Hello magic casters of all shapes and sizes! Welcome to my spellbook and thank you so much for checking out the 45th episode of our 2nd level spell series. Today we’re going to be taking a look at an incredibly potent yet often overlooked and underused spell. Today we’re looking at locate animals or plants 5e.
It is usable by the bard, druid and the ranger and it is found in the good old players handbook. Now this is what i’ve never actually seen used in a campaign before but i can guarantee you in one of my future games i am certainly gonna be playing one of these. In any case let’s take a lok at the mechanics so we can understand exactly how the spell works.
Mechanics
- Level: 2nd
- Casting Time: 1 Action (Ritual)
- Range/Area: Self
- Components: V, S, M *
- Duration: Instantaneous
- School: Divination
- Attack/Save: None
- Damage/Effect: Detection
The effect at a glance is as followed: Find a plant or beast within 5 miles, that matches a description or name that you provide. The cast time is one action and it can be ritual casted. So that’s an additional 10 minutes but no spell slots used which is fantastic.
The range is self but the actual area of effect is five miles which is absolutely incredible. The duration is instantaneous, the components are verbal, material and somatic. If you’re curious about that material component it is a bit of fur from a bloodhound which obviously makes a lot of sense and the school is a divination.
Needless to say this sounds a pretty dang cool but let’s go over the full description and i’ll explain to you why i think this is kind of game breaking in a little bit. So the description reads as followed.
Description
Describe or name a specific kind of beast or plant. Concentrating on the voice of nature in your surroundings, you learn the direction and distance to the closest creature or plant of that kind within 5 miles, if any are present. * – (a bit of fur from a bloodhound)
Whole mama that is one heck of a range and it’s pretty accurate too because it tells you both the direction and a distance which should allow you to pinpoint its exact location in that current moment. So would make a lot of sense to dispatch a familiar just to verify it but we’ll get into that in a little bit when we talk about the alternative uses here.
Something else i would really like to point out is the fact that it is ritual casted means it can be cast pretty much whenever you feel like consequence-free which is pretty cool especially for a spell of this particular type. Now lets take a look at some alternative uses here and think a little bit more creatively on how to use this spell.
Alternative Uses
So i think a great way to use it especially during those early levels you’re kind of broke all the time would be to use this as a way to generate revenue.
You know find rare plants and animals and sell them on the black market or open market or to various vendors i think that would super cool and i would certainly allow that in my games. Also this is a potentially game breaking way to use this but technically speaking.
Let’s say you’re running to the BBEG i like a kind of introductory encounter like they just show up to introduce themselves say that no matter what you do you’ll never be a threat to them, hit him with the good old bad guys spiel and you are able to stealthily throw some form a sticky seed or something of that nature onto the bad guy.
All you would have to do is just kind of walk around and cast the spell preiodically and look for that particular kind of seed and if you were able to find the bad guy that way that would be pretty fraking cool! I would also work really well with spies, assassins things of that nature. Do you know that does locate creature work on humans?
A little bit game breaking once again but still pretty cool! A great way to use this would also be to make maps, if you are a skilled in kind of nature and if you know what plants grow where it could give you a great way to find things like a fresh water source or volcanic soil or swamp things of that nature and like that all kind of makes sense.
Also now that i’m actually thinking about this you could really use this as a great way to fortify your camp for example. Now this is kind of loose because the way the spells worded it doesn’t say exactly what you have to describe. So you could be like any beast capable of harming me within five miles of me let me know where the closest one is. Check out this what is the difference between locate object and locate creature?
Something like that and the spell may or may not work, something you need to talk with your DM about how much information they need to be provided with, but it makes sense that if you’re a druid from a druid grove and if you’ve spent your whole life trying to collecting catalog various beasts that you would know which beasts were native to which areas, so i don’t know, once again run that past your dm see what they think but it could be a great way of just understanding what you’re going to be dealing with in the near to distant future. what is the locate animals or plants ritual?
Conclusion
That being said, if you have any alternative uses, ideas, concetps, questions, comments, concerns please put them down beneath in the comment section i really do appreciate it. Thank you so much guys, i really appreciate it, i hope you all have a great day and as always happy casting everyone. Also check out speak with plants 5e | plant growth 5e | speak with animals 5e | locate creature 5e | locate object 5e | locate animal spell |