D&D 5E (2024) Arcane Eye?

[AlViking]

One other option I forgot to mention is Inner Sanctum which blocks all divination spells. It's costly but can also be made permanent, any self-respecting castle, palace or significantly expensive hideout builder considers it part of the construction cost in my campaign.

 

[Seramus]

Wildly depends if the caster is sharing the knowledge (and thus, every character is getting the info), or if the caster is hoarding or only partially giving out info.

I'm chill with the former, and have very little patience for the latter.

 

[MarkB]

I don't get this talk about bogging down gameplay. If you're having players meticulously map every room from a verbal description, then scouting ahead just moves the meticulous mapping to early on in the session instead of later, and has it all happen at once so it's probably faster. If you're not, then you can either just show the players the map, describe quickly what they find about the layout, or sketch a quick drawing of what they see ahead. Nothing in the spell obligates anyone to do more mapping than they normally do when exploring. In my experience, scouting ahead like that actually makes the adventure because the PCs can see the rooms and plot out what order to look into them in instead of re-repeating the layout each time they get to a new door or intersection and inevitably getting something wrong about it.

Arcane eye bogging down gameplay really sounds to me like another one of those problems that people create for themselves.

I have actually played a chain pact warlock with an imp familiar, and did the invisible scouting thing with it a couple of times. I was wary of hogging the spotlight and said so, but the other players encouraged it and were happy to listen along to the exploration and do a bit of backseat flying.

Much as you describe, it was very handy for when we subsequently explored the area in person, allowing us to find a couple of places we might have missed and to get the drop on a couple of combat encounters.

 

[Zardnaar]

Yes there is: Imp | D&D 2024 | Roll20 Compendium

In the party. I'm aware a warlock can do it. No warlock though so its irrelevant.

An imp if spotted can be killed. Quite easily. Eye can be dispelled.

Ones a lot easier to deal with.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

In the party. I'm aware a warlock can do it. No warlock though so its irrelevant.

An imp if spotted can be killed. Quite easily. Eye can be dispelled.

Ones a lot easier to deal with.

If someone is able to see the eye, they could put a jam jar over it! Don’t need to be able to dispel it to put it out of action.

 

[Lazybones]

Heh, I've run two 5.5e campaigns so far and I've had a pact of the chain warlock in both of them. One used an imp, the other a quasit.

I can say conclusively that they are not that easy to kill, especially at the lower levels, and given that it takes a simple action to create a new one, they are that much more effective.

 

[Silam]

I think the question of whether Arcane Eye is a game busting spell has really two questions tucked inside it…

1. Is one player scouting ahead a game busting event?

2. Is Arcane Eye a particularly bothersome form of scouting?

I think question 1 is very table-dependent and we can’t really adjudicate it here. We can discuss the range of possible out-game reactions to scouting and ideas for dealing with them, but ultimately those may or may not land at a given table.

Question 2, on the other hand, can probably be answered more objectively. If scouting is going to happen at all, is it worse to allocate a warm body (e.g., your friendly party Rogue) to the task, or to use some more or less discreet form of magical sensor (e.g., a simple familiar, or Arcane Eye)?

Personally, I would say the latter method is less disruptive as far as gameplay goes, because the player doing the magical scouting can simultaneously narrate everything they’re seeing. Thus, there is a plausible in-game mechanism for the whole party to be real-time spectactors and commentators of the scouting. Whereas having one of the characters actually go and do it does not provide an obvious way to phone back to base, unless very short range Message cantrips are used, or else a more range-friendly spell (in which case, if you had such spell available, why not use your magic to scout directly instead of risking your Rogue’s life?)…

Furthermore, while there is always a possibility that the scouting is detected, the consequences are much worse in the case of the party Rogue being several rooms ahead of their comrades. They could be in real trouble, possibly with no means of contacting the rest of the party. Now that’s a real spotlight hog, much worse than granting real-time God’s view to the whole party. Not to mention the hassle of dying for the player of the Rogue, and of needing to carry a fallen comrade back to town for the rest of the party.

So all in all, I would say Arcane Eye is no more broken than a simple familiar, and both of those are better scouting options than a Rogue as far as the whole party is concerned.

But if your table has an adverse relationship with scouting in general, then this particular spell won’t fix that.

By the way, this is a terrific spell to use in conjunction with a Diviner 6’s Expert Divination feature.

 

[DragonLancer]

As a DM, it's one of those spells I really dislike. At low levels I've had players use it to scout a house or warehouse and that's fine. But then when you get a dungeon or cave complex, it's a free here is 90% of the map and it takes away so much of the exploration side of it. It's a handy utility but the duration and range is too great really.

 

[Gorg]

Thoughts on this spell?

Basically one can use it for scouting. Early on it might not be worth your only 4th level slot.

We have a knowledge cleric however. Free arcane eye via channel divinity.

I dont have an issue with the scouting part. More time required with 1 person. Eg if you have to draw a map for them IRL or describe 30-50 rooms in a larger dungeon. Basically anything that isn't a secret door.

Or if the player wants to search for secret doors. In every room. Potentially a table hog spell in terms of real time. I cant really be bothered mapping out every dungeon via this spell let alone the time required. Player could insist I suppose but I would probably just wrap the campaign up if push came to shove.

Quicker way perhaps would be just use it to describe the nearest two or 3 rooms breaking up the monotony and this would let the rest of the players participate planning snd precasting buff spells or things like spirit guardians and conjure Woodland beings.

Do yeah just an unfun ability and its essentially unlimited. I dont want to metagame to heavily eg every dungeon is built from force and airtight doors or requires teleportation to navigate, or lots of wilderness encounters.

Handwavium let PCs know what they can see and assume they've prebuffed each encounter?

I always thought the spell was interesting and flavorful. Never used it in 40+ years, lol.

 

[Horwath]

Wildly depends if the caster is sharing the knowledge (and thus, every character is getting the info), or if the caster is hoarding or only partially giving out info.

I'm chill with the former, and have very little patience for the latter.

if used, why would caster not share the info, unless caster is antagonistic towards the rest of the party.

when we used it(shortly at DMs request), we just narrated what we saw through the eye to everyone.