Peephole (3.5e Spell)
| Conjuration (Teleportation) | |
| Level: | Sorcerer/Wizard 4 |
|---|---|
| Components: | V, S, F |
| Casting time: | 1 minute |
| Range: | 5 ft. |
| Effect: | 1/2 in.-wide portal |
| Duration: | 1 min./level (D) |
| Saving Throw: | None |
| Spell Resistance: | No |
Crafty mages can bypass divination-blocking lead or shielding with a clever trick called "not using divination".
Peephole creates a 1/2 in.-wide spherical portal inside a glass lens that connects to a nearby empty point in space — either a place within the caster's line of sight or effect, or one they can easily specify spatially (e.g. "inside this treasure chest here" or "five feet in front of me, past that wall"). The portal on the other end is immobile and acts somewhat like a scrying sensor, but it is plainly visible and targetable (albeit Fine and thus hard to see from a distance), and technically lets anything through that would pass through ring gates, except that one end is covered in glass, and thus matter, sound, and smell cannot pass through.
The portal thus blocks line of effect, but not line of sight. Unlike clairaudience/clairvoyance, magical or supernatural low-light vision and darkvision can pass through, as well as other sensing powers such as detect spells, see invisibility, and true seeing, as long as they could be aimed both through the space-warping effect of a normal permanent portal and through a piece of glass. However, any object or spell that would be stopped by a piece of glass, like an arrow or a lightning bolt, collides with the focus instead. An attack against either portal that breaks the focus (the lens has a hardness of 1 and 1 hit point) ends the peephole spell and prevents anything from passing through, even the object or spell that broke it.
The portal is small enough, and the image passing through it distorted enough, that the caster needs to hold the focus close to their eye to make out anything on the other side, potentially making them vulnerable to gaze or blinding attacks. By turning the focus around in their hand, the caster (or someone else very close to it) can look through different sides of the other portal. If the caster or the focus leaves the spell's range from the target position, both portals fizzle out immediately.
Additionally, if either end of the portal is in bright light, the ambient brightness will cause the other end to produce bright light out to a 5-foot radius and shadowy illumination to a 10-foot radius, as long as there is no magical darkness on the other side. (This is akin to the effect of clairaudience/clairvoyance in darkness, but is due to the portal's light transfer rather than any magical sense.)
Focus: A tiny glass lens.
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