Pass without Trace

Shadow and silence gather around you and your companions, dulling noise, swallowing traces, and making even a moving group strangely difficult to detect. Footsteps fade, disturbed brush seems less certain, and the signs that should reveal a trail fail to hold clearly enough to be trusted.

2nd-Level Abjuration
Casting Time: 1 Action
Range: Self
Components: V, S, M (ashes from a burned leaf of mistletoe and a sprig of spruce)
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 hour
Available To: Druid, Ranger

A veil of shadows and silence radiates from you, masking you and your companions from detection. For the duration, each creature you choose within 30 feet of you, including you, has a +10 bonus to Dexterity (Stealth) checks and can’t be tracked except by magical means. A creature that receives this bonus leaves behind no tracks or other traces of its passage.

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Overview

Pass without Trace is one of the strongest movement and infiltration spells in the game because it does not merely help one creature hide. It changes what a whole group leaves behind in the world. A party that should be noisy, visible, and easy to follow becomes strangely difficult to pin down. Pursuit weakens. Ambush becomes possible. Evidence stops accumulating in a reliable way.

That is what makes the spell so valuable. It does not merely improve stealth. It interferes with consequence. Mud should keep footprints. Wet grass should bend. Snow should record weight. Brush should tremble. Gravel should speak. Pass without Trace suppresses those ordinary betrayals and lets a group move like something half-withdrawn from the world.

Its strength lies partly in scale. Many stealth tools protect an individual. This one protects a company: adventurers, scouts, raiders, pilgrims, beast-riders, sacred wardens, fey envoys, goblin hunters, or any other small band moving through country that ought to remember them. That turns it from a simple sneaking spell into a strategic one.

It also has a clear identity. Unlike Invisibility, which removes the seen body, or Fog Cloud, which obscures a space, Pass without Trace is about denied evidence. It is not the spell of not being there. It is the spell of leaving too little behind to prove you were.

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Best Uses

Move a Group Through Watched Ground

This is the spell’s clearest strength. It allows multiple creatures to cross terrain that should reveal them through sound, tracks, broken brush, disturbed dust, or clumsy movement.

Evade Pursuit

Once a group has gained even a little distance, Pass without Trace makes it dramatically harder for hunters, guards, beasts, scouts, or rival creatures to follow by ordinary means.

Approach for Ambush

A full band can reach striking distance with far less risk of being heard or discovered too early, making this spell excellent for coordinated attacks.

Infiltrate Dangerous Territory

Use it to move through ruins, sacred precincts, border paths, occupied woodland, giant-haunted moors, enemy encampments, or guarded roads without leaving the expected signs of intrusion.

Protect the Weakest Sneaker

One of the spell’s greatest virtues is that it helps the least stealthy member of the group avoid becoming the reason the whole plan fails.

Cross Traceable Terrain

Snow, mud, ash, leaf litter, shallow water, dust, and soft earth all become far less useful to trackers once the spell is active.

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Tactics

Cast it before the world notices you. The spell is strongest when it prevents detection rather than trying to repair a failed approach.

Keep the group close. Its protection depends on creatures remaining within 30 feet of you, so spacing, marching order, and timing matter.

Use terrain that should have memory. Wet ground, old dust, snowfields, shrine paths, fungal caverns, marsh edges, and leaf-heavy woodland all become much safer when the world is denied its usual evidence.

Think beyond infiltration. This spell is also excellent for withdrawal, rescue, pursuit-breaking, repositioning, hunting, and moving vulnerable companions through dangerous country.

Pair it with discipline. The spell suppresses traces, but poor silhouette, foolish timing, bright light, and obvious behavior can still betray the group.

Remember the distinction. It does not make creatures absent. It makes their passing difficult to detect and harder still to prove.

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Good Combinations

Fog Cloud: Fog hides the space you move through, while Pass without Trace suppresses the evidence that you moved through it at all. Together they are excellent for escape, infiltration, or breaking pursuit.

Silence: Silence suppresses sound in a fixed area, while Pass without Trace helps a group move quietly across a broader stretch of terrain. Together they are ideal for infiltration or ambush.

Invisibility: Invisibility protects the seen body; Pass without Trace protects the trail, the noise, and the weaker members of the group. Together they create intense stealth pressure.

Darkness: Darkness can break sightlines at a crucial point, while Pass without Trace helps a party reach or leave that point without obvious signs of passage.

Spike Growth: A vicious wilderness pairing. One side moves cleanly and leaves little trace, while the other crosses punished ground they may not understand until too late.

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DM Notes

Pass without Trace works best when treated as a spell that suppresses evidence, not as a universal license to ignore stealth fiction. It should make approach, evasion, and tracking dramatically harder without erasing the need for judgment.

Describe its effect in the world. Boots land strangely softly. Grass rises too quickly. Snow holds less shape than it should. Dust is disturbed, but not clearly enough. A wolf loses confidence in the trail. A forest spirit pauses, sensing trespass but not finding proof. This makes the spell feel magical rather than merely numerical.

Reward smart planning. The spell is most satisfying when used in terrain that should matter: haunted woodland, shrine grounds, ruined halls, war paths, giant country, borderland trails, and sacred groves.

Remember that it is a group spell. Much of its real power comes from letting several creatures succeed together where one clumsy companion, one loud rider, or one heavy-footed ally would otherwise ruin the whole attempt.

In worldbuilding, Pass without Trace belongs naturally not only to rangers and druids, but also to fey scouts, goblin outriders, elven wardens, beast-led hunting bands, spirit-haunted processions, sacred guardians, and any tradition that treats land not as scenery, but as witness. SpiralWorlds’ own structure supports that broader magical ecology rather than a human-only one.

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Why This Spell Is Dangerous in the World

Pass without Trace is dangerous because it lets small groups go where they should have been noticed and leave too little behind for ordinary people to prove it.

Its scope is limited, but that is enough. A 30-foot aura lasting up to an hour can move a party through a watched treeline, along a guarded road, across soft ground near a manor, into a shrine precinct, past a border post, or away from the scene of an attack without leaving the usual evidence pursuit depends on.

That makes it dangerous to communities that rely on tracks, noise, local vigilance, hunting beasts, or knowledge of the land rather than magical security. Patrols miss intruders. Hunters lose quarry. A sacred place is entered without the expected signs of trespass. Raiders appear where there should have been warning. Fey envoys, goblin scouts, poachers, cult messengers, rebel bands, or stranger things can pass through defended country leaving only uncertainty behind.

Its threat lies in deniable intrusion. Pass without Trace does not destroy defenses. It makes them doubtful by allowing the wrong people, creatures, or powers to cross them without leaving the proof the world should have kept.

Pass without Trace

The subject or subjects can move through any type of terrain and leave neither footprints nor Scent.

This material is Open Game Content, and is licensed for public use under the terms of the Open Game License v1.0a.

Transmutation

Level Druid 1, Ranger 1
Components V, S, DF
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Range: Touch
Targets: One creature/level touched
Duration: 1 hour/level (D)
Saving Throw: Will negates (harmless)
Spell Resistance: Yes (harmless)

Tracking the subjects is impossible by nonmagical means.