maintaining secrecy ?

[lightful]

Thanks a bunch.

The deeper darkness is great.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Doesn't the sensor see 5 ft. into deeper darkness?

 

[Tar-Edhel]

Put them inside a box. A very small box. A box with no room except for the kidnap victim.

Then either your magical sensor appears over the box (so you don't in fact see the princess) or it doesn't appear at all since there's no room near the subject...

Waddya guys think?

I've never been able to figure what exactly you did see by scrying. The spell creates a magical sensor near the subject. How large or far can this magical sensor see?

If the answer is: as far as eye can see, can you move it, like to see who the scryied person is talking with?

If not, can I decide where the sensor will appear and what direction it will be facing?

 

[andargor]

If I were kidnapping someone, I'd lock them in a square, featureless cell and cast Deeper Darkness in the room. Since the only vision spell that can be cast through a Scrying is Darkvision, and darkvision doesn't penetrate magical darkness, all they'll get to see is solid blackness. Since you need to see a location in order to teleport there, the rescuers aren't going anywhere.

And Deeper Darkness lasts days per level.

So there you go, a counter to scrying for the price of a 3rd-level spell.

Make sure the victim is gagged, as a high enough wizard (or a determined one) can cast Message through the sensor, and simply ask the victim where she is...

Andargor

 

[Storminator]

Then either your magical sensor appears over the box (so you don't in fact see the princess) or it doesn't appear at all since there's no room near the subject...

Waddya guys think?

I've never been able to figure what exactly you did see by scrying. The spell creates a magical sensor near the subject. How large or far can this magical sensor see?

If the answer is: as far as eye can see, can you move it, like to see who the scryied person is talking with?

If not, can I decide where the sensor will appear and what direction it will be facing?

Scry looks at a person, not a place. So I rule that the scry looks at the person from ~10 feet away, from the point that is closest to the scrier. Then the sensor does not move. If the scried upon moves the sensor reorients to keep them in view, and if they move away from it, it follows by the shortest path.

So if you detect scrying, hold still. The scrier will not be able to get enough of a view to teleport in. If you move around they will see more of the area, and possibly teleport in. I usually give one of the poorer teleport conditions tho.

There are other high level counters as well tho. At 5th level is false vision or mirage arcana. At 6th level permanent illusion can be made to serve. 7th level has Sequester and 8th Screen. Deeper darkness and a small box is pretty hard to beat tho.

PS

 

[officeronin]

All these precautions assume that the bad guys know that the enemy might try to scry and teleport. If they think this is likely, I'd use it as bait for a trap.

Here's one I did once -- the princess was captured, and the bad guys did a trap the soul into a gem. The gem was part of a necklace, worn by the doppleganger who had changed to look like the princess (and had plenty of time to grab info on her personality and knowledge). The party scried, saw "her" (it's where her soul is, and it looks like her...), and whisked her off for the reward.

Alternately, she's shackled prone to the floor, with shackles of dimensional anchor, and troops are waiting (invisible, in the next room, etc.)

OfficeRonin

"It's a traaap!!!" -- the immortal words of (Sahaguin) General Akbar.

 

[DanMcS]

It's not impossible for there to be magical materials that protect against scrying. The manual of the planes suggests Gorgon's blood, lead, plant life, and a couple of other things to protect an area from ethereal intruders and such. In a game I'm playing in, orichalcum, a magical version of copper (like mithril is of silver), protects against scrying if there's enough of it nearby. We built our stronghold into a mountain with veins of the stuff, and then worked it into the structure as well.

 

[wolff96]

Lead-lined room.

Lead -- an inch or more in thickness -- blocks nearly all divinations. I don't have the PHB in front of me, but I believe scrying is one of them.

Based on the price of sling bullets, you can get 50 lbs. of lead for 1 gold piece.

It wouldn't cost much at all to line a room in lead.

Of course, you better not care about your prisoner... eventually, they will suffer from Lead poisoning.

 

[Darklone]

One DM I know used an Unhallow with Dimensional Anchor... You can teleport in, but not out. Very bad. Well. You can always fireball your way out

 

[KnowTheToe]

If I were kidnapping someone, I'd lock them in a square, featureless cell and cast Deeper Darkness in the room. Since the only vision spell that can be cast through a Scrying is Darkvision, and darkvision doesn't penetrate magical darkness, all they'll get to see is solid blackness. Since you need to see a location in order to teleport there, the rescuers aren't going anywhere.

And Deeper Darkness lasts days per level.

So there you go, a counter to scrying for the price of a 3rd-level spell.

Roger Zelazny did this in the second series of his Amber books. A girl is trapped in complete darkness and someone uses a trump of the trapped girl to teleport to her and gets trapped in the darkness, then a portal to some other hell dimension or something made things really interesting.