Arelith

Sort of piggybacking on the final note in Xerah's comment being about having imperfect information.

I believe it was Skarain who pointed out earlier that the previous scry mostly was used to observe character associations, catch a stray sentence or two, or find a location. Having a mere glimpse, and then pondering upon it after, had been the essence of the old mechanic, and one that I thought was perfectly on point with the fun of putting together the puzzle.

The change seems an attempt at fixing something that never really seemed that broken in the first place.

I can't really recall scrying even really being that much of a contentious topic over the years. It's powerful, but widely preventable (so widely preventable we don't even FOIG its mitigation anymore apparently), and its short duration may leave the caster with more questions than answers - or in rare circumstance with a treasure trove of information.

It seemed to be in a great place already.

I don't like boiling divination down to just scrying. Divination has more RP cookies than any other spell focus. You get to see auras, you get the deck of stars, and DMs will give you visions all the time. I did a lot of divination RP and very rarely scried, because my character didn't believe in breaking peoples' privacy. You also get 30 whole seconds of unnerfed true seeing.

If people want to buff divination, other options include buffing the deck of stars to give more information about the aspect and their location if they're online/on the same server as you. The deck is a really cool and really under-utilized tool.

Party in the forest at midnight wrote: Tue Feb 16, 2021 8:19 pm The deck is a really cool and really under-utilized tool.

Probably because nobody understands it and having it constantly announce "the cards are blank" to all players present has never improved RP. Nor are the auras widely understood, I see them all the time but they make little sense to me. It would be nice if some of that stuff wasn't FOIG, as my innate caster Diviner would be figuring some of this stuff out on his own.

Scry is the main cookie that is advertised for Epic Divination Focus and now it's not as good. Like it, don't like it, it's not as good as it used to be. Divination should get something to offset this. I already felt this is school got the least attention before Enchantment, but then it got a bunch of custom spells. Divination is the coolest school to me but all the focus is on Scry. I invested in three feats for the RP and the benefits that came with Divination.

As I've played a Diviner here's what I've found most useful, Scry, and a minor increase to True Seeing timer, that's it. Deck of Stars, awesome in theory, but ultimately, hard to understand and I gave up trying. Seeing a character's aura? Again, awesome in theory but damn if I can make sense of it. As a Diviner, you should have an advantage in understanding things around you, not be more confused by what your gifts allow you to see.

In a parody of Kanye West's infamous interruption of Taylor Swift...

Wizards, I'mma let you finish, but Loremasters who took Secret of Scrying have only that cookie - and now that cookie is burnt.
With the recent revisions to Loremaster, where only two Greater Secrets can now be obtained, changing the fundamentals of scrying effectively reduces the value of taking that Secret. One can argue, 'well you can still scry!' and - while true - the longer, inescapable cut-scene simply isn't what some people wanted, and now a Secret that might have been used for something else has been wasted.

It would be nice to see options - 30s, 1m, 2m, 4m, 10m - perhaps with duration tied to spell component usage. Failing that, go back to the way -scry used to be - because it was not broke and did not need fixing.

As a loremaster who just got scry I see nothing wrong with this change. The durations doubled now.

I'd honestly like if it actually listed who was in the room (not piercing disguises) because 3 of the 5 times I've done it so far I've had a poor camera angle and got to stare at a tree, chair, or someone's back for the entire duration. I figure at least with the increased duration I'll hear some more between breaks of people typing.

(As someone who has not played a scrier) I dont really understand what the nerf here even is? Chain drunken scrying disabled. Anything else? From where I look, it seems purely like a buff to duration, and being stuck in weird camera angles and making little value out of the scry sometimes seems to me like a good incentive to RP that scry's visions are vague, unspecific and sometimes dont make sense at all, like seeing a vision of a seemingly random tree. If scry is somehow less useful now, I'm actually happy to hear, not that I see why though, 2 minutes seems like more than enough to tell a lot. Even 10 seconds duration would still often give up the location, the identity if disguised, the other people present, etc etc.

Simple fix to the privacy issue... when the suggestion board opens again i will suggest they add the spell (Non-Detection) to the servers. Problem solved.

AstralUniverse wrote: Wed Feb 17, 2021 6:35 am (As someone who has not played a scrier) I dont really understand what the nerf here even is? Chain drunken scrying disabled. Anything else? From where I look, it seems purely like a buff to duration, and being stuck in weird camera angles and making little value out of the scry sometimes seems to me like a good incentive to RP that scry's visions are vague, unspecific and sometimes dont make sense at all, like seeing a vision of a seemingly random tree. If scry is somehow less useful now, I'm actually happy to hear, not that I see why though, 2 minutes seems like more than enough to tell a lot. Even 10 seconds duration would still often give up the location, the identity if disguised, the other people present, etc etc.

A cooldown to scrying is comparable to a cooldown on knockdown - it does represent a considerable decrease in the ability's utility.
Whether or not this is justified is a different topic entirely - you'll have players arguing that the cooldown enforces the proper use of the ability while there will be players who will struggle to see the value in these abilities in their newly altered forms.
In either case, I don't think that debate is all that relevant here - the point being that the introduction of a cooldown for scrying is a nerf is a valid statement.

Furthermore, the increase in duration is not necessarily an improvement. Depending on a situation it can be even seen as a detriment (tracking a moving target is much harder now - it's a matter of time before you get stuck on a tile, an area transition or have a door slammed in your face. After that, by the time the scrying runs its course you'll regain control of your character without being any wiser than before, because at that time the scrying target could be anywhere)

Party in the forest at midnight wrote: Tue Feb 16, 2021 8:19 pm The deck is a really cool and really under-utilized tool.

I wouldn't really go that far. At this point I'd say that the aspects and the deck itself feel like an abandoned mechanic that seems to be treated and disregarded as such increasingly by more and more players from what I can tell.
- it's broken: usually provides outdated information (I've seen it repeatedly show characters who I knew have been rolled RL years prior for example)
- it's so nebulous that players more and more often simply dismiss it as something "quaint" after being frustrated by RL years of fruitless research efforts on their part.
- it doesn't provide any mechanical utility and other than sparking an odd RP interaction (usually a discourse about what this and that means) it doesn't really contribute in any other constructive way.
- there's no secret "society of seers" that know what all this stuff means. There never is! It's always a group of characters overtly lying and pretending to know some "mysterious trade secrets" in order to appear more relevant than they really are while pushing their own agenda. Every. Single. Time. And while there's absolutely nothing wrong with such IC behavior (it's a pretty cool concept actually), it's been repeatedly done to oblivion and has gotten really old on an OOC level long time ago (and players can see it coming from miles away at this point).

Furthermore, both the aura reading and the usage of the deck can be accessed simply by having a character wear the right kind of accessory. That makes it a niche mechanic that is accessible by anyone (regardless of class/alignment/feats - all you need to do is obtain a specific IG item one time) and as such should be disregarded for the purposes of any further discussion regarding divination - these perks are not exclusive to diviners.
Also, I would like to refer to the thread title here.

So, RL has been killing me and we have hit a tl;dr point at this wizard conversation, plus I don't play wizards. However it strikes me that the complaint here is that scry is too long now. If I am wrong, either tell me or just ignore me (did I mention I have also been sleep deprived.)

Why can't it be an option to be set by the player? While I am not a NWN coder, I do code in other languages and perhaps it could be set up where the scry length variable is manipulatable by the input with a default of 30 seconds. You would need to create boundary conditions (-scry 5000 would trigger an error) and have a default but otherwise it could make the tool a lot more versatile. So:

CHARACTER NAME -scry --> would scry for 30 seconds
CHARACTER Name -scry 120 --> Would scry for 120 seconds
CHARACTER NAME - scry 240 --> Would scry for 240 seconds.

I mean, conceivably, a divination wizard would be able to control how long the scryed for. This still forces them to commit to it (ie keeps the risk of being caught during a 4 minute scry) while opening up the potential to scry a conversation more fully.

**EDIT**
Reading through more it seems there are a lot more complaints about this plus the cooldown timer. As far as cooldown timers go, if you really want to sit in on a meeting, then find a buddy or two. 3 diviners at 4 minutes each cover their cooldown timers. This also means you introduce intrigue within that group, ie, who did a bad job of conveying the message and was it intentional or unintentional. As with most things in the game, making a team usually makes it more fun. Hence why the craftings system is set the way it is. Also why some parts of the island are not meant to be soloed.

Skibbles wrote: Tue Feb 16, 2021 7:22 pm Sort of piggybacking on the final note in Xerah's comment being about having imperfect information.

I believe it was Skarain who pointed out earlier that the previous scry mostly was used to observe character associations, catch a stray sentence or two, or find a location. Having a mere glimpse, and then pondering upon it after, had been the essence of the old mechanic, and one that I thought was perfectly on point with the fun of putting together the puzzle.

The change seems an attempt at fixing something that never really seemed that broken in the first place.

I can't really recall scrying even really being that much of a contentious topic over the years. It's powerful, but widely preventable (so widely preventable we don't even FOIG its mitigation anymore apparently), and its short duration may leave the caster with more questions than answers - or in rare circumstance with a treasure trove of information.

It seemed to be in a great place already.

In addition to what was already said, in my experience, scrying is also mostly used to ascertain the location of a given character before hostile action is taken. It is not all it is used for, but other than stealing snippets of character associations or stray sentences, as it has been said, it's mainly used to find a location. And doing so for a long time may be counter-productive to give the rest of the group the head's up.

With the duration being able to be player set, that would fix all of the current complaints about the change.

The main issue I have is that Scry is the main attraction to Diviners. not the spotting aura's which adds little because no one understands them. Not the Deck of Stars because, again, no one understands it. Diviners for the big investment of 2 pre-epic feats and an epic feat get a nerf to their only real bonus for taking the three feats. Even if you introduce a timer option for Diviners, where does that leave us? You look for 30 seconds because you just want a location, because you want to see if they're in the middle of a conversation then scry for longer afterward? You are still forced to get drunk to rest again ten minutes later to possibly do another Scry at the cost of yet more components to possibly get snagged on a door frame for the entire 4 minutes and get nothing.

Look at EVERYTHING the Diviner gets, Scry is the main and only real attraction. No spells, no other gimmicks that you can make sense of, just Scry. So, where is the incentive to be a Diviner? Necromancy has an entire class to itself, Enchantment and Illusion got a bunch of new spells, Evocation has a "path" and all the best offensive spells. The only school that isn't getting that kind of attention is Divination.

I just disagree.

I loved the auras and the deck. You don't have to like the whole toolset of something. For me, it was great at helping to figure out people who were disguised too. And the bonuses to the spells are nice as well.

Xerah wrote: Wed Feb 17, 2021 8:42 pm I loved the auras and the deck.

I think they're awesome in theory, but you can't make sense of them. You apparently understand them, that must be fun for you, those of us that invested in something to only scratch our heads as to what it even does/means is less fun. We have more incentive to get our three feats back and do something practical. Understanding the Deck of Stars or understanding what those Auras mean should not be FOIG. It's not like non-diviners can see Auras anyways. People announce left and right OoC how to block Scry but I can never get an answer on Auras or the Deck of Stars.

I'd love to make use of them, I really tried to make it a part of my character's RP, if you want to post what they all mean, go for it. I would love to actually get to use them, but as it is, to me, Diviners get one thing, Scry.

I don't see why the meaning of the Auras should be FOIG either. The manual tells you what all the other spells do, so why should the auras be any different?

There are IC books out there about what they mean.

Okay. I mean, by that logic, why not just delete a lot of the spell descriptions from the game menus and just put them in IC books that are scattered around the module? If keeping the auras FOIG makes sense then wouldn't that make sense, too?

Dr. B wrote: Wed Feb 17, 2021 9:23 pm Okay. I mean, why not just delete a lot of the spell descriptions from the game menus and just put them in IC books that are scattered around the module? If keeping the auras FOIG makes sense then wouldn't that make sense, too?

That part really isn't my call.

Xerah wrote: Wed Feb 17, 2021 9:19 pm There are IC books out there about what they mean.

The only ones I came across were written by PCs based off their own IC research (super unreliable source) and in private collection of PCs (not found on lootable bookshelves).

Whether it's your call is kind of beside the point.

The deck can out secret races like Rakshasa, it's extremely powerful. It also shows when someone is online, and when they're on the same server as you. And what sort of zone they're in. If there is one issue it's that inactive characters can remain the aspect for massive amounts of time, it'd be nice if points decayed so aspects can change easier. Is this something that the devs can look into?

Party in the forest at midnight wrote: Wed Feb 17, 2021 9:43 pm It also shows when someone is online, and when they're on the same server as you. And what sort of zone they're in.

Made redundant by scry. I suppose I could see how it would be kind of handy to someone who can't fit ESF: Divination, but usually there are just better options.

I wasn't aware the deck could do that, my character could use the Deck of Stars and see Auras since he was level 2 and I've never once known what I was looking at. I've made some assumptions as to what I'm looking at but I'm working in the dark here. It makes no sense that this is restricted to the few in the know and the rest have to figure it out or find someone willing to share. It was part of the attraction to make the character but all my Divination RP has ended up around the fact that he can see and hear someone far away for a brief moment.

Auras: Water, Earth, Fire, Air, Life, Death, all the random others. What do they mean!? Deck of Stars, "Tall menacing warlock stands behind stumpy dwarf" ok, that's cool, care to elaborate? This should be open knowledge to Diviners and if the deck is so powerful why does it announce everything it sees to everyone in earshot?

I totally forgot the deck of stars was even a thing.

It might belong in its own thread though, or the specialist thread, before this one gets derailed.

It really makes no sense for there to be a timer on Scry, Divination has the least going for it in every other capacity over other spell schools. It has little in terms of spells and half the goodies can be gained from an item. Now you slap it with a timer because the people that spent three feats for an ability are using it too much? You can -yoink, rest and -yoink again, same with other abilities on a cooldown timer. Why can't you be able to Scry every ten minutes without having to rest too?