Magic Jar possessing

[Atalius]

When you try to possess an enemy and fail do his allies notice that you attempted to take over there friend? Secondly if you succeed in possessing do they notice there friend has been taken over?

[Delenot]

Unless the allie had a way to passively detect the magic used or happens to be actually looking at the time...no, there should be no way to detect it occurring. Standard detections apply afterwards.

Once possessed, I would allow a perception vs disguise check If something interacted with the newly possessed target to tell if it was acting correctly. But that check would not tell you out right what occurred.

[LordKailas]

If the creature makes it's save, there is no reason for allies to notice unless the target says something to them.

Even then, IMO all the target would know is that they had to make a will save against something and nothing seems to have happened. In game this would translate to "I think something tried to mess with my head, but I seem to be ok". Which without a spellcraft or knowledge or heal check could be anything. Even then the spellcraft check is going to be difficult since there are no visual cues to go off of.

If the target fails the save then possessor would have to make a bluff check against the others sense motive to notice anything being off.

You should get a +15 to the check (+5 because they want to believe you and +10 because you have convincing proof)

now, if you step in front of the group holding a gem, laugh and point at one party member who then has to make a will save. Then yeah, I think the other members in the group have reason to suspect that you cast a spell....

Then again, if this happens in the heat of combat unless an ally can identify the spell they may not think anything of it.

[Delenot]

THIS. ^

[toastedamphibian]

I would think "sense enchantment" use of Sense Motive would still apply, and I would give circumstance bonuses based on how well they know the creature.

[Pizza Lord]

Atalius wrote:

When you try to possess an enemy and fail do his allies notice that you attempted to take over there friend?

No. Unless they have the ability to sense such magics in use.

Quote:

Secondly if you succeed in possessing do they notice there friend has been taken over?

No. This isn't like an enchantment or a domination where the subject is being swayed or persuaded or forced to act against their normal inclinations and such stress can be noted. You are in their body and you look just like them, you smell like them, you sound like them. Now, you may do things differently and you may talk differently. For instance, you may start ducking your head unconsciously as you pass through a doorway if you are normally very tall and they are short or you may speak with a slightly different accent, which might be noticeable. You would just sound like them talking with an accent though.

So it is possible for them to notice peccadilloes or mannerisms, but that would have to come from observation or a very blatant physical action that is jarringly different between you two. Obviously if you call someone a name that the possessed target never did or would know of, then they might make the connection.

In the case of your question, which is whether they can detect it right off the bat, the answer is almost always going to be a 'no' unless their very soul is giving off a visible effect or they're monitoring their ally magically. For instance, if you took over a wizard's familiar (not like you can tell what soul is what, other than the familiar is probably weaker souled than the others around) the wizard will likely be aware of it. If they had status on their ally, it may not pick up possessed as a status, but they'd realize the distance and location isn't matching (probably, unless the GM rules the spell stays with the body, which isn't unreasonable). If a paladin is giving off some holy glow and you take his soul over, that probably stops, but doesn't necessarily tell everyone that he's been possessed, maybe he just deactivated it.