Why are scrying rituals so dang short?

[theNater]

I'll be honest, I'm very surprised at how many "its fine" responses I'm getting. People really think 3 or 4 rounds is enough time that its worth all the cost and effort?

I do. All you need to scry on someone is the knowledge that they exist. Once you have that, even 1 round is enough to give you:

Appearance
Condition
Local location(in a forest, in a cave, in a building)
Current activity(running, fighting, sleeping)
Number and type of nearby characters/monsters

That's a minimum. That's enough to tell you what would be good questions for a divination ritual, or to give you nearby objects to target for the cheaper View Object ritual if you absolutely need to scry some more("the largest stalagmite that's been seen through my scrying mirror today" is nice and unambiguous).

It's not good for long-term surveillance. It is good for generating leads from the barest scraps of information. To go from "a town has been destroyed" to "a town has been destroyed by a red dragon with a broken left claw who is currently laired in the ruins of an ancient palace" is pretty valuable.

 

[Festivus]

For spying on someone? Absolutely not. For seeing the face of the man who murdered your sworn blood brother so that when you drive a dagger through his diseased heart you will know you have killed the right man? Absolutely worth it.

When you get down to it, the duration would have to be ridiculously long for it to be an effective spying tool. I mean, suppose it were five minutes. What are the chances somebody is going to do something worth spying on in that five minutes? In fifteen minutes? Maybe if you had it timed exactly so that you completed the ritual just as they started doing something interesting it would work, but otherwise you're probably going to have to watch for hours to see anything interesting.

Despite the flavor text at the top, this is not a spying ritual. This is a "reveal the face of mine foe" ritual. This is a, "I gaze upon the traitor's mien!" or "Show me the visage of my true father!" And an image appears, flickers for a few seconds, then disappears.

And that sort of thing absolutely has a lot of back-up in mythology, legend, and stories.

This is exactly my take on the scrying ritual as well, thanks for putting it so nicely. If I wanted to spy on the kings courtyard I would try and hire a spy or bribe the jester.

 

[Stalker0]

It sounds like most of the "its fine" crowd is not looking at the scrying ritual as scrying in the sense of spying, but more of an answer finding divination.

"Show me the man who killed my father!" "Reveal to me the one who took Arbinger, the sword of Morakon" that kind of thing.

However, it mentions in the DMG that a player should be "extremely specific" for the observe creature spell, and tells the DM he is well within his rights to deny players information for not being specific enough.

Regardless, I'm fine with a ritual whose purpose is to do the above. I just wish there was an actual "scrying" ritual, one that let me do some actual spying. I would be fine with a ritual that required me to have seen my target before, or have some of his hair or something like that, but then gave me a longer duration.

 

[theNater]

It sounds like most of the "its fine" crowd is not looking at the scrying ritual as scrying in the sense of spying, but more of an answer finding divination.

That's me, all right. Can't speak for the rest of the "its fine" crowd, of course.

Regardless, I'm fine with a ritual whose purpose is to do the above. I just wish there was an actual "scrying" ritual, one that let me do some actual spying. I would be fine with a ritual that required me to have seen my target before, or have some of his hair or something like that, but then gave me a longer duration.

Indeed, there don't seem to be any spying rituals in the PHB. It hadn't really struck me, largely because I'm unskilled at intrigue. Which means I don't know the advantages of magical spying over magical divination.

What are some of those advantages? How valuable are they? I'd like to be able to consider them when/if I start homebrewing rituals.

 

[Rith the Wanderer]

Maybe there will be a better spying ritual in future supplements? (a tired excuse, I know). I personally didn't use scrying much, but I did like the knowledge that I could.

On the teleport kill subject: Is there anything stopping a PC, having learned of a location, to spend the 135gp worth of reagents to Linked Portal over to an established teleportation circle, then spending the reduced cost of 1000gp (vs. 50,000) to use True Portal from there? I mean yeah it takes an extra 10 minutes, but for 49,000 gold, thats a penalty I'd be willing to take.

 

[bobo]

Having the scrying ritual limited to a few rounds works pretty well (with a kind DM) to allow the DM to tell you what he wants you to know, without providing anything that would derail the story. Essentially, the seconds you see are meaningful moments, instead of the random things throughout the day. You don't just see some guests arrive -- you see an ambassador discussing an invasion with the king.

With a more realism focused DM, this ritual is not actually useful for spying.

The rituals in the book aren't intended to be the only rituals in the world though, so if scrying for spying is something that your DM is ok with, just see if you can create a new ritual to do that.

While I agree that it is unfortunate that this mechanism doesn't exist in the book, I can understand leaving it out because it can ruin a story.