Dark Divinations (Adv Talents in Review)

[SangoProduction]

Preamble: Obscuration and divination together in one review. Appropriate enough. Yeah, I quite literally have nothing else to do (that I care to do at least - nothing of importance). This is about my only way to pass the meaningless days. I'm not even able to work, and I'm just supposed to accept it. But this feels like a semi-"productive" way to spend my time, by pretending to be helpful and contributing to others.

Post Review Analysis: Dark definitely had a higher power grade than expected. Also, I guess "Acceptable" for Divination basically meant "This talent gives the DM more plot hooks," and Fluffy was "bad/too narrow." Didn't intend for that. But I guess that's what posting memes on discord for 5 hours straight does to your mind.

I think I really like Divination advanced talents... from a DM standpoint. Less so from a player's.

Spoiler: Ratings

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Warning: This rare rating is given to talents that have truly game-breaking potential. Or at the very least need very close inspection before being allowed.

Questionable: These talents have an outsized impact, and should be considered in context before being allowed.

Acceptable: This is your standard faire advanced talent tier. Worth looking at, but rarely is it going to cause the catastrophic downfall of your campaign.

Fluffy: These little to no functional difference to a character. These are also the safest to give out as reward talents. For example, if they beat the witch who eats children, they might manifest the ability to summon items made of gingerbread.

Unknown: For when I really just don't know where it would lie. It's probably needlessly complicated. Take a good look at it yourself. I'll try and provide a cliff notes version of the talent, along with potential pit falls.

Dark

Spoiler: Warning

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Melt Into Shadow (lvl 10): Honestly, what person in their right mind would ever attack a blot of shadow that wasn't overtly doing anything. Effective immunity to anyone that doesn't know the blot is active. And at night? Incredible scout tool. But you *are* explicitly corporeal, and can be picked up to end the effect. If they somehow think to do that.

Pitch Black (lvl 10): This is a "Haha, you're blind" to all senses of everyone not immune to the effect, and is just a rider to your other (darkness) effects. To say that's disruptive is putting it lightly.

Shadow Double (lvl 15): Doubles your actions per round. For hour/CL. That's insane.

Spoiler: Questionable

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Midnight (lvl 10): Massive Overkill at 2 mile radius. But there are legitimate uses that don't involve slaughtering entire towns. Like it's definitely got a much different feeling than just slapping on a fog of darkness onto an ally to give them the effects. The functional difference? The following darkness doesn't give away their position.

One With The Void (lvl 10): Incorporeality. Just like Melt Into Shadow, it would be really difficult to just tell you are a creature and not some spell effect, unless they saw you cast it. And even then that could have been obscured by darkness. But there is much less you can do... aside from casting spells. Which... is probably more than enough.

Spoiler: Acceptable

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Animated Shadow (lvl 5): hour / lvl, 2 extra arms with 10 ft reach. Doesn't scale with size. Makes melee touch attacks nicer. Allows the gnome to reach the cabinet. Safer lock picking with no stated penalties.

Lightless Penumbra (lvl 1): Very specific protections from light-/sight-based effects. Doesn't say the vampires sparkle though. Points docked.

Shadow Walker (lvl 10): Basically fancy, shadow-fluffed teleportation.

Vanish In Shadow (lvl 5): Basically Hidden Presence, as a Spheres buff rather than spell.

Spoiler: Fluffy

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Black And Black Morality (lvl 10): It's a counter ability against alignment-hate abilities. That's about as niche as it gets. But it's so powerful that even strongly aligned planes inflict no penalties. Which... is kinda funny. There are more reliable planar protection abilities out there. But it just works.

Divination

Spoiler: Warning

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Expansive Vision (lvl 10): Careful. Plenty of senses are fine with this. Several, like with Alt Div, Advanced, are sorta balanced on being only Close ranged.

(greater) Scrying (lvl 10/ lvl 15): You know "scry and die"? Yeah. Much more difficult in Spheres. Not impossible, and this is one half of it.

Remote Casting (lvl 5): Hey, you know "scry and die"? Yeah, much more difficult in Spheres. Here's the other 40%. Now all you need is the die.

Spoiler: Questionable

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Alternate Divinations, Advanced (lvl 1): Only ones of concern are: life sense and thought sense and touch sight and potentially spirit sense. OK, that's most of them but... um... OK, fine I'll put it in Questionable. Just look at it and compare to what they are already doing and see if it's disruptive for your game.

Penetrating Divination (lvl 1): Depends on just how secret you want your stuff to be. Honestly, I'd just give them the mundane penetration of both talents, but still blocked by thin lead, to go like "No, this was specially protected, and you need to check it out normally." Obviously, with the caster's full knowledge of that. Maintains most of the scouting performance of the talent, at better cost.

Sensitive Divinations (lvl 1): This very substantially changes how lingering auras work. But standardizes them. Worth considering if that's how you want it to work.

Spoiler: Acceptable

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Cartographer’s Divinations (lvl 5): Let's be honest, these are the "plot hook" abilities, but taken as a talent. You praise the player for giving you such ease of running a game. The usability is secondary.

Discern Location (lvl 15): Find an item or creature at any range, with no means of protection... Except for the explicit ones, which have been usable long before this. But otherwise, it is relatively narrowly useful.

Hear Name / Power Of The Name (lvl 5 / 10): mile/CL telepathy, but spoken. For hour / lvl. And has potential for a bit of spycraft. Generally not disruptive, despite that high praise for the ability. Substantially more useful when you have a settlement to be defended. Which is basically "Plot hook, I choose you!"

Speak And I Listen (lvl 10): Empowers Hear Name to enable you to teleport to the caller. However... it gives that ability to the sense. Senses can be given to anyone, even those without teleportation. Do they use the caster's warp ability? Have to, right? Anyway, neat.

Read Omens (lvl 5): Cryptic advice in regards to a question. Again, basically "plot hook" talent. And occasional lore, in-universe hints to road blocks, etc, etc. I wouldn't even roll the die on it, when they need it. (Or if I did, I'd fudge it.)

True Perception (lvl 10): True sight, but for any sense.

Unobscured Vision (lvl 10): X-ray vision, as a close-range sense. Neat.

Spoiler: Fluffy

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Divine Identity (lvl 1): Only has use in very particular campaigns. But it does say that you can connect two times you sense an aura as the same person. With no apparent difficulty. That's quite neat fluff.

Divine Knowledge (lvl 10): Very weak 3 spell points. yes/no answer, with a 70% chance of getting an answer at level 20.

Eyes Of The Cabal (lvl 5): Again, useful in only particular campaigns. But makes it reliably useful in those campaigns. Otherwise it's just a bit of fluffy spying.

Sense Observation (lvl 1): Good for explicitly telling your players that they are being watched. Even though you could already just say "you feel like you're being watched." Generally has no true purpose.

Trapfinding (lvl 1): Lets the caster work as the rogue - especially useful when there is no other rogue in the party.