Elven secret door detection

[Festivus]

Running with the elven eyeball idea, perhaps you could only use it's ability when looking through the eye. That way you couldn't have something else in your hand (e.g. a weapon) or hamper movement a bit because it distorts your vision slightly. In addition, you would probably need to be evil to create such an object given you need a preserved elf eyeball.

Eyeball of Detection
This preserved eyeball of an elf has a small hole cut in the back of it that you can peer into, and see as if looking through the eyeball. Peering through the eye you can detect secret doors, compartments, caches, and so forth. Only passages, doors, or openings that have been specifically constructed to escape detection are detectable with thsi eye. The amount of information revealed depends on how long you study a particular area or subject. You must hold the eyeball before your own in order to see.

1st Round: Presense or absence of secret doors.

2nd Round: Number of secret doors and the location of each. If an aura is outside the line of sight, then you discern its direction but not it's exact location.

Each Addtional Round: The mechanism or trigger for one particular secret portal closely examined by you. Each round you can turn to detect secret doors in a new area.

Faint Divination; CL 1st; Detect Secret Doors; Price ?? (Don't have DMG at work) ; Weight --

 

[Goldmoon]

Want to balance it? Make an eyepatch that must be in place for 24 hours before it will work.

 

[ValhallaGH]

Well, you could always go the Eye of Veccna route and have to replace your own eye to use the item....

I'm leaning towards the Circlet of the Elves (~4,000 gp) with a required elf creator, personally. Not that I'll be running a game where I could use such an item for quite some time.

 

[Festivus]

I was kind of thinking that you having to hold it to your eye instead of holding a weapon or shield would help balance it a bit. That and the fact you would have to kill or maim an elf to create one.

I suppose you either require that you hold two eyeballs or increase the amount of time it takes for the effect to work.

This is what I get for playing a necromancer, always looking at the darker side of crafting things.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

The topic of the Elves freebie secret-door-detect ability reminds me of a discussion we had a couple months ago during a session....

The gist of the conversation boiled down to the idea that elves would never bother building secret doors in their buildings because within a week the entire city would know about them just by the cleaning crew going about their daily business.

DS

 

[Goldmoon]

The topic of the Elves freebie secret-door-detect ability reminds me of a discussion we had a couple months ago during a session....

The gist of the conversation boiled down to the idea that elves would never bother building secret doors in their buildings because within a week the entire city would know about them just by the cleaning crew going about their daily business.

DS

So no secret doors anywhere in the ruins of Myth Drannor?