Spellcraft-b-gone?


Skills and Feats

RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32

Spellcraft has always bothered me because it lets Arcane and Divine spellcasters to know too much about each other's business. Under 3.5, Clerics rarely took Spellcraft because of a scarcity of skill points, and it sort of made sense that a Wizard might at least know how to understand a cleric's prayers.

However, under PFRPG, the consolidation of Spellcraft and Concentration made it so that a Cleric, who doesn't formally study magic, can analyze a master wizard's casting.

I suggest that Spellcraft be abolished. Instead, identifying a spell requires a Knowledge check from the appropriate skill. Knowledge (Arcana) for arcane casters and Knowledge(Religion) or Knowledge(Nature) divine casters (Clerics and paladins, and Rangers and Druids, respectively.)

The Concentration-type abilities that got consolidated into spellcraft could either 1) go back to Concentration, 2) get integrated into a new skill, call it 'Discipline' that might also have benefits for non-spellcasters, or 3) become a Will save.

Liberty's Edge

This sounds reasonable to me.


Maybe we could just add a caveat that the Spellcraft skill only applies to magic (or psionics, or shadowcasting, or infusions, or invocations, etc...) that you can cast?

If you are an Arcane caster and have ranks in Spellcraft, but cannot cast Divine magic, then you must use the Knowledge(Religion) skill to emulate an aspect of the Spellcraft skill, but at a penalty.

This would also eliminate the need for all the Psuedo-spellcraft skills that come along with each alternative magic system.

Scarab Sages

This could be solved with penalties to try to identify spells, not of your abilities.

Same Class: +0
Same type (arcane-arcane or divine-divine): -5 or maybe -1/level of spell
Alien Type (arcane-divine or divine-arcane): -10 or maybe -2/level of spell

But I like the Discipline Idea, and reverting to Knowledge checks.


Ahyup.

I think this must be the fifth (?) thread I've seen on the issue? Seems like a clear signal to me.

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