D&D 5E (2024) Arcane Eye?

[Paul Farquhar]

It should be done Galaxy Quest style - the DM tells the eye caster, and they have to repeat it to the rest of the party.

 

[Seramus]

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

I don't know why players do what they do, sometimes. While actual antagonism is rare, I've seen players share some of the information, but not all of the information. Why? Depends.

I've seen someone just not tell the party about a threat, to encourage them to go that way. Or lie about a big threat, to encourage them to go a different way. Or just want to feel like they are "mysterious."

And I've seen actual antagonism, too. Not mentioning loot, or just to control people and feel edgy, or play metagame police by not mentioning something then relishing the GOTCHA moment when someone else mentions it IC.

Those players don't last long at my table; I'm a full cooperation all the time kinda guy. But I'm not always the GM, and haven't always played with great people.

 

[Silam]

It should be done Galaxy Quest style - the DM tells the eye caster, and they have to repeat it to the rest of the party.

To me this seems ideal roleplay-wise, but unfortunately a slog gameplay-wise. Unless… it coule be fine if there was some tooling (a VTT with functioning fog of war, perhaps?) which makes it easy/instantaneous for the caster to navigate and perceive the dungeon so they can narrate what they see in their own voice in real-time. But if the DM needs to whisper in the caster’s ear, then that character repeats, that’s pretty inconvenient.

 

[Tigris]

To me this seems ideal roleplay-wise, but unfortunately a slog gameplay-wise. Unless… it coule be fine if there was some tooling (a VTT with functioning fog of war, perhaps?) which makes it easy/instantaneous for the caster to navigate and perceive the dungeon so they can narrate what they see in their own voice in real-time. But if the DM needs to whisper in the caster’s ear, then that character repeats, that’s pretty inconvenient.

Just give them a print out of the room and they can describe them and later this is used as the map for the room.

 

[Silam]

Just give them a print out of the room and they can describe them and later this is used as the map for the room.

Indeed. I think there’s a good chunk of scenarios where that works well. For example: give a map of all the explorable corridors and rooms with opened doors, while rooms with closed doors don’t have the necessary 1 inch gap for the eye to squeeze through. The caster can see that part of the dungeon and all of the creatures within it (all of which have no ability to perceive the invisible eye).

In cases where some of the rooms contain creatures capable of detecting the eye, then the order in which they are explored matters and handing over the full map may be more than the DM should provide.

Also, if the caster wants to follow up the first pass of exploration via the Eye with opening doors via Mage Hand or a familiar, then that also calls for turn by turn decision-making and eventual discovery of creatures (and vice versa, them discovering that their door is somehow getting opened magically).