Identify and Appraise

[alleynbard]

Why?

Identify is a good, useful spell that can guarantee knowledge about a specific magic item. I understand your changes with the Appraise skill (which is another issue actually). The ability to understand a magic item without any major hitches can still be valuable.

I think a new spell in between detect magic and identify would have served your purpose but still allowed a guaranteed way to discover an item's secrets.

What was the motivation behind changing Appraise and its relationship to magic items? Why was Appraise chosen as opposed to Knowledge (arcana) or Spellcraft? I use the Spellcraft variant presented in the Magic Item Compendium to help characters figure out what an item does and it seems to work fairly well. So why choose Appraise over Knowledge (arcana) or Spellcraft?

The exact details might not be open content but it seems like a variation using Spellcraft or Knowledge (arcana) instead of Appraise might be more appropriate and still allow magic-users to focus on the skills that matter to their chosen adventuring career.

[Jason Bulmahn]

This change was enacted for a couple of reasons.

It is almost standard practice these days that adventures gather loot, bring it back to town, get it identified, and then, finally use it... maybe.

We feel that using the items you find during the adventure itself lends a powerful tool for GMs and adventure writers. Also, using 3.5 identify was usually more of a book keeping hassel than it was worth.

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer

[Anry]

Jason Bulmahn wrote:

This change was enacted for a couple of reasons.

It is almost standard practice these days that adventures gather loot, bring it back to town, get it identified, and then, finally use it... maybe.

We feel that using the items you find during the adventure itself lends a powerful tool for GMs and adventure writers. Also, using 3.5 identify was usually more of a book keeping hassel than it was worth.

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer

I've seen that happen more and more often. Both as a player and as a DM, its bit frustrating actually.

I haven't gotten to the skills myself, let alone the spells. Having to dedicate time to each chapter. I'm digging through the classes currently.

[etrigan]

I agree with the OP on this one.
Appraise should be use to evalute the gold value of an item but not it's fonction.
Appraising the cost of a catapult won't give the character any knowledge on how to build one or how to operate it... so I don't see how appraise can be relevant in finding the properties of magical items.
Knowledge (Arcana) or Spellcraft are already use to identify spells effects that are cast or in already in place... And magical items are permanent spells cast on a items...

[evilvolus]

I agree with the bulk of the change...I currently use a system in 3.5 that I found on the boards here that uses Spellcraft for identification with the Identify spell boosting the roll.

What I don't like is the use of Appraise instead of Spellcraft. The side effect of this change is that Appraise becomes a mandatory skill for at least one caster in the group. Suddenly, in every party, it's the wizard who always knows how to value art and gems instead of the rogue. I would favor keeping appraise as-is, and move identification to spellcraft, which makes a great deal more sense.

I'm also unhappy with identification as a standard action. As it stands, the wizard who runs into a boss fight with Detect Magic running can start IDing the bad guy's stuff before they've even killed it.

Sit down for a few minutes and ID the loot? Sure. Yelling 'The bad guy's wand is fireball, spread out!"? Not so much.

[Timitius]

etrigan wrote:

I agree with the OP on this one.

Appraise should be use to evalute the gold value of an item but not it's fonction.
Appraising the cost of a catapult won't give the character any knowledge on how to build one or how to operate it... so I don't see how appraise can be relevant in finding the properties of magical items.
Knowledge (Arcana) or Spellcraft are already use to identify spells effects that are cast or in already in place... And magical items are permanent spells cast on a items...

But the problem with this is that then only spellcasters can figure out what a magic item is. That makes no sense.

A bard should be able to...he hears so many tales of wonderous items. A rogue should be able to...he fences items, sees and hears descriptions of what an item is and does.
A fighter....um, should not. Unless he can heft the sword, swing it about and get a "feel" that this sword is magic and beholds greater precision (i.e. +1)
A cleric...maybe, if it is a divine item (Lo! The holy hand-grenade of Antioch!)

The issue is each class would require a different skill to Identify, and that would just be messy. By putting it down under ONE skill, Appraise, it eases the rules up a bit. I could see throwing in some more Synergy between skills, though. (i.e., 5 ranks in Spellcraft gives a +2 bonus to Appraise when used to ID magic items).

[Timitius]

evilvolus wrote:

I'm also unhappy with identification as a standard action. As it stands, the wizard who runs into a boss fight with Detect Magic running can start IDing the bad guy's stuff before they've even killed it.

Sit down for a few minutes and ID the loot? Sure. Yelling 'The bad guy's wand is fireball, spread out!"? Not so much.

Hmm. Yes. That would be absurd. Generally, to appraise an item, one should have to closely examine the item, as in HOLD it, turn it over, look for the "Made in China" stamp. I doubt that the skill intends for one to glance at the bad guy and say, "hmmm, that looks like a +3 sword, and his armor clearly is of the +2 variety."

No sir, to appraise, your wizard would have to walk up to the baddie, slowly walk around him, lift up his arm to peer at the joints, lift up armor pieces to peer beneath them, going..."Hmmmm. AHHHH. Yes. Yes! I see......" and then standing back proudly and declaring, "Yes. As I thought....+2 band mail. Proceed."

[Jason Bulmahn]

Ahh, I see the point now.

There is a slight problem with the rules here. It should take 3 rounds to start identifying the powers of items. You must first be able to know its magic, the strength of its aura, and the school. This problem will be addressed.

So.. if you wizard wants to spend three rounds waiting to ID a bad guy's items, that is fine by me. That is three rounds he is not casting magic missile.

Jason Bulmahn
Lead Designer

[primemover003]

Identify should take longer than a standard action, maybe a minute to cast. I do think that Appraise being able to determine magical powers is a good idea, just the DC fo doing so needs to be fairly high.

If a Wizard casts ID he get's a +10 bonus whereas the fighter, bard, or rogue need to be a bit higher level to start fguring it out. I think it makes sense.

[Dam'Sadar]

A quick word to say that I'm glad to see that the Identify spell now only takes 1 standard action to cast.
I might have gone for 1 minute casting myself, but I've always found the "1 hour" casting time to be preposterous.

On the topic at hand, I personally like the way Identify works with Appraise for the reasons presented by Timitius. I also agree that synergy bonus should be considered here.

[etrigan]

I think that the idea with this new rules were not to have everyone to get the equivalent of Bard Knowledge but instead make identification of magic items possible in dungeon rather than to have to wait 1 hour to cast Identify... This way, character can use usefull items they found right now... not in the next adventure...
And I think that Knowledge (Arcana) make more than a lot of sense... Saying that spellcaster should not be better to identify magical propreties is ridiculous. Even the Appraise skill as written require
that the user of this skill cast detect magic first...

[Timitius]

etrigan wrote:

And I think that Knowledge (Arcana) make more than a lot of sense... Saying that spellcaster should not be better to identify magical propreties is ridiculous.

I'm not saying that the spellcaster shouldn't be better suited...they SHOULD. Magic is their bag, baby! But, I think it should be possible (but more difficult, compared to spellcasters) for other classes to be able to identify magic items.

etrigan wrote:

Even the Appraise skill as written require that the user of this skill cast detect magic first...

Does it say that? Wow. Oops. I guess I need another look at that.

I still think other classes should have a chance to use Appraise to identify magic items though. Synergy would be a good mechanism for doing that, I think.

OR maybe assists, as well? The wizard can detect magic, but the rogue, given enough magic info from the wizard, can really appraise the item as something "on the market" they've heard about or seen before.

[Vigil]

Bards, clerics, and rogues CAN still identify stuff, though. Anyone can train in Appraise (either as a class skill or cross-class), and all of those classes have some access to detect magic in some form or another.

Rogues can take the minor magic talent to cast some 0- and 1st-level spells, or use wands with UMD checks.

[etrigan]

And anyone can also train in Knowledge (Arcana) (either as a class skill or cross-class)... :-)

[Archade]

Ever since Magic Item Compendium came out, my players have been making Spellcraft checks to identify magic items, and it works well.

Effectively, when a character gets to 10th level, they know what the potions are, because a DC 25 Spellcraft check is easy.

When a character gets to 12th level, minor magic items are identified most of the time, so you don't have to fiddle around. A quick roll, and you are done.

I support keeping that in the Pathfinder rules. I have to be honest, I'm not sure Appraise is the skill to do it (I fixed Appraise in my home game to make it more useful, and I will get around to posting it here in a separate post).

[Timitius]

Vigil wrote:

Bards, clerics, and rogues CAN still identify stuff, though. Anyone can train in Appraise (either as a class skill or cross-class), and all of those classes have some access to detect magic in some form or another.

Rogues can take the minor magic talent to cast some 0- and 1st-level spells, or use wands with UMD checks.

True. I did not factor in the new rogue talents. I stand corrected.

I guess I got so excited about the idea of being able to ID magic items without spells or scrolls, that I failed to comprehend the text. Apologies. My bad. (I guess I was in my Diablo track of mind, where the rogue CAN identify magic items as a class ability.)

But, whether the skill of choice for this stays as Appraise or moves to Spellcraft...I still stand behind the idea of a skill synergy bonus of some kind.

:P

[Rezdave]

Jason Bulmahn wrote:

We feel that using the items you find during the adventure itself lends a powerful tool for GMs and adventure writers.

Yes and no ... I hate the old 1st Edition convention that everything you needed to defeat the odd-ball monsters in a dungeon was coincidentally scattered about it for you to recover and use.

OTOH, I did run an adventure where a dragon who was an ally of giants had in its horde everything looted from the region that might be useful to defeat a dragon or giant. These items were still valuable "treasure horde" and what better guardian to make sure they weren't used against the dragon than to bury them at the bottom of said dragon's very horde? The caveat, of course, is that only after fighting and defeating the giants and the dragon to you get the items written into the adventure that would help you.

Jason Bulmahn wrote:

Also, using 3.5 identify was usually more of a book keeping hassel than it was worth.

I fail to see why. It's short, to the point, and tells you everything about an item. Also, I like that the casting time is long, but not too long.

Jason Bulmahn wrote:

It should take 3 rounds to start identifying the powers of items.

Longer even, says I, and you need it in your possession.

Personally, I think 3.5 identify is too powerful and takes all the fun and mystery out of magic items.

I have House Rules that use 3.0 identify as a 1st level spell (aka identify, lesser telling you the "basic function" of a group of items) then bumped 3.5 identify up to 3rd level to tell you everything about one item. This leaves analyze dweomer as basically identify, greater at 6th level.

Now we have a progression where the party can adventure through 2-3 good encounters over a period of as many hours (or maybe 15 minutes) then sit back and camp while the wizard casts lesser identify from a 1st level slot during lunch and dinner to find out what (several of) the magic item(s) they recovered are basically about.

The party can immediately start using the basic function of magic items, but it leaves a little mystery for them for the future ("wow ... why does this otherwise plain-looking +1 longsword have an overwhelming aura?")

I hated the 3.5 identify because it too all the mystery out of magic items at 1st level. In my campaign you don't get to know everything immediately (or, within an hour) until 5th level.

I strongly advise a lesser, standard, greater progression for identify. Makes for more fun and better role-playing IMHO.

Incidentally, I just ran Christopher West's Unfamiliar Ground, and Neegla's lesser heavy pick of frost was in the PCs' hands in combat before they knew how to use it. They only needed to have one PC get hit in combat and see an allied NPC take a critical to know that it was something they wanted to use even if it hadn't been identified.

I also routinely have PCs in my games start wearing unidentified captured rings, amulets and so forth immediately "just in case". Granted, I'm not a Killer-DM nor am I out to screw with the Players so they know that occasionally cursed items appear. But they figure if their opponent was using it then the item might help them. If it was sitting in a box on a shelf, OTOH ...

FWIW,

Rez

[delabarre]

Jason Bulmahn wrote:

We feel that using the items you find during the adventure itself lends a powerful tool for GMs and adventure writers. Also, using 3.5 identify was usually more of a book keeping hassel than it was worth.

I love this change and am incorporating into my Runelords campaign as a house rule right away.

I would make one suggestion though: let the 100 gp pearl material component for identify be optional; if a pearl is consumed, it would give a +10 (or so) bonus on the Appraise check.

[Mystic "X"]

Timitius wrote:

etrigan wrote:

I agree with the OP on this one.

Appraise should be use to evalute the gold value of an item but not it's fonction.
Appraising the cost of a catapult won't give the character any knowledge on how to build one or how to operate it... so I don't see how appraise can be relevant in finding the properties of magical items.
Knowledge (Arcana) or Spellcraft are already use to identify spells effects that are cast or in already in place... And magical items are permanent spells cast on a items...

But the problem with this is that then only spellcasters can figure out what a magic item is. That makes no sense.

A bard should be able to...he hears so many tales of wonderous items. A rogue should be able to...he fences items, sees and hears descriptions of what an item is and does.
A fighter....um, should not. Unless he can heft the sword, swing it about and get a "feel" that this sword is magic and beholds greater precision (i.e. +1)
A cleric...maybe, if it is a divine item (Lo! The holy hand-grenade of Antioch!)

The issue is each class would require a different skill to Identify, and that would just be messy. By putting it down under ONE skill, Appraise, it eases the rules up a bit. I could see throwing in some more Synergy between skills, though. (i.e., 5 ranks in Spellcraft gives a +2 bonus to Appraise when used to ID magic items).

It might be a bit messy, but would having different classes identifying different types of items be a bad thing? Fighters should be able to tell the added precision of a weapon by taking a few minutes to exercise with it, or tell the balance and benefit of a suit of armor or a shield by putting it on and getting a feel for it. A bard should know (or be able to dig up) stories to get the purpose of extremely rare (and somewhat famous) items. Clerics have their religious knowledge (their own, their allies, and to some small extent their enemies), rogues stumble their way into command words, and then the wizards with Identify take care of everything else.

I suppose a skill-based identification method could work, but Knowledge (Arcana) seems like a better fit. (I like the catapult example with Appraise.) I still think, with or without the above methods provided to each class, that keeping Identify is a better choice, without the expensive spell component, with a longer casting time (less than an hour, but more than a minute), and with a limit on the knowledge that can be gained (either placed within the spell or using the lesser, normal, and "greater" versions already mentioned).