So the party finds, hidden under the floor in a room, a sword. Turns out this is a sparkblade, but no one in the party recognizes it as such. So the wizard tries an Arcana check (2nd level, trained in Arcana and Crafting), getting 25 on the role. How much should the GM tell him about this blade? In particular, should he tell him it's a cold iron blade, or would that be a separate Crafting check? It's a 3rd level item, so the DC to identify it should probably be about 18 or so (or should it be higher?), and 25 is a success. But should the GM just dump every physical detail about the blade? How hard should it be, for example, to find out how to activate its once per day lightning power (in practice the fighter took the blade, waved it around for a bit yelling "do something" and the GM counted that as a valid activation).
Assuming the 25 was a critical success (I believe it is for a level 3 item), the GM should dump all the info at least related to the magic.
CRB pg.238 Identify Magic
“Critical Success You learn all the attributes of the magic, including its name (for an effect), what it does, any means of activating it (for an item or location), and whether it is cursed.
Success For an item or location, you get a sense of what it does and learn any means of activating it. For an ongoing effect (such as a spell with a duration), you learn the effect’s name and what it does. You can’t try again in hopes of getting a critical success.“
Now the cold iron trait is disputable as to whether that info comes with an arcane check, but I don’t personally see a reason to withhold that cookie. However, you mentioned the character had crafting as well so that should justify well enough to include the info about cold iron.
Sorry, noticed that it was just a success. Ugh, I get your issue a bit more now. Ignore my earlier post. This is just yet another example of the need for consistent and updated errata, or at least someone responsible in staff to answer these questions in a definitive manner.
I'd just give him the item's full description on a success. It might not be RAW, but if a player doesn't know everything about his equipment, the GM has to keep track of that stuff which is WAY too much of a headache.
However, if you want to go strictly by RAW:
If he rolls a success on an Identify Magic check, I'd give him everything there is to know about the magic of the item: "This is a +1 short sword that can once per day shoot a lightning arc at a target that will also jump to one additional target."
Knowing the weapon is made of Cold Iron would be a seperate check, most lkely Crafting or some applicable Lore skill.
Special materials shouldn't really take a check at all, if you ask me. They should fall into the "You might know basic information about something without needing to attempt a check..." clause of Recall Knowledge because they are visually significantly different from one another.
Same as people shouldn't need a check to tell a cast iron skillet from a stainless steel one, it shouldn't take a check to tell "this weapon is darker color and a rougher-looking texture of metal than typical".
I don't know. Seems to me there's a big difference between "this item looks different to the ones you typically see" and "the typical item is stainless steel, this one is cast iron". Or, in the case of the sparkblade, between "the metal of this sword is darker than most swords" and "this is a cold iron blade".*
On another note, should the rarity of an item or its components affect the DC of a check to determine what it is? I think it should, but if there's something in the CRB that says so, I missed it. BTW, cold iron is apparently common, so that wouldn't matter to the case at hand, but what if the sword were made of adamantine (uncommon) or orichalcum (rare)?
*Perhaps in this case, in response to the arcana check, the GM should just mention the difference in appearance, and only identify it as cold iron in response to a crafting (or perhaps Lore: Metallurgy) check.
BTW my intent with this thread is to try to get a handle on how generous the GM should be in responding to checks like these. Automatically dumping everything that can be known seems too generous. OTOH, I suppose my feeling that a player should have to work to figure out how to activate a magic item might be too onerous.
I think it depends on the players actually.
As GM, I wouldn't want to have to keep track of all of the unidentified traits of the equipment that they are actively using. That sounds terrible and not fun for me.
So if the players want to role-play learning about the unidentified traits and are capable of separating what the player knows from what the character knows, I would give them the full information on a successful check and let them decide how much of that information their character knows.
If that isn't a fun and interesting thing that the player wants to do, I would probably either just give them the full information on a success anyway as a freebie, or not let them use the item until it has been fully identified in some other way. Both of these options feel like houserules though, but if it makes the game run easier and is fun for the players (GM included) then it is a good houserule.