Are scry durations too short?

[Stogoe]

It's a change from previous editions, certainly, but I feel it's a good one. Scry is not a stakeout, it's not a phone tap. It's "Show me the person who killed the king/looted the temple/etc". And that's just perfect. I don't think "Oh, good, the evil priest is finally asleep. We teleport in and cut off his head" adds anything worthwhile to the game.

 

[theNater]

I wouldn't mind a scry ritual with a 1-hour casting time if it could let me scry for say, an hour at least. At least, the chances of me getting some useful information is higher. Else, you are just as likely to catch the target during his toilet break as he is to reveal some vital information, and even if you are lucky, 30s may be insufficient to get all the information you require.

Assuming you are scrying in the comfort of your own abode (with no imminent threats to distract you), the casting time shouldn't really matter, but it should not be too proibitively long either.

Okay.

Typical examples might be questions about why something happened, which may require long, detailed explanations so the PCs can get the full picture, and this may not be something which can be readily summarized into a few words without skipping a lot of details.

As I recall, scrying doesn't allow the caster to look into the past, so why something happened(or, usually, is happening) isn't really going to be available no matter how long the caster can watch. Unless, of course, the targets tend to expound at great length their reasons to their minions/allies/victims. Neither the scrying rituals nor Consult Oracle look very good for this, but Consult Mystic Sages seems to be right on point, and can answer in the form of a brief story.

For example, you may know that the orcs plan to invade a certain village. What you may not know is why they want to do so (assuming this involves a more complicated plot than the old "plunder the land for the gold and slaves" bit). Maybe the village is built over the entrance to a tomb which houses some powerful ancient elder evil that the orcs plan on releasing. Had you been able to scry longer, you might have been able to catch on to the orc leaders discuss that part and maybe fantasize about one day ruling over the "lesser races".

If you didn't know of it, you wouldn't think of asking that question to the oracle.

I'm not sure I can buy this. Either a party is curious, or not curious. If they are curious, "why?" is a perfectly reasonable question to ask the oracle, especially given that they probably have at least two questions and "where?" is only one. If they aren't curious, they're not going to maintain the scry past the cheers for "tommorow we attack Thunder Vale" to get to the "and once we have it, we can summon back the elder evil!" part.

Of course, the DM is likely to find some way of inserting this little bit of information into the campaign somehow. And some may not want the players to be able to unravel the entire plot with a few spells, so my concerns may or may not be relevant.

And, oddly enough, I find neither "to give the PCs information they'll get somehow anyway" nor "so the PCs can ruin surprises planned by the DM" to be compelling reasons for scrys to last longer.

 

[MarkB]

One variant I'd consider is allowing the ritual caster to specify, in general terms, some specific situation he is looking for regarding the target - i.e. "A meeting with allies", or "Discussion of battle plans", or "Within his inner sanctum".

If, at any point during the hour-long casting time, the subject is in a situation which fulfills the criteria, then what the caster sees at the end will be thirty seconds of that scene, and he will know at what point during the past hour it occurred. If the specified situation does not occur, the ritual functions as normal and the caster sees whatever the subject is doing at the moment the ritual is completed.

In either case, the Scrying Sensor is only visible during the thirty seconds that are actually viewed. Thus, if the sensor is found and destroyed before the end of the ritual, the caster will at least know that the specified situation did occur in some form.

 

[Saeviomagy]

I think the major problem with the scry rituals (all of them, including the 10-minute-cast arcane eye) is that they give you at best 30 seconds of viewing for every 10minutes of game time, and there's no way to accurately aim that 30 seconds so you can see or overhear anything useful unless the DM is actively messing with the gameworld so you hear it, in which case why even bother with the ritual?

Stacking them back-to-back alleviates the problem somewhat, and so does allowing the ritual to be 'held' - even if such 'holding' is merely extending the casting until some event occurs.

I think mostly the scrying rituals just seem like timmy cards: they sound useful, but in actuality you'll almost never find a situation where they have an advantage over, say, investing in the stealth skill.

In that light, I'd have much preferred them to work as long-duration easy-cast spells that worked only to see things from an ally's point of view: that way they become a method of involving the group in someone's solo stealth mission instead of the waste of time they currently are.

 

[Lizard]

I have to wonder what kind of games other have in 3x...

I got scry a little while ago. Oh boy, I said! I can use this horribly broken spell and ruin all my DMs plots! Bwahaha!

Not so much.

First, we rarely had more than a name for an enemy. We certainly didn't have their hair or know them well.

Second, any enemy worth scrying on usually has a will save from hell.

Third, any enemy worth scrying on either WAS a wizard, HAD a wizard, or was living somewhere BUILT by a wizard, and so was scryguarded out the wazzoo.

Fourth, nine times out of ten, we don't even know we HAVE an enemy until he launches his surprise attack when we're scattered all over town dealing with our assorted personal plot threads.

Basically, I have never managed to get a "live" scry -- that is, during actual game play -- which was remotely useful. During downtime bluebooking, I've said "I will be doing A, B, and C to try to figure out Foozle's defenses", and sometimes get something useful out of it, but since that's so much up to DM discretion, I could have just as easily said "I'm doing library research/gather information/whatever" and gotten the same information.

But to keep this on topic....

Either the DM *should* use scrying as the "Gilligan's Island Radio" -- you always tune in just in time to get the plot relevant information you need (which is fine) -- or there should be some way to be "smart" and make your small window of opportunity useful. For example, Loremaster's Bargain or the other "Oracle" type rituals can be used to find out when the best time to scry is. You can probably come up with other ways to make sure you're doing it right -- perhaps bribe a henchman of the evil overlord to tell you when he meets with his spymaster, or something.

Basically, given the high cost and level of scrying in 4e, it should be part of the player/DM social contract that it be useful. (It might, for example guarantee one or two successes in a skill challenge.) If the DM really hates it as a plotbreaker, he can, of course, simply make sure the ritual is never learned by a PC, which I consider fully acceptable. The 4e DMG talks a lot about saying yes...saying NO is also a skill DMs need.

 

[Stogoe]

I think the major problem with the scry rituals (all of them, including the 10-minute-cast arcane eye) is that they give you at best 30 seconds of viewing for every 10minutes of game time, and there's no way to accurately aim that 30 seconds so you can see or overhear anything useful unless the DM is actively messing with the gameworld so you hear it,

Um, narrative storytelling? If you're thinking that "What would really happen is you get 30 seconds of BBEG on the toilet" you're committing one of the gravest sins of 4e, and that's expecting a simulationist result from a game that embraces - nay, revels in - the notion of being a game first, and a narrative second, and anything else a far distant third.

 

[Lizard]

Um, narrative storytelling? If you're thinking that "What would really happen is you get 30 seconds of BBEG on the toilet" you're committing one of the gravest sins of 4e, and that's expecting a simulationist result from a game that embraces - nay, revels in - the notion of being a game first, and a narrative second, and anything else a far distant third.

Carry that logic far enough, though, and you might as well create a ritual called Reveal Plot Point, the material component of which is a large pizza, given to the DM.

A large part of making the game fun is making it *seem* believable, and that means not drawing back the curtain to reveal the wizard, even if everyone knows he's there. In a book, if the 'window' for scrying is limited (the stars must be right, whatever), the main characters will often do something extra to make sure they get the most use out of their opportunity. Even if this, too, is implausible, the act of calling out the difficulty of getting the scrying "just right" helps dull the knee jerk reaction of "Oh, sure, they just HAPPENED to get him right when he was explaining his evil scheme!" You (the author or the DM) communicate to the audience that it's not mere random chance which produced the positive result. Many Bothans might have to die to open the scrying window at the right time, if you get my badly mangled mixed metaphor.

 

[Saeviomagy]

Um, narrative storytelling? If you're thinking that "What would really happen is you get 30 seconds of BBEG on the toilet" you're committing one of the gravest sins of 4e, and that's expecting a simulationist result from a game that embraces - nay, revels in - the notion of being a game first, and a narrative second, and anything else a far distant third.

Yeah, but at the point where your dm is handing you the perfect 30 seconds out of an entire day, why not just never spend resources on the ritual and wait for the DM to figure out some other way of getting the info to you. He's obviously pretty keen on doing so.

And really - it's going to start breaking my sense of verisimilitude if I do decide to use the spell and just happen to catch the bad guy at the perfect time twice with this spell (and it's a pretty bad investment if you only ever cast it twice). It's also pretty odd that your character thinks this has enough of a chance of working that he's willing to spend a not inconsiderable amount of money on trying it. Wizards are supposed to be smart - certainly smart enough to realise that a 1/2880 chance of catching the BBEG at the right time isn't worth blowing 21 grand.

 

[Lizard]

Wizards are supposed to be smart - certainly smart enough to realise that a 1/2880 chance of catching the BBEG at the right time isn't worth blowing 21 grand.

Isn't there also a ritual which lets you fool scryers? So if you see "the perfect moment" twice or more, you might begin to suspect someone is pulling your leg...

Yeah, Deceive Sensor. Given that it lasts 24 hours and scrying lasts only a few rounds...of course, again, you won't spend 45K gold just because someone *might* scry on you today -- even the most mad of evil overlords would go broke trying to keep that on 365 days a year, and eventually you'll run out of Mystic Mojo dust or whatever. I think the high level 4e paradigm is going to be Precog, Scry, Overland Flight, instead of S/B/T.

I kind of like the idea of a "Precog war". "Did he predict we'll be scrying now/did we predict the best time to scry properly?"

Overall, despite powering up the game in some area, 4e actually makes a medieval-style world more believable in many others. (Of course, since any shmuck can use a ritual scroll if they have the ingredients (remember, you don't need the ritual caster feat to use a scroll, nor do you have to be of the ritual's level), you can also do a high-magic world where everyone knows a ritual or two. It's a DM call, and that's how it should be...)

 

[Ahglock]

Basically with the reward 30 seconds of seeing some guy, and a 1 hour cast time and a fairly high GP cost I don't see any PC ever casting it. To me that means either the duration is too short or the cost is too high or both.

I think considering how hard it would be to get any useful information out of 30 seconds that the duration may be too short.

I look at it this way if someone had gather information as a skill in 3e and had invested max skill points to it at like say 10th level. Would the person think they got a useful amount of information form there expenditure in skill points if the DM said i'm giving you 30 seconds of random conversation from Mr. X during this day. You find out, ROLL ummm he likes his wifes new haircut and the blue dress looks really nice on her today.

That is basically what the 4e scry spell is asking players to accept. Spend lots of money to buy the ritual, spend a bunch more money to cast it and most likely get worthless information assuming your scry even gets through. Going into that situation will any players even purchase the ritual in order to waste more money on its casting?