Augury

What kind of "Otherworldly entity" would this entail?

Some gods have dominion over fate. The Raven Queen (goddess of death, fate, and winter, Savras (god of wizards, divination, fate, and truth), Tyche (goddess of fortune) although she did split into Tymora (goddess of good luck) and Beshaba (goddess of misfortune), and Ioun (goddess of knowledge, skill, and prophecy).

Depends on the caster... could be a deity, a patron, an elemental, a fey, a dragon... whatever makes sense flavor-wise

Noticed in the character creator when you try to add this spell, it says 11min cast time instead of the "1min + 10min" like other ritual spells. Guess someone messed up in the editing since here on the spell page shows the correct casting time

The problem with this spell is that I, the DM, may not know the future in a game revolving around dice and random events.

How do you roleplay this? I feel like just telling the characters, "Weal," or "Woe," is lame, but also telling them that the plan is good or bad could be lame.

What have you done with this spell? 

Quote from kiwizard >>

What kind of "Otherworldly entity" would this entail?

 Depends on the caster.  For a cleric, it would mean contacting their god or one of their god's servants (like an angel that serves the god).  For a wizard or warlock, it would mean contacting an extraplanar entity (fey, fiend, dragon, spirit of a long-dead wizard or sage, any entity with sufficient knowledge or magic powers).  For a druid, it would mean communing with the forces of nature, and the omen could be in the form of a natural force like a pattern in the clouds, stars, plants, or animal calls.

I love the concept of this spell, but it is a little hard to DM around. any ideas anyone?

As a DM I interact with this like a magic 8 ball or a vague fortune cookie and base it on planned events like a planned battle. If the caster has a patron (cleric/warlock) I have them be the entity (unless in another's domain)

Not necessarily, but for a Diviner Wizard with portent, this information is incredibly useful. If I have a high roll on the die ahead of time, then I can try to gauge what needs to guarantee success, or in the case of a low die, how to ensure a monster's failure. The key line to mention within the spell description is the fact that it says, "The spell doesn’t account for circumstances, such as other spells, that might change the results." If you or that player's dice luck goes badly, then the result can obviously change, but it's incredibly useful to try to give your players some level of control and not feel as though the DM merely wished for certain things to go a certain way or that the party felt blindsided. Yes, the spell doesn't give the full picture. No divination spell in the game does. It's up to the player to do their best to work within the spell description to interpret how best to use the information, and for a Divination Wizard, that skill is everything to them 

I keep it quite literal and base it only within the confines of the spell description. If the party casts the spell before whatever action they would end up taking, if they wait 30 minutes in-game to act upon it, then I like to say that it is fair to warn the person who cast the spell that things are likely to change based on the outcome that they received when they initially cast it. Especially if they cast it later again. To me, this is a good foreshadowing tool because it mentions that outside influences aren't taken into account within the spell description, so because of that loophole, as a DM, you easily have the means to surprise your players, even if you give them a peek. Divination magic as a whole only paints portions of the picture, which is entirely the reason why it possesses the fewest spells in the game. To truly master Divination spells in DnD, you need to layer multiple sources of information together to paint a full picture. For instance, Detect Magic first shows you what things radiate as magical. Then you focus on it to reveal the school of magic that it belongs to (if any). Especially for my Wizard players, but for spellcasters as a whole, I use the 8 schools of magic to classify spells and give an idea as to how they are likely to function, regardless of spell level. The flaws within Detect Magic is that it will never tell you what specific spell is being used and can be blocked out. Then you have Identify that will give you that information. But the trade-off with Identify is that it requires touch, and you might not want to risk being in danger touching random magic stuff. Mind you, these are both 1st-level spells, but even spells like Nystul's Magical Aura can trick Detect Magic, but can be seen through with Identify or other spells. You combine this information with Augary being something that you ask about that may occur within the next 30 minutes, then, if you know the specific spell if needed, or with Detect Magic providing surface-level info, then you can layer those pieces of information into the Augary question to get more specific. Even spells like Divination, Scrying, Commune, or Contact Other Plane have loose loopholes that can only truly be closed if the caster casts other Divination spells that ask or answer different parts of these spells. They all need to feed into one another to be successful. I guess the long-winded answer for me is that, as I describe it, Augury changes based on what information the party has and how specific they are with their question. The more loaded the question, oftentimes I reward with a clearer answer, even if I keep things under wraps.