Arcane Sight and Hiding Things

[Meirril]

So, player picked up Arcane Sight with permanency. He's wandering around with a party that has a lot of magic items. He wanders into areas that often have faint enchantments on the entire building.

The question comes up, how much info and how fast should he get it? Lets present a few situations that can be tricky.

The easy one: Invisible spell caster menaces the party. For some reason, the player hasn't invested in See Invisible (yet, he will). How much info should the player get? And how fast?

Second scenario: Party opens a door into a room covered in a magic trap. Dose the Player get to notice the new magic aura before anyone can walk in? How obvious is stuff like this? Does this trump trap detection?

Third scenario: Player searches a room for loot. Does the magic aura of items he failed to make a perception check to find still show up? Like there is a magic coin buried in a pile of bones inside of a ruin that has a same school magic aura on the entire ruin (both weak transmutation). Should our player just become aware of hidden magic items because he has Aura Sight and spends 3 rounds searching a room? (and the hidden items aren't behind things that block detection)

Fourth Scenario: Something carrying a magic weapon sneaks up to the party. Does the magic aura give them away? This seems totally against the spirit of the game and the spell.

[Chess Pwn]

1) He'll instantly see a magic effect and which square it's in that he can KNOW ARCANA to know it's an illusion school.
2)The magic aura IS VERY OBVIOUS, this will help answer 3 and 4. But yes, if there's a magic trap if he gets line of sight to the magic trap area he knows there's magic there, he won't know it's a trap per se, just that there's magic there and which school it is.
3)yes, he instantly knows that there are 2 sources of magic, the room and the coin.
4)if he's using mundane hiding to hide then the mundane hiding hides the magic items and thus their aura too. But if he's using hide in plain sight or something like that then yes, as long as the wizard has a clear line of sight to the magic items he'll see the magic item.

[CyderGnome]

Meirril wrote:

So, player picked up Arcane Sight with permanency. He's wandering around with a party that has a lot of magic items. He wanders into areas that often have faint enchantments on the entire building.

The question comes up, how much info and how fast should he get it? Lets present a few situations that can be tricky.

The easy one: Invisible spell caster menaces the party. For some reason, the player hasn't invested in See Invisible (yet, he will). How much info should the player get? And how fast?

Second scenario: Party opens a door into a room covered in a magic trap. Dose the Player get to notice the new magic aura before anyone can walk in? How obvious is stuff like this? Does this trump trap detection?

Third scenario: Player searches a room for loot. Does the magic aura of items he failed to make a perception check to find still show up? Like there is a magic coin buried in a pile of bones inside of a ruin that has a same school magic aura on the entire ruin (both weak transmutation). Should our player just become aware of hidden magic items because he has Aura Sight and spends 3 rounds searching a room? (and the hidden items aren't behind things that block detection)

Fourth Scenario: Something carrying a magic weapon sneaks up to the party. Does the magic aura give them away? This seems totally against the spirit of the game and the spell.

Jumping off topic here... but how is the player dealing with the fact that he has permanently acquired glowing blue eyes? Seems like it would make normal social interaction difficult and any attempt to engage in subtle maneuvers that require being overlooked difficult.

Heck, moving beyond the uneducated who might be convinced he's a demon or something, I could see some "in the know" casters and portions of magical society reacting quite negatively to it... possibly viewing it as it is the magical equivalent of stop and frisk combined with a credit check.

[Dave Justus]

From what I can tell, although arcane sight functions similar to detect magic, it isn't quite identical. One particular difference is that it doesn't have any clause about penetrating barriers, it requires line of sight to detect something.

It also appears to me that any creature or object that you can't see, you can't see its auras either so invisibility will conceal the aura as well as the creature from you.

[jbadams]

Third and fourth scenario.

The player knows the location and strength of auras within their sight.

If the items aren't plainly in sight, I wouldn't automatically reveal them to the player, but would probably grant a bonus to Perception to spot them.

[toastedamphibian]

I am with Dave on this. "You know the location and power of all magical auras within your sight."

1) Nothing. Can't see the caster so is not within his sight.

2) Nothing. Can't see the trap. If he discovers the trap through other means, he can examine it's aura.

3) Only if the magic item is visible.

4) Only if he sees it. If he makes his perception check to see the sneaker, he knows it has a magical aura with it.

The purpose of the spell is to inform you of the magical properties of things you can see, not inform you about the presence of things you cannot.

[Meirril]

CyderGnome wrote:

Jumping off topic here... but how is the player dealing with the fact that he has permanently acquired glowing blue eyes? Seems like it would make normal social interaction difficult and any attempt to engage in subtle maneuvers that require being overlooked difficult.

Heck, moving beyond the uneducated who might be convinced he's a demon or something, I could see some "in the know" casters and portions of magical society reacting quite negatively to it... possibly viewing it as it is the magical equivalent of stop and frisk combined with a credit check.

Strange that you have asked. We're doing RotRL AP and he cast it when the party went out into the Wilderness to deal with a Giant raid. They just got back to civilization and immediately entered a dungeon. So...really nobody that doesn't know them has seen his glowing blue eyes yet.

The party has a reputation as heroes. Still, dealing with others becomes a bit more interesting. Something for me to think about.

[Dave Justus]

Glowing blue eyes might not be in the top 10 weird things the average shopkeeper sees before lunch. Certainly it is tame compared to tieflings/aasimir and some of the other races out there.

I would expect the character to periodically mutter "the spice must flow" however.

[Volkard Abendroth]

Dave Justus wrote:

From what I can tell, although arcane sight functions similar to detect magic, it isn't quite identical. One particular difference is that it doesn't have any clause about penetrating barriers, it requires line of sight to detect something.

It also appears to me that any creature or object that you can't see, you can't see its auras either so invisibility will conceal the aura as well as the creature from you.

Invisibility does not hide it's own aura.

Arcane Sight will let you know there is Illusion magic at X location (or moving around) and a knowledge: arcana check will tell you it is invisibility.

It either case, the invisible character will still have be invisible. The person with Arcane Sight will know the correct location, but will still be unable to target and still have to roll his 50% miss chance with rays, etc.