Recognizing Spells in Pathfinder

[Ughbash]

OK lets say you have a caster that does not want people to know he is casting spells. He has eschew material components, still spell, silent spell. The spell he is casting is a personal spell so not an obvious thing like fireball....

Joe Schmoe his rival wizard makes a spellcraft roll and boom he knows what spell he just cast... how?

To make matters worse there is the feat "Secret Signs" this means if you have a somatic only spell they need to roll a perception roll vs your sleight of hand to notice yoru spellcasting. How then do they even get a perception roll when the spell casting does not have ANY somatic or anything else?

Should a quickened silent, still, spell with no material components be harder to determine?

[Artanthos]

It should be harder to determine.

It is not.

[Anguish]

It depends on what the DM wants to happen.

The best example of this would probably be to look at psionics, where there aren't somatic or verbal components. Instead there are "displays". There might be a weird sound, or a snow shower or there's a flash of light or it might suddenly smell like rotten eggs.

The rules say you can identify spells using Spellcraft. The rules about finger-wiggling aren't related. Just because your fingers aren't moving doesn't mean that your mage armor doesn't shimmer around you or that your false life doesn't make your skin look healthier (or more zombie-like given it's necromantic). Spells still have visible signs of what they are and Spellcraft decodes that regardless of if someone mutters "enlarge person" while he casts enlarge person. The fact that someone gets BIG is a giveaway.

Back to the start... if a DM doesn't want to follow RAW, they don't need to. It'd be perfectly acceptable to not fill in the blanks as I've done and say that if a spell doesn't by common-sense have a sign of what it does then it doesn't. That's fine. It's just against RAW of what Spellcraft does.

[Ughbash]

Anguish,

My point is with one feat "Secret Signs" you can make a sleight of hands check vs their perception check and if htey loose they don't know you cast a spell and thus can not identify it for SOMATIC ONLY Spells.

Would it not logically carry over that if you used the feat "still Spell" so the spell had no SOMATIC (or any other give aways) they would not get a perception check and thus could no identify it?

This feat seems to imply that someone must make a perception check to notice you casting a spell at least in certain circumstances.

Basically Still Spell SHOULD be better then "Secret Signs" as it not only costs a feat, it also negates the somatic rather then just trying to hide the somatic (at the cost of increasing spell level).

[Kolokotroni]

In 3.5 complete scoundrel there were things called skill tricks. I happened to like them very much. One, I think it was called subtle spell casting, allowed you to make a bluff check to prevent people from noticing you are casting a spell.

[Lincoln Hills]

Perhaps - just theorizing here - a sufficiently skilled mage can tell what sort of spell is being put together from the subtle sense of which powers are being tapped. Somewhat similar to the way a professional card-sharp can tell somebody else is cheating, even in the absence of direct evidence.

[Peter Stewart]

"Identifying a spell as it is being cast requires no action, but you must be able to clearly see the spell as it is being cast"

What's the problem here again?

[King of Vrock]

Right this is clearly an adhoc GM ruling. The GM should probably add a modifier to the Spellcraft check to identify the spell, at the very minimum I'd add +2 for each componant missing. But its not unlike a creature using a (Sp) ability. There are no componants, but it has to momentarily concentrate enough to manifest the effect.

--Schoolhouse Vrock

[Peter Stewart]

If you can't see the spell being cast, because there are no components, then you can't identify it with spellcraft (unless using some kind of arcane aid, such as arcane sight or detect magic). Cannot see = cannot identify. Built right into the first sentence of the skill description.

[wraithstrike]

Peter Stewart wrote:

If you can't see the spell being cast, because there are no components, then you can't identify it with spellcraft (unless using some kind of arcane aid, such as arcane sight or detect magic). Cannot see = cannot identify. Built right into the first sentence of the skill description.

The devs have said components don't matter. This has come up before.

[wraithstrike]

JASON lead rules dev wrote:

..... Notice I did not say component, because I think the les are silent on parts of spellcasting that are codified components rsus those that occur without any sort of codification, such as the wiggle a finger, change in breathing and other flavor bits that happen when a ellcaster makes the magic happen, as it were. Back to the topic at hand, since the rules are silent here, I think it is well ithin the GMs purview to impose a penalty to the Spellcraft check to entify a spell without components (V, S, M). Since there is no real crease for spells with just one, I would guess that this penalty is not very

I am on my phone. The end of that quote is him suggesting a -4 penalty as a house rule.

[Azten]

Use invisibility, obscuring mist, walk around a corner, etc, etc.

[GreenMandar]

The "Unfavorable Conditions" DC modifier from Perception, which is mentioned in the Spellcraft description could be used as an in-rules way was of adding modifiers. Say +2 to the DC for each missing component. Yeah it's a little stretch, but not completely out of the park.