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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Henry" data-source="post: 3154219" data-attributes="member: 158">Really? In our last Eberron game, both the PCs and the Villains scried each other REPEATEDLY before final confrontations. The PCs got the idea because the villains were doing it to them. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> In my games, if the PCs take the time to engage in scouting, scrying, gathering info, they find info about resources, forces arrayed, tactics, etc. If they don't bother, they take what they get, sometimes VERY strong opposition.In one situation, one Ethereal artificer took out a party of FIVE NPCs of two levels below him by himself, because the villains were caught off guard and had no divinations up (he used Superior Invisibility, and WASTED them one after the other. By the time the villains had figured out what was going on, and cast their true seeings, over half were dead, and only two escaped.In the final conflict of the campaign, the PCs scouted the villains up to three rooms ahead in a dangerous demonic palace, before confronting them. The final fight saw the heroes surprised because the demons they faced had true seeing inherently, unknown to them, and walked right into a trap. However, because they used scrying, Knowledge (Dungeoneering), and were loaded for battle beforehand, they still turned a really bad ambush into a victory. Had they not been prepared, they would have lost given arrayed forces.So in my experirence, prep and divination is only as useful as the DM allows it to be, and if the DM is prepared to handle it, the players can find it all the sweeter when a plan DOES go off well.Correct; that's why the PC artificer succeeded so brilliantly against the five villains, because he was prepped and they weren't, and that's what I planned for. In another situation, however, the same player surprised me totally; He faced down a beholder, and while the rest of the party distracted it, shot it with an antimagic ray while his central eye was focused elsewhere. It caught ME flat-footed (not the beholder), and in the end he had eagles from a SUMMON MONSTER II chase down the slow beholder, running for its life, and they clawed it to death. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />  One 7th level spell, and the beholder might as well have failed a finger of death save, because it would have been a quicker death. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f631.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":eek:" title="Eek!    :eek:"  data-smilie="9"data-shortname=":eek:" />On the other hand, they were the ones who miscalc'ed when the common ethereal/superior invisibility tactics they had used backfired on them, because of the demons' inherent properties. However, it was to be a hard fight -- they were facing a cabal of the Lords of Dust, and stopping the release of a Rajah. Even then, they used teamwork, and it showed.</blockquote>

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