In our game a while back, our characters slew a cleric named Nualia and layed claim to her Seiedron medallion. We knew it was magical, but didn't immediately try to identify it. The GM showed me a glimpse of the item's description, but pulled the book away once he realized it revealed more than he wanted. Before he could, however, I noticed something about it allowing others to see through it, potentially acting as a covert spying device for the unwary.
Later in the adventure, bodies with Sihedrons carved into them started popping up. During our investigations, my fighter bough a scroll of identify to determine the properties of this magical medallion, hoping to find a connection to it and the murders.
I gave the scroll to our party mystic theurge and she rolled a 47 on her Spellcraft check.
The GM told me that, while worn, a Sihedron medallion grants its wearer a +1 resistance bonus on all saving throws. Once per day, as a free action, it may be commanded to bestow the effects of false life on the wearer. Placed on the neck of a dead body, a Sihedron medallion preserves the body indefinitely via a gentle repose effect.
He did not mention anything about its ability to spy on the wearer. I know he left it out. He knows I know.
When I asked him about the rest of the item's abilities, he insisted that those properties were not part of its magical abilities. He likened it to using an item as a focus for scrying. The item itself is not magical, nor is scrying a magical property of the item, it is merely a focus.
I want to know if that is true of this particular item, or if my character has been cheated out of knowing something he otherwise should have. I don't want our group getting spied on unfairly when we should have found out otherwise according to the rules of the game.
It's a bit difficult to say based only on the description of the medallion, but based on another description in the book I would say it's not a property of the medallion itself.
As for unfair scrying; if your GM follows the book's instructions on the matter, I wouldn't consider it unfair.
The rules in the book are a bit vague and subject to GM interpretation. It's kind of too bad that the GM spilled the beans. The reveal is supposed to be rather dramatic and shocking.
In my Runelords game, for reasons of plot, I decided that the ability in question was not a magical ability of the device itself, and neither detect magic nor identify would reveal it. I decided that the medallion served as a focus for the scry ability, and would only have an aura that could be detected normally when it was being used as such. I also decided that higher-level magical detection spells would reveal the info: arcane sight would reveal it on a DC 40 check, and analyze dweomer would reveal it automatically.
BTW, this should probably move to the Runelords board.
Thanks everyone. It sounds like there is at least some room for varied interpretation.
I'll probably let it go for the sake of the game.
After reading through it RD - I'd say those properties don't show up - they aren't active without very specific circumstances and seem to be more a property of the rune itself and how it has uses for some types of magic.
Think of the rune as an 'intimate connection' during a scry - a wizard with a lock of your hair to use doesn't make that lock of hair magical.
So it's kind of like a yellow sign?
EDIT: No, never mind. Don't answer that, I don't need any more spoilers.
I'll pipe up as another GM and say that the book makes it VERY hard. It's a wonderful dramatic effect, but it's also only a CL 5 item, so determining its negative features is "too easy" for PCs.
Nothing in the text says anything about how PCs can identify this particular "feature".
I went the "waffly middle ground" -- I gave them all the "good effects" with a standard DC 20 (15 + CL) check. But treating it as a curse only puts the DC at 30, and that's "too easy".
So GM fiat I set the DC at 40.
Totally random. I think you're going to get a different answer from every GM as to how he or she handled this. It's a lot more fun if the PCs don't know, but if the PCs put forth significant effort and resources towards figuring it out, it really does come across as cheesy to say, "Ha ha! You didn't find it!"
As always, I like Haladir's answer the best. But I always like his answer the best. Something about that Gandalf avatar or something. Lends him credence.
Funny this post comes in now. My group just recovered the medallion (from the corpse of its previous owner :) and while I didn't let the owning player read the description from the book...
Not sure what I'm going to do. Maybe nothing. It's some time before the characteristics become relevant and the next chapter has all kinds of Sihedron stuff that has nothing to do with the medallion. With any luck, my players will make up all kinds of crazy tie-ins that will push the detail from the player's mind.
...he did import the item into Hero Labs
Oh gods, one more reason to insist on paper char sheets only...
Ruyan.
Hero Lab does show spoilers. Like M1917 hand grenades from Rasputin Must Die showing up by default as a standard alchemical weapon!
Not only Herolab. The d20psrd website also has the full description of this and other items from various APs. Which rather messed up the secret of the medallion for our group.