Augury Spell: Reading the Near Future Before It Bites

Asking a Good Augury

The spell works best when the caster names a specific action they intend to take. Augury judges that decision. It does not answer a general question about the world.

“What is behind the door?” is not an Augury question. “What omen attends opening the door?” is.

The omen does not reveal its cause. Woe might mean an ambush, curse, poisoned cup, hostile witness, legal trap, collapsing floor, or danger the characters have not imagined. The spell warns without solving the mystery.

Running Augury at the Table

Establish the action the characters actually intend to take, judge its likely results according to the edition being played, and give the corresponding omen. The answer should be useful without becoming an explanation of everything waiting ahead.

Weal means good results; it does not promise victory, safety, treasure, or lasting happiness. Woe means bad results; it does not necessarily mean death or catastrophe.

Weal and woe is appropriate when the contemplated action carries genuine benefit and genuine harm. Opening a vault may recover the needed relic and awaken its guardian. Exposing a corrupt official may reveal the truth while putting the accusers in immediate danger. Rescuing a captive may save a life while revealing the party’s presence to an enemy.

A neutral omen also depends on edition. Current 5.5e calls it Indifference. Pathfinder 1e and D&D 3.5e use Nothing, with the added uncertainty that a failed augury can also produce Nothing.

The spell is strongest when it sharpens a decision without making that decision for the players. Scouting, investigation, negotiation, caution, and judgement still matter after the bones have fallen.

Augury in 1454

In 1454, even a narrow glimpse of supernatural judgement can influence decisions far beyond an adventuring company. Princes consult diviners before arrests, negotiations, dangerous audiences, hunts, and sudden military moves. Councillors in Free Imperial Cities may commission a reading before sending an embassy through hostile territory or committing civic money to an uncertain venture. Wealthy guilds and merchant companies can afford to seek an omen before risking caravans, ships, valuable cargo, or politically dangerous contracts.

The spell’s 25-gp ritual apparatus or incense helps shape who can use it routinely. A prosperous merchant house may regard that expense as cheap insurance before committing a fortune to the road. A mercenary company may keep a professional diviner close to its captain. A prince can maintain several practitioners at court. For poorer households, the same sum makes a genuine Augury an exceptional expense reserved for a marriage, inheritance, journey, accusation, dangerous bargain, or other decision whose consequences justify the cost.

Mercenary commanders value the spell because its question can be narrow without being trivial. A captain may seek an omen before attempting a particular ford, storming a gate, riding through a mountain pass, accepting a night’s truce, or moving the company before dawn. Augury cannot disclose the enemy’s whole battle plan, but it can make one immediate choice less blind.

Shipmasters and merchant syndicates use it in much the same way. An omen may be sought before sailing, trusting an unfamiliar pilot, entering a contested port, unloading suspicious cargo, or agreeing to carry a politically dangerous passenger.

Learned natural philosophers have a deeper problem. In its current 5.5e expression, the omen comes from an otherworldly entity. What, precisely, has answered?

Different schools offer different classifications. Some speak of intermediary spirits or planetary intelligences. Others argue for ancestral powers, fey minds, planar beings, local genii, or intelligences whose nature is still imperfectly understood. The existence of the answer is easier to demonstrate than the nature of the answerer, and disputes over that distinction can occupy court scholars, universities, private circles, and master-apprentice traditions for generations.

Historical and Mythic Context

The historical name fits the spell unusually well. Roman auspices were fundamentally practical: they could favour or oppose an undertaking without providing a detailed narrative of everything that would happen afterward. In that sense, Roman augury is strikingly close to the tabletop spell—an omen over a proposed act rather than a complete revelation of the future. A useful surviving overview can be found in the LacusCurtius account of Roman augury and auspices.

The world of 1454 also has its own learned traditions of divination. The British Library’s Sloane MS 314, dated 1425–1449, preserves a treatise on geomancy alongside Geoffrey Chaucer’s Treatise on the Astrolabe and an account of a necromantic ritual. Astronomical instruction, geomancy, and ritual material could therefore circulate together within a single fifteenth-century learned manuscript.

For a more powerful expression of the oracular tradition within SpiralWorlds, see the Pythia, Delphic Oracle, whose magic moves beyond simple omens into deeper divination and direct supernatural counsel.

Mythically, Augury preserves the tension between knowing an omen and controlling an outcome. A warning may be correct and still be ignored. A favourable sign may encourage disastrous overconfidence. A mixed omen may tempt someone into believing the benefit can be taken while the price is somehow avoided.

The unseen world speaks, but it does not take the next step for the living.

Related Divinations

• Zone of Truth: establish what can be truthfully said, then use Augury to judge the consequences of acting upon that information.
• Speak with Dead: obtain testimony or remembered information before testing the likely result of acting on it.
• Locate Object: answers where an object lies; Augury answers whether pursuing or handling it is likely to bring good or bad results.
• Divination: extends supernatural guidance beyond Augury’s narrow judgement of one contemplated step.
• Commune: moves from an omen to direct questions posed to a supernatural intelligence.
• Foresight: represents the far end of anticipatory magic, providing immediate warning of danger rather than a ritual omen over one proposed action.

Adventure Hooks

Augury at the Table

Zee Bashew’s Animated Spellbook captures the spell’s central tension: Augury is deliberately broad enough to leave judgement in the players’ hands, while still giving them meaningful supernatural guidance before a dangerous choice.