Confucius once said, “Real knowledge is to know the extent of one’s ignorance.” While this might not seem like the most applicable concept in the world when it comes toDungeons & Dragons, a good dungeon master realizes that information is a villain’s ultimate weapon against a competent party.
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Conversely, good players are also aware that access to information is a crucial element in thwarting the most dastardly villains' plans. The divination school of magic is comprised almost entirely of spells that serve to inform player characters and villains alike. Woe to those who miss out on these often overlooked magics. The information they offer can be more precious than gold.
10Speak With Animals
This 1st level ritual spell is one of the earliest ways for PCs (Player Characters) to interact with the world around them in interesting and unforseen ways. In case you’re unaware of rituals, spells with the ritual tag can be cast without expending a spell slot as long as you take an additional 10 minutes to cast the spell.
In other words, ritual spells are free real estate!
Beasts are some of the most common enemies at low levels and opening up dialogue options with them makes it possible to talk around fights, learn information about the surrounding area, and perhaps even access otherwise unavailable quest lines.
Of course, this spell does require a DM (Dungeon Master) who is good at improvisation as most DMs don’t plan for their PCs to converse with the wolves they randomly encounter in the forest. Thankfully, improvisation is an important element of running games and even an intermediate DM will likely be able to deliver for a player who casts this spell.
9Comprehend Languages
This is yet another 1st level ritual spell that your DM will be much more prepared for in comparison to Speak with Animals. This is due to humanoids always having social interaction available as an option versus beasts that normally don’t.
Importantly though, while this spell allows you to understand any spoken or written language, it doesn’t let you speak or write it.
Even just listening in on enemy tactics prior to or during battle can lead to huge benefits for your party as it may unveil the goals of your opponents and allow you to parley with them through actions instead of words. Furthermore, clues found in writing locked behind a lesser-known language are completely overridden by this simple spell.
8Detect Magic
Our final 1st level ritual spell is one that any knowledgeable spellcaster should have prepared at all times. Detect Magic lets you see magical traps and even tells you theschool of magicused in certain circumstances.
Any PC familiar with the schools of magic can use this information to great benefit as each school is home to common effects.
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For example, an aura of evocation magic on a door tells you that the door is probably trapped with a glyph of warding that will explode and deal elemental damage once activated. As another example, if you were to find an aura of divination magic coming from a statue, you would know that interacting with that statue will likely reveal useful information to your party.
7Augury
Augury is a 2nd level ritual spell that can give you a hint on the results of a course of action taken within the next thirty minutes. Omens learned from this spell include well for good results, woe for bad results, weal and woe for both good and bad results, and nothing for results that aren’t especially good or bad.
Unfortunately, Augury can be a bit finicky as it doesn’t take into account changing circumstances that might affect the results in the next 30 minutes. For example, fighting the goblins might be a good idea until your party triggers a trap that puts them in a difficult situation.
Augury doesn’t assume that you’ll avoid the trap.
6Detect Thoughts
Here’s a spell with a long list of use cases: the most popular of which is for interrogation. This 2nd level ritual allows you to probe the thoughts of any creature with an Intelligence score greater than 3.
Initially, you only learn the surface thoughts of the creature whose mind you’re reading.
However, you can choose to probe deeper to gain more information including the creature’s reasoning, emotional state, and greater concerns. In order to learn this information, the creature must first fail a Wisdom saving throw though.
In addition, any creature whose mind you probe deeper into becomes immediately aware that you are reading its mind whether they succeed or fails the saving throw.
5Speak With Dead
Popularized by the Dungeons & Dragons movie, Speak with Dead is a 3rd level necromancy spell making it the only non-divination spell on this list. When used, the spell returns the spirit of a creature to its corpse.
You can ask the spirit five questions to which it must provide an answer; however, the answers need not be truthful, and answers are usually somewhat cryptic.
The corpse can’t learn new information, so it’s unable to offer assistance on future courses of action. The corpse also needs a mouth in order to speak.
Headless bodies are a no-go. While Speak with Dead certainly has a lot of limitations, five questions can unveil a lot of information, especially if you ask the right leading questions which reveal information that you can then ask more about.
4Arcane Eye
This 4th level concentration spell is so powerful that it’s capable ofturning a difficult dungeon crawl into a walk in the parkwhen used properly. Arcane Eye lasts for one hour and creates an invisible sensor with darkvision out to a range of 30 feet.
As an action, you can move the sensor up to 30 feet. The sensor is so small that it’s capable of fitting through a gap as little as one inch wide.
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Arcane Eye is the ultimate scouting tool for a party that wants to know what’s behind every door in a dungeon. Only high-level spellcasters or otherwise magical beings are likely to have defenses against this spell.
Once it works once though, don’t be surprised if your DM prevents Arcane Eye from being quite as effective in the future.
3Commune With Nature
The 5th level ritual Commune with Nature lets you learn three facts of your choice about the land within 3 miles of you. The facts include information about terrain, bodies of water, buildings, prevalent creatures, powerful magical beings, and influence from alternative planes.
The depth of these facts is left to DM fiat to some degree. However, seeing as this is a 5th-level spell, most DMs will be pretty generous with the information they provide.
2Legend Lore
Legend Lore is a 5th-level spell without the ritual tag, so it’s going to tax your spellcasters to use it. That being said, there’s no limit to the depth of information you can learn about a person, place, or object using this spell.
The more information you already have and describe the subject, the more information you will receive in return.
All of that being said, Legend Lore only works on things of legendary importance. In other words, this spell won’t tell you anything about an uncommon magic item you find, but it can hint to you the location of a legendary one as well as whether it is cursed, what it’s useful for, where it’s been, who’s wielded it previously, and more.
1Scrying
The final spell is a favorite of veteran DMs everywhere. Scrying lets you observe a creature you name for ten minutes through the use of an invisible sensor it creates within 10 feet of the creature as long as they fail a Wisdom saving throw, and if they succeed on the saving throw, the spell fails.
What better way for a villain to keep their eye on an adventuring party than the scrying spell? Just as well, what better way for an adventuring party to learn information about a villain’s plot than the use of this same spell?
Including Scrying in your games will add a level of intrigue, drama, and counterintelligence activities worthy ofan epic high-level story. Happy spying.
