Level
6th
Casting Time
1 Action
Range/Area
Touch
Components
V, S, M *
Duration
1 Hour
School
Divination
Attack/Save
None
Damage/Effect
Detection
This spell gives the willing creature you touch the ability to see things as they actually are. For the duration, the creature has truesight, notices secret doors hidden by magic, and can see into the Ethereal Plane, all out to a range of 120 feet.
* - (an ointment for the eyes that costs 25 gp; is made from mushroom powder, saffron, and fat; and is consumed by the spell)
Would this reveal the nature of a Changeling, as well as other Illusionary effects (Alter Self, Seeming, etc)?
doppelgangers as well, but yes... it can definitely mess with story lines involving such things, but very few people ever realize how powerful it really is, so it typically goes un-used
Yes, since it just gives truesight, and the truesight feature says: "Truesight
A monster with truesight can, out to a specific range, see in normal and magical darkness, see invisible creatures and objects, automatically detect visual illusions and succeed on saving throws against them, and perceive the original form of a shapechanger or a creature that is transformed by magic. Furthermore, the monster can see into the Ethereal Plane within the same range."
@drag0n_77 The ability Truesight allows you to see the true form of creatures who have shapechanged, same principle applies to Alter Self and any other transformative ability, as well as polymorph, i would assume.
There's been some interpretation that a changeling's reshaping is physical rather than magical so that it might not work against that, nor against makeup
Regardless, even if it is a physical transformation, Truesight allows you to "perceive the original form of a shapechanger," so it will work on Changelings. It will not, however, allow you to see through a disguise depending on makeup and clothes, since those simply cover up physical features, without changing them.
True Seeing
This spell gives the willing creature you touch the ability to see things as they actually are. For the duration, the creature has truesight, notices secret doors hidden by magic, and can see into the Ethereal Plane, all out to a range of 1 foot.
* - (an ointment for the eyes that costs ? gp; is made from mushroom powder, saffron, and fat; and is consumed by the spell)Truesight allowing you to see into the ethereal plane suggests that you may see the soul of the thing you are looking at. So even if the physique of the thing was changed, it couldn't beguile it's true nature to you regardless while you are under the effects of this spell.
what are you on about? the spell is fine as is
Agreed.
I'm asking, for a homebrew version of this spell, what's an appropriate spell level if it only gave 1ft of Truesight? (IE, hold things up to your face, to gain the info Truesight grants)
It's a Lvl 6 spell slot, making it unavailable to low-to-mid level characters unless granted by an item; additionally, 120ft is double the typical base range for Darkvision; so I'm wondering what's a reasonable scaling if the range decreases.
120ft @ 6th Lvl slot... 60ft @ 3rd Lvl slot... 20ft @ 1st Lvl slot?
The ability itself is quite powerful, so shortening the range from "double" to "normal" doesn't seem like a big enough sacrifice to justify dropping to 3rd @ 60ft...
Having the added benefits of Truesight when examining something up close 1ft from your face, seems like a useful & potentially amusing capability, but I'm not sure what cost in spell-slot Level that should have.
If I want to create goggles which grant 1ft Truesight range, what's an appropriate rarity / detrimental property?
I love the idea of characters needing to get within 1ft of things to see their true form. I even imagine homebrew creatures with normal vision + 1ft of Truesight.
Spell costs & natural abilities are often handy indicators of something's intended value, when homebrewing. I'm trying to gauge how balanced/unbalancing 1ft of Truesight would be, to figure out a base level of availability & cost per use.
1ft of truesight seems super useless to me. You'd have to get right up in somebody's face to see through any illusion or shape-shifting. I'd say you need at least 5 or 10 feet.
Wait, for combat? Yes, mostly useless.
You really can't think of a use for it, outside combat, though??? Not useful at all? Interrogations, traps, magic items, illusions grand & small; but there's no usefulness to Truesight with less than 5ft of range?
Hm. I feel like there's a pun here about "lacking vision"... Oh well, I shouldn't be surprised anyway that I enjoy my own ideas more than anyone else seems to. "Why would you want that?" has pretty much been par for the course my whole life; playing D&D lately has felt no different. :/
I had a horrible image of the material components being applied like eyedrops based on that description. I hope the ointment is applied *around* the eyes or just magically consumed in a puff of smoke and sparkles. Spores and grease to the eyes, yuck.
Yep
I'm realizing now that having truesight and not darkvision is similar to having a Warlock's Devil's Sight and darkvision:
You can see through magical and normal darkness, but still suffer disadvantage to Wisdom (Perception) checks made in dim light. Obviously there are a lot of other benefits to True Seeing and truesight, but dim light is not one of them. This could explain why some monsters have both darkvision AND truesight.
Thoughts on giving a relatively low level character something like goggles of True Seeing despite it being a high level spell?
Depending on how far out the true sight goes I’d consider it a legendary item. This is a 6th level spell and getting a permanent version of it for free seems… really dang strong.
Back in Nam aka the old days, I believe true sight also allowed you to see all magical items and what they were (Identified so to speak) in the 120 ft range if you were looking in that direction.
so im thinking about running a 1 shot with a false hyrda in it, and because I know that this spell, if taken, would cause arguments. if a character cast this spell would they be able to see the false hydra? Because the False Hydra is using a spell to cast itself into an un-knowing sub-conscious that makes you not recognize it as being there. similarly to how your brain just ignores your nose even though you can see it the whole time. so any DM help/opinions would be appreciated!
My DM just gave me this with my Mark of Detection Siberys mark. And wow am I excited to try this out! Advantage on Investigation checks and this once per long rest? My rogue inquisitor is going to be awesome 😎 (level 7)