Locate Object: Find What’s Missing in Your Life
Usable By: Bard, Cleric, Druid, Paladin, Ranger, Wizard
Spell Level: 2
School: Divination
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: Self
Duration: Concentration, up to 10 minutes
Components: V, S, M (a forked twig)
Describe or name an object that is familiar to you. You sense the direction to the object’s location, as long as that object is within 1,000 feet of you. If the object is in motion, you know the direction of its movement.
The spell can locate a specific object known to you, as long as you have seen it up close—within 30 feet—at least once. Alternatively, the spell can locate the nearest object of a particular kind, such as a certain kind of apparel, jewelry, furniture, tool, or weapon.
This spell can’t locate an object if any thickness of lead, even a thin sheet, blocks a direct path between you and the object.
Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold
Locate Object gives you an object detector from 1,000 feet out, a McGuffin seeker for when you know you’re close to it. Here’s the problem I have with that: 1,000 feet isn’t a particularly large distance, and if you’re within that area, finding the object probably doesn’t take all that much more effort to locate.
This spell is very similar to Locate Creature; its short distance makes it feel like it’ll randomly cease to function the way you’d want it to. It being ineffective through lead opens it up to being nonfunctional even when you’d actually potentially get something out of it, which can easily lead to interpersonal conflict between the players and the DM.
To make matters worse, this spell doesn’t work on any objects you haven’t been within 30 feet of and observed. Likely, this is only a tool you’d be able to use to keep track of a creature you plant something on like a tracker. It not being a ritual spell means you get ten minutes of tracking before you need to recast, and if the pursuit lasts more than thirty minutes you run the risk of running out of slots. What’s worse is that is something you can do entirely mundanely; you do not need Locate Object to tail somebody. You don’t need it to locate objects really at all.
Mundane investigation is going to probably be a way better option than ever spending spell slots on Locate Object. The risk of casting a spell that does nothing is too high, and the number of scenarios you’d actually benefit from the cast are probably capped out at once or twice a campaign, if that. Locate Object doesn’t have a home on nearly any character sheet out there.
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