Personally, I would houserule this back to the old way.
It does seem a bit odd, but after looking at the description, I dont think it will be that big of deal when you look at the odds. At 15 + spell level, the chances of an untrained person recognizing a spell as it's cast are pretty slim. Even so, there really isnt anything they can do about it anyway, considering the fact that if you are untrained in Spellcraft, you probably cant counterspell in any effective way.
So your peasant, if he is very lucky, (maybe he saw a fireball show at the local fair?) gets to yell "fireball" before he/she/it gets roasted. In practice I dont see it affecting the game all that much.
It does seem a bit odd, but after looking at the description, I dont think it will be that big of deal when you look at the odds. At 15 + spell level, the chances of an untrained person recognizing a spell as it's cast are pretty slim. Even so, there really isnt anything they can do about it anyway, considering the fact that if you are untrained in Spellcraft, you probably cant counterspell in any effective way.
So your peasant, if he is very lucky, (maybe he saw a fireball show at the local fair?) gets to yell "fireball" before he/she/it gets roasted. In practice I dont see it affecting the game all that much.
Its more the enchantments that matter. Two guards at gate, "No you ain't coming in", wizards waves arms, "Okay in you come old mate, and how are you today"
Its more the enchantments that matter. Two guards at gate, "No you ain't coming in", wizards waves arms, "Okay in you come old mate, and how are you today"
Ah, the old Jedi mind trick. (What? maybe the wizard's name is Jedi...) Seriously, the same answer applies. In my campaign, you have one of 2 possibilities here:
1) In gate-guard class, they learned to be wary of the robed guys "waving their arms". He makes his lucky roll, and knows a charm spell was cast. He makes his save or not. Id give him a bonus to his save if he made that Spellcraft roll. And what if was cast on his partner? Then a definite attitude adjustment towards hostile may be in order. Either way, he cant do anything about the casting itself.
2) He fails his roll to identify the spell. He makes his save or not. Same results, only without the bonus to the save. He still cant do anything about the spell.
In the end, the guard cant do anything about the actual casting. He gets a bonus, or he gets to help his mates, but only if he is lucky. But the spell still goes off. AND...with the possibility that an NPC may get that lucky roll, the PCs need to be a little more subtle about charming guards at the gate.
I had found the new Spellcraft a bit troubling as well since I was playing in a game that updated a 3.5 game to Pathfinder. This meant that a slew of ancillary classes we were playing that couldn't get Spellcraft at all before suddenly got it (since they had concentration).
We decided to keep Concentration as a separate skill because a Warblade and Psion suddenly being able to say, that's a Righteous Might when before they would say, okay, he got bigger.
My personal inclination would be to roll Spellcraft into Knowledge: Arcana rather than Concentration. Especially as I use Tome of Battle when I can, where non-caster characters actually have a use for concentration.
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It does seem a bit odd, but after looking at the description, I dont think it will be that big of deal when you look at the odds. At 15 + spell level, the chances of an untrained person recognizing a spell as it's cast are pretty slim. Even so, there really isnt anything they can do about it anyway, considering the fact that if you are untrained in Spellcraft, you probably cant counterspell in any effective way.
This is the truth.
In earlier editions, being able to identify a spell being cast, allowed you to DO something about it.Casting took up a portion of the round, from one initiative count to a later one, and trained viewers could tell how long they had to interrupt it, or put up a defence.
"OK, I was going to cast a big spell of my own, but knowing what's incoming, I'd better cast a quick and dirty low-level response", or "Hmm, that'll keep him busy for a while. Don't want to waste a Magic Missile, in case he has Shield up, but I can take out some of the goons, and allow my ally to charge him".
Third Edition spells are cast effectively instantaneously, meaning unless you have a readied or immediate action, you can't stop it.
At the moment you can't make Spellcraft trained again, simply because every single monster having spell-like abilities needs it to "cast" defensively.
Which is also something that I don't like. Now basically every monster that has spell-like abilities is able to identify spells, because they had to take Spellcraft to effectively use their own abilities.