Information/Detection Spells

[zot]

I made a simple system for investigation, interrogation, etc. that I also use for divination. The major limitation is that the result represents ALL of the investigation using that technique, so if you're using a divination spell, you only get the one divination and further attempts yield nothing. You can't use yes/no/yes/no/yes/no to narrow down your answer.

The good news for players is that the answers have more information than yes or no, so even though you get "one round of divination", you can end up with some pretty workable information. A GM that feels it's being abused is free to rule that the broad topic of "this story" has already been addressed with divination :).

Here's my thread on it.

As opposed to finding it a source of abuse, by the way, I have found it to be very helpful for GMing. The questions the players ask (whether they are from interrogation, interviewing, searching for clues, divination, or whatever) tell me where THEY think the story is headed. I use that to influence NPC motivations and plans, what to create, etc. It allows me to create the story at the table without having to do a ton of work ahead of time. I don't have hundreds of hours to invest in things which might never see the light of day like I did when I was a kid :).