Locate Animals or Plants: Is That a Hamster in Your Pocket?
Usable By: Bard, Druid, Ranger
Spell Level: 2
School: Divination (Ritual)
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Self
Duration: Instantaneous
Components: V S M (A bit of fur from a bloodhound)
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.
Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold
Something about fantasy games draws us towards quests for magical stuff. We want to find treasures and items of mythical powers that do fantastic things beyond the norm. Even “fetch quests” to get a sprig of some herb called “moonglow” is wreathed in mystery and comes with a series of trials and tests to retrieve this mythical plant to assist in some greater magical spell or ritual. Locate Animals and Plants gives you a five mile wide quick search to find what you’re looking for.
While you definitely don’t need Locate Animals or Plants, it being a ritual spell makes it a fairly easy pickup for druids before going off on the quest to locate some monstrous wolf causing mayhem around the hamlet. Being a prepared caster makes it an easy option to get when you’d want it, and won’t ever cost you a spell slot. Bards have a bit more of an issue, as even though they’re ritual casters as well, they run into the issue of it taking up one of their few known spells. Rangers have an even worse time considering this as not only do they tend to have a really easy time getting the information this provides mundanely, they certainly don’t have the known spell space, nor spell slots to spare for this kind of effect.
It’s nice that this doesn’t reveal more than area or direction. There’s still a quest, still trials and tribulations, still a need for survival and investigation checks after casting, but there’s less wasted time meandering in the complete wrong direction. If you’re DMing for a group with a druid, you can create moments for their natural magic to pay off in a meaningful way by giving them a quest to find some plant or animal nearby that without their magic would be somewhat irritating to locate. The rest of the quest, then, opens up plenty of opportunities for other characters to shine.
Locate Animals or Plants is by no means revolutionary, nor something the majority of characters will regularly be preparing. There are plenty of games where there will be no reason to ever prepare this. Still, if you’re specifically a druid, or a bard that’s happy with their current spell repertoire, Locate Animals or Plants can be a nice little tool to just have access to. It’ll feel more like a druid class feature than a real spell.
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