Identify Magic Critical Success

[Erez Ben-Aharon]

Other than being able to detect a 'cursed' item, is there any difference between the result for critical success and a success on Identify Magic? The wording on the two entries are really confusing, but when I deconstruct it / reword the entries for Critical/Normal success - it seems to be saying the same thing.

Anyone cares to chime in?

[David knott 242]

Detecting a cursed item seems to be the only difference -- but it is a big difference in the rare case where it matters.

[Fuzzy-Wuzzy]

For an item or location (as opposed to an ongoing effect) a normal success just gives you a vague idea of what it does, while a crit tells you exactly what it does and (afaict) anything else there may be to know about it. Knowing what things do is typically important.

[Captain Morgan]

I will say that only having a vague idea of how your equipment works in practice seems kind of awful. Like, do you not tell your players the name of the item or read the item description out of the rulebook? Seems like a pain.

[Erez Ben-Aharon]

I'd agree with Captain Morgan here... there is no reason for ambiguity. As far as I'm concerned a Success which tells you how to activate the item would also tell you what it does, as in any case you would figure it out sooner or later.

I have a feeling a Critical Success was supposed to be just to detect if it is cursed. Reason is in 1st Ed. a success 10 higher than DC gave you just that, so it feels this should pretty much work the same (except for some reason with a lot more unnecessary verbiage).

I *might* make an edge case for magical items that are truly epic and have some really secret/obtuse function in additional to their regular one...but I don't even know if those exist yet.

[thenobledrake]

I don't think that there is meant to be a difference between "you get a sense of what it does and learn any means of activating it" of a success on identifying an item, and the "you learn... what it does, any means of activating it" part of a critical success.

In either case, the character knows enough for it to make sense for the player to record the details because they understand how to activate the item and understand when it is beneficial to use. For example, knowing that if you say "burn my foes" in Elvish will cause the weapon to add fire to your attacks... that's really all you need in-character, and the player can go ahead and write down how much fire damage because they're going to see how potent it is the first time they use it anyways and there is no deterrent to their using it since they have a sense of what the item does.

Critical success on Identify Magic seems to only add learning if there is a curse involved, and all the details other than name and "what it does" for an ongoing effect.