Detect Psychic Significance in PFS?

[Fromper]

Is the spell Detect Psychic Significance useful in PFS? I'm considering it for my skill monkey/casting occultist.

Since occultists get the object reading ability that lets them id magic items without spellcraft, I don't feel the need to get Detect Magic. Besides, other party members generally have it for just generally scanning an area.

Guidance is always useful, so I was leaning towards that. But DPS just seems to fit the personality of an occultist too well to resist. I just want to know if it would be a complete waste, because it'll never be useful in Society play.

[KingOfAnything]

Never say never. I doubt you'll get regular use out of the spell, but there are the occasional significant non-magical items to detect (The shield in Library of the Lion comes to mind).

If you play with a regular group of GMs and make a habit of using it in conjunction with psychometry, you might get a little more backstory in your games.

[Ascalaphus]

Depending on the GM, you might be able to use it to gain a circumstance bonus on checks to "find the significant item in this huge pile/library".

Or to even sidestep the Perception check to find a plot-critical clue. Although you would've probably made the Perception check anyway.

More insidiously, any trap that's claimed victims before might be psychically significant...

[Serisan]

It's a good "find the McGuffin" spell, but I find that I mostly use it to mock the other characters when they start self-aggrandizing. "I cast Detect Psychic Significance and find nothing."

[cavernshark]

I can't speak to Detect Psychic Significance specifically, but I can tell you that my amnesiac psychic once recalled and used Discern Next of Kin in a scenario and that act ultimately earned us a second prestige point.

Like the others said, I think it just generally falls into the category of most divination effectiveness is going to come down to how much the GM wants to play along. It also can result in an easy conduit for the GM to give you cool backstory that might not otherwise appear in the scenario.

[Fromper]

So I went ahead and took it, and I played that PC twice this weekend at a local convention.

In an artifact hunt, where we weren't sure if the things we were finding were genuine, it was a good way of confirming stuff like that. I think that's enough to make it a useful cantrip to have, if not quite as generically useful as the Guidance and Detect Magic that I didn't take in order to get it.