Ondath
Hero
Well, auguri's point is to wish someone happy birthday in Italian. But what about the spell?
I searched the forums to see if this was ever discussed since 5E's launch, but since it wasn't, here I am.
So... What's the point of Augury? As a DM, whenever my players cast it, I felt like the only logical answer I would give them would be Weal and Woe, since most ideas PCs come up with can go either way. As a player, I never saw the spell's benefit.
I'm guessing that it's a holdover from earlier editions, and kinda serves like the Common Sense perk in WoD games (AKA the "DM, please tell us if what we're about to do is patently stupid!" power, the most OP of them all). But even with that goal, it doesn't seem to do that much. The "next 30 minutes" time limit means that it can only be applied for quick plans in the short term, and like I said, I feel like 99% of most queried plans of action will yield the Weal and Woe result. Furthermore, I feel like the spell more fits a player skill-centric play style (like the OSR games), but doesn't really work with modern sensibilities. I feel like most DMs wouldn't require their players to burn up a 2nd-level spell slot to say that their plan is doomed because they as players didn't account for a factor their characters (being creatures of average intelligence living in the world) would know. So the DMs would just straight up say "Your PC would know that...", which makes the spell even more pointless.
I was curious to see if Level Up improved upon the spell's idea, but it's basically the same as O5E. But I've been thinking that the Circle of Stars Druid's Cosmic Omen could offer a nice mechanical alternative. So instead of asking how a course of action will go and getting the DM's assesment of it, the DM would roll on a table and give a bonus or penalty to rolls related to the queried course of action according to the result. So if the result comes up Woe, it's not that you have a stupid plan, it's that Fortune has decided that course of action will lead to a bad result, and you'll get a d6 penalty whenever you attempt something related to it. That sort of thing. Do you think this would be a balanced alternative to the spell?
I searched the forums to see if this was ever discussed since 5E's launch, but since it wasn't, here I am.
So... What's the point of Augury? As a DM, whenever my players cast it, I felt like the only logical answer I would give them would be Weal and Woe, since most ideas PCs come up with can go either way. As a player, I never saw the spell's benefit.
I'm guessing that it's a holdover from earlier editions, and kinda serves like the Common Sense perk in WoD games (AKA the "DM, please tell us if what we're about to do is patently stupid!" power, the most OP of them all). But even with that goal, it doesn't seem to do that much. The "next 30 minutes" time limit means that it can only be applied for quick plans in the short term, and like I said, I feel like 99% of most queried plans of action will yield the Weal and Woe result. Furthermore, I feel like the spell more fits a player skill-centric play style (like the OSR games), but doesn't really work with modern sensibilities. I feel like most DMs wouldn't require their players to burn up a 2nd-level spell slot to say that their plan is doomed because they as players didn't account for a factor their characters (being creatures of average intelligence living in the world) would know. So the DMs would just straight up say "Your PC would know that...", which makes the spell even more pointless.
I was curious to see if Level Up improved upon the spell's idea, but it's basically the same as O5E. But I've been thinking that the Circle of Stars Druid's Cosmic Omen could offer a nice mechanical alternative. So instead of asking how a course of action will go and getting the DM's assesment of it, the DM would roll on a table and give a bonus or penalty to rolls related to the queried course of action according to the result. So if the result comes up Woe, it's not that you have a stupid plan, it's that Fortune has decided that course of action will lead to a bad result, and you'll get a d6 penalty whenever you attempt something related to it. That sort of thing. Do you think this would be a balanced alternative to the spell?