No secrets can be kept due to Consult Oracle?

[keterys]

Thinking over an investigation my party did last night...
A divination was used to find out who stole something. Pretty generic guy.
Then they found out where that person was. Cased the area. Found out who he usually works for, arranged a meeting to buy something, intimidated the information out of him about where the drop off and person was.
They researched who he worked for, found out a mess of stuff, decided this guy was a real piece of work they'd be happy to kill, tracked down the object from the meetup point to the guy's lair.

A whole ton of roleplaying, all triggered by the divination of finding out the person's name. Of course, they also had the option (for less xp and less kudos with an npc because of the npc having to expend resources) of requiring further divinations to find out that information directly, but they chose not to. If they had, they'd have gotten the answer directly of who it was sold to, and where it was brought, and they'd have jumped right to the lair.

So, in a lot of cases I think the real trick is to be okay with them getting the information and to give them incentives to play along.

 

[Regicide]

I can understand the sentiment, but if you look at it a bit more deeply its not really that much of an issue. The ritual costs 3600 gp to cast. The DM should be saying to himself "OK, the party can learn some things for 3600 gp OR they can learn them more cheaply some other way, but that won't be so easy...".

Not really, 3600 is cheap. This is potentially an over the top power that makes other powers that also got reigned in, like flight and tongues, look pretty minor.

Plus I think there are some fairly decent limits on the Oracles already. The information has to be known by a "creature". This probably excludes things like gods, primordials, etc. You aren't going to learn the deep secrets of the Multiverse just by casting a ritual or two.

Is my wench cheating on me? What items has the party rogue pocketed instead of sharing with us? Which armies are gathering right now? Yikes!

Who killed JFK? Who helped? That is world changing.

Minority Report anyone? Who is making plans to commit murder right now? Even if you heavy-hand the "can't really judge" line so this is out, even just the postcognition is world changing in any town sufficiently wealthy enough to cast this in response to major crimes.

In reality, they are screwed if they do NOT take advantage of these types of resources.

Thus requiring either the players be experts with the game who know all the rituals and smart enough to apply that piece of information to what they're doing, or having the DM hold their hand and railroad them to a ritual caster who suggests it. Neither option is very pleasant and brings back memories of modules where the party is utterly hosed if they don't walk into fights death warded or mind blanked. "Oh sorry guys, guess you should have burnt that incense and done a divination to know what buffs you needed beforehand!"

Anyway, the wording of the ritual says "potential to know" so it gives the DM the flexibility to hand out as much information they want without having to ban it or jump through hoops of non-existent anti-oracle-out-space-and-time-peep-show rituals which the PCs will inevitably want to be able to do too.

 

[Ryujin]

Pretty sad when an assassin has to off himself after the job to keep things secret, because if he's alive the killer could be divined.

 

[Artoomis]

It does not take a living creature knowing - one that is dead will do. Just that someone had to know, at some point.

Of course, it is a 16th level ritual, and by that time the party is pretty darn powerful.

Still, overuse of this will cause a drain on party funds that becomes much less significant as the party level increases, which seems appropriate.

Also, the number of questions you "buy" each time is pretty limited.

So yes, you can get definitive answers to question like is the king a vampire, but getting anyone beyond the party to believe you is a whole different thing!

It occurs to me that out party (now 23rd level) has been vastly underusing this ritual and we don't know all kinds of information that we probably should know, especially given the political things we are trying to do.

I think our effectiveness will go up dramatically once we start using this better, and once we get True Portal in a few levels so we can act immediately on information provided - if we can afford to do so with True Portal being 50k (25k with the Ritualist's Ring and a milestone) each time..

 

[Bagpuss]

Pretty sad when an assassin has to off himself after the job to keep things secret, because if he's alive the killer could be divined.

It doesn't matter if the person is alive, only that someone knew at some time. But as I pointed out earlier that is a requirement for the oracle to possibly know the answer, not certainty that they will.

 

[surfarcher]

DM just needs to think a bit guys because this is a big fuss over nothing The fact is there are plenty of ways to handle it!

Maybe the real villain is several times removed from the fact. It'll take a lot of questions (and gold and hours) to isolate them using Consult Oracle. This can be nice because it can give the PCs a lead on some real investigation without giving the whole plot away.

If you think turnabout is fair play try Ward the True Name (Chromatic Dragons p86) because that BBEG currently ten levels higher than your PCs can easily use it and that can make for a very hot time for the PCs.

Personally I happen to like warding against scrying. It's sensible and the rulebooks are very specific that such warding rituals do exist (PHB p299, DMG p27), which makes sense or Orcus would already know how to overthrow the Raven Queen And remember that 90%+ of supplements and adventures implicitly or explicitly introduce new rituals - available to PCs or otherwise. I haven't ever bothered to write it up as a ritual but I basically use it to "make one specific fact obscured to scrying attempts" and cause the scry to fail with the PCs knowing it has been blocked somehow. Writing it up formally as a ward could be an interesting exercise.

Just because the PCs get a certain answer doesn't mean they have the whole picture. Clever adversaries will anticipate investigation and may act through elaborate means so that the PCs pursue false (even dangerous) leads.

Would Consult Oracle but considered as hard evidence by the authorities? If not the party could find themselves standing in a steaming pile of mess when the authorities come looking for Duke's murderers!

Now if you want to have some real fun start combining these The PCs used Consult Oracle and discovered who the BBEG is. But he was using Ward the True Name and realised the party is on his tail. So the BBEG comissions a powerful ritualist to remove the "evidence" from the oracle! Now the party's reaction to their knowledge of the BBEG has no "evidence" to support it. They killed him and he was the Mayor? Oops! Can you spell "kingdom-wide manhunt" or "fugitive"?

Getting the idea folks?

-doug

 

[CapnZapp]

No Doug, it's you who is missing the point.

Having to always take all info rituals into account is a chore, it is predictable, and in the end, it is a waste of brain cells, because if you're not going to let the PCs use their rituals, why have them in the first place.

Instead of handing out rituals that always work except when the DM hands out McGuffins to prevent them from working, how about handing out rituals that have unpredictable results already from the beginning?

The point isn't that there might be ways to handle it.

The point is that a DM shouldn't have to handle it at all. The problem should simply not be there.

If Consult Oracle already from the beginning is written to allow the DM to only hand out the clues he's ready to hand out, then the end results are exactly the same, except that the DM doesn't need to spend hours thinking about counter-measures, and can concentrate on the real plot!

Instead of making up new counter-rituals on the spot, why not simply write the original ritual in such a way no such counter-measures are needed in the first place?!

 

[Bagpuss]

If Consult Oracle already from the beginning is written to allow the DM to only hand out the clues he's ready to hand out,

Which it is.

then the end results are exactly the same, except that the DM doesn't need to spend hours thinking about counter-measures, and can concentrate on the real plot!

Which he can.

Instead of making up new counter-rituals on the spot, why not simply write the original ritual in such a way no such counter-measures are needed in the first place?!

You mean like Consult Oracle?

 

[keterys]

I suspect that your interpretation is not the prevailing one, Bagpuss. Essentially it's wishy washy. 'Well, it says it _might_ know' makes it completely random and/or arbitrary, when the inference from the examples is that it almost always does know.

I don't believe there is any rule to back up your interpretation. The rule for what the oracle knows is 'For the oracle to know the answer to a question, the answer must be known to at least one creature, even if that creature is no longer alive.'

Now, it is possible to obfuscate things beyond that, such as by making it difficult for it to interpret what it sees or requiring some other fuzzy logic, but in terms of raw information, it's a very heavy trump card.

 

[Bagpuss]

I don't believe there is any rule to back up your interpretation. The rule for what the oracle knows is 'For the oracle to know the answer to a question, the answer must be known to at least one creature, even if that creature is no longer alive.'

The way that is written it entirely backs my interpretation. That is written as a limitation on what the oracle can know. IE: If the information was never know by a creature living or dead then it cannot be know.

For a real world example, if you asked an oracle in the prehistoric times "Is mechanically power human flight possible?" It would not be able to answer, as no creature living or dead knew at that time.

If they wanted that sentence to be an indication of what an oracle actually knew, rather than a limit on what if could know it would have been written.

"If the answer to a question is known by any creature living or dead, then the oracle will know the answer."

They didn't phrase it that way for a reason. The way they did phrase it is clearly written as a restriction.

This makes them unparalleled sources of information because they have the potential to have seen and heard everything, even information otherwise known to only one creature.

Why use the word potential as well, when you're saying they automatically know information known to at least one creature.

Although there are other odd things about Consult Oracle.

It says You must phrase your question so that the oracle can answer it with a single word or a brief phrase.

Yet Loremaster's Bargin states Unlike rituals that provide cryptic answers (Consult Oracle) or have limited scope (Consult Mystic Sages), the Loremaster’s Bargain ritual provides contact to a creature that might be genuinely informative and helpful, provided you convince it to help.

Which implies Consult Oracle should be cryptic (how can one word answers be cryptic), and should be be genuinely informative or helpful.