Foiling Divination

[Grey Watcher]

Short of the Epic Boon or a similar artifact, what are ways to foil the various divination spells? Specifically, how can a character avoiding being scryed upon or otherwise detected personally (so "lock it in a lead-lined" box is maybe not ideal) since the person would presumably still have to eat and breathe and stuff and might want to do things in addition to "being undetectable."

Some initial ideas:

• If you can't specify the target properly, you can't scry. Avoid giving out accurate personal information as much as possible. Use and abandon pseudonyms frequently. Get yourself a Disguise Kit, Hat of Disguise, or some levels in Warlock for the Mask of Many Faces Invocation so no one even knows what you physically look like.
• Clean up after yourself. Try to avoid leaving things that can be used to scry on you, like fingernails and hair. If you can't clean up, make an even bigger mess so the stuff that's yours can't be found (see if you can't pour something on that bloodstain to make it not a usable sample, or at the very least, make it easier to overlook). If you've got a cantrips like prestidigitation and produce flame, that makes this a lot easier. Depending on how your DM rules it, the Pass Without Trace spell could be interpreted as cleaning up things like stray hairs and other detritus you're leaving behind, though it's short duration means it's best suited for specific applications than a general prevention.
• See invisible things. A lot of divination spells create scrying sensors that, while invisible and intangible, nonetheless are objects that exist in the world. Get a means of seeing these things, or at least somehow being aware of their presence, and you can avoid them as you might more conventional spies. If you're a spellcaster, be sure to pick up Dispel Magic if at all possible to destroy them outright. Granted, then they'll know that you know that they're watching, but at least it cuts the feed.
• Avoid pretty much anything with eyes and ears. There are plenty of ways a spellcaster might be looking or listening to you through an otherwise innocuous-looking animal. Keep vigilant and be aware that that any given cat or bird could just as easily be spying on you as some beggar or messenger-girl.
• Nondetection. If you have access to spellcasting, this is a pretty basic precaution.
• Mordenkainen's Private Sanctum. If you gain access to it, you'll pretty much always want to use this to sleep, since it will make a room impermeable to most magical spying shenanigans.
• Mind Blank. This seems to be one of the few, if not only, things out there that can block someone trying to read your thoughts if they already have line of sight on you.

Anything I'm missing? I didn't have a chance to trawl through magic items, so beyond the things I could recall off the top of my head (eg the Hat of Disguise), I haven't gone into those.


I was gaming this out because I have an idea for a character who's a conspiracy nut about the Burning Hate Heresy, so I figure he'd be extra cautious about priests and celestials who might be inclined to use magic to find him. He might be a wee bit flattering of himself in terms of how important an enemy he is to said conspirators, assuming they exist.

[Naanomi]

Svirfneblin can get non-detection at-will with a feat

[Rukelnikov]

Nondetection basically

[Crgaston]

The Amulet of Proof against Detection and Location is an Uncommon magic item.

[XmonkTad]

Bad plumbing can help with the locate spells: it only takes a little bit of lead to make those spells go haywire. Locate creature gets foiled by a river or a moat (water needs to be running). I'm not 100% sure nondetection works on arcane eye, but it does really well with most everything else.

[Man_Over_Game]

Magic Aura? It's a bit niche, but it does allow you to change how you're detected from magic. You could even create a stone with the essence of your choosing, to appear like something you're not, or to create a distraction for someone to track instead of you. You can even cover the stone up with lead to block out detection spells for when you don't want it to do its thing (you don't want to be detected as a Lawful Good thing in a demon's lair).

[Naanomi]

If we are getting into niche stuff, Masterminds can fool Telepathy at high levels

[MaxWilson]

Kill yourself temporarily.

[Naanomi]

Kill yourself temporarily.

Fails against speak with dead

[MaxWilson]

Fails against speak with dead

"[T]he corpse is under no compulsion to offer a truthful answer if you are hostile to it or it recognizes you as an enemy."

[Naanomi]

"[T]he corpse is under no compulsion to offer a truthful answer if you are hostile to it or it recognizes you as an enemy."

So put on a Disguise before you cast the spell so the corpse doesn’t recognize you, duh

[MaxWilson]

So put on a Disguise before you cast the spell so the corpse doesn’t recognize you, duh

Oh sure, the PC is gonna fall for that.

[Potato_Priest]

So put on a Disguise before you cast the spell so the corpse doesn’t recognize you, duh

Ha! In true murderhobo tradition, PCs treat all NPCs as enemies!

[Man_Over_Game]

Ha! In true murderhobo tradition, PCs treat all NPCs as enemies!

So what you're saying is, you have to disguise the corpse...as a PC?

I just imagine a DM putting on a taped-on neckbeard and moving to the other side of the table, constantly asking to make Perception and Insight checks, to make sure that the PC he's interacting with is actually a PC.