Using Divination Spells for Droskar's Guiding Ring

Question

Here is the description of Droskar's Guiding Ring:

This gold ring is misshapen and uncomfortable to wear for long periods of time; inscribed on it is a crude symbol of a fire burning under an arch. Once per day, the wearer may use charm person. If Droskar is the wearer’s patron deity, any time the wearer crafts a magic item, she may choose to pay half of the item’s construction cost instead of the full cost. The wearer spends time working on the item normally, but at the time of completion there is a 50% chance that the item turns out nonmagical and worthless. For example, if creating a magic bracer that normally costs 1,000 gp to craft, the wearer may craft it for only 500 gp, but there is a 50% chance the wearer’s shortcuts and cheap materials result in a valueless, nonfunctional item.

The description of Divination:

Similar to augury but more powerful, a divination spell can provide you with a useful piece of advice in reply to a question concerning a specific goal, event, or activity that is to occur within 1 week. The advice granted by the spell can be as simple as a short phrase, or it might take the form of a cryptic rhyme or omen. If your party doesn't act on the information, the conditions may change so that the information is no longer useful. The base chance for a correct divination is 70% + 1% per caster level, to a maximum of 90%. If the die roll fails, you know the spell failed, unless specific magic yielding false information is at work.

As with augury, multiple divinations about the same topic by the same caster use the same dice result as the first divination spell and yield the same answer each time.

The description of Augury:

An augury can tell you whether a particular action will bring good or bad results for you in the immediate future.

The base chance for receiving a meaningful reply is 70% + 1% per caster level, to a maximum of 90%; this roll is made secretly. A question may be so straightforward that a successful result is automatic, or so vague as to have no chance of success. If the augury succeeds, you get one of four results:

• Weal (if the action will probably bring good results).
• Woe (for bad results).
• Weal and woe (for both).
• Nothing (for actions that don't have especially good or bad results).

If the spell fails, you get the “nothing” result. A cleric who gets the “nothing” result has no way to tell whether it was the consequence of a failed or successful augury.

The augury can see into the future only about half an hour, so anything that might happen after that does not affect the result. Thus, the result might not take into account the long-term consequences of a contemplated action. All auguries cast by the same person about the same topic use the same die result as the first casting.

Could one use Augury or Divination to predict the result of Droskar's Guiding Ring, allowing an almost 100% success rate with it?*

*Especially if you use something like Messenger of Fate to get a 100 percent success rate with your divination spells.

Answer 1

Yes, depending on your GM, but only for Divination

Divination spells allow you to see into the future in some way, so the knowledge of the spell is based around whether the item creation will have been successful.

For Augury, you can only see 30 minutes into the future, so there would be no point in casting it, as you would have the item almost created already.

For Divination, the spell would give you an answer about whether the item was created successfully (GM should determine early whether it is successful), but the DM might give you a cryptic answer. Depending on the answers the GM gives you will determine whether it is worth it.

Answer 2

You cannot predict the result of dice rolls

The Dice are metagame objects, they don't exist within the game. When a game mechanic says you have 50% chance of succeeding at something, it is talking about it mechanically, not flavor-wise (though it will often be accompanied with the proper flavor). Whenever the game says you have 50% chance to succeed at something, that is resolved with a percentile (d%) dice roll, which is usually 2d10 or any other dice with results split 50/50 (1-3 and 4-6 for d6, for example).

Augury, if used to ask "Should I craft this magic item?" will most likely return a Nothing result, because the spell cannot tell what the result of the Dice you roll will be.

On the other hand, there are several divination abilities that grant bonuses to checks, or even allow you to reroll those checks. From card fortune telling (Harrow) to literally looking a few seconds into the future (Anticipate Peril, Threefold Sight, Glimpse of the Akashic, etc). Those spells fill the niche of predicting your fortune and allowing you a chance to change that future.

Note that not even the Foretell Failure spell could predict the result of that % roll.

Droskar may not approve that

Not only that, but being able to predict it would be against Droskar's dogmas:

He believes that sufficient toil leads to eventual success, and that those who fail simply weren't trying hard enough.

While his portfolio also includes Cheating, I don't think it's a good idea to cheat on a deity's granted ability, especially when he wants you to try until you succeed.

Alternatively, the GM may even answer with Weal, because you are acting in Droskar's good favor by willing to take a risk to succeed, which is exactly what he expects of his followers.

Divinations are the GM's territory

Along with Illusions, divination spells are admittedly completely in the GM's hands. So, you may get many different answers to your question, and they are all (somewhat) valid.

But keep in mind the scope of each spell. Augury will predict something in the next 30 minutes, so it couldn't predict the results of a work of 8 +hours (crafting a magical item). Divination, on the other hand, may sound like it could easily predict the result, right? Well, the spell will foresee a possible future that may happen within a week and give you some clue on how to proceed. Well, what if you tried to make a couple of items during this week? Which one would succeed? Assuming that you ask "Will I successfully create a magical wand?", the answer may vary depending on how many times you are actually going to try to make that wand, because if the answer is "yes", you are likely to try to make it, but if the answer is "no", you probably won't try to make it, entering a self-fulfilling prophecy. You succeed or failed because you used a spell to predict the future.

The Divination spell also may not be able to answer that question directly, as you are given hints on how to proceed about your question, not exactly a "yes/no" answer (that kind of answer is even discouraged by the GameMastery Guide). You could get an answer saying "You should stop gambling" or even "Droskar wants you to try until you succeed", or even "You may fail a few times, but you will eventually succeed".

The advice granted by the spell can be as simple as a short phrase, or it might take the form of a cryptic rhyme or omen.

Answer 3

No. The Divination spell in Pathfinder 1E does not predict the future; it provides guidance for a proposed set of actions.

Look at the definition of Divination that you quote: it provides the caster with advice, not information--there is a difference. The Divination spell allows the caster to propose some action to occur in the next week and get advice on how best to pull it off successfully. The Core Rulebook's shorthand description of the spell in the spell lists makes this even more clear: "Provides useful advice for specific proposed actions."

Asking whether something will be successful is asking for information about the future, not advice on a proposed action. It may seem that Divination should have predictive capabilities, but based on the spell description it does not and cannot predict the outcome of something, only give advice on how to go about a course of action.

At the GM's discretion, he might allow you to cast Divination for things involving dice rolls (such as crafting an item with Droskar's Guiding Ring) and grant a bonus to the dice roll to reflect the advice given, but that would be a house ruling and is not something specifically allowed by the rules as written.