Scrying

[Tar-Edhel]

Loremasters, greetings

What exactly do you see when scrying someone. The spell states 'a magical sensor located near the creature' without specifying more details about the view you get.

Can you zoom in and/or out?

Do you see people the scryed person interacts with?

Can you locate someone with this? Or in other words, can you get clues about his geographical location?

Ho far can I see around the subject? If I was to scry on him while he is flying, can I get a view from above to see the ground many hundred feet below?

Thanks!

 

[the Jester]

On a related note, can you move the scrying sensor created by clairaudience/clairvoyance? I've ruled no, but don't know if there's anything official on the subject.

 

[Thanee]

We play it, that you can see as if you were standing at a point close to the scryed person. So you can look around, but not move the spot, which will keep its proximity to the person (i.e. 10' or so).

Bye
Thanee

 

[Tar-Edhel]

Danke Thanee!

Anyone else wants to give it a try? Nobody has an official ruling on this?

 

[Solomani]

We run scrying in a similar manner as to having a physical position close to the person. Of course if you are using a scrying orb or similar (unlimited scrying). You can use the initial point to get a fix on another person or object and move the sight origin to there.

EG: Right I'm gonna scry on that mage will met earlier. Is anyone nearby? OK I'll have a good look at them and then scry on them. As we go along I'll switch to the enemy commander if this bloke goes near him.

Seems to work fine, and allows you to look all around a place if used with enough imagination.

 

[jodyjohnson]

We play it verbatim without adding in all the old interpretations and additions from the last 25 years.

1. You see the target.

You can tell whether they are inside, outside, in the dark, under sunlight, etc because of their lighting. It doesn't give you enough information for a teleport.

2. You can hear the target.

Not their friends, not the background noise, not their headphones and walkman.

You can't move the sensor but it stays in front of the target.
The sensor is only there to provide line of effect for those near the target to target it for dispel.

Unfortunately, there are a few 'official' modules where it's a upgraded version of clairvoyance/clairaudience. Move it, survey the area, hear everyone. Not that modules can't be wrong (Nightscale anyone?).

 

[Thanee]

Hey, I just had a really evil idea what to do with the drow sorcerer/archmage npc of mine...

The party will sooner or later try to find him again via scrying (they know, that they need several attempts, as he is most often protected against scrying, but not always, they have succeeded only once so far and then he was in complete darkness, so they could not derive any local information to teleport to). They want to see him dead, but so far they could kill him (barely), but not ensure that he'll stay dead (he had cloned himself).

Next time he could use contingency/false vision to set up a carefully prepared teleport trap! That will be fun!

Bye
Thanee

 

[twjensen]

Verbatim?

We play it verbatim without adding in all the old interpretations and additions from the last 25 years.

Unfortunately, there are a few 'official' modules where it's a upgraded version of clairvoyance/clairaudience. Move it, survey the area, hear everyone. Not that modules can't be wrong (Nightscale anyone?).

Well, that leaves out most of the scrying scenes from fantasy novels that players (and their DMs, to be honest) have read. A typical scrying reveals the target and the target's immediate surroundings. Most of the time you don't actually hear the target.

As a possibly reasonable alternative, the spell as listed does exactly as it says. Any greater scrying has to be moderated with a suitably powerful scrying crystal that the party hopefully only has access to when the story / module / DM's whim requires it. Which is how I run it.

 

[jodyjohnson]

Mirror, mirror on the wall ... who's the fairest of them all.

Snow White, and here's where she is. Why don't you just teleport to her right now and kill her?


Palantir, Galadriel's Mirror, etc. combine Clairvoyance, Clairaudience, Scrying and the occasional Augury/See the future. Too bad Sauron didn't have Teleport Without Error. What a sad outsider he was.

 

[Kershek]

Not that modules can't be wrong (Nightscale anyone?).

What's wrong with Nightscale?