Why are scrying rituals so dang short?

[theNater]

You complete the scrying ritual. You can see the king in his audience chamber, ready for his council of war with his chief advisors. You can see the advisors respectfully walking towards the king. They bow, address him with the normal honorifics and... ka-ching! The view goes blank.

What's the chances of hitting a useful 30 seconds of the targets day with the scry spell? Pretty much nil, I would have thought.

So now we know that: The king is in his audience chamber, the king is holding a war council, which of his advisors are present, that all of them are following proper protocol, and which of them are armed and how heavily.

Given that we used Observe Creature rather than View Location or View Object, we've at least learned something(the king's location, which of his kingly accoutrements he's got).

We may not know what his battle plans are, but if we start up a View Object right away, we'll probably see the maps before they finish rolling them up for storage.

 

[WhatGravitas]

Teleportation is LOS. Scrying grants LOS, does it not?

You still need 5 minutes for True Portal using a scroll. Plus, it would be easier to put a note like "no teleporting" into the scrying rituals.

I think that was done out of pure fear of plot-killing... I think that was a bit of too much balancing.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Wolfwood2]

Maybe we're missing the intended purpose of this ritual. I forget, is there a clause saying that you have to have seen the target before? Because if not, the main purpose would be to see what somebody looks like that you only know second-hand or by reputation. I could see where that would be worthwhile.

EDIT: Oh yeah, I just looked at the description from DnD Insider.

"When you perform this ritual, choose a specific creature. You create a magical sensor adjacent to that creature, and you can see and hear as if you were standing in the square where your sensor is located. You need not personally know or have ever seen the subject. However, when performing the ritual you must describe your intended subject with sufficient clarity that the ritual unambiguously knows which creature you’re talking about. This ritual can show you a creature anywhere in the world, but it can’t show you a creature on another plane."

So potentially you could describe the subject as, "the guy who stole the gems form my vault last night." And presuming that there was only one guy who committed the theft, you'd get to see his face.

How is that not awesome?

 

[ExploderWizard]

Teleportation is LOS. Scrying grants LOS, does it not?

Maybe that's the reasoning?

Sigh.............. Teleportation requiring LOS is one of the dumbest rules......well, ever.

Teleportation is about long distances, thus the whole plane of existence rule. To me the fey step ability is NOT a teleport but a short dimension door. LOS for dimension door seems reasonable but not for teleport. Teleportation restrictions should be based more on familiarity than LOS. Sure you can scry a location for hours but familarity would never be better than so-so for any location that you actually haven't been physically. There are so many better ways to screw up scry/buff/teleport as a combo than nerfing all the individual abilities into uselessness.

 

[Stalker0]

Sigh.............. Teleportation requiring LOS is one of the dumbest rules......well, ever.

Teleportation is about long distances, thus the whole plane of existence rule. To me the fey step ability is NOT a teleport but a short dimension door. LOS for dimension door seems reasonable but not for teleport.

As a note, teleportation rituals do NOT require LOS. That said, I completely agree that if scrying was nerfed to prevent scry/teleport, then there are far better ways to do that.

I'll be honest, I'm very surprised at how many "its fine" responses I'm getting. People really think 3 or 4 rounds is enough time that its worth all the cost and effort?

 

[ExploderWizard]

As a note, teleportation rituals do NOT require LOS.

I wasn't talking specifically about the ritual. Check out the "teleportation" cloak magic item. As a dimension door item ok but that is NOT teleporting.

For some uses, ritual teleportation won't cut it. The destruction of the demon is bringing the temple down on the party, they need to teleport out of there FAST.

 

[Mike000]

Probably the DM is meant to give the scrying players something valuable to look at. Otherwise it's just wasting everyone's time... and gaming patience.

Sure - just like on TV or in movies...how often does some character switch on the radio or TV and NOT immediately hear something of interest? Just never mind how unlikely it really is.

 

[Wolfwood2]

As a note, teleportation rituals do NOT require LOS. That said, I completely agree that if scrying was nerfed to prevent scry/teleport, then there are far better ways to do that.

I'll be honest, I'm very surprised at how many "its fine" responses I'm getting. People really think 3 or 4 rounds is enough time that its worth all the cost and effort?

For spying on someone? Absolutely not. For seeing the face of the man who murdered your sworn blood brother so that when you drive a dagger through his diseased heart you will know you have killed the right man? Absolutely worth it.

When you get down to it, the duration would have to be ridiculously long for it to be an effective spying tool. I mean, suppose it were five minutes. What are the chances somebody is going to do something worth spying on in that five minutes? In fifteen minutes? Maybe if you had it timed exactly so that you completed the ritual just as they started doing something interesting it would work, but otherwise you're probably going to have to watch for hours to see anything interesting.

Despite the flavor text at the top, this is not a spying ritual. This is a "reveal the face of mine foe" ritual. This is a, "I gaze upon the traitor's mien!" or "Show me the visage of my true father!" And an image appears, flickers for a few seconds, then disappears.

And that sort of thing absolutely has a lot of back-up in mythology, legend, and stories.

 

[AuraSeer]

Despite the flavor text at the top, this is not a spying ritual. This is a "reveal the face of mine foe" ritual. This is a, "I gaze upon the traitor's mien!" or "Show me the visage of my true father!" And an image appears, flickers for a few seconds, then disappears.

This explanation rocks.

I guess that means the evil queen from Snow White was an epic character, at least 24th level. "Mirror, mirror, on the wall! Who's the fairest of them all?"

 

[Alratan]

For spying on someone? Absolutely not. For seeing the face of the man who murdered your sworn blood brother so that when you drive a dagger through his diseased heart you will know you have killed the right man? Absolutely worth it.

When you get down to it, the duration would have to be ridiculously long for it to be an effective spying tool. I mean, suppose it were five minutes. What are the chances somebody is going to do something worth spying on in that five minutes? In fifteen minutes? Maybe if you had it timed exactly so that you completed the ritual just as they started doing something interesting it would work, but otherwise you're probably going to have to watch for hours to see anything interesting.

Despite the flavor text at the top, this is not a spying ritual. This is a "reveal the face of mine foe" ritual. This is a, "I gaze upon the traitor's mien!" or "Show me the visage of my true father!" And an image appears, flickers for a few seconds, then disappears.

And that sort of thing absolutely has a lot of back-up in mythology, legend, and stories.

Then it should be a high heroic, low paragon effect then, as it's the sort of thing that low level, reasonably non-fantastic heroes had common access to in many mythologies.