Do characters know spell names?

[Bigger Club]

Knowing spell names and their effect in my opinion falls strictly under Knowledge arcana/religion. Spellcraft is more practical application of identifying a spell as it is cast.

To use analogy If martial arts maneuver is a spell. Knowledge tells you that shionage is a wrist throw that based on the slight varieances can be used to throw an opponent in four directions. Spellcraft would let you know that when someone takes a specific kind of hold of the arm they are trying to use shionage.

And you do not necessarily even need skill ranks to know something. If you just fought a red dragon and 2 hours later it's mate comes along you do not need to roll Knowledge arcana to figure out that this one too can breath fire. Same thing with the BDF will can figure out the very basics of the spells he or she encounters.

Shopkeepers should very rarely try to con their clients, reputation is very important also it's rather inconvenient when mister BDF comes back with his four friends after the party rogue got killed because they deliberately fooled the fighter. Also returning customers are good and if the shopkeeper knows these people are going to try to raid the local dragons lair or something they should understand that if successful they will have a lot of extra coin to spend. Now some mistakes could happen like with cure spells the magnitude might be different unless they can give a specific description.

Besides unless the fighter also dumped their wisdom they should be able to figure out it's smart to bring in someone who knows their stuff or at least consult them before going in to the store. The party wizard should be able to tell the BDF to what to ask for and how much it should about cost.

[Pendin Fust]

@RavingDork
That's a whole 'nother can of worms. You'd still have to consume to taste it. If you just look at a potion, who knows if Enlarge Person is clear, purple, or bubbles? Maybe all potions look like water?

**EDIT**

Also, really? 15 + potion caster level DC to identify by taste?!

@Bigger Club
That's the point I'm trying to make...BDF should be bringing the wizard to shop with him, on the outside chance that he/she isn't able to communicate clearly to the shopkeep what they want/need. Or on the very outside chance that the shopkeep is crooked and has a deal with the local dragon.

[thejeff]

Pendin Fust wrote:

@RavingDork

That's a whole 'nother can of worms. You'd still have to consume to taste it. If you just look at a potion, who knows if Enlarge Person is clear, purple, or bubbles? Maybe all potions look like water?

**EDIT**

Also, really? 15 + potion caster level DC to identify by taste?!

@Bigger Club
That's the point I'm trying to make...BDF should be bringing the wizard to shop with him, on the outside chance that he/she isn't able to communicate clearly to the shopkeep what they want/need. Or on the very outside chance that the shopkeep is crooked and has a deal with the local dragon.

Can we leave the "Dumb" part out of the argument? Yeah, if you're a moron, you should probably bring a handler along.

By the rules, we're really talking caster/non-caster here. Since, regardless of how smart you are or even how many ranks of Spellcraft you have, you can't tell anything about magic items without detect magic. Or trying them out, which only works in some cases. With a good perception, you can id the potion by taste. Some items you could try in the store. If the sword flames on command (and we can assume the seller will tell you the command) it has the flaming property. Harder to tell what + it has.

So why am I investing in Spellcraft again? I can't use it for items. Unless we're back to knows nothing and can learn nothing, even by experience, about what spells are available and what they can do without investing points.

OTOH, I'd think twice about cheating the rich dangerous thug. 1) I want more business. 2) He might survive the item not working.

I think the iding potions by taste is a hold over from the pre 3.0 days when you'd have to taste potions and hope the GM would give you a clue from the effect. "You feel a little better." "Your hand looks transparent for a moment.", etc. It's not actually the taste of the potion, but being able to notice the slight effect from just a sip of it.

[Adamantine Dragon]

So, as for the reference to a hardware store and a non-skilled person attempting to buy tools...

Yeah, I think that's a pretty good analogy actually. In a world with mage guilds, trade guilds, instantaneous communication at any distance and magic items common enough that you have a near-certainty of finding a +3 sword in any town large enough to have a decent sized Inn, the idea that magic items are rare or unknown things is simply silly.

Getting back to the hardware store analogy. If I need to buy a tool which allows me to cut complex shapes into a flat surface, I might not know to ask for a "router" but the guy I'm buying it from is sure as heck not going to call it a "gouger." And when I'm done buying it, I'll know it's called a "router" for all eternity.

The same would hold true for most items. They would have names, and the names would be pretty consistent across entire continents simply because magic item crafters powerful enough to craft powerful magic items aren't going to have any problem navigating from one corner of the globe to another.

If a GM wants to run a low-magic campaign where magic items truly are rare and/or unheard of, then fine, but that's not remotely how RAW goes.

Sure you can argue that the names the game designers have chosen are sort of silly in some cases ("Summon Nature's Ally IV"), but that's not the point.

Your characters aren't speaking English, you know. They are speaking some totally unrelated language that is arbitrarily called "Common" and what you call "Summon Nature's Ally IV" is simply a convenient metagamed translation of the spell's theoretical actual name. What you call it is simply a convenience to play the game.

It is sort of interesting to me to see the excruciating level of detail being applied to this since that sort of thing is usually targeted at things like how many arrows a human being can actually shoot in six seconds. It's nice to see the spellslingers getting their share of grief from the verisimilitude patrol for once.

[TriOmegaZero]

Yes, my characters know spell names. How else can you have spells named after Mordenkainen and Rary?

[Tom S 820]

What about relatively smart fighter at level 15 who still hasn't put points in spellcraft cause he has other priorities?

I Would say the player was dumb for not put in any ranks since he has at least 30 time to do so. 1 rank let you make the roll. You may not be good at it. But you will be go enough you know witch potion dose what after the wizard tell you what they are and you understand what he say.

Or the rogue who's put points in UMD, but not spellcraft?
Even if I've maxed out Spellcraft, I still can't tell what the potion is without casting detects magic, which I can't do. Because, while I'm not an idiot, I'm also not a caster!

Again same point dumb player if you are going to use magic items you best know some of the spell that work off. If you gab what you think is the wand of cure light wounds and it wand of cause light wound and use on me I would be pissed...Note thing like this happens in the real world 70% of all death in the United states due to drug over dose stem form note reading the label on the bottle and not taking them as prescribed.

Do you guys really all role play the caster using Detect Magic and making spellcraft rolls on each and every potion or other item he buys?

Depend on GM our group has 10 players 4 of witch are GMs

#1 GM Make you roll for every thing cause thing he gives out is custom or quirky

#2 GM let you take 10 on the Roll will tell if know it and if you can not get with 10 you have to roll. Unless you are under duress in witch you have to roll.

#3 GM look at the number of PC with Spell Craft and if more that 4 PC you get all common item ie Core and only have to roll for uncommon ie non-core

#4 GM Dose not use spell craft at all. It dose not exist in his game you use associated knowledge skill ie Arcane for wizard, Religion for cleric, Nature for druid, planes for witch so on and so forth. And non-caster can try to ID or know about stuff but DC 25+ level instead of DC 15 +level.

[Tom S 820]

Adamantine Dragon wrote:

So, as for the reference to a hardware store and a non-skilled person attempting to buy tools...

Yeah, I think that's a pretty good analogy actually. In a world with mage guilds, trade guilds, instantaneous communication at any distance and magic items common enough that you have a near-certainty of finding a +3 sword in any town large enough to have a decent sized Inn, the idea that magic items are rare or unknown things is simply silly.

Getting back to the hardware store analogy. If I need to buy a tool which allows me to cut complex shapes into a flat surface, I might not know to ask for a "router" but the guy I'm buying it from is sure as heck not going to call it a "gouger." And when I'm done buying it, I'll know it's called a "router" for all eternity.

Only if the guy selling it tell you take what need ore you read it of the box. iether you learn something and in a game that note by having ranks in said skill.

[thejeff]

Tom S 820 wrote:

thejeff wrote:

What about relatively smart fighter at level 15 who still hasn't put points in spellcraft cause he has other priorities?

I Would say the player was dumb for not put in any ranks since he has at least 30 time to do so. 1 rank let you make the roll. You may not be good at it. But you will be go enough you know witch potion dose what after the wizard tell you what they are and you understand what he say.

So what does 1 point in Spellcraft get me?

Are you really saying that if I don't have any Spellcraft and the wizard tells me "This is a potion of Enlarge Person. Drink it and you'll grow bigger and stronger" I still won't know what it does?

Tom S 820 wrote:

thejeff wrote:

Or the rogue who's put points in UMD, but not spellcraft?

Even if I've maxed out Spellcraft, I still can't tell what the potion is without casting detects magic, which I can't do. Because, while I'm not an idiot, I'm also not a caster!

Again same point dumb player if you are going to use magic items you best know some of the spell that work off. If you gab what you think is the wand of cure light wounds and it wand of cause light wound and use on me I would be pissed...Note thing like this happens in the real world 70% of all death in the United states due to drug over dose stem form note reading the label on the bottle and not taking them as prescribed.

How would that ever come up? Only if someone had told the Rogue it was a Cure not a Cause. Someone would have had to identify it for him anyway, either the seller or when it was found.

How would even maxed Spellcraft help grabbing a wand? Again, you can only use Spellcraft to identify item after 3 rounds of using Detect Magic. Are you saying you need it to know what already identified items do?

Tom S 820 wrote:

thejeff wrote:

Do you guys really all role play the caster using Detect Magic and making spellcraft rolls on each and every potion or other item he buys?

Depend on GM our group has 10 players 4 of witch are GMs

#1 GM Make you roll for every thing cause thing he gives out is custom or quirky

#2 GM let you take 10 on the Roll will tell if know it and if you can not get with 10 you have to roll. Unless you are under duress in witch you have to roll.

#3 GM look at the number of PC with Spell Craft and if more that 4 PC you get all common item ie Core and only have to roll for uncommon ie non-core

#4 GM Dose not use spell craft at all. It dose not exist in his game you use associated knowledge skill ie Arcane for wizard, Religion for cleric, Nature for druid, planes for witch so on and so forth. And non-caster can try to ID or know about stuff but DC 25+ level instead of DC 15 +level.

I think you're talking about identifying found items here? Which is not the topic at hand. Obviously you need a caster with Detect Magic and Spellcraft for that.

I was asking about buying items. Particularly consumables like potions and scrolls.

If GM #1 makes you buy custom/quirky items without the seller telling you what they do, that's a very weird style of game.

[Adamantine Dragon]

Tom S 820 wrote:

Adamantine Dragon wrote:

So, as for the reference to a hardware store and a non-skilled person attempting to buy tools...

Yeah, I think that's a pretty good analogy actually. In a world with mage guilds, trade guilds, instantaneous communication at any distance and magic items common enough that you have a near-certainty of finding a +3 sword in any town large enough to have a decent sized Inn, the idea that magic items are rare or unknown things is simply silly.

Getting back to the hardware store analogy. If I need to buy a tool which allows me to cut complex shapes into a flat surface, I might not know to ask for a "router" but the guy I'm buying it from is sure as heck not going to call it a "gouger." And when I'm done buying it, I'll know it's called a "router" for all eternity.

Only if the guy selling it tell you take what need ore you read it of the box. iether you learn something and in a game that note by having ranks in said skill.

I don't even care if people interpret this as "RAW." This is simply silly at every conceivable level. Characters don't need "ranks in said skill" to remember the name of a spell. That's exactly equivalent to saying that characters could not remember names of animals without ranks in "survival."

It's gone beyond the sublime to the utterly ridiculous.

[Atarlost]

Yet another thing to add to the caster-martial disparity: Non-casters aren't allowed to buy magic items because they can't identify them. If he wants to buy magic items he needs spellcraft and needs to dip something with cantrips or orisons, then he needs to keep it maxed because the DCs scale with the caster level of the item and he's going to want better magic items as he levels. There goes one of his maybe four skill points. Another is going into perception because the DCs are stupidly high and everyone is rolling it all the time. We're not talking a class that's drowning in skill points here and it's pretty bad to have to wait until level 4 to get around to opening up all your class skills. Later if any of them want more than a single point, which they probably will. If you actually want to be good at anything we're looking at level 8+ just to get that one point into swim.

[Tom S 820]

So by your guy reasoning. If I see some one cleave or cast a spell I should be able to doing as well. Even though I do not have open feat or the ablity to cast a spell... Well That "It's gone beyond the sublime to the utterly ridiculous."

The ranks, abiltys, feats ect on the Charicter sheet measure what your charicter can and can not do. If have X you can do X if you do not have X then you can not do X. Why is this so hard to get?

[thejeff]

Tom S 820 wrote:

So by your guy reasoning. If I see some one cleave or cast a spell I should be able to doing as well. Even though I do not have open feat or the ablity to cast a spell... Well That "It's gone beyond the sublime to the utterly ridiculous."

The ranks, abiltys, feats ect on the Charicter sheet measure what your charicter can and can not do. If have X you can do X if you do not have X then you can not do X. Why is this so hard to get?

Because there is no skill that says "Knows names of spells."

The ones suggested come with other, more useful abilities that aren't likely to be the focus of every character.

No one is suggesting you can duplicate spells or feats just by having seen them, only that you can remember and talk about spells (or presumably feats) that you've seen or heard of.

Not I saw him cast Fireball, so I cast one back, but "Hey Cleric, remember this guy cast Fireball when we fought him before, maybe you could have Protection From Elements ready for us?"
Without having to invest 8 ranks in Spellcraft (Take 10 to hit DC 15+3) to remember Fireball.

[Tom S 820]

thejeff wrote:

Tom S 820 wrote:

So by your guy reasoning. If I see some one cleave or cast a spell I should be able to doing as well. Even though I do not have open feat or the ablity to cast a spell... Well That "It's gone beyond the sublime to the utterly ridiculous."

The ranks, abiltys, feats ect on the Charicter sheet measure what your charicter can and can not do. If have X you can do X if you do not have X then you can not do X. Why is this so hard to get?

Because there is no skill that says "Knows names of spells."

The ones suggested come with other, more useful abilities that aren't likely to be the focus of every character.

This Skill that dose that it called Spell Craft

No one is suggesting you can duplicate spells or feats just by having seen them, only that you can remember and talk about spells (or presumably feats) that you've seen or heard of.

Not I saw him cast Fireball, so I cast one back, but "Hey Cleric, remember this guy cast Fireball when we fought him before, maybe you could have Protection From Elements ready for us?"
Without having to invest 8 ranks in Spellcraft (Take 10 to hit DC 15+3) to remember Fireball.

My wife is a teacher she teaches the children in class each and every day by your line of reasoning every child should get 100% on each and every test that take cause some where in the course of studies she told them the answer. Wrong …This dose not happens. Why cause they did not put the time and effort to studied the material to be able to recall the answer in timely manner.

And as far as animal point. First it Knowledge Nature not Survival you need to put and rank to “”Pathfinder Geek Craft” :)… but really in all serious. Do you really think you do not have a rank in knoweldge nature by now. Think about all the time you spent training with parent, family friends ect.. When you where little to learn all the different types of animals. You really do not think you do not have a rank in Knowledge Nature by now.

Also I can not tell you the name of each and every animal out there. Neither can my wife she and She has Master degree in Biology.

Some checks are just beyond my realm of skill.

[Tom S 820]

If GM #1 makes you buy custom/quirky items without the seller telling you what they do, that's a very weird style of game.

We have been doing that since 1978. There where ton of dragon magazine articles about this such thing all though out the 1980's for D&D. And there was no spell craft to try and figure out what each and every thing did. You just had to try and you faild alot of time. You may have never figured out what some items where called or did. Be happy that is skill and rules to let you do it now.

[thejeff]

Tom S 820 wrote:

If GM #1 makes you buy custom/quirky items without the seller telling you what they do, that's a very weird style of game.

We have been doing that since 1978. There where ton of dragon magazine articles about this such thing all though out the 1980's for D&D. And there was no spell craft to try and figure out what each and every thing did. You just had to try and you faild alot of time. You may have never figured out what some items where called or did. Be happy that is skill and rules to let you do it now.

Custom item with odd abilities. Cool.

A store where you buy items that the seller doesn't explain to you. Weird.

PC: Hi. I'd like to buy a Ring of Featherfall, please.
Magic Mart Clerk: We don't have any. Well, I think we don't. I don't actually know what any of this stuff does. We do have a magic ring. I'll sell it to you for 5000gp.
PC: Great. Here's your money. Maybe our wizard can figure out what it does.

If you don't have magic stores, that's fine, but I was talking about buying items. Obviously anything you find, you'll have to identify. If someone's selling magic items, you'd think they would have used their skills to find out what they are and use that info to price and market them.

[thejeff]

Tom S 820 wrote:

thejeff wrote:

Tom S 820 wrote:

So by your guy reasoning. If I see some one cleave or cast a spell I should be able to doing as well. Even though I do not have open feat or the ablity to cast a spell... Well That "It's gone beyond the sublime to the utterly ridiculous."

The ranks, abiltys, feats ect on the Charicter sheet measure what your charicter can and can not do. If have X you can do X if you do not have X then you can not do X. Why is this so hard to get?

Because there is no skill that says "Knows names of spells."

The ones suggested come with other, more useful abilities that aren't likely to be the focus of every character.

Tom S 820 wrote:

This Skill that dose that it called Spell Craft

Alright, last try. Either we're talking past each other or have such different viewpoints we can't come to any agreement

Not by RAW.

Quote:

You are skilled at the art of casting spells, identifying magic items, crafting magic items, and identifying spells as they are being cast.

Not general knowing about spells. The closest is identifying spells as they are cast, but that's more about recognizing the verbal/somatic/material components used.

So, if Spellcraft covers knowing the names of spells, what's the DC for remembering what the wizard called that spell he cast on me last week? Is it only based on spell level? Can I roll it untrained? Is it different for spells I've seen used and heard named or the same for everything?

[Adamantine Dragon]

Tom S 820 wrote:

And as far as animal point. First it Knowledge Nature not Survival you need to put and rank to “”Pathfinder Geek Craft” :)… but really in all serious. Do you really think you do not have a rank in knoweldge nature by now. Think about all the time you spent training with parent, family friends ect.. When you where little to learn all the different types of animals. You really do not think you do not have a rank in Knowledge Nature by now.

Also I can not tell you the name of each and every animal out there. Neither can my wife she and She has Master degree in Biology.

Some checks are just beyond my realm of skill.

The issue is not whether someone knows every animal(spell) name. The issue is can a reasoning, intelligent individual remember the name of a spell that was cast on him by a cleric the day before. This is a silly side diversion anyway, the focus of my comments before this came up was that spells would even have names, since some were arguing that spells would not have commonly agreed upon names.

This entire line of logic, that you need ranks in a skill before you can even remember what happened yesterday, is just so bizarre that I find it hard to believe anyone would even propose such a thing.

Player: "My character pops behind a tree to take a piss."
GM: "Wait, you don't have any skill ranks in pissing."
Player: "What? skill ranks?"
GM: "Without ranks in pissing, you can only piss in your pants."

OMG.

[Tom S 820]

thejeff wrote:

Tom S 820 wrote:

If GM #1 makes you buy custom/quirky items without the seller telling you what they do, that's a very weird style of game.

We have been doing that since 1978. There where ton of dragon magazine articles about this such thing all though out the 1980's for D&D. And there was no spell craft to try and figure out what each and every thing did. You just had to try and you faild alot of time. You may have never figured out what some items where called or did. Be happy that is skill and rules to let you do it now.

Custom item with odd abilities. Cool.

A store where you buy items that the seller doesn't explain to you. Weird.

PC: Hi. I'd like to buy a Ring of Featherfall, please.
Magic Mart Clerk: We don't have any. Well, I think we don't. I don't actually know what any of this stuff does. We do have a magic ring. I'll sell it to you for 5000gp.
PC: Great. Here's your money. Maybe our wizard can figure out what it does.

If you don't have magic stores, that's fine, but I was talking about buying items. Obviously anything you find, you'll have to identify. If someone's selling magic items, you'd think they would have used their skills to find out what they are and use that info to price and market them.

That exat thing is in Pathfinder MOD or AP I just ran it saturday night in Skull and shakels book lol the quarter maste has thing for sale but dose not know what all or every thing dose so you can get some realy good buys or way over charged. And it was written by "Pathfinder" case closed.

[GrenMeera]

First off, why does everybody keep saying Spellcraft? Spellcraft only identifies spells as they are being cast and when using Detect Magic.

Knowledge: Arcana.

This has been said repeatedly, but it still isn't sinking in. Once again, the skill for this is:

Knowledge: Arcana.

Here's things listed in the SRD:

SRD wrote:

Identify auras while using detect magic Arcana 15 + spell level
Identify a spell effect that is in place Arcana 20 + spell level
Identify materials manufactured by magic Arcana 20 + spell level
Identify a spell that just targeted you Arcana 25 + spell level
Identify the spells cast using a specific material component Arcana 20

Here's another important line:

Knowledge: Arcana wrote:

You are educated in a field of study and can answer both simple and complex questions.

So yeah... Spellcraft has nothing to do with this conversation unless you are identifying an item's properties using Detect Magic.

The second thing I'd like to add is that some things are simply memory.

I saw an enemy use a feat.
I saw a spell that did X.
I saw a creature that looked like X, and attacked my Y with his Z.

Recalling something that has happened to your character has always been a straight Intelligence roll to me. Granted, this is how I've always handled it and not specifically RAW. If my player's Barbarian character wants to know what that spell is that his friend always cast on him, but they have not discussed it specifically in character, I'd have him roll Intelligence (DC 10 on average but I'd change it depending upon how often the spell is used). If they HAVE discussed it in character, I'd allow him to discuss the spell without a roll.

Thankfully Knowledge: Arcana is also an Intelligence based skill. It thematically works for all else that is not simply memory of something you just saw in game. It covers memory of things you have looked into in your down time.

I agree with Adamantine Dragon. It is absurd and unrealistic to believe that there would be no common names for spells. Our world doesn't work that way, and neither would a fictional one. Just because I can't name 50 cars doesn't mean that there aren't 50 commonly known car names (Knowledge: Engineering, DC 30).

[Tom S 820]

Adamantine Dragon wrote:

Tom S 820 wrote:

And as far as animal point. First it Knowledge Nature not Survival you need to put and rank to “”Pathfinder Geek Craft” :)… but really in all serious. Do you really think you do not have a rank in knoweldge nature by now. Think about all the time you spent training with parent, family friends ect.. When you where little to learn all the different types of animals. You really do not think you do not have a rank in Knowledge Nature by now.

Also I can not tell you the name of each and every animal out there. Neither can my wife she and She has Master degree in Biology.

Some checks are just beyond my realm of skill.

The issue is not whether someone knows every animal(spell) name. The issue is can a reasoning, intelligent individual remember the name of a spell that was cast on him by a cleric the day before. This is a silly side diversion anyway, the focus of my comments before this came up was that spells would even have names, since some were arguing that spells would not have commonly agreed upon names.

This entire line of logic, that you need ranks in a skill before you can even remember what happened yesterday, is just so bizarre that I find it hard to believe anyone would even propose such a thing.

Player: "My character pops behind a tree to take a piss."
GM: "Wait, you don't have any skill ranks in pissing."
Player: "What? skill ranks?"
GM: "Without ranks in pissing, you can only piss in your pants."

OMG.

Trained skill vs untrained skill... And It not remaber it. It to unstand what you said. Also It IC not OC. You can parioit all you want that dose not mean you know what you are saying.

[Adamantine Dragon]

Tom S 820 wrote:

Trained skill vs untrained skill... And It not remaber it. It to unstand what you said. Also It IC not OC. You can parioit all you want that dose not mean you know what you are saying.

Sigh, it's not worth trying to work out what that means to try to respond.

Good luck with your games Tom. I'll continue to allow my players' characters to be able to remember simple basic stuff that happened to their characters without a skill check, trained or untrained. Clearly we have completely different ideas of what constitutes reasonable verisimilitude.