Arcane Investigation Spells

[Trahnesi]

In my game, a large nasty creature teleported into a magic acadamy. After the creature was defeated, the NPC wizards are trying to learn what they can about how the creature got there and where it came from. What I'm trying to figure out is, what spells they would use for this. They do not have access to any form of magic other than wizard spells, and the important question is what level of wizard they would need to be in order to find out about the creature.

The only books I've got are the PHB, DMG, and MM. If there is a spell that would work well in another book, that would be good to know - especially what level the spell is.

At the moment, the list that I can think of is:

- Scry (4th level, only if there is some connection to the unknown source... perhaps the dead body?)

- Legend Lore (6th level)

- Vision (7th level)

- Discern Location (8th level, and really the top of the line short of wish.)

Does anyone else have any ideas?

Thanks!

 

[Hypersmurf]

Limited Wish to emulate Commune.

-Hyp.

 

[ForceUser]

Limited Wish to emulate Commune.

-Hyp.

Nice one.

 

[Elder-Basilisk]

Contact other Plane. It's risky and unreliable compared to emulating Commune, but it's another possibility.

 

[Nim]

Contact Other Plane (5th level)

There might, possibly, be some stuff in Manual of the Planes that would let you back-trace a Teleport.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Contact other plane, but make sure you pass it on to your familiar. Then if he fails, you can just do again - his intelligence basically doesn't matter as long as he's smart enough to follow orders (which a 9 can do), and he's got no spellcasting to lose. Succeed once for every wizard of 9th level or higher present and you'll have a pretty good answer. Note also that unlike commune, contact other plane is merely limited to one-word answers rather than "yes or no, unless it would be confusing". With contact other plane, you can cut straight to the chase by asking names and the like... Make sure you buff the familiar first so he can succeed at that ability check more often. Finally point out to your DM that the answers gleaned from dieties are affected by the personality of the deity in question - if you choose a nice lawful good diety that is your patron, you shouldn't ever get the result "lie", although "random answer" and "don't know" are still on the charts...

Then clarify your answers with limited wish/commune to weed out the bad answers.

Alternatively save yourself some XP by casting commune via a bound imp for a mere lesser planar binding. It's lawful, so it'll follow the letter of your contract. Of course that contract is "Use your commune power to ask these questions precisely, and return the answers verbatim and we'll let you go".

 

[Jack Simth]

Clone it and interrogate (Sor/Wiz 8)?

Create Undead (Sor/Wiz 6) combined with Control Undead (Sor/Wiz 7)

 

[Silveras]

Contact Other Plane (5th level)

There might, possibly, be some stuff in Manual of the Planes that would let you back-trace a Teleport.

Monte Cook had some interesting Teleport -related spells in the Book of Eldritch Might. The Complete Book of Eldritch Might should have them 3.5 updated. One, at least, was a Teleport tracer.