It depends, honestly. In a recent adventure, there was a nifty sword buried beneath a small hill of bones, as well as a handful of potions. We could have broken out the block and tackle and spent hours sifting through the debris, like the derring-do adventurers we are. Or we could save time by scanning the pile with our tricorder–er, wizard–noticing where the shiny was, and going straight to grabbing that stuff out.
I don’t see much advantage to the sanitation engineer approach there, but without Detect Magic, that’s what we would have had to do.
On the other hand, imagine an adventure where a bad guy has hidden an important magic item from us. We know the magic item is in a particular location, but we need to put together various clues to figure out where. That’s a fun puzzle, and it shouldn’t be shortcutted by a single spell, no matter the spell.
That’s where lead sheeting comes in. Again, anyone dealing in powerful magical items is gonna know about detect magic, and if you can afford thousands of gp worth of magic, you can afford a few gp worth of lead sheeting to hide it. For items deliberately hidden, lead sheeting should be standard equipment.
The difference, I suppose, is in whether looking for the geegaw is going to be a fun part of the adventure, or a bit of drudgery that detracts from the adventure. I think Detect Magic can circumvent the drudgery, and a good GM can come up with plausible in-game reasons to keep it from circumventing fun parts of the adventure.
A campaign I was in a while ago, the party was very puzzled by the fact that the Macguffin they were retrieving didn’t show up under Detect Magic. Until one of the party members thought to look closely, and noticed that the carving on the staff was carefully contrived to hide a seam where it could unscrew into two pieces. Open it up, and sure enough, a layer of lead sheeting with a thinner rod inside of it (which had an overwhelmingly-strong magical aura).
Bear in mind, also, that casting Detect Magic as a ritual - which is what makes it at-will in 5e - takes 10 minutes. Just from a roleplaying standpoint that can cause a lot problems if overused.
If the DM is doing his job right, though, those will be problems for the party. Allowing the party the opportunity to self-inflict problems is part of what the game is about.
Well, flooding the dungeon I’m designing would be relatively easy, but completely foolish.
Connects to the sewers on an island in the mouth of a large river. Island is about 1.5 miles by 4 miles. The tunnels lead down to a rather spectacularly large section of the Underdark, several miles down.
So sure, you could punch a whole and divert the river down the hole trying to flood out that entire section of the Underdark and make sure nothing ever comes up again. Then watch as the water flow makes the hole larger and larger and soon enough washes half the island down the hole, killing thousands. Mostly Halflings, whose city it is.
One of my potential scenarios for 6-9th level characters is for a flood of creatures to boil out of it and invade the city. First Mites and Fungal Creepers. Then bigger things. Because there is a Dossenus mating swarm in the deep. They’ll come up last. Just big open table city battle against a ton of low to mid CR creatures. Potentially followed by “Here’s a bunch of Wall of Stone and Transmute Rock to Mud scrolls. Go down and plug the tunnels!”
Anyway, one of the thoughts about the OP was having a tunnel just filled with Russet Mold and remains of bodies secreted in the Vegepygmy zone of the Sewers. Enough that you’d need several Remove Disease spells to clear it out and sort through all the bodies for the goodies. (And discover one of three planned connections to the Underdark. This one mostly blocked by the sheer amount of Russet Mold, which upon being removed, means it is open for traffic again!)
Having someone just spam Acid Orb for an hour would be a slight annoyance and I’d have to consider damage to treasure, one piece of which is one of the spellbooks of a legendary Dwarf Wizard who disappeared 300 years ago during the Festival in the Fey Elf city that only appears on this world for 5 days every 7 years.
But it isn’t just that. Its more the discrepancy between having an extremely limited number of cantrips and having a relatively unlimited number of them.
Any PC who is able to attend the full five day Festival gains the following;
All Greyleaf Fey react one level better toward this PC. (excludes Feywild creatures who cross over.) They react one level worse if the character has a negative reputation toward the Fey.
Free Bonus Feat, even if you don’t meet the pre-requisites. Choices are: Cosmopolitan, Improved Counterspell, Magical Aptitude, Nimble Steps, Stealthy, +?
Twice Fey (Attending the Fey Festival a second time, must remain friendly toward Fey)
All Greyleaf Fey react two levels better, crossover Fey react one level better.
**Thrice Fey **(Third time is definitely the Charm!)
Character is welcomed as a friend everywhere in the Greyleaf.
The Elven Court bestows Woodland Stride upon the character.
The Overstayed Your Welcome Award
For visiting the Fey Festival a fourth time, a non-Fey is stripped of all previous awards, delivered to a semi-random location and asked not to return. Alternately, the character may be stripped naked and left bound and gagged in another game setting. We recommend Paranoia!
In that case, the party wizard wouldn’t even want to spam Acid Splash to clear it all out. Just make one party member magically immune to disease (if there isn’t one already so immune), send them down to retrieve any particularly interesting treasure, sponge it down with Everclear to get rid of any mold residue, and leave the rest of the fungus in place to keep on blocking that tunnel from invasion.
As long as the players have a reasonable opportunity to know this (as in, you volunteer this information to anyone with appropriate knowledge skills like engineering or nature, not waiting for them to ask for rolls), this is a great obstacle. If you spring it on them without warning, it’s punitive DMing.
Sounds potentially very fun.
This looks like it could move into punitive DMing. If characters use their resources effectively (and cantrip-casting is a resource, just as much as being able to swing a sword effectively is a resource), that’s a good thing. If you want it not to be a boring slog, intersperse other challenges: weakened struts that collapse tunnels when sprayed with acid, completed vegepygmies that burst out of patches of mold, undead remains of the mold’s previous victims (no reason why someone couldn’t produce both a vegepygmy and a ghost, as far as I can tell), etc. If there’s treasure down there that the PCs should be able to find, don’t spitefully deny it to them for using a cantrip a bunch. Make it interesting instead.
Am I right in thinking that you’d warn players at the end of the third festival that they’re not welcome to return? Without such a warning, this fourth “reward” would be really irritating to me as a player.
That’s not quite what I meant, more that for example with the Omnidetector on, they wouldn’t have to think “Hmm, how come there’s a lit sconce in this room in a dungeon full of undead who see in the dark anyway ? Did someone light it or is it a magical gizmo ?”. I’d have to think that for them, in a way - by telling the mage “so you walk into the room and there’s a sconce radiating with magic” “Ooooh let’s examine the sconce !”. Hell, in your example they’d have to be curious about the pile of bones in the first place. See ? It’s not so much about their characters doing grunt work, more about their paying attention to the game, the world, etc…
So it’s more like the second example you gave, where detecting magic would let them locate the solution to a puzzle instantly.
And, yes, illusions. Illusions should be a Thing, dammit, but RAW they light up like a christmas tree. And, well, in a way they should, because players *should *have tools against illusions ! It’s just that IMO those tools should be *actual *spells (therefore prompting the “should we burn the spell on that weird thing that might could be an illusion ? Or do we just try it the hard way ?” debate), or items, not just Mr Wizard on his daily stroll.
Oh, and BTW, the lead sheeting thing ? That’s just in Order of the Stick ;). There’s nothing about lead that blocks magic in the ruleset - the only way to make a magical gizmo look mundane is to cast a Magic Aura spell on it (or Nondetection if you’re rich). And that costs either a mint for Permanency (2500k a pop) or a wizard doing the rounds every few days to recast it, which may or may not be practical depending on the opposition although it might open up amusing day jobs for low-level (N)PCs. And of course, the PCs would absolutely want to re-sell the permanent Magic Aura’d* trap bits
My own group solved the issue by ruling that you can’t move while concentrating on the cantrip version of the spell and it takes a few minutes before you see anything clearly. For a more convenient solution there’s Greater Detect Magic, Arcane Sight or Wizard Eye. Basically Detect Magic is our “ok, so which gizmos in this pile of crap are magical ?” post-murderspree or post-finding-the-vault go to, and our “ok so this is obviously magic, but what kind ?” tool and little else.
You kinda seem intent on calling me out for that. I disagree and in general think spamming this kind of accusation is lazy and unwelcome. Makes me think of you like a previous player who, on faced with the possibility of needing to retreat from a superior force, told me off with “We just want to play on the easiest possible setting!” :rolleyes:
Especially with that last bit. The festival is once every 7 years. Instead of taking it in humor, you reacted with offense.
“You approach the room. You detect at least one magic aura in the room. Also, you detect a clattering and clanking sound as a dozen or so bony figures wearing tatted armor rattle their way toward you, rusty swords raised. Roll initiative.” If the wizard would like to spend the first round of combat detecting the number of auras, and the second round detecting the location and strength of each aura, that’s a legitimate choice, although super suboptimal; I’d be a bit miffed at the wizard who did that instead of casting haste and fireball (or whatever) during those rounds.
There are arguments either way, but yeah, this is the one place where I think it’d be reasonable to tweak the rules.
It’s true that it requires a super-tortured reading of the rules to get my interpretation, but I stand by it. Here’s the reference:
:rolleyes: back atcha, buddy. I’m not calling you out for anything. I said that depending on how you play it, it could be punitive, and I used that word twice–hardly spamming.
As for the humor in your once every seven years festival? Um, okay. Ha ha?
The only thing I’m offended by is your overreaction to my post. But even that’s not a great deal of offense, more of an “oh, brother, here goes the Internet again” reaction :).
Actually, I think I misunderstood what you were saying before: you’re talking about after the battle with the undead. Sorry!
It may help to think of “detect magic” as an extra sense that you get by virtue of being a dedicated caster, in the same way that a druid or ranger with an animal companion has pretty decent access to scent as an extra, useful sense. In both cases, it’s not nearly as useful or always-on as vision or hearing, but it’s still pretty useful.
Just as you tell characters with vision what the room looks like, you tell the dedicated casters with detect magic up what the magic is like. In both cases, players use this information to decide what to investigate: the fighter investigates the alcove behind the rock formation that he sees, the cleric investigates the magical lines on the floor that she sees.
Let’s not play the “haha, I only slammed you twice in one post, so you’re over-reacting and I’m the one who should be mad!” card. It doesn’t play well.
“Let’s not”? How about “let’s not make this conversation get more and more pitiful with every post”? If you post your game here, I’ll offer constructive criticism of it. That’s going to remain the case. If you are worried about the cards that I’m going to play, keep that in mind.
Huh? Arguing about rules is an integral part of the D&D experience. I once nearly lost a friendship of over twenty years thanks to an argument over 3.5 grappling rules. Good times.
If the warning you provide consists entirely of the history of a treasure the characters might not find because you want consequences for using cantrips well, and the history suggests only that the treasure’s owner disappeared during the festival, and characters should infer from that that you shouldn’t visit the festival four times–well, thanks for answering my question :).
Less snarkily–you know how, after the third festival, “Character is welcomed as a friend everywhere in the Greyleaf”? That’s the point where the fey, who regard the character as a friend, warn the character if they see the character approaching a dangerous situation. Such as, for example, attending the festival a fourth time.
And if I’m warning a friend about danger, I do so in the clearest way I can. If your fey are super-fey, the best they might be able to do is a long mysterious poem, or showing them the remains of someone who became too close to the fey; but if you have friendly earthy fey, they’re gonna pull the character aside and say, “Look, dude, it’s been fun, but you’re not welcome anymore.”
This isn’t an attempt to downgrade the challenge (believe me–I used to be part of a messageboard called the Rat Bastard DM Board, where we all worked together to make our player characters’ lives wonderfully awful). It’s an attempt to “play fair”, in the same way that mystery writers play fair by putting all the clues to solve the mystery in plain sight.
Well, in regards to the OP proposition, I’ve decided to leave well enough alone. It just seemed oddly unbalanced, especially when you look at the Advanced Race Guide and see how much it costs for spell-like abilities, and unlimited cantrips is better by far.
Thanks all for your contributions to that conversation.
