Insofar as I can tell, you don't necessarily need to identify something before making a counteract check against it, unlike 1st Edition. So, what does this feat do for a player character?
Enemies have no practical reason or need to identify your magic in the vast majority of scenarios.
Insofar as I can tell, you don't necessarily need to identify something before making a counteract check against it, unlike 1st Edition. So, what does this feat do for a player character?
Enemies have no practical reason or need to identify your magic in the vast majority of scenarios.
If the enemies are just a bunch of hit points waiting to go down, I agree with you. Now, outside combat, you may end up in situations where you want to conceal what you cast, because it's an illusion or an enchantment for example. If you like to Charm people, for example, it's quite handy for a feat.
Now, it's a skill feat, and like many of them, it is very specialized and hardly usable in a "vast majority of scenarios". But if you play an illusionist, it's the kind of feats you want in case of.
As a side note, I really dislike when the GM use metagaming. An enemy isn't supposed to know anything about your spells outside their obvious manifestation. When an enemy is hit by a nasty spell, it would be quite logical for them to try to recognize it instead of acting as if they know its effects.
Insofar as I can tell, you don't necessarily need to identify something before making a counteract check against it, unlike 1st Edition. So, what does this feat do for a player character?
If I remember right: in the playtest, counterspell required you to first identify the spell before you could counterspell it. That was later removed, probably because recognizing a spell was also a reaction and you only get one of those each round - you couldn't both recognize the spell and counterspell it.
So it may be that this skill feat didn't get looked at after the changes to counterspell were made.
You only automatically identify a spell as it is being cast if it is in your repertoire or you have it prepared. Otherwise you need to spend an action afterwards and make a check to indentify it. There are skill feats that make this a reaction or free action.
So the question to ask yourself is: how often are people trying to identify your spells? I'd warrant almost never in combat (unless you're real into wizard duels) but if you're trying to use illusions or enchantments in social situations and are worried someone will notice this could be helpful. Stealth casting is decently viable with the right build.
If they're not identifying your spells in combat they either (1) have no reason to ever try to counterspell (they might be wasting a resource on something that doesn't help them to negate) or (2) should be trying to counterspell all the things all the time if they have the resources to do so (because they never know whether it's a harmless spell or not).
Ask your GM to pick one and be consistent without metagaming.
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Currently, Counterspell doesn't require you to recognize the spell. Identify Magic takes 10 minutes, so that is usable outside of combat. The only in-combat method that I am aware of is Recognize Spell.
Currently, Counterspell doesn't require you to recognize the spell. Identify Magic takes 10 minutes, so that is usable outside of combat. The only in-combat method that I am aware of is Recognize Spell.
I think they're referring to Identifying Spells in the CRB pg 305.
"If you want to identify a spell but don’t have it prepared or in your repertoire, you must spend an action on your turn to attempt to identify it using Recall Knowledge. You typically notice a spell being cast by seeing its visual manifestations or hearing its verbal casting components"
The Identify Magic exploration activity is for effects you didn't get to see cast and/or were long in-place when you found them.
I think somehow people started conflating counteract with Counterspell. All Counterspell are counteracts but not all counteracts are Counterspell.
This feat doesn't interact with Counterspell in anyway. It can potentially interact with counteract checks, although it doesn't strike me as incredibly likely to. Usually when you identify spells it is to tell the difference between an illusion or conjuration spell. Did the enemy just teleport or turn invisible? Is that dragon they just summoned real or not?
Currently, Counterspell doesn't require you to recognize the spell. Identify Magic takes 10 minutes, so that is usable outside of combat. The only in-combat method that I am aware of is Recognize Spell.I think they're referring to Identifying Spells in the CRB pg 305.
"If you want to identify a spell but don’t have it prepared or in your repertoire, you must spend an action on your turn to attempt to identify it using Recall Knowledge. You typically notice a spell being cast by seeing its visual manifestations or hearing its verbal casting components"
The Identify Magic exploration activity is for effects you didn't get to see cast and/or were long in-place when you found them.
Ah. So if you see the spell being cast, you can identify it with one action. And Recognize Spell upgrades that to be a reaction instead (as well as possibly providing a bonus to defenses against it). Otherwise, if you didn't see the spell being cast, it is 10 minutes to identify the spell from just the continuing effects.
So identifying a spell in combat still seems like something that is rarely done.
'Hey, that guy just cast a spell on me and it hurt.'
'Well, what spell was it?'
'One that hurt. Does the name really matter?'
Currently, Counterspell doesn't require you to recognize the spell. Identify Magic takes 10 minutes, so that is usable outside of combat. The only in-combat method that I am aware of is Recognize Spell.I think they're referring to Identifying Spells in the CRB pg 305.
"If you want to identify a spell but don’t have it prepared or in your repertoire, you must spend an action on your turn to attempt to identify it using Recall Knowledge. You typically notice a spell being cast by seeing its visual manifestations or hearing its verbal casting components"
The Identify Magic exploration activity is for effects you didn't get to see cast and/or were long in-place when you found them.
Ah. So if you see the spell being cast, you can identify it with one action. And Recognize Spell upgrades that to be a reaction instead (as well as possibly providing a bonus to defenses against it). Otherwise, if you didn't see the spell being cast, it is 10 minutes to identify the spell from just the continuing effects.
So identifying a spell in combat still seems like something that is rarely done.
'Hey, that guy just cast a spell on me and it hurt.'
'Well, what spell was it?'
'One that hurt. Does the name really matter?'
Yeah, but it CAN be useful when it comes to anything that messes with perception, or tells you if an enemy teleported away vs turning invisible. However, normally it's going be enemies that use magic to flee, rather than PCs, and usually the folks that could identify your spell are already bad targets for mental trickery because they have good will saves and are just generally smarter and therefore harder to trick.
So this is really more of a social tool, best utilized as a back up to Conceal Spell type strategies. If you fail the skill checks and someone notices you casting, at least they will be less likely to realize the spell you cast was Charm. Social casting is pretty risky for begin with, though, and often unnecessary in pre-written adventures which build in diplomacy DCs and such.