While discussing the Solarian radiation revelation with some friends, a related question came up.
Can you identify a supernatural ability in use? Spells are explicitly called out as being obvious. Spell-like abilities act like spells in that regard as well.
A cast spell always has obvious effects that are noticeable by nearby creatures; it is not possible to clandestinely cast a spell.
Supernatural abilities on the other hand are silent on the matter. For things like Supernova, its pretty obvious there is fire shooting out dealing the damage. However, what about Radiation or Hypnotic Glow? Radiation's effects are more like a poison acting internally, and Hypnotic Glow is purely a mental effect.
As far as I can tell, there is no skill that lists Identify Supernatural ability as its used. Only "Identify a Spell Being Cast" under mysticism. At best we can figure its probably a mysticism knowledge recall on knowing what kinds of abilities a Solarian might possess.
That raises the question of DC is it for a character or an NPC to recall knowledge about character class abilities? Treat the character's level as CR and use the very common category?
If you have NPCs which lack the Mysticism skill (which is trained only for questions with DC higher than 10), nor have the Detect Radiation spell, is it using metagaming knowledge to have them activate their environmental seals at the beginning of a fight against a Solarian's radiation power? Would you have them do that even if the Solarian in the party doesn't have that power?
Similarly, if you walk into a bar, use Hypnotic Glow on a patron to pump them for a quick bit of information and then leave quickly, does anyone in the bar notice?
In absence of a proper ruling, mystycism checks make the most sense to me. In the case of the radiation revalation though, the most obvious issue would be noticing they're being affected by something at all, considering radiation tends to be rather invisible and if I'm not mistaken, the solarian doesn't have to do anything particularly obvious to make it happen. Now, if someone's got a Geigercounter ready, they might very well be able to put two and two together and figure out that the guy who just a moment ago was swinging a mote of stellar energy at their friend's face might be one of them solarian types doing something dastardly. Otherwise, they're mostly puking their guts out and not knowing why. Maybe all-you-can-eat discount shrimp wasn't a great choise for dinner the day before the big climactic battle?