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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5725818" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 253: November 1998part 5/8Wyrms of the north: In a world so full of powerful magic and active gods, it's easy for paranoia to set in. Dragons are certainly no stranger to this, as their great power and senses means they can be all too aware of those that exceed them. This is one of those cases. He's not one of those super twinked dragons or archmages that's become immortal and practically invulnerable, but he'd very much like to be. After so many of the real thing, it's amusing to meet a wannabe who tries hard, but hasn't really pulled it off yet. So this shows he's aware of his excesses in the past and if not apologising for them, is able to poke fun at them. Racking up the contingencies is something so many of his characters do, and it's no surprise that not everyone would be perfect at it, and they'd still feel unsafe after doing all they can. So this fills out the slightly lower tier of the world nicely. Surely there are enough people at the top now? At least until a few of them get killed in big metaplot events. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /> Arcane lore: A special for diviners? About frigging time! Each element has got at least one, often several themed issues, while this school remains neglected. It's no wonder they get the best deal in terms of restricted schools. It has plenty of potential, but not enough people are exploiting it. Oh well, this is a decent length and density, skipping the lengthy histories of who and why to just get into the useful crunch. Plenty of stuff here to help keep your diviner competitive and more informed than anyone else. Detect Mineral helps you become a very profitable dowser. It'd work better if it had a longer range though. Sometimes the really good stuff is miles underground. Can't expect the world from 1st level spells. Know Intelligence, like detect magic or evil, is one of those low level divinations that reveals a fairly limited bit of info, that you can nevertheless get plenty of use out of if you apply your own analytical skills. Serpentine Sight helps you penetrate cover, seeing slightly around walls. Interesting. Cast on your warrior and they'll really benefit in a trench based battle. Envision Whole lets you figure out what a broken object was. Again, reconstructing it will take higher level magic. Insight boosts your intelligence temporarily in the same way Strength boosts your strength. Another case where I say roll on next edition, where this stuff'll be standardised and applied to all your scores equally. Time Sense gives you a perfect internal clock. I'm sure I've seen a better variant on this with a decent duration before, so I shall yawn at this one. Forecast Usefulness helps you figure out what spells you'll need next day. Genius. This is only as infallible as the GM's ability to predict what the players will do and encounter of course, so play nice, will you. Know Command Word is a relatively quick and specific item identification trick that'll let you pluck an item from a hoard, and turn it against it's owner in a couple of rounds. One of those ones that could well become a staple of the cautious wizard, especially since the full identify is so expensive. Locate Wizard Mark lets you tell where every instance of your personal sigil is. This isn't too earth-shattering on it's own, but you can bet Elminster and co can find some incredibly obscene uses for it along with other divination and sympathetic magics. Lets pull those Xanatos Gambits folks! Teleport Track is another of the Elminster favourites. Foil those escaping fiends and make them think twice about underestimating a foolish mortal. Diviners really are the kings of antiscrewage, and they ought to get more credit for that alone. See Backward lets you rewind and find out what happened in a place. Another no problemo plot solver for the DM to work around cleverly. Clairsentience gives you remote sight, sound and smell, in one handy package. That's much easier than stocking up on spells for all the senses. Reverse Scrying is yet another familiar Wizards Three favourite. Who could this be that is researching me? Perhaps I should terminally douse their curiosity. Speak with water is another information gatherer that'll work just fine, albeit with slightly quirky focus. Yawn. Candle of Revelation is a longlasting, multipurpose portable divination device. A whole bunch of the basics in one go. Some wizards do get lazy at higher levels. Well of Wisdom gives you superhuman wisdom for a very short time. It's material component is a bit of a bugger to get though. This'll take quite a bit of work to take advantage of, and carry serious risks along the way. Not everyone can be Solomon. Speak with Distant Dead lets you summon spirits without their bodies. This is surprisingly tricky and unreliable in D&D. I suppose there are worse metaphysical quirks to have to work around.</blockquote>

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