Arcane Eye: I Spy with My Little Eye

Usable By: Artificer, Wizard

Spell Level: 4

School: Divination

Casting Time: 1 action

Range: 30 feet

Duration: Concentration, up to 1 hour

Components: V, S, M (a bit of bat fur)

You create an invisible, magical eye within range that hovers in the air for the duration. You mentally receive visual information from the eye, which has normal vision and darkvision out to 30 feet. The eye can look in every direction.

As an action, you can move the eye up to 30 feet in any direction. There is no limit to how far away from you the eye can move, but it can’t enter another plane of existence. A solid barrier blocks the eye’s movement, but the eye can pass through an opening as small as 1 inch in diameter.

Review by Sam West, @CrierKobold

Find Familiar out the gate leaves a massive hurdle for reconnaissance magic. Having a quick, tiny pet you can telepathically communicate with and sense through whenever you please leaves a lot of upper level options feeling lackluster. Arcane Eye exemplifies this problem; it functions as an extra visual sensory effect for a 4th level slot. The problems it helps solve have no shortage of other possible solutions in lower level spells. The most glaring competitor is Find Familiar, which I’d argue is a better version of this 4th level effect, but there are dozens of other spells that will be potential tools to solving the rare problems Arcane Eye solves while also having a wider breadth of applications.

What Arcane Eye gives you over Find Familiar is the sensory source being invisible and the ability to maintain your own senses during the cast. Find Familiar offers other non-visual information, the ability to interact with objects, creatures, and environments, the ability to move the sensor more than 30 feet each round, no concentration requirements, and an indefinite length over any distance. Find Familiar is a FIRST level spell, and has a laundry list of meaningful upsides.

But let's say you’re not interested in Find Familiar, or don’t have access to it for some reason. What exactly can Arcane Eye do that other lower level options can’t? If your objective is to see something discreetly, isn’t Invisibility nearly always a better option than this? Unless you really care about being able to infiltrate through a one inch gap, being able to be invisible in the space you’re aiming to observe seems like a way better option, as all of your other senses are available too, plus it lasts the same duration. I like that there is more risk there as well; the plan has more moments to go wrong, which can lead to fun conflicts and confrontations. Secret meetings could be a lot more interesting to navigate through means of Disguise Self, Suggestion, or other charisma based magic that rewards engagement with the world around you. Gaseous Form keeps all your senses active and offers you tools to move through tiny spaces. I’m just not seeing when I’d want to cast Arcane Eye with all its limitations compared to other spells with a far more varied utility.

At the end of the day Arcane Eye won’t really hurt to use or have. It can be a tool for spying on somebody entering a combination lock, or monitoring a corridor discretely for incoming guards. If you end up using it for either, it’ll feel fine. It's just not something you ever should need. There are way better, more flexible options at lower levels that have huge arrays of applicable uses, whereas Arcane Eye is just an invisible extra floating eyeball. You will find uses for Arcane Eye for sur, but you’re probably better off finding a better lower level spell to use in its place.

5e Spells

Arcane Eye: I Spy with My Little Eye