Find the Path

[Scott]

Never had a cleric make it high enough to cast this spell, but my cousin's M-U has a book of infinite spells, and after casting a cure serious woulds spell from it, it automatically turned a page to Find the Path. Anybody have experience with this, or thoughts on parameters to keep it from being abused?

[geneweigel]

I've split hairs over so many divination spells but its not that powerful from the DMG notes:

Find The Path: This spell is subject to the same sort of abuse os a locate
object spell is. A locale is not an object. The spell will enable the caster
to find a way into or out of some area, but this area must be known or
identified in itself, not for what it might house. Thus, one could use it to
find a great forest of ash trees but not to find a forest where a green
dragon lived. In the latter case the desire is to find an object, not an area
or locale. Similarly, use of a find the path spell to locate the woy to a hoard
of platinum pieces is absolutely useless, as it must not be allowed, but the
spell could be used to find a level known to have such a hoard of coins, or
a cavern with n pool in it might be pointed to, etc. The spell finds a way to
a locale or an area, and whatever objects are therein ore not meaningful
to the spell.

In POLYHEDRON #7 (1982) Frank Mentzer wrote in SPELLING BEE:

FIND THE PATH: This tells everything
you need to do to get wherever you
specify - such as, "pick up torch,
stick in hole by fireplace, pull sconce
to open super-secret door." It has a
good duration, too: 1 turn per level.

This is from the THE ASTRAL PLANE article by Roger E. Moore that was audited and approved by E. Gary Gygax in DRA #67 (NOV 1982):

Find The Path: If cast immediately after
an entrance into the Astral Plane, this
spell will enable astrally projecting characters
to go quickly to their desired
plane. There is a 50% chance that only
one encounter check (the usual initial
one) will be required before reaching the
other plane; in any event, only one “extra”
check will be required at the worst,
and the entire voyage is shortened by
four hours as well. This spell, of course,
would have to be cast upon the leading
spell caster of an Astral Spell- using
group to be effective for them.

Kim Mohan's audit of psionic-like spells stated find the path was non-psionic DRA #78 (OCT 1983).

[Scott]

Quite a wide spectrum there. Frank is definitely a player friendly DM. Going to have to think about it for a bit. Statistically he'll only get 3 or 4 uses before the page turns again, so I probably don't have to worry about it being abused too much.

[Scott]

It is a 6th level spell though , minimum of 11th level to cast, so it should have some power to it.

[geneweigel]

Sorry about that I totally got distracted.

Mentzer is talking about semantics (steps to get to a locale target) and the original notes are regarding topic (not used for object targets within locale targets but the locale itself unless specifically associated with the locale).

Example for DM Notes: where is the Staff of Xago? It might work if it is a well known legend that said the Staff of Xago is within the Temple of Mystery and show the way to the fabled locale but if is known to have been lost then it cannot say. But if you're standing right outside the same temple and the staff is within but there was no legend associating it with the temple then the spell won't work.

Keep this in mind for the following with the same item associated with the locale:

Example for Mentzer Notes: Where is the staff of Xago (inferred it is well known to be in temple as above)? Go to the tallest nearby mountain where you will find the falcon's nest. At the wall beside speak the words "Zabus Xago" and enter.

[grodog]

Mar 11, 2017 16:03:53 GMT -5 Scott said:

Anybody have experience with this, or thoughts on parameters to keep it from being abused?

When I ran my high level version of the Lost Caverns of Tsojconth games at GaryCon and NTX a couple of years ago, in most of the sessions at least one high-level PC cleric burned a 6th level spell slot on Find the Path, and I certainly allowed them to do so. They were trying to find the entrance to Iggwilv's hidden lairs, accessible only via gates. The problem in this case was that I had placed several possible entrances into the Lesser and Greater Caverns, which provided different "strength" readings for viable paths toward their goal. I thought it was certainly a fair use of the spell, and tried to provide them as much information as possible based on their queries, so that they could choose which route(s) to puruse. Some also used locate object and detect gate, I think, so at least a few of the groups were definitely hitting the divinatory magics hard!

Allan.

[Scott]

Well, he used the spell one time and the page turned again.

[grodog]

Doh!

Hopefully the next spell was Mending

Allan.

[Scott]

Next page was blank, after that spike growth. He'll probably turn that quick.

[Scott]

He had Bigby's Crushing Hand, and voluntarily turned the page on that one. I still shake my head at that.

[grodog]

LOL. I may have to give an NPC in one of my levels a book of infinite spells now---haven't used that one in quite awhile!

Allan.