Trying to do Divination Better

[deaddmwalking]

Merxa,

You're on to something. Since there are no metaphysics to D&D magic, there's literally nothing that can't be a spell. The best way to solve any problem is to research a spell that solves that problem. It could be 'summon macguffin' or even 'create macguffin'. Why does it matter where it is now when it could be where you are when you want it to be?

I definitely see how recommending an optimal course of action is limited by the imaginations of the players and the information that the GM shares is bound to be a failure. BUT, the real question is not whether Kaelik succeeds 100% in making the best possible divination rules but whether he addresses the problems he identified in the existing 3.x ruleset and therefore whether these spells work better replacing the existing divination spells. In most cases, the answer is 'yes'. 3.x did so poorly where it literally did require you to know all of everything everywhere for all time that providing more limited but directly useful information if helpful (even if it isn't limited to 'this plane of existence').

There are surely more elegant ways to address the failings in 3.x (including rewriting the whole system to address all of the problems), but as a simple kludge to make divinations easier to use for both the player and the DM, this isn't terrible. Probably not needed at most tables, but for a 'table rules variant' it probably works.

[gatorized]

Whew, that sure was hard! Maybe stop playing shitty systems that don't do what you want and use a system that has already solved your problems instead.

I dunno why but I find it so strange that people don't seem to care about how much more vaguely defined the magic is in other RPGs. Your scrying spell (the least ambiguous of the three) doesn't cover or reference any rules for scrying sensors like: can the scrying sensor move around? If you scry on a person as if you were there do you have to hope you're taller than them so that you don't just see the inside of their head?

Attuned too is maybe a crazy powerful anti-stealth spell, any heist would require you to account for it, which makes it too bad that there's no way of knowing what would trigger it to ping you. If only you'd listed a spell like Divination or Contact Other Plane that at least lets the players interrogate the DM about their intent in advance .

There is no sensor of any kind mentioned in the power.

Clairvoyance works just like you'd expect it to in a comic book. You activate the power, and the GM describes the scene you're viewing (assuming it works). We don't need detailed rules, since we're not robots. Since the power doesn't say you view the scene from inside a person's head, and that would be non-sensical and defeat the purpose of the power, it obviously doesn't work that way, and you don't need a rulebook to tell you that.

Attuned in most cases doesn't give you any special ability to detect sneaking beings, unless your Attuned power has a very limited scope (like the example provided of a specific location). Actually, I'm not sure how you got the impression it's anti-stealth, given that most of the provided examples of its functionality don't even refer to detecting individual beings at all. If you're attuned to your own house, sure, of course you would probably be able to detect the presence of individuals there. That's how you would expect it to function. But if you're attuned to more broad regions like those in the examples, that won't be the case. The rulebook provides several examples of what Attuned can detect, which are listed in my post. Note that some versions of Attuned don't detect people at all, depending on the type and scope the player chooses. Like with any power, the player chooses and describes how the power functions for their hero, so there isn't any possibility of the player not understanding it.

The broadness and flexibility of the powers is exactly why the system is superior to D&D in every way.

The system doesn't presume the existence of deities, so there is no reason for there to exist a power to allow a hero to speak directly to deities. If the participants want such a power, it's quite easy to modify one of the existing powers or create a new one to suit, without any risk of breaking the game balance.

And of course, if you really wanted to defeat stealth, there are far more effective methods available, such as true sight, astral sight, thermal vision, super hearing, radar, and the like - and these aren't limited to a single location. Really, Attuned would never occur to me to pick up as a stealth countermeasure. It's really more of a weak, unreliable alarm system or plot device generator.

[Kaelik]

Something very funny about making about how clear and obvious things are where you say:

"I have no idea why you think Attune is anti stealth, I mean, yes, if you attuned to your house you would detect people stealthing around your house, that's obviously how that would work, but there's no reason to believe attuning to a forest would detect people stealthing around the forest, that's just obvious."

You should probably reevaluate whether everything is super obvious or not.

[deaddmwalking]

I like how if I decide to be cosmically attuned, the GM must give me information on all 'cosmic beings' at the drop of a hat.

That would qualify for me as 'needing to know everything, everywhere, all the time', and that's really a bitch for a GM to have to handle. It's much easier to answer a question like 'which cosmic being is out to get me right now', because in the sequel you'll have a new villain but you hadn't actually sat down to design Dr. Doom and you don't want the players owning you when they ask why you never mentioned him when they were fighting Thanos.

[gatorized]

No, not all of them. Just the ones that matter for the game. And it's entirely up to the GM to decide how many exist, if any at all.

"Which cosmic being is out to get me right now" is exactly the sort of thing the power is made for.

What do you mean "owning you"? You didn't mention him because you hadn't conceived of him yet. What's wrong with that? Why do you describe your players as if they're antagonistic towards you?

[deaddmwalking]

Sometimes I am the GM. If someone uses a divination that expands the in-game universe, that creates problems when I haven't considered what that looks like yet.

If we're in Season 1 and they ask a question that should reveal the Season 3 villain I either say 'no' because that person doesn't even exist in my mind or I say 'yes' and I make a stupid villain like Supreme Leader Snoke and I'm stuck with it.

I'm not an antagonistic GM. I don't have antagonistic players. I want them to use their abilities and I want those abilities to work. I also want my life to be easy, so when they use a power I can incorporate it into the story.

What I don’t want or need is anyone telling me 'GMs can modify it to suit their whims'. First off, I can already do that without being told. Second, I don't want to. Spells like fireball are relatively easy to adjudicate. Divinations should be, too.

Of course we addressed that with a firm magical metaphysics that establishes, among other things, that magic is not intelligent, nor does it have a preferred state. A spell that lets you determine whether you should go left or right isn't possible based on what is 'good' for the party, but a spell that lets you set up a 'save point' and explore one option and then either 'confirm that's what you did' or go back to that save point would be.

[gatorized]

"Yes" and "No" aren't the only options. You can also say "I haven't considered that yet", as you said in your post. And then you and the players can use your imaginations to decide what that villain might be like. What's the problem?

If your players aren't antagonistic, why are you concerned about them "owning" you?

[deaddmwalking]

I want player abilities to work. I'm not afraid of them 'owning' me - I'm afraid of letting them down. If they use an ability that should provide information and I fail to give them that information, that's a failure to let them use those abilities. It would be bad if I didn't let a character use Rage, and it's bad if they can't use Divination. Either way, they're not getting the benefit of abilities - abilities that presumably came at the expense of other abilities they could have had that do work.

There are a lot of different campaigns, and some surely involve the players brainstorming who the villains are. There are other times where collaborative development of future campaigns may not work.

[Foxwarrior]

Actually, divination powers that are vague and narrativey and heavily interpreted by the DM gives me an idea.

Why not have a character building resource dedicated to letting the DM give you problems? Like you could pick up "lost heir of the kingdom" to be hunted by assassins and have to hide your face in public, or "seer of the future" to get ominous nightmares of the future to drive you to madness, or "has a family" so that you need to rescue them from yet another kidnapping.

[Nath]

Actually, divination powers that are vague and narrativey and heavily interpreted by the DM gives me an idea.

Why not have a character building resource dedicated to letting the DM give you problems? Like you could pick up "lost heir of the kingdom" to be hunted by assassins and have to hide your face in public, or "seer of the future" to get ominous nightmares of the future to drive you to madness, or "has a family" so that you need to rescue them from yet another kidnapping.

Since you want the entire party to go on the adventure, I don't think you should reward one player with extra ressource merely for carrying the hook - in addition to having it easier to roleplay his character's involvement. If anything, I would rather try to reward other players if they cleverly tie their characters' to another's story.

One could possibly imagine a system where the character around which the story revolves gets some kind of negative mechanical drawback, due to pressure and personal risk, in which case the extra ressource would compensate, but I don't like the idea. If anything, I would rather go the opposite way, and give the character only an extra advantage during each adventure that involve his character's hook.

On the other hand, all character concepts should have thematically appropriate hooks for the DM to use as part of their starting package: picking cleric as a character class implies you'll accept to go on sacred quest, a warrior may have former brothers-in-arms that need help, etc. In that regard, you could offer players the choice to either default to their class "standard hook", or picking another one from a defined list - like, when creating a rogue you can either choose the baseline "Indebted" or "Lavish lifestyle" as your personal hook, but you may replace it with "Strange visions" or "Lost heir" from the joint list. Then you can either have the players transparently discuss their character hooks, and possibly agreeing to follow one in particular, or keeping them secret at least for now and assume everyone has the default hook for their class.

[Neo Phonelobster Prime]

OK so that's what? Close enough to three posts now that have discussed "Doing Divination Better" by... putting a fairy tea party note on your character sheet and um, maybe this time for sure inventing a formalized resource system to quantify what is clearly a fairy tea party mechanic.

I'm slapping this threads cheeks. I'm checking this threads pulse. I'm holding a mirror in front of its mouth.

[Kaelik]

Entire forum is dead, not sure why this particular thread would be an exception.