Commune with Nature: Better than Breadcrumbs

Usable By: Druid, Ranger

Spell Level: 5

School: Divination (ritual)

Casting Time: 1 minute

Range: Self

Duration: Instantaneous

Components: V, S

You briefly become one with nature and gain knowledge of the surrounding territory. In the outdoors, the spell gives you knowledge of the land within 3 miles of you. In caves and other natural underground settings, the radius is limited to 300 feet. The spell doesn’t function where nature has been replaced by construction, such as in dungeons and towns. You instantly gain knowledge of up to three facts of your choice about any of the following subjects as they relate to the area:

terrain and bodies of water
prevalent plants, minerals, animals, or peoples
powerful celestials, fey, fiends, elementals, or undead
influence from other planes of existence
buildings

For example, you could determine the location of powerful undead in the area, the location of major sources of safe drinking water, and the location of any nearby towns.

Review by Samuel West, Twitter: @CrierKobold

Ranger’s have a hard time in the 5e conversation. What they are built to be good at is challenging for many to make engaging, leading to playing as one often feeling like you aren’t using your core features.

Despite all this, you decide to play one, eventually reaching 9th level, and you’re presented with a glimpse of potential greatness, a moment where you can make your survival skills shine and track how many giants are venturing around and where their settlement might be! And then the druid casts Commune with Nature, asks three questions with no skill checks, and makes every one of your survival features more or less invalid.

Beyond bullying rangers, Commune with Nature offers a unique method of information gathering that is notably distinct from its similarly named Commune brother. It takes activities that would normally require skill checks to perform over a longer time frame and simplifies it out to three facts in just 1 minute.

This spell highlights the power of the ritual tag; it's a very low cost to have access to a new tool that doesn’t compete for spell slots, and this is the kind of tool that is near universally applicable. In addition, if you’ve got the time, you aren’t really limited to the three questions. The difference between 1 action and 1 minute is massive, while the difference between 1 minute and 10 minutes at the table can feel minimal to non-existent.

The loose language of the spell’s fact options makes its power fluctuate table to table. “Prevalent” peoples might mean specifically a group in control of the region, the most numerous kind of humanoid, both, or potentially just any number of a kind of humanoid greater than three.

Locating influence from other planes of existence can yield very little (there is feywild magic dotting the landscape, but you already knew that) to a lot (this specific glade contains a powerful source directly connecting it to the shadowfell).

The exact facts you want to know will determine how useful that information ends up being. Knowing the location of the nearest building may get you to some run down hunting shack you didn’t know was here when you were looking instead for the bandit encampment.

Keep in mind relative locations can often be less useful than static information; knowing generally where extraplanar magic is can be useful, but more specifically discerning where magic coming in the highest density from another plane can be more useful on a case by case basis.

It's probably for the best that it be this flexible for DMs. Ultimately it acts as a release valve for information gathering; if the party is intended to get somewhere and is missing a few details that would help them navigate there, Commune with Nature can be an easy tool to fill in the gaps.

It does make me pity the ranger that much more, though.

5e Spells

Commune with Nature: Better than Breadcrumbs