Tony Vargas
Legend
Well, y'know, it did get a lot of flack during the playtest for stepping on the rogues toes and being an example of casters being good at everything. So maybe they hit it a few extra times with the nerf bat.
Phazonfish
B-Rank Agent
That's a good justification for it being bad, but in my opinion that doesn't change the fact that it is bad. Maybe a more healthy way to balance it would be to buff it a bit (say, reducing it to a 1st level spell, removing the line of sight restriction, and removing the part about natural or unintentional traps not being detected), but also restrict access to the spell to, for instance, just rangers (who are not full casters and who have a theme of guiding the party through dangerous lands) and maybe one cleric domain (let's say knowledge, because divination). How does this sound? Sure, it still does a rogue thing, but not as well because you still need to know to cast it (and once per area at that), and unlike being a rogue it requires a resource to do. It's not nice to step on martial class' toes, but surely rogues having a monopoly on trap finding isn't healthy either. Or we could just make it a ritual and call it a day, but I don't like that solution as much, because Rangers need more love and are the only class that can cast it but aren't ritual casters.
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FormerlyHemlock
Hero
If you want to buff it, I'd make it a concentration spell with all the same restrictions it has today. Duration one hour (concentration) might be appropriate. It doesn't obviate the needs for rogues or other trap monkeys, but at least there you'll get a warning that tells you when you need to slow down and start looking for traps. Until then you can go full speed ahead.
BTW, I don't see any real problem if you wanted to relax some of the restrictions it has today, too. I just think that giving it a duration would be sufficient to make it a valuable exploration spell, on par with combat-oriented spells, whereas today it's a niche spell which is possibly too expensive for the few scenarios in which it is useful.
FormerlyHemlock
Hero
Abi-Dalzim's Horrid Wilting 16
Drawmij's Instant Summons 23
Feign Death 29
Find Traps 29
Friends 31
Mordenkainen's Sword 24
Ray of Enfeeblement 4
True Strike 32
Weird 21
To those downvoting True Strike, like Tony and lowkey--why? Is it just because you don't want it to win, or are you thinking of actual scenarios where it's useful? (Trying not to miss with Plane Shift on a hostile target? Something else I'm overlooking?)
If there's some way in which True Strike isn't utter garbage I'd love to know what it is.
Drawmij's Instant Summons 23
Feign Death 29
Find Traps 29
Friends 31
Mordenkainen's Sword 24
Ray of Enfeeblement 4
True Strike 32
Weird 21
To those downvoting True Strike, like Tony and lowkey--why? Is it just because you don't want it to win, or are you thinking of actual scenarios where it's useful? (Trying not to miss with Plane Shift on a hostile target? Something else I'm overlooking?)
If there's some way in which True Strike isn't utter garbage I'd love to know what it is.
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Tony Vargas
Legend
Phazonfish
B-Rank Agent
As much as the component kills it for me, I don't understand how Instant Summons has gotten so few downvotes. I would think the ability to prep one's valuables (SPELLBOOK FOR INSTANCE) to return to one's possession in the event of theft or other unforeseen separation sounds like a really wizardly thing to do. Afraid the gem will get stolen too? Stash it somewhere else.
FormerlyHemlock
Hero
Well, two things:
(1) In 5E, wizards are less spellbook-dependent than they used to be (compared to AD&D 2nd edition, anyway--I haven't played 3E or 4E) and spellbooks are relatively cheap to create. Making a backup spellbook doesn't take you six months of your life and thousands of gold pieces; nor do you absolutely need to have a spellbook all the time. In fact, you can feasibly even leave your spellbook at home for a whole weeklong adventure against orcs or something and manage just fine--you still get all your spell points/slots back every time you long rest.
(2) Drawmij's Instant Summons doesn't help that much if the spellbook does get stolen. "Bohab the Tishabite has your spellbook; he is in Londonium" doesn't help all that much. It's barely enough information to get you to the lowest level of scrying ("secondhand: have heard of the target"), which means the target will have +5 on its Wisdom saves, which basically means that you can probably scry out a mook after a couple of days of trying, but if the spellbook has already been passed to someone with a strong mind (high Wisdom save) you may never be able to scry them out.
Especially if you don't have Scrying already prepared when your spellbooks with Scrying in it gets stolen.
Now, to be fair, that scenario only happens if Bohan the Tishbite happens to be holding or carrying your spellbook at the instant you crush the sapphire. If you cast the spell multiple times on your spellbook, you may have a dozen or more chances to recover the book--if the first sapphire doesn't get you the book, try again at midnight with another in case Bohab has set the spellbook down while he sleeps. (Perhaps that's why it's a ritual: so you can cast it over and over again on the same possessions.) Some DMs may give you grief about whether you can cast the spell multiple times on the same spellbook (citing "Combining Magical Effects" and the way spells like e.g. Bless do not stack with themselves for a higher bonus--they may claim that only one Drawmij's Instant Summons can be cast on the same object at a time) and for those DMs you're stuck with the base case of having to scry Bohab out, or at best hope to get lucky on your first and only sapphire.
TL;DR it's not absolutely horrible, and you've probably persuaded me to downvote it next time. But it's also not necessary or that effective compared to just making a backup spellbook and storing that where you would otherwise keep the sapphire. 10,000 gp of redundant sapphires buys a lot of backup spellbooks...
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Tony Vargas
Legend
3e they were very dependent (you could 'master' a few spells with a feat and not need a book for them, you could write down the spells you still had prepped at the time if you lost your book, but it was a pretty serious loss), and the books were comparatively expensive, a serious if seldom-used 'nuclear option' sort of balancing factor on the Tier 1 wizard. 4e, spellbooks were a package deal with being a wizard, you recorded your dailies and rituals in them, only needed them to swap out a daily or do a ritual, and they weren't overly expensive nor irreplaceable (the rituals could be, but, like everyone else's items, the expectation was that they wouldn't be arbitrarily taken away without a good chance of recovery, IDK how much people really abided by the 4e expectations around magic item loss, capture scenarios and the like, though, IMX, they just mostly seemed to not happen like in every other edition).
Yep, pretty care-free, now.
Plus it's a classic spell. And it's Jim Ward's name spelled backwards. That's gotta count for something.
snickersnax
Explorer
I think everyone is overlooking the real benefit of Drawmij's....You can crush a sapphire as a single action. Do you know how hard it is to crush a sapphire? Plus now you have 1000gp worth of sapphire dust so you can use it to defray the cost of material components for your next sequester spell.
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