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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 6135962" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Issue 319: May 2004part 5/8I Scry: We've had a couple of articles recently on the ramifications of scrying magic in your game. If used regularly and intelligently, it rapidly turns into an arms race that leaves less intelligent and magically capable creatures in the dust, and those that can keep up perpetually paranoid. Course, money can substitute for magical skill to an extent, especially in 3e, where you can hire wizards to make you items that shield you from screwage. So it's not surprising that we'd see an article on this topic. Give some of these out as treasure, and your players may not be as immediately ecstatic as a new blasty wand, but they will thank you later, when the evil diviner doesn't immediately know all the buttons to push to make them inadvertently advance his plans. Amulets of Deception make you look like someone else in scrying visions, while not affecting your appearance in person. This may actually be more handy than just plain nondetection, as a smart diviner may well be able to figure out by inferrance when there's a person who's interacting with others in the scene but invisible to them, but not a more subtle alteration like this. Circlets of Convocation let you teleport straight to someone who's scrying on you, giving them a nasty shock indeed. Course, they don't give you a way to get back, survive in hostile environments, or bring anyone else along, so this still might not turn out great for you. Hope your dungeoncrawling skills are up to scratch, because you'll probably be right in the middle of their defences. Deathglance Lockets are slightly safer, merely inflicting large quantities of damage on peeping toms and breaking their contact. One or two shocks like that'll make them far more cautious in the future. Golden Beholders are a decidedly inventive item that let you detach the small eyestalks and place them wherever, and then use the central body to see through any of those 10 locations at will. So they're good both as a security camera system in your lair, and to a lesser extent spying. Beware of wizards giving gifts, for they may be traceable. Black and White Elipsoid Ioun Stones give you yer basic invisibility to scrying. As that's only step 2 in any arms race, it's not hugely impressive. Mirrors of Captured Images let you do magical stakeouts without being glued to the crystal ball all day, recording up to 24 hours of remote images for you to play back at your leisure. Careful you don't record over the really important bits, as that storage time'll get filled up faster than you think. Rings of Scrying Detection are another basic one that just do what they do reliably. don't get too clever and forget your basic info gathering enhancers. Rings of the Evil Eye, on the other hand, have a superficial benefit that hides the fact that they leave you completely open to being spied upon anytime, anywhere. Still, unlike most cursed items, you just can take it off after discovering the catch. Better hope one of your companions covers your vulnerability. Scout Goggles are another one that lets you see through the eyes of other ones in the set. Since they're obvious and this can be done reciprocally, they're better suited to party scouts than spies, hence the name. Scryskulls bring this to a close with another very cool looking idea, a helm that lets you animate, and perceive the world through a floating skull. A good one for if you want to convince people you're a demilich, or just give quests from a safe distance in a suitably dramatic fashion, as people tend to be suspicious of skulls, which makes them not great for straight spying.</blockquote>

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