I'm currently in a throwback campaign where we made 3 fighters and a rogue, very Conan vibe. There is one issue I'm trying to overcome: how do we find out if something is magical without detect magic and the like? We found a ring last session just because I put it on, then took it off and it fit the other guys finger just perfectly (resizing), but if we stumble across, say, a magical bone, is here any obscure knowledges or skills to notice? Before it comes up DM outlawed rogue talent minor magic.
Wand of detect magic. Let the rogue umd it. Or someone else.
Or a minor magic item with detect magic. Should be rather cheap
Wand of detect magic. Let the rogue umd it. Or someone else.
Or a minor magic item with detect magic. Should be rather cheap
Failing that, take Leadership at 7th and get a Cohort that can cast it :)
Appraise would work.
Would just tell you the basic value of the ring, but it's pretty safe to say that when a ring clocks in at several thousand gold, it's magic.
I would hire an NPC to do it, or get a wand like someone said. I think the wand will be cheaper.
Appraise would work.
Would just tell you the basic value of the ring, but it's pretty safe to say that when a ring clocks in at several thousand gold, it's magic.
If Appraise can't tell you what the magic is, you have no way to determine how much that magic would cost. At best, you just know the value of the base ring, not the value of the enchantment.
Minor magic rogue talent, your GM could house rule that it works similarly to a cantrip so you don't have to count how many time you use it.
Wand of Identify to boost said talent would be nice with UMD too.
In Plague of Shadows and Stalking the Beast, the main character can determine if an item is magic by feeling the resonance between it and a magic item she is already wearing.
In game terms, she has a bracer of strength +X that also allows her to detect magic with a range of touch.
Appraise does not say it gives the value of magic items. It says that it gives the value of common items with a DC 20 check. If you beat the check by more than 5 then it lets you know the item is magical, but it still says nothing about giving the price of magical(not common) items.
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To make it more clear:
For a magical item, Appraise can tell you that it is magical but not what it does, if you beat the roll by 5. Otherwise, you won't even think it's magical. So you might appraise a gold ring of Regeneration as being worth 100gp instead of 50,000gp.
Even if you beat the roll by 5, you still think you have a 100gp ring with an unknown magical ability and have no way to appraise the value of that unknown ability, so no Appraise check would EVER tell you that it was a 50,000gp ring of unknown magic - you would have to know it was Regeneration to get that price, but Appraise cannot give you this info.
Without magic, you must resort to experimenting with the item (like we usually did way back in 1st edition) or you'll need to take it to someone who can cast the magic for you (but that is no longer "without magic", it's just "without your own magic").
For other things, it's even harder. Like if you find a door that won't open and you want to know if it's magically shut. You pretty much can't. You need Detect Magic for that kind of thing.
Hopefully, if you're going for a Conan-esque game, there is almost zero magic in your entire campaign so it won't be a problem.
But if you're playing Conan in Golarion, well, you're probably screwed.
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I remember reading that many magical items have writing on them describing their power word in a riddle or some other roundabout way(that might have been 3.5, but I thought I also read it in a pathfinder book somewhere), so have your rogue put points into the much feared linguistics skill along with knowledge skills to figure out the riddle. That's basically the best you can get after you appraise the item and realize it's magic without 3.5 material(which did allow you to non-magically identify if you min-maxed appraise and got a feat I believe)
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Failing that, take Leadership at 7th and get a Cohort that can cast it :)Wand of detect magic. Let the rogue umd it. Or someone else.
Or a minor magic item with detect magic. Should be rather cheap
Name him Daniel Jackson.
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Considering half of them glow, it should be a 50/50 to be readily apparent.
Have one of the fighters retire and the PC rerolls as a cleric or wizard.
Name him Daniel Jackson.Failing that, take Leadership at 7th and get a Cohort that can cast it :)Wand of detect magic. Let the rogue umd it. Or someone else.
Or a minor magic item with detect magic. Should be rather cheap
You don't want to do that. Eventually your cohort will ascend to godhood and leave you right where you started whenever it would be the most inconvenient.
Strange -- I went to the Spellcraft page, and they only give a DC for identifying magic items with Detect Magic. Seems that they ought to let you use Spellcraft without Detect Magic, just at a higher DC.
If you haven't used Detect Magic, you don't know it's magic in the first place, nor what school it is.
a 12.5gp scroll of detect magic has a DC of 21, so 1 single point in UMD and a take 20 will result in successful use. Long term the lantern/cloak might be worth the price but in the short term and if you are still low enough level not to have a few thousand gold free for them the scroll is a viable option at 1/200th the price of the cloak.
You can't take 10 with UMD so it stands to reason you can't take 20 either. In addition, you can't take 20 on skills that have a penalty for failure and rolling a 1 prevents you from trying to use UMD to activate that item again for 24 hours.
Thanks, the appraise rule was exactly what I was looking for.
a 12.5gp scroll of detect magic has a DC of 21, so 1 single point in UMD and a take 20 will result in successful use. Long term the lantern/cloak might be worth the price but in the short term and if you are still low enough level not to have a few thousand gold free for them the scroll is a viable option at 1/200th the price of the cloak.You can't take 10 with UMD so it stands to reason you can't take 20 either. In addition, you can't take 20 on skills that have a penalty for failure and rolling a 1 prevents you from trying to use UMD to activate that item again for 24 hours.
Actually, that is a delay, not a failure. Take-20 would take 20 days if ruled as 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1,20. Failure would be a spell mishap on a scroll by activating but failing the CL check and the like.
/cevah
well the PRD on UMD is clear
and because there is a consequence of failure you can't take 20
Try Again: Yes, but if you ever roll a natural 1 while attempting to activate an item and you fail, then you can't try to activate that item again for 24 hours.
When you have plenty of time, you are faced with no threats or distractions, and the skill being attempted carries no penalties for failure, you can take 20....
Is a delay a penalty when you have plenty of time? I don't think so.
A mishap, otoh, is a penalty.
/cevah
If you roll 20 times with a magic device, you're going to activate it at some point before you hit 20. It isn't just a series of 19 "1"s followed by a 20. It's a simulated number of tries. But if you have, say, a 60% chance of success by rolling, then you're going to use up 12 charges of your wand in trying to get a 20. If you're using a one-time-use item, there's a 60% chance that it goes off whether you have your desired 20 or not.
You won't use up extra charges because when the first activation occurs, you stop trying. If you fail to activate a wand (or scroll), no charge is expended. If you fail to activate blindly by 10 or more, you get a magical mishap, so you cannot Take-20 if a mishap is a possibility.
/cevah
Are you saying that that first activation is guaranteed to be a 20? Because if not, this isn't "take 20".If you roll 20 times with a magic device, you're going to activate it at some point before you hit 20. It isn't just a series of 19 "1"s followed by a 20. It's a simulated number of tries. But if you have, say, a 60% chance of success by rolling, then you're going to use up 12 charges of your wand in trying to get a 20. If you're using a one-time-use item, there's a 60% chance that it goes off whether you have your desired 20 or not.You won't use up extra charges because when the first activation occurs, you stop trying. If you fail to activate a wand (or scroll), no charge is expended. If you fail to activate blindly by 10 or more, you get a magical mishap, so you cannot Take-20 if a mishap is a possibility.
/cevah
Let's check the PRD:
When you have plenty of time, you are faced with no threats or distractions, and the skill being attempted carries no penalties for failure, you can take 20. In other words, if you roll a d20 enough times, eventually you will get a 20. Instead of rolling 1d20 for the skill check, just calculate your result as if you had rolled a 20.
Taking 20 means you are trying until you get it right, and it assumes that you fail many times before succeeding. Taking 20 takes 20 times as long as making a single check would take (usually 2 minutes for a skill that takes 1 round or less to perform).
Since taking 20 assumes that your character will fail many times before succeeding, your character would automatically incur any penalties for failure before he or she could complete the task (hence why it is generally not allowed with skills that carry such penalties). Common “take 20” skills include Disable Device (when used to open locks), Escape Artist, and Perception (when attempting to find traps).
Take-20 is a mechanical simulation of rolling multiple times, not rolling 20 times. You stop when you get it right. If you can get it right on a 16, then nothing requires the Take-20 to have had a result of 20 at some point.
So, no guarantee, but it is Take-20.
/cevah
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There's also a magic item, Helm of Comprehend Languages and Read Magic that lets its wearer do those things at-will. It isn't Detect Magic, but it'll help with any scrolls, spellbooks, or magically-altered writing you may find. It costs 5,200 GP, though, so it wouldn't be something to get at low levels.
But mechanically if you take 20 you resolve the check using a 20. There are some checks where how much you beat a check by matters (many don't allow you to take 20 - crafting, knowledge checks etc)
Crafting:
if you can fail, you cannot Take-20.If you cannot fail, Take-20 uses 20* the time.
Using 20* Take-10 is 10* more profitable than one Take-20.
You want to waste time, go ahead and Take-20.
Knowledge:
Retry: No.
You cannot Take-20 here.
Bard skill is a specific rule override.
The ones not allowing it usually have Retry: No, or a consequence to multiple tries (i.e. intimidate).
When you factor in the time and special caveats, Take-20 is often sub-optimal on those skills.
/cevah
Time to Raise Dead on this thread!
This isn't on the Paizo PRD yet, but it is now on d20pfsrd.com, and Pathfinder Unchained has what you want:
In Appraise,
In Spellcraft,{. . .}
With sufficient ranks in Appraise, you earn the following.5 Ranks: A successful DC 20 Appraise check reveals whether an item is magical, and a second check (DC = 25 + the item's caster level) unveils its properties. You can use Appraise to detect non-written forgeries and counterfeits.
{. . .}
{. . .}
With sufficient ranks in Spellcraft, you earn the following.5 Ranks: Identifying magic items takes 1 full round, and the time required to learn a spell from a spellbook is halved.
10 Ranks: You can identify magic items without using detect magic, though the DC is increased by 10.
{. . .}