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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Chaosmancer" data-source="post: 8097628" data-attributes="member: 6801228">High level barely helps anything, because you have to take into account a few very important details. Sorcerers have zero scrying ability. They do not have any divination spells that give any information. I even checked my custom list, which I included even more spells that are typically not on the wizard list. Nothing. So, firstly, you need a second caster in the party to gather the kind of precise information you are talking about. Secondly, there are some pretty strict limits on those types of spells anyways. Commune and Contact Other Plane both are limited to vague answers. Commune is strictly yes or no, while Contact is a little more varied with giving single word answers, like "Never" or "Unlikely" You are probably familiar with the game 20 Questions? Yes, it is possible to turn yes or no answers into a very specific set of information, but it is called "20" questions for a reason, you usually need more than a dozen answers to narrow it down sufficiently. Commune is a Ritual, but it only gives three questions, and has a cumulative 25% fail rate. If you get at least three sets of the spell off, you still need two days of casting it to narrow down a single piece of information. And that can be very misleading, if the wrong types of conclusions are drawn from the web of questions. But what about Scrying? Well, first of all, it is a saving throw, modified by a few factors. Someone you have never met before gets a +5. and if you have no "connection" to them, you can't reduce the save. Additionally, if they succeed, you can't attempt again for 24 hours. And you only get ten minutes of viewing them. So, you could gain very little knowledge of any use. Such as... where are they. And... that is about it. Clairvoyance needs you to be familiar with the place, and you can't move the sensor. Divinition and Augury are very vague statements of "weal" and "woe" which aren't giving you a lot of information like enemy numbers, like you were suggesting...In fact, it seems to me, that the most powerful information gathering spells, that put no party members in direct harm and couldn't be casually negated by the types of high level tactics I would expecte from high level foes.... are Wizard abilities. Which would lead to the scenario that the wizard is rendered obsolete... by providing the very information that is being used to render them obsolete. Which, in certain circles, would be called "doing an excellent job"</blockquote>

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