Tome Diviner, doable?
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Tome Diviner, doable?
I'm looking for ideas similar to the Beguiler, Puppeteer, etc. Can you make an fantasy diviner class that isn't just a big middle finger to the plot (or from the plot, depending on the DM's railroad tendencies)? Obviously they'd get detect spells, scrying, and the like. But giving them combat roles that're more evocative than +$TEXAS insight bonuses seems at first glance difficult. Part of the problem is that a good-sized chunk of divination in D&D is vague territory that relies heavily on judgement calls from the DM (augury, Contact Other Plane, etc).
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- angelfromanotherpin
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angelfromanotherpin wrote:It's not hard to nail down a schtick for them. Precognitive kung fu is an established trope that justifies straight combat bonuses, but you could also do a thing where you show up to a fight knowing your enemies' secret weaknesses and throw down debuffs by exposing their macho fighter as a virgin or because one guy is allergic to cats and you had a dream which told you to carry around a pocketful of cat dander; that part would have to be abstracted, obviously, but I think its got some legs. Hell, it could just be prophetic curses: "I can see the future; you don't have any." "Your horoscope says you're likely to be killed by Elothar of Bladereach; who is conveniently right here."
K wrote:Diviners are Seers and they fight like Jedi.
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DnD divination isn't very good. Finding an object that you've already touched that is presently far away is an 8th level fucking spell. Most of the shit you'd want a diviner to do is pretty hard in DnD. I mean, tell us where the artifact of legend is? Good fucking luck! Instead, low level spells will only tell you about your immediate surroundings and high level spells are all about stupid scry and die one upmanship that you don't even care about.
Compare and contrast a Shadowrun mage and all the psychometry and astral scouting and ritual tracking and shit you can do without writing a single detection spell on your character sheet. An actual detection specialist can do amazeballs things compared to their DnD counterpart.
Basically there is a shit tonne of room for a character specializing in information gathering that does a fuck of a lot better than a 60 foot detect undead and still doesn't make normal rpg plots impossible.
-Username17
Compare and contrast a Shadowrun mage and all the psychometry and astral scouting and ritual tracking and shit you can do without writing a single detection spell on your character sheet. An actual detection specialist can do amazeballs things compared to their DnD counterpart.
Basically there is a shit tonne of room for a character specializing in information gathering that does a fuck of a lot better than a 60 foot detect undead and still doesn't make normal rpg plots impossible.
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In low level combat a diviner should be negating concealment and granting their allies rerolls.
In mid level combat a diviner should be allowing allies to ignore some categories of AC/Defense bonuses and auto-counterspelling D&D's plethora of save-or-lose effects.
In high level combat a diviner should be able to make a simple declaration to retcon in things like negating a TPK with a flashback to having set-up multiple contigent ressurections at the start of the adventure.
In mid level combat a diviner should be allowing allies to ignore some categories of AC/Defense bonuses and auto-counterspelling D&D's plethora of save-or-lose effects.
In high level combat a diviner should be able to make a simple declaration to retcon in things like negating a TPK with a flashback to having set-up multiple contigent ressurections at the start of the adventure.
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How well would that stuff port over to D&D? Like, if you just wrote up a Dread Necromancer- or Fire Mage-style class with all those capabilities as class features or new spells (appropriately tweaked for D&D's cosmology, e.g. astral scouting to Ethereal scouting), would that work as a good Diviner class or would it be too strong or weak due to setting differences?FrankTrollman wrote:Compare and contrast a Shadowrun mage and all the psychometry and astral scouting and ritual tracking and shit you can do without writing a single detection spell on your character sheet. An actual detection specialist can do amazeballs things compared to their DnD counterpart.
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It would do two things:fbmf wrote:So what would a Tome Diviner look like?
Game On,
fbmf
Feel like a diviner.
Contribute to level appropriate challenges.
Now at most levels, most DnD challenges are combat based, so our putative Diviner is going to need a combat plan at each level. At low level it is entirely acceptable for that plan to be power attacking with a big hammer after true striking. At higher levels that is not going to cut the mustard, and you will need additional methods of contribution to pull your weight.
The next question is what it actually means to feel like a diviner. As previously mentioned, most DnD divination is pretty underwhelming. That spell that detects Mind Flayers within 60 feet of the caster is a joke, but it is also real. At least in the sense that it was written down in an official product. Obviously no one actually casts that stupid thing. In DnD, most divination lets you analyze things that are within arm's reach and if you want to get useful information about things that are far away that's pretty much tough shit. Divination specialist mages exist, but only because you only need to pick one opposition school. Diviners generally prepare actual divinations only in their bonus slots - regular slots all go to the same color sprays and webs that every other flavor of wizard uses.
Divination is mostly called upon to do one of three things: evaluate treasure, identify the traitor, and provide generic bonuses that happen to be foresite themed. If your character had detect magic and true strike on a stick and had really big bonuses to sense motive and appraise, they would be able to do pretty much everything you've ever seen a DnD wizard pull off with spells from the Divination school.
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Well, the existing divination abilities are basically ass, so you're starting over from scratch (or at least slot everything into new levels), and any new noncombat abilities in particular are going to have to fit into the existing mechanics - which is going to be a little weird, because you may recall scry and die having virtually no feasible counters, and you do not want to repeat that mistake.fbmf wrote:So what would a Tome Diviner look like?
Game On,
fbmf
But combat-wise, it's not too complicated. A diviner is either a buffer (you declare rerolls and bonuses and the like) or a muscle wizard (without the muscles, you just hit things exactly the way they need hit instead of simply very hard).
I'm thinking of the class getting sneak attack, but it's triggered by something other than their target being flat-footed or flanked. The scout has their precision damage boost when they move at least 10'. The Tome knight gets their damage boost when their challenged target fails to hurt them for a round. For a diviner, I'm tempted to have the trigger be something like one of the following:
- The attack both provokes and requires concentration as if by a spell, forcing concentration checks to avoid AoOs
- The target must have been attacked and missed (or hit?) within the last round (and the diviner had uninterrupted sight the entire time)
Last edited by virgil on Fri Dec 23, 2016 11:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Come see Sprockets & Serials
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick
EXPLOSIVE RUNES!
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Do you want the damage to actually happen or to act as a cost that those targeted try to not pay?
Since you mention the Tome Knight I assume you know the distinction but for the benefit of the audience, effects like "attack me or I do lots of damage to you next turn" are clearly meant to effectively force the monster to attack you, and not to be a reliable damage source.
Since you mention the Tome Knight I assume you know the distinction but for the benefit of the audience, effects like "attack me or I do lots of damage to you next turn" are clearly meant to effectively force the monster to attack you, and not to be a reliable damage source.
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It is intended to be a cost for the diviner, yes. Though while I know the distinction for the Tome Knight and it's intended purpose to be a way to 'naturally' generate a taunt effect, there are a number of people who use the Challenge mechanic as a cost for their damage boost; hence the number of Knight Archers.
Come see Sprockets & Serials
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick
EXPLOSIVE RUNES!
What if I give the Diviner Crusader maneuvers (including the WoF mechanic), as well as Beguiler-like spellcasting with the spell-list focused on Divination from Arcane & Divine spell-lists?
Come see Sprockets & Serials
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick
EXPLOSIVE RUNES!
- OgreBattle
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I don't know of many characters with precognition having much of a choice in what they see, and that kind of 'branching probabilities' prophecy thing seemed like a WoF kind of thing.
Come see Sprockets & Serials
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick
EXPLOSIVE RUNES!
Low-level stuff, maybe. High level jumps straight into "have specific counter-measures or you lose" territory, able to find out exactly who your enemies are, what they're doing, and how to stop them, for example. Or build up enough data to take over any country that isn't using said countermeasures.FrankTrollman wrote:As previously mentioned, most DnD divination is pretty underwhelming.
And while the full extent of what can currently be done may be too much, I think some element of that strategic divination needs to be present in a diviner class. Combat divination is ok, but if that's all the class does it's pretty "meh" as a Diviner - really you're just a refluffed warrior-type or Bard.
But I definitely would focus on divining the past and present as opposed to the future (the extremely short-range future is ok). Still a ton of useful stuff you can learn that way, and it prevents temporal paradox impossible to adjudicate bullshit.
Last edited by Ice9 on Sun Jan 22, 2017 10:42 am, edited 2 times in total.
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No it doesn't. It is part of Scry & Die, which is a broken tactic in the "party of adventurers vs. party of evil dudes" in the sense that whoever uses it first wins. But in the larger sense of actually exploring a dungeon or conquering a country or something, it's pretty much useless.Ice9 wrote:Low-level stuff, maybe. High level jumps straight into "have specific counter-measures or you lose" territory, able to find out exactly who your enemies are, what they're doing, and how to stop them, for example. Or build up enough data to take over any country that isn't using said countermeasures.
Let's do the roundup:
Level 2
- Detect Thoughts - Allows you to telepathically listen in on someone within 60 feet if they fail a save. Very importantly: not covert! By the rules, people do know they made a will save.
Locate Object - Find an exact item you've previously seen if it's within 600 feet or so. Will find your car keys anywhere in the stadium, but not if you dropped them back at the bus stop.
Level 3
- Clairvoyance - Pick a location within 600 feet and see what's there. Good for seeing into a vault, but won't let you spy on things across town.
Arcane Sight - Identify magical effects within 60 feet.
Tongues - Speak any language, but gives you no special insight into lies or powers of persuasion.
- Arcane Eye - Creates a temporary slow moving drone with a camera attached that lets you check out potential dangers around corners. You have never seen this spell cast.
Detect Scrying - An entry in the Scry and Die wars. Works very poorly since it doesn't stop the scrying or the dying and only gives you a caster level check to find out who is about to kill you.
Locate Creature - Know the exact direction to someone you've already met if they are within a few hundred feet of you. Pretty much only useful for finding party members who have mysteriously disappeared in a Scooby Doo mansion.
Scrying - Gives you teleport actionable intelligence about dudes, allowing for Scry and Die to be a thing.
- Contact Other Plane - DM gives you cryptic answers from demon lords. Also go crazy.
Prying Eyes - Gives you a literal handful of slow, short range spotter drones.
Telepathic Bond - Gives pretty decent radio communication to a small group of people for about two hours.
- Analyze Dweomer - Analyze a magical object you are physically holding.
Legend Lore - Analyze a magical object you are physically holding in a slightly different way.
True Seeing - Pierce all illusions and see things as they really are... out to 120 feet.
- Greater Arcane Sight - See magic auras out to 120 feet!
Greater Scrying - Do your scry and die setup much quicker. Largely meaningless unless your target has Detect Scrying and thus the ability to cast round/level buffs before scrying instead of after meaningfully impacts the amount of preparation time your assassination target has.
Vision - Quickly analyze an object you have at hand. You have never seen this spell cast.
Level 8
- Discern Location - Find your car keys at unlimited distance.
Moment of Prescience - Cash spell in for a very large bonus to a single die roll sometime during the day. Not actually worth an 8th level spell slot, but totally worth using the day before an adventure using extend effects or simple casting it at end of day and then resting.
Greater Prying Eyes - create a small number of floating scout drones with advanced sensor arrays. You have never seen this spell cast.
- Foresight - Gives a bullshit small bonus (+2) to a bunch of defensive indices. It's an insight bonus so it stacks with a bunch of other shit. Appears in min/max builds because it's another thing you can have, but very obviously not worth a 9th level spell in any real sense.
But wait! Aren't there also some Cleric spells in the Divination school? Indeed there are!
- Augury - Level 2 - ask whether a course of action is likely to provide good or bad results. Gives wrong answers 20% of the time and also can only tell you that things will be both good and bad if there is treasure and danger - does not give nuanced answers and is pretty much useless except for telling you to not put cursed rings on 80% of the time.
Commune - Level 5 - ask an extraplanar entity some questions and get cryptic answers.
Divination - Level 4. Much better version of Augury where you know what it isn't giving you correct information and gives short cryptic answers instead of just "yes, no, and yes & no."
Find the Path - For the next 2 hours you know what the shortest way to get to a location. Like having Google Maps while you're in town, or lets you get through any but the largest mazes.
A Shadowrun character can match most of this not only without casting any spells, but in most cases without having any magic since you can get broadly superior remote control cameras and communicators with longer battery life from Radio Shack.
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Ignoring the low level stuff, which I agree is not very impressive (except Detect Thoughts), several of these are pretty damn useful. Also there are more useful ones outside of the PHB, but leaving that aside for now:
However, I can see where you're coming from in one way - a number of GMs are not going to have planned or want to figure out what various people in the setting are doing at any given time, and so they might stonewall the kind of "knowledge database" style information gathering that Divination is good at. And in that case, it's not doing much.
Although you could say the same thing about retro-divination like you mention in Shadowrun (which does exist in D&D, but as a psionic power) - if the GM doesn't feel like figuring out past histories of objects, they might just stonewall it.
Not quite -FrankTrollman wrote:Detect Thoughts - Allows you to telepathically listen in on someone within 60 feet if they fail a save. Very importantly: not covert! By the rules, people do know they made a will save.
You can scan to your heart's content if the save DC is good or you're using it against low-level people. Even they make a save once, that gives them no info, so you can probably get away with one success as long as you watch them carefully. And when you're using it for interrogation, it doesn't matter if they notice it.SRD wrote:A creature that successfully saves against a spell that has no obvious physical effects feels a hostile force or a tingle, but cannot deduce the exact nature of the attack.
Totally seen it cast, once the slot cost is minor. It's invisible, and even if someone sees it they get a lot less info than if they saw you.Arcane Eye - Creates a temporary slow moving drone with a camera attached that lets you check out potential dangers around corners. You have never seen this spell cast.
Not only teleport-usable, but information gathering usable, especially if you can read lips. You can see people within 10' of the target, which means you can create a "chain of scrying" where by seeing one member of an group you eventually see every member. You know when they made a save, so you can make sure that not too many tingles are felt. Given that there are all kinds of magical shit going on in D&D worlds, "knowing one person made a save against something" is not usually enough to provoke a big response. Also, you can totally scry on animals such as mounts or pets, which have a low Will save and can't warn people even if they do succeed at some.Scrying - Gives you teleport actionable intelligence about dudes, allowing for Scry and Die to be a thing.
Not so good at first, but once you crank up your Int enough to safely contact deities (does not fall on a '1'), it's one of the best methods, because almost nothing can block it. Oh, you're shielded against all mortal scrying? Too bad that doesn't mean a shit to Boccob. One word answers aren't great, but there's no material cost so with a few days of downtime you can ask a bunch of questions and get almost any info.Contact Other Plane - DM gives you cryptic answers from demon lords. Also go crazy.
It's not amazing, but it is useful for searching non-hostile areas quickly.Prying Eyes - Gives you a literal handful of slow, short range spotter drones.
Or can be made permanent. Utilitarian, but useful in many cases.Telepathic Bond - Gives pretty decent radio communication to a small group of people for about two hours.
Is identifying an item per level for no cost not useful? Also scans people.Analyze Dweomer - Analyze a magical object you are physically holding.
Yep, that's what it does. Negating all illusions isn't good enough for you?True Seeing - Pierce all illusions and see things as they really are... out to 120 feet.
Knowing the entirety of an opponent's buffs isn't good enough for you either? You're harping on the limited range, but vision is just shitty like that in D&D. For instance, if you aren't a devil and it's nighttime, then an Imp can fly 130' above you and shit on you all night, and you can't do anything about it. Not an issue specific to Divination.Greater Arcane Sight - See magic auras out to 120 feet!
And it lasts 60x as long, which is good if you're doing actual information gathering with your scrying. And you can use it to communicate with people.Greater Scrying - Do your scry and die setup much quicker. Largely meaningless unless your target has Detect Scrying and thus the ability to cast round/level buffs before scrying instead of after meaningfully impacts the amount of preparation time your assassination target has.
Your car keys, the royal scepter you managed to brush your hand against once, a person in hiding who you have a belt buckle from ... all pretty much the same, I agree.Discern Location - Find your car keys at unlimited distance.
I've seen it cast multiple times. Again, for the purpose of searching an area quickly and not having to worry about traps.Greater Prying Eyes - create a small number of floating scout drones with advanced sensor arrays. You have never seen this spell cast.
And makes you always able to use Immediate actions, which is pretty important with Celerity. Also it gives you an action to respond to things before they happen, depending on how it's read.Foresight - Gives a bullshit small bonus (+2) to a bunch of defensive indices. It's an insight bonus so it stacks with a bunch of other shit. Appears in min/max builds because it's another thing you can have, but very obviously not worth a 9th level spell in any real sense.
A lot of those sound very helpful to conquering a kingdom.None of these spells are in any way helpful to conquering the kingdom unless assassinating the king is part of your plan.
However, I can see where you're coming from in one way - a number of GMs are not going to have planned or want to figure out what various people in the setting are doing at any given time, and so they might stonewall the kind of "knowledge database" style information gathering that Divination is good at. And in that case, it's not doing much.
Although you could say the same thing about retro-divination like you mention in Shadowrun (which does exist in D&D, but as a psionic power) - if the GM doesn't feel like figuring out past histories of objects, they might just stonewall it.
Last edited by Ice9 on Mon Jan 23, 2017 1:30 am, edited 2 times in total.
No monetary cost, and nobody cares about that anyway when infinite gold is on the table. At least in theory, infinite gold is on the table. For that matter, a first-level Dragonfire Adept can have Identify (no material components) at will and nobody ever plays them.Ice9 wrote:Is identifying an item per level for no cost not useful?Analyze Dweomer - Analyze a magical object you are physically holding.
Meanwhile, here is the actual cost of the spell: a sixth-level spell slot. Know what you could be doing with that slot? Acid Fog, motherfucker. Or True Seeing (I consider that one to be pretty worthwhile for dungeoncrawling stuff as well as for general knowledge), AMF, Planar Binding, Mass Suggestion, Mislead, Circle of Death, Undeath to Death, Disintegration...
Anyway, you probably want to stick with your effects being based on a target (object/person/place - with different levels requiring different degrees of familiarity) or an extension of your own senses, and not just playing 20 questions with a decreasingly patient DM. Here are some things that are worth considering.
Objects:
-exact magical properties and temporary effects (see: Identify/Arcane Sight)
-is it actually what it looks like? (see: True Seeing)
-exact value if you care
-where it is and what's going on around it (see: Scrying, Locate Object)
-sometimes "Who made this?" and "Who held it last?" and "Does this have some great destiny?" are useful things to divine as well, but you need to accept that the answer is likely to be "Who gives a fuck?" for the first two and "No, it's a fucking horseshoe of +2 to Reflex Saves, it is destined to make you slightly less likely to die in a fireball unless you keep asking me this shit" for the last one.
People:
-alignment (see: Detect ___)
-what they're thinking (keep in mind that when you do this over an entire room of people, you will get dirty looks. Anyway, see: Detect Thoughts, Brain Spider, Telepathy)
-spells affecting them (see: Arcane Sight)
-pierce any illusions and see through shapeshifting (see: True Seeing)
-locate them and see their general surroundings (see: Scrying)
-general "Detect hostility and let me know ahead of time that there's going to be a fight" is good. This could even be just an ongoing class feature where basically your party can't get ambushed and eventually, any time the DM says "Okay, monsters appear, roll Initiative" they instead say "Okay, monsters will appear in 3 rounds, tell me your buffs then roll Initiative" or "Do you want to be here for the Umber Hulks that are going to wander past in 3 rounds?"
-find the weak point to hit in order to deal massive damage as though they were a giant enemy crab (if you let people save against being divined, that's basically a save vs death, with the death being slightly delayed).
-glaring at someone to interrogate them completely. Maybe learning their great destinies or plot-importance.
-also the Heroes of Horror stuff where you can learn someone's greatest fears and desires, maybe add in the ability to know enough of a person's life to be able to fuck with them - you can get people to assume you know them well and they just can't remember you.
Places:
-Scry on a place
-dispel any illusions
-find your way around
-discover traps, ambushes, secret doors, whatever
Your vision:
-basically anything which basically already works like that (even though some of them require you to stare for up to a minute): Darkvision, True Seeing, See Invisibility, Devil's Sight, Arcane Sight (and all other things that reveal Auras).
And maybe divine spooky secrets of the universe that, when whispered to another person, can send them into a catatonic state. That's a thing you could do if you really wanted, but I don't know whether you want to do that as a Divination thing.
Even ruling out "let me ask a bunch of questions" and "you know stuff about things generally and see everything coming so you get some generic numeric bonuses on some things, I bet that's exciting" you have plenty of options. It's just a matter of picking which ones of those you want, picking how strong they should be and picking the right actual levels for them. And yeah, some of them need to be changed such that they're nowhere like the original spells, so you're almost writing up a Fire Mage or Warlock at this point.
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Ok, three things:Koumei wrote:No monetary cost, and nobody cares about that anyway when infinite gold is on the table. At least in theory, infinite gold is on the table. For that matter, a first-level Dragonfire Adept can have Identify (no material components) at will and nobody ever plays them.
Meanwhile, here is the actual cost of the spell: a sixth-level spell slot. Know what you could be doing with that slot? Acid Fog, motherfucker. Or True Seeing (I consider that one to be pretty worthwhile for dungeoncrawling stuff as well as for general knowledge), AMF, Planar Binding, Mass Suggestion, Mislead, Circle of Death, Undeath to Death, Disintegration...
1) Almost nobody outside the Den uses the Wish economy. Maybe it would be good if they did, but they just don't. Things continue to cost gp all the way up to 20th level, and the response to "I use Planar Binding / Fabricate / Flesh to Salt / whatever to get unlimited gold!" is "Nice trick, but ... no, you can't do that; house-ruled if necessary."
2) Most of those other spells don't do anything during down-time, which is when you're generally using Analyze Dweomer. Or, use the Spontaneous Divination ACF and do it at EOD for no opportunity cost.
3) A single spell in your spellbook is a much lower opportunity cost than a level spent on Dragonfire Adept. It's not surprising that people don't prefer the latter.
Last edited by Ice9 on Mon Jan 23, 2017 4:47 am, edited 3 times in total.
Every time I look at the 10 minute casting time, it boggles my mind that someone thought that was a good idea.FrankTrollman wrote: Level 3
- Clairvoyance - Pick a location within 600 feet and see what's there. Good for seeing into a vault, but won't let you spy on things across town.
EDIT: I've also seen Arcane Eye cast (in Gygaxian dungeon environments).
Last edited by hogarth on Mon Jan 23, 2017 5:06 am, edited 1 time in total.
While I was mentally debating making this Tome Diviner a spellcaster with this list for the utility divinations, I think Koumei's rough outline is a better fit if I want to also give them WoF maneuvers for their Jedi fighting style. Hell, making their spell-likes require verbal components and have arcane spell failure would actually make their outfit Jedi-like (robes & two-handed weapon)
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How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick
How do you confuse a barbarian?
Put a greatsword a maul and a greataxe in a room and ask them to take their pick
EXPLOSIVE RUNES!
I like that idea - a diviner is about the perfect flavor to go with WoF. For the Jedi look IDK if verbal components would fit though, maybe just somatic ones + ASF. "Stealthy diviner" seems like a natural combination.
I would still go with the utility/strategic divinations though; I see no reason a class couldn't have both.
I would still go with the utility/strategic divinations though; I see no reason a class couldn't have both.
Last edited by Ice9 on Mon Jan 23, 2017 7:09 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Could you plausibly build that last bit there into a more general 'minored in enchantment' aspect of a 'majored in divination' specialty? A guy who, sure, can ferret out what someone fears, and can make the one threat that's likely to work -- but who also knows exactly what someone wants, and what he wants to hear; and what would and wouldn't sound reasonable or believable, and which offers he'd accept and reject; and whatever the uppermost limit of skill is for bluff and diplomacy and sense motive?Koumei wrote:People:
-alignment (see: Detect ___)
-what they're thinking (keep in mind that when you do this over an entire room of people, you will get dirty looks. Anyway, see: Detect Thoughts, Brain Spider, Telepathy)
-spells affecting them (see: Arcane Sight)
-pierce any illusions and see through shapeshifting (see: True Seeing)
-locate them and see their general surroundings (see: Scrying)
-general "Detect hostility and let me know ahead of time that there's going to be a fight" is good. This could even be just an ongoing class feature where basically your party can't get ambushed and eventually, any time the DM says "Okay, monsters appear, roll Initiative" they instead say "Okay, monsters will appear in 3 rounds, tell me your buffs then roll Initiative" or "Do you want to be here for the Umber Hulks that are going to wander past in 3 rounds?"
-find the weak point to hit in order to deal massive damage as though they were a giant enemy crab (if you let people save against being divined, that's basically a save vs death, with the death being slightly delayed).
-glaring at someone to interrogate them completely. Maybe learning their great destinies or plot-importance.
-also the Heroes of Horror stuff where you can learn someone's greatest fears and desires, maybe add in the ability to know enough of a person's life to be able to fuck with them - you can get people to assume you know them well and they just can't remember you.
Last edited by Regularguy on Wed Jan 25, 2017 2:33 am, edited 1 time in total.
Well you just did that there, so I'd say yes, you could indeed plausibly do that.
And remember, the Warmage is like Evocation/Conjuration, probably with a smattering of other spells. The Beguiler is Enchantment/Illusion, with a side order of a bunch of other things. The Dread Necromancer probably has a handful of other things. So it's probably reasonable for the "Diviner" to also have a Minor Subject, or an assortment of complimentary spells.
And remember, the Warmage is like Evocation/Conjuration, probably with a smattering of other spells. The Beguiler is Enchantment/Illusion, with a side order of a bunch of other things. The Dread Necromancer probably has a handful of other things. So it's probably reasonable for the "Diviner" to also have a Minor Subject, or an assortment of complimentary spells.
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