Read Aura vs Detect Magic

[Hsui]

Confusion about what is that value of Read Aura if you have detect magic to identify items.

You can detect magic an item (since you can ignore known magic) and determine it is magical. You can then run thru you Occult/Arcana/etc skills to determine what it is (maybe). From what I can read, Read Aura provides only the additional ability to tell if it is an illusory magic item and the school.

What am I missing?

[shroudb]

detect magic doesn't pinpoint magic.

it just tells you "magic is around".

sure you know your own items, so you can ignore those, but you still don't know if it's the sword that you picked up the magic, the wall next to you, a permanent spell effect affecting the dungeon, etc

now, this may sound (and it is) like something you can "game" (i pick up the sword and move outside of the dungeon, do i still perceive magic? Yes? then i try to identify it)

but just imagine:

you move down a hallway in the dungeon with detect magic. GM tells you "you sense magic". Now what?

Or, you find a cache of items, a dragon hoard, or anything like that. With 100s of items, and your only solution is to try them one by one. Even at max heightened, it'll still target everything and only react to the one strongest thing. And it won't even tell you what this is just that's "in this pile of stuff".

or... you simply read aura everything in your sight, and in 1 minute know exactly what's magical, what school, and what's not.

------

to put it simply:
detect magic is what tells you when to use read magic.

[Hsui]

Ah, thank you

It seems that they are encouraging the pc's with spellbooks (wizards usually) to be the main magic item identifiers since spontaneous ones would not be likely to spend a cantrip slot on this spell.

[shroudb]

Hsui wrote:

Ah, thank you

It seems that they are encouraging the pc's with spellbooks (wizards usually) to be the main magic item identifiers since spontaneous ones would not be likely to spend a cantrip slot on this spell.

on the flipside, countering spells works extremely better for spontaneous in this edition. so i think it balances out.

There are also magic items that give those two cantrips, and feats that grant the detect magic, so a spontaneous can work it out.

but either way his knowledge check to identify will be lower due spontaneous being Cha based.