D&D 3E/3.5 [3.5] Where'd you get that map, again?

[Jack Simth]

I was browsing through some books, looking for an item for a character, and came across a gem:

Sense

The wearer of this kind of third eye can manifest clairvoyant sense at will.

Faint clairsentience; ML 3rd; Craft Universal Item, clairvoyant sense; Price 24,000 gp.

I checked, and Clairvoyant Sense is a 2nd level Seer Power - which suddenly develops problems if you can use it at-will:

Clairvoyant Sense
Clairsentience (Scrying)
Level: Seer 2
Display: Auditory and visual
Manifesting Time: 1 standard action
Range: See text
Effect: Psionic sensor
Duration: 1 min./level (D)
Saving Throw: None
Power Resistance: No
Power Points: 3

You can see and hear a distant location almost as if you were there. You don’t need line of sight or line of effect, but the locale must be known—a place familiar to you or an obvious one, such as behind a door, around a corner, or in a grove of trees. Once you have selected the locale, the focus of your clairvoyant sense doesn’t move, but you can rotate it in all directions to view the area as desired. Unlike other scrying powers, this power does not allow psionically or supernaturally enhanced senses to work through it.

If the chosen locale is magically or psionically dark, you see nothing. If it is naturally pitch black, you can see in a 10-foot radius around the center of the power’s effect or out to the extent of your natural darkvision. The power does not work across planes.

With this item, you can fully map out a dungeon without ever stepping foot into it. How?

Well, it helps if you've got natural Darkvision (dwarf, half-orc, whisper gnome, quite a few others), but that only speeds things up in dark areas. See, it has to be a place that's familiar to you, or a place that's obvious to you. With an item that makes it at-will, that gets... interesting.

Method:
1) Stop at the entry to the dungeon. Use Clairvoyant Sense to see inside the first section.
2) From your Clairvoyant Sense sensor, activate the item again to use Clairvoyant Sense to see the next section (most doors are obvious, so when you're viewing from the first room, you'll be able to see the doors to the others).
3) Goto 2 until you run out of places to look.

As it's a standard action to activate, you can do this quite quickly.

Is it my imagination, or is this item a bit on the overly-useful side for something that only costs 24k?

 

[Corsair]

That's pretty sweet. Had I known of this item a year ago, I most definitely would have bought one for my current character.

 

[Angrydad]

As a DM I'd rule that a "known" or obvious place cannot be someplace you've only seen/gained access to via the power you're using. Thus you'd only be able to scout one room ahead as you troop through the dungeon (still a ridiculously useful ability).

 

[Jack Simth]

As a DM I'd rule that a "known" or obvious place cannot be someplace you've only seen/gained access to via the power you're using. Thus you'd only be able to scout one room ahead as you troop through the dungeon (still a ridiculously useful ability).

Once I get to the dungeon's level, I map it out by placing the sensor at five-foot increments in a given direction, and noting what I see on some parchment I purchased for the purpose.
I then take a five-foot offset, and run down that row again.
I then take another foot-foot offset....

At any given time, I'm specifying the location in an obvious manner - X feet north (or south), Y feet east (or West) of my current position.

With five-foot "grid positions", a 400-foot by 400-foot dungeon (assuming a reasonably level floor, but we can account for 3d if we like) takes 6,400 invocations of the item to map out (fully). If it takes a standard action to note nearby walls on my map, then that takes me 12,800 rounds - at ten minutes per round, that's 1,280 minutes, or 21 hours and 20 minutes. One day's, and I have an enormous area covered. If I judge that 10-foot increments are sufficient, that drops to five hours and 20 minutes. If I judge that 20-foot increments are sufficient (in natural blackness with no darkvision, I do get a ten-foot radius, after all), that drops to 1 hour, 20 minutes.

Generally, though, I won't really need to know more than one or two rooms in advance.

 

[Shin Okada]

Personally, I never introduce psionic into my game. So that is my first choice of getting rid of that item.

But if you are a DM and just think item to be too useful, you can either counter it by putting various dungeon features (say, magical complete darkness or very wide dark cavern area). Or, simply increase the cost of that item.

And, at higher level modules, important part of the dungeons are often completely protected against divinations or not in the same plane, or even in some special plane or demiplane which PCs don't even know it's existence.

Controlling divinations are up to the DM and should be done by his own taste. Some DMs simply allow most of the divinations work as players desire. Other DMs try to make them almost useless. Most of the DMs are between those two I guess.

 

[Simm]

Once I get to the dungeon's level, I map it out by placing the sensor at five-foot increments in a given direction, and noting what I see on some parchment I purchased for the purpose.
I then take a five-foot offset, and run down that row again.
I then take another foot-foot offset....

At any given time, I'm specifying the location in an obvious manner - X feet north (or south), Y feet east (or West) of my current position.

With five-foot "grid positions", a 400-foot by 400-foot dungeon (assuming a reasonably level floor, but we can account for 3d if we like) takes 6,400 invocations of the item to map out (fully). If it takes a standard action to note nearby walls on my map, then that takes me 12,800 rounds - at ten minutes per round, that's 1,280 minutes, or 21 hours and 20 minutes. One day's, and I have an enormous area covered. If I judge that 10-foot increments are sufficient, that drops to five hours and 20 minutes. If I judge that 20-foot increments are sufficient (in natural blackness with no darkvision, I do get a ten-foot radius, after all), that drops to 1 hour, 20 minutes.

Generally, though, I won't really need to know more than one or two rooms in advance.

You know I don't think this would work. I've always assumed that the implication of needing to be familiar with the area you are viewing is a representation of the fantasy trope for scrying and teleportation that you need to hold an image of the location in your mind in order to project to that point.

 

[Jack Simth]

You know I don't think this would work. I've always assumed that the implication of needing to be familiar with the area you are viewing is a representation of the fantasy trope for scrying and teleportation that you need to hold an image of the location in your mind in order to project to that point.

How, then, do you handle the explicitly permitted things the ability permits, like looking on the other side of the door?