking focus for the spell. A custom ring with a unique inscription for important people will help you find them in the event something happens.

S tier spell, highly recommend.

[Tanarii]

It's good, but has some real limitations:

1000 ft range. This is much further than most people think (who tend to greatly overestimate distances), but it still typically means within an adventuring site. As opposed to long distance tracking.

Gives you direction, not distance or location. This may mean some triangulation is required, and is particularly fun when the path to the object is very unclear. Such as in a properly jaquayed dungeon or stereotypical pre-industrial city with lots of narrow twisty streets.

In a variant rules go-of-xp campaign, it's also very nice for finding gems and jewelry.

[Kurt Kurageous]

I've been playing a Paladin for the last six months or so, and the thing that has surprised me the most is how incredible Locate Object is. No one in our group has ever made much use if it before, but its been very useful in almost everything we've done so far.
S tier spell, highly recommend.

You are quite correct. The spell has definite limitations, but the fact that walls and barriers are not one of them makes it very useful. And the way you are using it is the right way. I've done similar. After discovering a group of cultists all wore a certain piece of jewelry, it was easy to find them among the teeming masses.

The 1000' range makes it more useful than Detect Magic as it allows tailing and approaching with stealth. Detect Magic is more powerful, but you generally will be in sight of the object and thuis in the sight of the creature carrying it.

As with most spells, its utility often depends on the creativity of the caster and license of the DM. I applaud your use of a message/item you made being 'found' by or simply given to a foe and then tracked back to the objective. I hadn't thought of that use!

[Segev]

It is very nice; my experiences that make me not so eager to have it as opposed to other spells mainly center around its range being limited. Though admittedly, 1,000 feet is further than I remember it being limited to! That's actually going to cover a surprising area, as long as you're not trying to search, say, an entire city.

[Kurt Kurageous]

It is very nice; my experiences that make me not so eager to have it as opposed to other spells mainly center around its range being limited. Though admittedly, 1,000 feet is further than I remember it being limited to! That's actually going to cover a surprising area, as long as you're not trying to search, say, an entire city.

Even an entire city is searchable in days as long as you keep moving. Just doing a brisk walk along the main streets would allow you to cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time! 1000' is a little less than 1/5 of a mile...

[Joe the Rat]

If you have a solid picture of an item, it is incredibly potent in a mystery situation.

My players, given the chance, will make or buy locate object scrolls for when an adventure has a significant MacGuffin, or if a known or recognized item is on the person they are trying to find. With 10 minutes duration, you can do a decent job of triangulating if something is in a specific room or building.

As a pro tip, think about lead-lined chests (or chambers) if finding a specific thing is the key to a mystery, and the culprit plans ahead.

[Kurt Kurageous]

As a pro tip, think about lead-lined chests (or chambers) if finding a specific thing is the key to a mystery, and the culprit plans ahead.

I would think that every single purpose built reliquary (room/thing you keep relics in) would be lead-lined!

[Segev]

Even an entire city is searchable in days as long as you keep moving. Just doing a brisk walk along the main streets would allow you to cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time! 1000' is a little less than 1/5 of a mile...

That works if the thing you seek is stationary. If it moves, you might still come across it if your large radius crosses paths with the moving item, but if you have limited time before it might abscond from the area entirely....

[Kurt Kurageous]

That works if the thing you seek is stationary. If it moves, you might still come across it if your large radius crosses paths with the moving item, but if you have limited time before it might abscond from the area entirely....

Absolutely true, which is why spiral search and box search patterns exist. And why searches fail despite them.

[Unoriginal]

1000 ft range. This is much further than most people think (who tend to greatly overestimate distances)


Even an entire city is searchable in days as long as you keep moving. Just doing a brisk walk along the main streets would allow you to cover a lot of ground in a short amount of time! 1000' is a little less than 1/5 of a mile...


To give a comparison, 1000ft is around three times the length of a football field. Or 1/137th the length of a marathon.

[SociopathFriend]

Like many spells- it's not that useful in situations where you don't want it.

But when you do? It's excellent.

Finding a lost amulet or weapon? Boot up Locate Object and start walking around till it pings off of something.

Had something stolen from you? So long as you've noticed within a minute or two- the perp can't have gotten far. Fire up the magic and let loose the dogs!

[SharkForce]

The search area also scales with move speed, which makes it even better at searching a city if combined with the right spells.

Of course, there *is* a difference between having the theoretical capability to cast phantom steed and move 200 feet per round (because it can dash) and being able to get away with riding a horse at >60 feet per second down a crowded city street that is probably run by someone who doesn't care for having their people injured and property damaged just because you're looking for a particular orphan or something like that, so this tactic may not be appropriate for all situations ;)

[Tanarii]

Like many spells- it's not that useful in situations where you don't want it.

But when you do? It's excellent.
Compare and contrast to Find Traps 😂

[diplomancer]

I agree, one of my favourite spells when I play a Paladin. This is specially so because Paladin 2nd level spells, apart from Find Steed, are not very exciting, so there's usually "room" to prepare it.

[Monster Manuel]

In our current arc, we're trying to cure a city overrun by werewolves and I anticipate that its going to be very useful locating the silver we need to make more of the cure.
Here's one of the limitations of the spell, to be fair. If you're searching for a general "type" of object, it will find the nearest one, which may not be the most useful outcome; it's not a magic metal detector. You cast the spell looking for "something silver", and it'll find the pouch of silver pieces you have in your bag. Dangit. OK, lose the silver coins, and the vest with the silver buttons and your silver Ring of Protection. So you cast it again, and you get a ping just to your left. You find a silver fork, and now that's the nearest item. You can't take it with you, though, since then it will remain the "closest" silver item. So, you toss it out the window to your teammate waiting below, and hope there's something else that's closer. It's amazing for finding a specific thing, it's less amazing for finding lots of a generic thing.

That said, I had a wizard once who set up an outpost in a mineral-rich part of the countryside. Would spend downtime days casting Locate Object to find the nearest uncut diamond, and fly around until it picked up something. 1000 feet underground still counts, as long as there's no lead mines in the way. And a summoned earth elemental can retrieve a lot of diamonds. DM was permissive, so I didn't abuse it, but that character never hurt for spare cash.


It hasn't come up yet, but I'm thinking about getting some unique tokens that I can use as tracking focus for the spell. A custom ring with a unique inscription for important people will help you find them in the event something happens.


Love this. One of my favorite uses of the spell, for sure.

[da newt]

Yup - Locate Object is as awesome a spell as your DM allows it to be.

[Chronos]

Quoth Monster Manuel:

Here's one of the limitations of the spell, to be fair. If you're searching for a general "type" of object, it will find the nearest one, which may not be the most useful outcome; it's not a magic metal detector. You cast the spell looking for "something silver", and it'll find the pouch of silver pieces you have in your bag. Dangit.
That's the consequence for making a request as vague as "something silver". You can get much more focused than that, like "a silver leaf brooch", or whatever it is you're actually looking for. Rare will be the situation where you're looking for something and all you know is that it's silver, and if you do somehow find yourself in that situation, your first priority needs to be finding out more about what you're looking for, not finding its location, because if that's all you know, then you won't even recognize it when you do find it (maybe the thing you're looking for really was that silver fork, after all).

And yeah, it can be a great spell, but sometimes that 1000 foot range is way too short. Like, one example from my table, the party was looking for something, and it was even something specific that they'd seen, but their search area was "Somewhere in Waterdeep". You can only get within 1000' of a very small fraction of Waterdeep, within ten minutes (though the map was unfortunately not marked with a scale, which made that hard to realize).

[SharkForce]

That's the consequence for making a request as vague as "something silver". You can get much more focused than that, like "a silver leaf brooch", or whatever it is you're actually looking for. Rare will be the situation where you're looking for something and all you know is that it's silver, and if you do somehow find yourself in that situation, your first priority needs to be finding out more about what you're looking for, not finding its location, because if that's all you know, then you won't even recognize it when you do find it (maybe the thing you're looking for really was that silver fork, after all).

And yeah, it can be a great spell, but sometimes that 1000 foot range is way too short. Like, one example from my table, the party was looking for something, and it was even something specific that they'd seen, but their search area was "Somewhere in Waterdeep". You can only get within 1000' of a very small fraction of Waterdeep, within ten minutes (though the map was unfortunately not marked with a scale, which made that hard to realize).

It still allows you to search entire city blocks at a time. Through every single building including up to the high floors, into the sewers, into every container in every house.

The problem is not that it isn't searching a big enough area. The problem is that you have clearly set your expectations far too high. I don't think you could get that kind of efficiency if you had a thousand people helping you. Maybe not even 10,000. Certainly I wouldn't expect you to have anywhere near that number of people who are skilled at searching.

As I recall, when I did the math using a map of Waterdeep once it was theoretically possible to search all of the main city of Waterdeep in less than an hour with this spell (obviously you would have to cast it multiple times) *if* you could ride at full speed with a ritually-summoned phantasmal speed (which you probably couldn't unless you're someone pretty important in Waterdeep, but that's hardly the spell's fault).

[solidork]

What do people think about using locate objects to find a "container lined with lead"? I don't see why it wouldn't work, but I kind of don't like it if it does. It works for stopping people who are trying to find specifically what you're hiding, but people who don't even know you've got something good would be able to tell you've got something worth hiding. You could get more creative in the ways you use lead to make your countermeasures harder to detect, but that starts requiring a lot more resources than an unassuming lead box.

Maybe these kinds of containers are common enough that it's not a flashing red sign of "hey something super interesting is here"? If you're rich/powerful you could still have enough physical security to make someone think twice about taking a chance for something unknown.

[Segev]

What do people think about using locate objects to find a "container lined with lead"? I don't see why it wouldn't work, but I kind of don't like it if it does. It works for stopping people who are trying to find specifically what you're hiding, but people who don't even know you've got something good would be able to tell you've got something worth hiding. You could get more creative in the ways you use lead to make your countermeasures harder to detect, but that starts requiring a lot more resources than an unassuming lead box.

Maybe these kinds of containers are common enough that it's not a flashing red sign of "hey something super interesting is here"? If you're rich/powerful you could still have enough physical security to make someone think twice about taking a chance for something unknown.

Consider that "pewter mugs" would probably count, and that such were reasonably common high-class diningwear.

It's likely to work if you're dealing with one guy who has only upper middle-class means, but if you're in the ritzy part of town, every other townhouse will have a lead-lined safe, minimum, and probably a number of buildings will have several lead-lined containers.

[SharkForce]

Lead doesn't block a lot of spells these days, and the spells it does block don't tend to reveal a ton of useful information. For example, you can still use clairvoyance or scrying on a room line with lead.

I'm not saying that there won't be *any* lead-lined containers around, especially in genuinely high-security areas (stuff that would be the equivalent to bank vaults, for example), but I wouldn't expect the average moderately wealthy person to own one.

of course, there *could* be a particularly pro-active security products salesperson going around selling rich people stuff they don't need by over-hyping the risks of not having a lead-lined safe, but for the most part the thief breaking into your house is probably not relying on the locate objects spell to find your valuables. It's probably cheaper, easier and more reliable for them to just bribe your servants anyways.

[sambojin]

I'll have to remember to prep this spell more often. I mean, I usually play as a Druid, so the movement/ search area/ perception and even stealth thing is taken care of with wildshape. Hell, I usually play as a Firbolg Land or Moon Druid, so the slots spare and spell preps thing is taken care of too, and finding stuff and scouting is one of the things I do anyway.

And yet, I don't think I've prepared it more than a few times, and only used it a couple. It was clutch in those circumstances, but it just sort of felt like "more of the stuff I do", but it was really useful at the time. For some reason it just got filed away into the "I cast a level 2 spell that was helpful" bit of my brain, not the "we found them incredibly easily" bit when searching for a noble (they had a platinum signet ring), or "you essentially had x-ray vision on the city and palace guards, or knew where the closest one was at least" (they wore their noble's symbol on their armour, so my DM allowed the "armour being worn with that symbol on it" interpretation of the spell) bit of my brain. But after reading this thread, now I will prepare it a heap more, and hopefully remember to use it. Cheers!

(I can't think of too many adventures where this wouldn't be helpful, at least once a day. Every second day at worst. Also, it's on all three spell lists in DnD1, and just about everyone's in 5e, so it seems to be an intended function of anyone who can cast spells to be able to do this if they want. Yet we barely ever do.
But always handy for a party to have, if you've got a spare prep, nearly every day. And it doesn't lose function if 2-3 people have it. If anything, it gets better, and even more specifically useful regardless of prior knowledge of what you're looking for (you can rule out false positives, etc), or at least lengthens its use-time/ covers-more-area the day you need it, which is often enough to warrant it)

[SociopathFriend]

Compare and contrast to Find Traps 😂

I predict that eventually ending up quite handy for our Out of the Abyss campaign.

[Tanarii]

I predict that eventually ending up quite handy for our Out of the Abyss campaign.
How? Unless you don't have a trap finder (otherwise you wouldn't use a slot), you somehow have a strong suspicion there's a trap maybe once or twice a day per caster but none other (since slots are limited), and you plan to turn around and leave the area entirely by the way you came in if it pings, not sure what the use is.

It's on par with True Strike, Witch Bolt and Enthrall for being a trap spell. Heh.

[sambojin]

But is there anything else you could use it for? That's the niceness and horribleness of the spell. It's a player creativity spell, on the "so what can I name as an *object*?" thing. Are demonic weapons any different to normal weapons? Are items of a magical nature or with a magical aura different from basic others? And it's only the closest thing of that description, so be a bit more specific.

It's interesting, but it's a DM thing. If you do the spell too broad but a usefully specific generalisation on it, you might have nothing as a spell cast. But some things, could definitely work. I reckon some stuff would fly, depending. Just depends, but still fun, DM permitting, on allowing your party to think and react, together. But on very uncertain information, in many respects.

It doesn't break campaigns, and it allows DM creativity for both "yep, you used resources, let's get my big thing done, you're there now or soon", and red herrings of "don't get too cheeky, you've still got these hoops to go through", so it's fine.

It's one of those "could be antagonistic, but isn't, but it's nice to see people think outside the box a bit" spells, so worthwhile taking sometimes, some days.


There's not that many lvl1-2 Divination spells that are genuinely helpful (for actually divining the course of action you or your party could/should take), but this is one of them. There's good Divination spells, but they tend to chart the course, not divine the correct path. I mean, it's not a weak circle of magic, it's just usually reactive or buffing or OP-as-f*. But literally everyone gets this spell, if they want. And it's a good spell, due to that.

(I mean, the average 9th lvl druid *could* just ritual cast Commune with Nature 4-6 times in an hour and find out most basic facts of a place that the party needs to know, and kinda nail down some of the problems, or just cast this out of spite alongside a lvl9 pally, but it's still a good spell :) )

[SharkForce]

How? Unless you don't have a trap finder (otherwise you wouldn't use a slot), you somehow have a strong suspicion there's a trap maybe once or twice a day per caster but none other (since slots are limited), and you plan to turn around and leave the area entirely by the way you came in if it pings, not sure what the use is.

It's on par with True Strike, Witch Bolt and Enthrall for being a trap spell. Heh.

Nope, it isn't even *that* good.

Remember, Find Traps only detects *intentional* traps. You still need to check just in case there was an unintentional trap that you managed to avoid on your way out.

This is mostly important because it means we get to make the joke that Find Traps is so bad that it can't even detect itself =)

(that said, it is also a contributing factor in how useless the spell is... even if it tells you that there are no traps, there could still be traps, and not just because someone blocked your divination either. Not finding a trap means that you still need to manually search for traps if you want to be certain there are no traps).

[Tanarii]

Yeah, find traps would probably be balanced as a 2nd level if it could detect and pinpoint location of all traps and hazards with a trigger or delivery mechanism within 250ft, as long as they weren't Behind some thickness of lead, wood or stone.