Alright, i come here in search of advice to retcon a very specific "mistake" i might have made whilst dungeon mastering. I am new to dungeon mastering (but absolutely loving it!) and I hope im not the only dungeon master who has made a decision, only to regret it right after. And I hope someone out there has an idea as to how to "fix" it.
So one of my players, a dragonborn paladin from way out east, has a backstory in which he's done somethng awful back home (he's tried, but failed to kill his king who turned out an evil fascist bascially, very original right? But whatever it works haha) and now he's run and he's ended up at the sword coast, where he is laying low, doing some adventuring, type thing.
So i thought it would be cool to make a dream sequence for him, in which he was running away from the capital in which he lived and had done his dirty deet; thunder and rain, arrows flying around his head as he fleed the crime scene, epic dramatic music, the whole shabang!.... And then in the dream, he is suddenly confronted by this man he had tried to kill. The king" Who tries to convince him to "come back home" (although with clear undertones of "to get your pusishment") and when my player rejected this "dream version of the king" - i asked him to make a wisdom saving throw, which he then failed and then i described how a "burning dot was tracing around his forearm, creating this intricate symbol before his eyes" and then the king said "you will find your way home one way or other" (All of this happed IN THE DREAM mind you) but: When he woke up from the dream, he looked at his arm and I told him that the symbol was still there! (albeit in a faded version, like a decade old scar on his arm) Which i thought was cool and which freaked him out! - Great! ........ BUT......
Then the character afterwards was very worried - of course - and he asked the partymembers whether they knew anything about "spying, or tracing magic" which they didn't. And thats when it dawned on me: He thought that this was some way for "the people he wronged" to find him and come get him! --- And thats not how i was thinking it at all haha! I just thought it would be a cool moment and a scar to "remind him of what he had done" and then we'd get back to all that MUCH later when we go out east ----- But I loved his idea better! I love the thought that they are trying to keep taps on him and possibly are actively looking for him. That creates some great circumstances and stakes to play of off - I can't believe i didn't think of that, or think of the ramifications of making my "cool dream sequence" (As i said, I am new to dungeon mastering) - But now im thinking "wait, thats actually a great ******* idea" So now i WANT it to be some sort of tracing spell, a way to scry on him or something like that.
PROBLEM IS: That before i realized this, my player went to the local magic items salesman (who himself is a low level wizard) to ask him for help, and asked him to "detect if he had any magic on him" - which the wizard could, as he has detect magic. And the wizard told him: "No, i cant detect any magic on you." - but now i actually WANT there to be some magic on him... so i ****ed that up. - and i cant just said "wait, lets just say there is...."
So here's my question. Are there any subtle, neat, in-game ways to fix my **** up. Like is there ANY WAY that the detect magic spell couldnt detect any magic on that symbol? Are there some schools that that spell cant detect? No right? As far as i know detect magic WOULD have given a "Ping" if any magic nonsense was going on.
Is there anything to be said like "the magic was too high level to be detected?" No right?
Or is there some way i can just say "well that wizard did a bad job finding magic on you....." ?
Or is there some way i can say, "its only magical sometimes" as in... "only when they use it to scry on you" or something. But, on the other hand i dont want to scare my player so much that he will leave the villiage that i spend a month making and drawing maps for, and where i intend the first few levels or 4ish to take place ( i have big plans with this place, i dont want him to leave, and leave the party, in fear of them coming after him hahahah! Yikes, what have i done!) - My idea for that is, that they will convieniently find (or the wizard will sell them) an "Amulet of Proof against Detection and location" - which would keep him safe for now. - But for that, he needs to know that there IS something magical about that symbol, which I (the dufus DM has told him, there is not...)
Bascially, my problem is: Now i want there to be something magical about that symbol, but i've already told my player there is not. And i can tell; now he's just confused. And thats not a feeling i want to instill in my players who were brave enough to open up and lean into his backstory.
Sorry for the long ordeal. I hope some one has some great ideas :)
The Wizard could have simply lied about the symbol being magical, for reasons their own; perhaps they don't like Dragonborn, or Paladins, or people where the Dragonborn is from. Maybe they're an agent of whatever faction that's trying to gain insight into the character and simply refused to actually detect whether or not there is magic on it, or detected it and straight up just lied.
The item is immune to magical detection and scrying is an option, appearing as a mundane symbol or item or whatever, especially when detection is placed upon it. Maybe something like a Boon of Truesight or Gem of Seeing is all that can detect it.
The item is only magical when it is activated by the other party is a really typical retcon my main DM has used, much to his chagrin however because insight checks exist as do second opinions from other people who can detect magic.
I dunno, there's a lot of options for easy retcons, it doesn't have to be elaborate. In fact, the simpler it is the easier it will go over, in my strong opinion.
So there might be a limitation for Detect Magic for you to exploit. That limitation is that the magic effect has to be active. If the NPC had used something like Scrying, the Detect Magic spell will only detect the scrying sensor while it is active. After the spell is complete, there is no effect to detect.
This is going to feel like a "gotcha" for your player.
Another opportunity might be for the Night Haunting trait of a Night Hag or the Etheralness traight of a Succubus. Neither are magical effects, therefore, undetectable by detect magic.
You might have just been lucky. No actual mistake made, no retcon.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
PROBLEM IS: That before i realized this, my player went to the local magic items salesman (who himself is a low level wizard) to ask him for help, and asked him to "detect if he had any magic on him" - which the wizard could, as he has detect magic. And the wizard told him: "No, i cant detect any magic on you." - but now i actually WANT there to be some magic on him... so i ****ed that up. - and i cant just said "wait, lets just say there is...."
I sometimes feel like situations like this are why nystul's magic aura was invented
False Aura. You change the way the target appears to spells and magical effects, such as detect magic, that detect magical auras. You can make a nonmagical object appear magical, a magical object appear nonmagical, or change the object’s magical aura so that it appears to belong to a specific school of magic that you choose. When you use this effect on an object, you can make the false magic apparent to any creature that handles the item.
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Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock) Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric) Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue) Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
possibly the wiz answered the wrong question the scare/mark is not a magical tattoo
Think I would go for the mark is just a physical remnant of being marked, the mark has become part of PC's astral self, the way it is used to scry or spy is not dissimilar to a portal key or QR code not magical in itself but identifying.
but how to let him know about the deeper secrets of the mark... you could alway have a npc turn up who also carries the mark to impart some lore after all evil tyrants tend to make quite a few enemies
“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
Character: "But the wizard told me it wasn't magical!"
Helpful NPC: "That old fraud? He's more salesman than wizard. There are kinds of magic that won't read as an active enchantment. Any wizard worth his staff should know that."
Simple enough. The sigil is NOT magical. It is a unique design, which the Wizards of the Court are able to trace, as they are intimately familiar with it. Your favorite brush isn't magical, but if I know it and have handled it, I can scry the brush. No retcon required, it's just how magic works. To add to the drama, if the party has anyone who will learn scrying magic, they can later reveal this newfound understanding and explain how scrying really works. All the fear and apprehension returns lol.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
It IS a cool idea. However, I think you need to think a bit farther into the future about how YOU want to develop this plot line. The dream sequence you added is what is known as a plot hook but you haven't thought out the plot you want to attach to it.
1) The folks back east want to capture/kill this dragonborn.
2) The folks back east are obviously powerful magic users
3) The folks back east have a nation's worth of followers they can send to capture/kill the dragonborn
4) IF the dragonborn can be tracked by the tattoo then the dragonborn is essentially already captured given the resources of the opponent in their backstory (an evil king in charge of a nation can send a LOT of powerful opponents if they want to).
So you need to decide how you want the story to develop.
Also, keep in mind that this scale of development has the capability to take over your entire campaign depending on how you decide to let it develop. Would the other players in the campaign be ok with a plot that suddenly pivots to the backstory of the dragonborn?
Anyway, there are many many ways you could develop this. Here is one option.
- the king has discovered either a magic user or magic item that allows him or other followers to enter dreams in order to acquire information. The king wants to find the dragonborn either for revenge or perhaps because the dragonborn knows something (they might not even know what) that the king needs to extract from them (something other than revenge might be a better motivator in this case).
- the dream device allowed the king, after much searching, to find the dragonborn in dreams. He gets glimpses of where the dragonborn might be. The mark he placed in the dream is not magical in the real world, it is a tracking beacon in dreams that allows the king to get easier access to the dragonborn and find him more readily in the dream world. On a particularly bad week you could give the dragonborn a level of exhaustion due to the nightmares and dreams they are having - not every week or every day but perhaps require a wisdom save to get a good night's sleep on night's when the king invades the dreams. As a result the mark is not magical - however, it is evidence that some of the events in the dream world can touch the real world - which you might also be able to use.
- anyway, based on the glimpses he gets in dreams, the king can send out searchers looking for the dragonborn. He does not know exactly where he is located - but he can perhaps get images of a city or town recently visited, unusual geography that the dragonborn saw that day and can use that information to assist his search parties. Since the searchers are spread out looking for the dragonborn and since the king likely couldn't send an army to the sword coast - this gives you the option to have the dragonborn encounter the searchers in groups that would be manageable for the party. It might also inspire the paladin to multiclass into warlock for the Mask of Many Faces invocation to make him harder to find :)
There are many different directions you can take it, the above is just one of many possibilities.
P.S. One of the first decisions you need to make is how central you want to make this to the campaign you are playing. At the least, the dragomborn and the party will have to deal with groups of searchers - at an intermediate step the dragonborn could be captured and the party might have to rescue them - and at a high level of impact, the party could end up leaving the Sword Coast and head back east in an attempt to somehow deal with the king.
+1 for either the magic shop trader being a fraud or them being part of the network keeping tabs on the Dragonborn. Depends whether you want them to remain an NPC or if you want them to become part of the plothook.
Cool idea. Why don't you have the scar burn bright now and then and this is when they are tracking him? It isn't magical until then.
Or (a bit neater) have the dragonborn have the dream recur and each time it leaves a scar. Then the scars aren't magical themselves but rather part of the consequence. Each dream is trace as and you end up with a dragonborn covered in marks which others, not of his/her clan, can recognise as meaning fugitive.
PROBLEM IS: That before i realized this, my player went to the local magic items salesman (who himself is a low level wizard) to ask him for help, and asked him to "detect if he had any magic on him" - which the wizard could, as he has detect magic. And the wizard told him: "No, i cant detect any magic on you." - but now i actually WANT there to be some magic on him... so i ****ed that up. - and i cant just said "wait, lets just say there is...."
I sometimes feel like situations like this are why nystul's magic aura was invented
False Aura. You change the way the target appears to spells and magical effects, such as detect magic, that detect magical auras. You can make a nonmagical object appear magical, a magical object appear nonmagical, or change the object’s magical aura so that it appears to belong to a specific school of magic that you choose. When you use this effect on an object, you can make the false magic apparent to any creature that handles the item.
Seconded.
Detect Magic is a first level spell and Fairly common. If I was placing a spell on someone to clandestinely track someone's whereabouts, I would for sure think of the possibility that they'd gain access to that spell and plan accordingly.
I just wanted to thank you all for taking the time to reply. I've read them all and there's alot of fantastic advice!
Most of all I gather than it might not be the worst problem in the world. As I can read in the above there are an abundance of creative sollutions that will only make things even more interesting.
Can the "Burn Scar" be targeted with a Find Item or Locate Object Spell? The Scar need not be magical. It only needs to be distinct, right?
I would go with a version of that. The scar isn't magical but it can be traced as the design is known. Maybe there is a bone fragment or something under the scar?
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
The best ideas I get as a DM is the stuff my players get wrong. :)
Just be ready to work them in.
And if I can add one thing: the DnD books don't have all the spells. You're the DM. There is nothing stopping you adding more spells, or monsters, or anything you like. Not just for you: for the players too. If someone does some off-the-cuff move that's cool consider giving something like it (balance considered) as a permanent ability.
The thing I've not liked about the otherwise excellent adventurer's league is the idea that homebrew is wrong or weird. Most games at home should be doing some kind of homebrew. The rules are meant as a starting point.
I have never, not once, not ever, run a monster from the monster manual that was the same as the monster manual said.
The symbol doesn't really need to be magic for the spell scrying. You can treat the symbol as a likeness or picture to track them with giving a -2 to saves as per the scrying spell. Basically they cast scrying focusing on the symbol as a way to target the spell and I think that is entirely fair rules as written and only requires they know he has the symbol. If he learns about scrying some how, he could learn about that rule. There is also the spell arcanists aura which hides the magical nature of things, if he tries to dispel the mark it would remove that effect and make the magic visible while the actual mark itself may not be able to be dispelled.
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Alright, i come here in search of advice to retcon a very specific "mistake" i might have made whilst dungeon mastering. I am new to dungeon mastering (but absolutely loving it!) and I hope im not the only dungeon master who has made a decision, only to regret it right after. And I hope someone out there has an idea as to how to "fix" it.
So one of my players, a dragonborn paladin from way out east, has a backstory in which he's done somethng awful back home (he's tried, but failed to kill his king who turned out an evil fascist bascially, very original right? But whatever it works haha) and now he's run and he's ended up at the sword coast, where he is laying low, doing some adventuring, type thing.
So i thought it would be cool to make a dream sequence for him, in which he was running away from the capital in which he lived and had done his dirty deet; thunder and rain, arrows flying around his head as he fleed the crime scene, epic dramatic music, the whole shabang!.... And then in the dream, he is suddenly confronted by this man he had tried to kill. The king" Who tries to convince him to "come back home" (although with clear undertones of "to get your pusishment") and when my player rejected this "dream version of the king" - i asked him to make a wisdom saving throw, which he then failed and then i described how a "burning dot was tracing around his forearm, creating this intricate symbol before his eyes" and then the king said "you will find your way home one way or other" (All of this happed IN THE DREAM mind you) but: When he woke up from the dream, he looked at his arm and I told him that the symbol was still there! (albeit in a faded version, like a decade old scar on his arm) Which i thought was cool and which freaked him out! - Great! ........ BUT......
Then the character afterwards was very worried - of course - and he asked the partymembers whether they knew anything about "spying, or tracing magic" which they didn't. And thats when it dawned on me: He thought that this was some way for "the people he wronged" to find him and come get him! --- And thats not how i was thinking it at all haha! I just thought it would be a cool moment and a scar to "remind him of what he had done" and then we'd get back to all that MUCH later when we go out east ----- But I loved his idea better! I love the thought that they are trying to keep taps on him and possibly are actively looking for him. That creates some great circumstances and stakes to play of off - I can't believe i didn't think of that, or think of the ramifications of making my "cool dream sequence" (As i said, I am new to dungeon mastering) - But now im thinking "wait, thats actually a great ******* idea" So now i WANT it to be some sort of tracing spell, a way to scry on him or something like that.
PROBLEM IS: That before i realized this, my player went to the local magic items salesman (who himself is a low level wizard) to ask him for help, and asked him to "detect if he had any magic on him" - which the wizard could, as he has detect magic. And the wizard told him: "No, i cant detect any magic on you." - but now i actually WANT there to be some magic on him... so i ****ed that up. - and i cant just said "wait, lets just say there is...."
So here's my question. Are there any subtle, neat, in-game ways to fix my **** up. Like is there ANY WAY that the detect magic spell couldnt detect any magic on that symbol? Are there some schools that that spell cant detect? No right? As far as i know detect magic WOULD have given a "Ping" if any magic nonsense was going on.
Is there anything to be said like "the magic was too high level to be detected?" No right?
Or is there some way i can just say "well that wizard did a bad job finding magic on you....." ?
Or is there some way i can say, "its only magical sometimes" as in... "only when they use it to scry on you" or something. But, on the other hand i dont want to scare my player so much that he will leave the villiage that i spend a month making and drawing maps for, and where i intend the first few levels or 4ish to take place ( i have big plans with this place, i dont want him to leave, and leave the party, in fear of them coming after him hahahah! Yikes, what have i done!) - My idea for that is, that they will convieniently find (or the wizard will sell them) an "Amulet of Proof against Detection and location" - which would keep him safe for now. - But for that, he needs to know that there IS something magical about that symbol, which I (the dufus DM has told him, there is not...)
Bascially, my problem is: Now i want there to be something magical about that symbol, but i've already told my player there is not. And i can tell; now he's just confused. And thats not a feeling i want to instill in my players who were brave enough to open up and lean into his backstory.
Sorry for the long ordeal. I hope some one has some great ideas :)
The Wizard could have simply lied about the symbol being magical, for reasons their own; perhaps they don't like Dragonborn, or Paladins, or people where the Dragonborn is from. Maybe they're an agent of whatever faction that's trying to gain insight into the character and simply refused to actually detect whether or not there is magic on it, or detected it and straight up just lied.
The item is immune to magical detection and scrying is an option, appearing as a mundane symbol or item or whatever, especially when detection is placed upon it. Maybe something like a Boon of Truesight or Gem of Seeing is all that can detect it.
The item is only magical when it is activated by the other party is a really typical retcon my main DM has used, much to his chagrin however because insight checks exist as do second opinions from other people who can detect magic.
I dunno, there's a lot of options for easy retcons, it doesn't have to be elaborate. In fact, the simpler it is the easier it will go over, in my strong opinion.
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It doesn't have to be actually magical; it's a mark created by magic but it may not have any ongoing magic.
I like "magic shop wizard is his Watcher" thing. If the town of the shopkeeper isn't a regular base for the party, have the Watcher keep showing up.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
So there might be a limitation for Detect Magic for you to exploit. That limitation is that the magic effect has to be active. If the NPC had used something like Scrying, the Detect Magic spell will only detect the scrying sensor while it is active. After the spell is complete, there is no effect to detect.
This is going to feel like a "gotcha" for your player.
Another opportunity might be for the Night Haunting trait of a Night Hag or the Etheralness traight of a Succubus. Neither are magical effects, therefore, undetectable by detect magic.
You might have just been lucky. No actual mistake made, no retcon.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
I sometimes feel like situations like this are why nystul's magic aura was invented
Active characters:
Carric Aquissar, elven wannabe artist in his deconstructionist period (Archfey warlock)
Lan Kidogo, mapach archaeologist and treasure hunter (Knowledge cleric)
Mardan Ferres, elven private investigator obsessed with that one unsolved murder (Assassin rogue)
Xhekhetiel, halfling survivor of a Betrayer Gods cult (Runechild sorcerer/fighter)
possibly the wiz answered the wrong question the scare/mark is not a magical tattoo
Think I would go for the mark is just a physical remnant of being marked, the mark has become part of PC's astral self, the way it is used to scry or spy is not dissimilar to a portal key or QR code not magical in itself but identifying.
but how to let him know about the deeper secrets of the mark... you could alway have a npc turn up who also carries the mark to impart some lore after all evil tyrants tend to make quite a few enemies
“It cannot be seen, cannot be felt, Cannot be heard, cannot be smelt, It lies behind stars and under hills, And empty holes it fills, It comes first and follows after, Ends life, kills laughter.” J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again
Character: "But the wizard told me it wasn't magical!"
Helpful NPC: "That old fraud? He's more salesman than wizard. There are kinds of magic that won't read as an active enchantment. Any wizard worth his staff should know that."
Simple enough. The sigil is NOT magical. It is a unique design, which the Wizards of the Court are able to trace, as they are intimately familiar with it. Your favorite brush isn't magical, but if I know it and have handled it, I can scry the brush. No retcon required, it's just how magic works. To add to the drama, if the party has anyone who will learn scrying magic, they can later reveal this newfound understanding and explain how scrying really works. All the fear and apprehension returns lol.
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
It IS a cool idea. However, I think you need to think a bit farther into the future about how YOU want to develop this plot line. The dream sequence you added is what is known as a plot hook but you haven't thought out the plot you want to attach to it.
1) The folks back east want to capture/kill this dragonborn.
2) The folks back east are obviously powerful magic users
3) The folks back east have a nation's worth of followers they can send to capture/kill the dragonborn
4) IF the dragonborn can be tracked by the tattoo then the dragonborn is essentially already captured given the resources of the opponent in their backstory (an evil king in charge of a nation can send a LOT of powerful opponents if they want to).
So you need to decide how you want the story to develop.
Also, keep in mind that this scale of development has the capability to take over your entire campaign depending on how you decide to let it develop. Would the other players in the campaign be ok with a plot that suddenly pivots to the backstory of the dragonborn?
Anyway, there are many many ways you could develop this. Here is one option.
- the king has discovered either a magic user or magic item that allows him or other followers to enter dreams in order to acquire information. The king wants to find the dragonborn either for revenge or perhaps because the dragonborn knows something (they might not even know what) that the king needs to extract from them (something other than revenge might be a better motivator in this case).
- the dream device allowed the king, after much searching, to find the dragonborn in dreams. He gets glimpses of where the dragonborn might be. The mark he placed in the dream is not magical in the real world, it is a tracking beacon in dreams that allows the king to get easier access to the dragonborn and find him more readily in the dream world. On a particularly bad week you could give the dragonborn a level of exhaustion due to the nightmares and dreams they are having - not every week or every day but perhaps require a wisdom save to get a good night's sleep on night's when the king invades the dreams. As a result the mark is not magical - however, it is evidence that some of the events in the dream world can touch the real world - which you might also be able to use.
- anyway, based on the glimpses he gets in dreams, the king can send out searchers looking for the dragonborn. He does not know exactly where he is located - but he can perhaps get images of a city or town recently visited, unusual geography that the dragonborn saw that day and can use that information to assist his search parties. Since the searchers are spread out looking for the dragonborn and since the king likely couldn't send an army to the sword coast - this gives you the option to have the dragonborn encounter the searchers in groups that would be manageable for the party. It might also inspire the paladin to multiclass into warlock for the Mask of Many Faces invocation to make him harder to find :)
There are many different directions you can take it, the above is just one of many possibilities.
P.S. One of the first decisions you need to make is how central you want to make this to the campaign you are playing. At the least, the dragomborn and the party will have to deal with groups of searchers - at an intermediate step the dragonborn could be captured and the party might have to rescue them - and at a high level of impact, the party could end up leaving the Sword Coast and head back east in an attempt to somehow deal with the king.
+1 for either the magic shop trader being a fraud or them being part of the network keeping tabs on the Dragonborn. Depends whether you want them to remain an NPC or if you want them to become part of the plothook.
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Can the "Burn Scar" be targeted with a Find Item or Locate Object Spell? The Scar need not be magical. It only needs to be distinct, right?
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
Cool idea. Why don't you have the scar burn bright now and then and this is when they are tracking him? It isn't magical until then.
Or (a bit neater) have the dragonborn have the dream recur and each time it leaves a scar. Then the scars aren't magical themselves but rather part of the consequence. Each dream is trace as and you end up with a dragonborn covered in marks which others, not of his/her clan, can recognise as meaning fugitive.
Seconded.
Detect Magic is a first level spell and Fairly common. If I was placing a spell on someone to clandestinely track someone's whereabouts, I would for sure think of the possibility that they'd gain access to that spell and plan accordingly.
I just wanted to thank you all for taking the time to reply. I've read them all and there's alot of fantastic advice!
Most of all I gather than it might not be the worst problem in the world. As I can read in the above there are an abundance of creative sollutions that will only make things even more interesting.
I would go with a version of that. The scar isn't magical but it can be traced as the design is known. Maybe there is a bone fragment or something under the scar?
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
The best ideas I get as a DM is the stuff my players get wrong. :)
Just be ready to work them in.
And if I can add one thing: the DnD books don't have all the spells. You're the DM. There is nothing stopping you adding more spells, or monsters, or anything you like. Not just for you: for the players too. If someone does some off-the-cuff move that's cool consider giving something like it (balance considered) as a permanent ability.
The thing I've not liked about the otherwise excellent adventurer's league is the idea that homebrew is wrong or weird. Most games at home should be doing some kind of homebrew. The rules are meant as a starting point.
I have never, not once, not ever, run a monster from the monster manual that was the same as the monster manual said.
It's your game. Do what you want with it.
The symbol doesn't really need to be magic for the spell scrying. You can treat the symbol as a likeness or picture to track them with giving a -2 to saves as per the scrying spell. Basically they cast scrying focusing on the symbol as a way to target the spell and I think that is entirely fair rules as written and only requires they know he has the symbol. If he learns about scrying some how, he could learn about that rule. There is also the spell arcanists aura which hides the magical nature of things, if he tries to dispel the mark it would remove that effect and make the magic visible while the actual mark itself may not be able to be dispelled.