Detect Magic - How Powerful Is It?

[Detect Magic]

All powerful!

[RDM42]

mdt wrote:

Abraham spalding wrote:

Either way it's just going to be "10 seconds of real time and a couple of rolls".

To me, it's more of a gut thing. A 0 level spell shouldn't, even at will, require so many modifications. No other at-will 0-level spell requires such things, and I still find it mechanically obnoxious that a 0 level spell can all but defeat a much higher level spell (such as Invisibility or Greater Invisibility). By RAW, it even detects illusion spells (despite ruling it as 'interacting with'). And there have been people on here that argue that detect magic will still detect the illusion even if you fail your saving throw interacting with it, but 'you believe you're wrong'.

That grates on my sensibilities. It wasn't as big a problem back in 3.5, because you had a limited number of uses, so it was husbanded for 'looting the dead' to detect magic items and 'looting the treasure room'. Now it's used ad nauseum (emphasis on nausea).

Did detect magic remove the miss chance or other effects of invisibility?

[shadowkras]

In my games i rule that you can only detect something you can clearly see with your other senses. You cant use detect spells to replace any other spell in the game. You cant detect someone invisible, thats what see invisibility is for.

If someone is casting detect magic in a room with something invisible, they will know there is magic around the room, but they cant say what or where because thet cant study in detail the subjects.
They also dont have line of sight to something they cannot see.

Quote:

A line of sight is the same as a Line of Effect but with the additional restriction that that it is blocked by fog, darkness, and other factors that limit normal sight (such as Concealment).