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I believe that is intended. Identifying is for things that you don't already know what they are - things that you find. And even items with the same effects may not look or work similarly.
If you find a scroll in a dungeon, you will have to identify it before you can use it.
If someone sells you a potion of healing, you can probably assume that they actually gave you a potion of healing - but it might not hurt to double check it yourself.
If you craft a Drakeheart Mutagen, you can be pretty sure that it is a Drakeheart Mutagen.
But just because you can craft your own version of a Drakeheart Mutagen doesn't mean that if you find a Drakeheart Mutagen in a dungeon that you would immediately and automatically recognize it as a Drakeheart Mutagen.
Oops, I have been giving my players Crafter's Appraisal, the ability to identify magic items with Recall Knowledge Crafting, all along. It just made sense that if a character can identify a construct creature with Recall Knowledge Crafting, then they should also be able to identify items with Recall Knowledge Crafting.
Part of my carelessness is that I hate appraisal of looted items. Back in my early days as a GM, a PC misidentified an item, I think mistaking a 50gp gem as a 500gp gem. And he almost sold it to a merchant for the full 500gp, but I caught that and told him out of character that it was really a 50gp gem and the merchant offered the correct price for it. I probably missed some others. In addition, unidentifed items are hard to track. The player will mark down "red hat, magic" on a character sheet and then ask the shopkeeper to appraise it. I have to remember which magic item it really is. The character sheet did not record which room it came from, though sometimes I could narrow it down by noticing that it was listed between two known looted items.
Nowadays, when the PCs gain magic items from looted bodies or a treasure trove, I simply list the items in the loot-and-xp channel of our campaign's Discord server, along with their level, price, and link to the item in Archives of Nethys. We want to divide the treasure between the PCs quickly and cleanly without the delay of identifying them. The PCs have trained Aracana, Occultism, Nature, and Religion among them, so given enough time they could identify them. If Crafting can be added to that list, I would have even more justification.
Despite multiple searches, I could not find information on how being able to create a magical item, or indeed having created it before, helps you identify the same instance of that magic item in the wild.
I use the principle that if we have an in-game example of a PC knowing something, then that character still knows it. If the party fought trolls and three days later they encounter another troll, then they do not have to make a Recall Knowledge check again. Trolls are emblazed in their memory. Likewise, for a Striking Rune on a looted guisarme, the fighter can look at the Striking Rune on his longsword and say, "Hey, these runes are identical!" Or if they found a potion bottle and sniff it, I can tell them, "It smells exactly like the minor Healing Potion that you drank yesterday."
But just because you can craft your own version of a Drakeheart Mutagen doesn't mean that if you find a Drakeheart Mutagen in a dungeon that you would immediately and automatically recognize it as a Drakeheart Mutagen.First, this is an alchemical item, not a magic item, which you *can* identify with a Crafting check.
The problem with Magical Crafting is not that you don't identify a magical object automatically. The problem with Magical Crafting is you cannot even attempt to identify it despite being able to make it.
The inability to even make the attempt is what I'm objecting to.
The choice of example item doesn't change the game mechanics logic.
Just because you can craft a Bottomless Stein doesn't mean that you can recognize one in the field.
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(Disclaimer: I am aware Crafter's Appraisal exist. Ths is about why would the tax feat exist in the first place)
So due to a conversation about how to Identify Magical items we found an interesting hole in the rules: A character thas has magical crafting but no training in Tradition skills or Crafter's Appraisal cannot identify magic items they have the ability, level and formula to create. Your ability to etch a +1 potency rune in a weapon doesn't allow you, rules as written, to even attempt identify a +1 potency weapon in a loot pile.
Despite multiple searches, I could not find information on how being able to create a magical item, or indeed having created it before, helps you identify the same instance of that magic item in the wild.
This leads to the rather janky situation of a legendary crafter that is capable of Crafting Anything (as per the legendary feat) but has no clue as to how or why the items they create work, or even how to learn what that exact same item is or does when built by someone else.
Is this intended?
This isn't likely to happen in practice. I cannot imagine a character who is Legendary in Crafting, and therefore likely pumped intelligence, who was neither trained in any of the four magic skills or couldn't find the room to take a first level skill feat. Most classes wind up trained in at least one identify magic skill automatically and I cannot fathom an intelligence based character skipping all of them.
So yeah, you can intentionally build a bad character who can't identify magic despite having Magical Crafting. And then you can deal with it. I'm all for removing traps but sometimes the trap has glaring neon signs over it and I just cannot bring myself to feel sympathy for people who fall in anyway.
It's not even much of a trap option. It doesn't affect the items that you are creating. You still know what those are since you created them.
If you don't take any training in identifying random items that you find, I don't understand why you would expect that you could use your ability to craft things to identify things. Those skills are separate and are stated as such.
Despite what it seems, Crafter's Appraisal isn't a feat tax. It's a skill compression feat. If you want to be able to identify items, but don't want to keep pumping Recall Knowledge skills, then a Legendary Crafting PC is as good or better at ID for magic items. They don't have to raise up Arcana, Occultism, Religion AND Nature to cover those rare items which are skill traits instead of "Magical". It's similar to Unified Theory in Arcana or Chirugeon's research field benefit.
It's a bit like coming up with your own custom programming language so that you can write code that performs a task, without having studied existing programming languages and being unable to recognize what someone else's code is meant to do.
The in-world dissonance here is that your character (or whoever gave them the recipe) ostensibly invented the enchantment from nothing and has no hope of recognizing similar effects elsewhere because of how unique it is, despite such a feat being quite a bit more impressive than it's described.
For this reason, as well as for Mathmuse's reason regarding identifying magic items being uninteresting gameplay, I tend to let people attempt to identify magic items untrained. Given that this means more people can attempt it, and combined with my overall permissive attitude toward identifying magic items in general, Crafter's Appraisal is a lot less valuable at my table.
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I've questions to ask about some of the things posted above.
In order to build an item - you need to have a formula for it. This means that you understand exactly how to make it, what components are needed, and how it works. So if I can for example, craft a Wand of Jump (lesser), then its components would be very specific (its listed on the formula afterall). While the wand itself may vary based on the art design of the craftsman, the essential components from the formula are probably the same. So in theory, if I knew how to make one and looked for the essential components (not just the artistry of the craftsman) then I should be able to identify things I know how to make. Because all I would have to do - is to look for the essential parts of the formula.
For example, if a formula for a wand of jumping needed a frog's leg, a casting of jump, pliable wood, the magical trigger word "Salire" written on the side of the wand, and a silver band at the base to make it... wouldn't finding those components on another wand created by another magical craftsman give me a clue that its a wand of jump? Are there 10.000 formulas to make a wand of jump? Or just one? If in theory, there's only one formula - then a craftsman who can make something should be able to identify the same thing. If there are multiple ways to make the same thing... then, I see why everyone is saying it is impossible to identify items without magic or feats. So are there thousands of ways to make one magical object? Just one? A few similar ways? Many unrelated ways?
Another thing not yet mentioned is that being able to create the magical item often stems from reverse-engineering the formula. The artificer can break down the item into its components and figure out how it is built. If a person with the magical crafting ability can do this... shouldn't the ability to reverse-engineer something also allow you the skill to figure out what you're holding is? Isn't this all just a matter of understanding magical theory and building objects which can contain that magic?
Remember that these are questions, not statements.
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Thanks for posting that link. It actually says something about identifying wands.
"If you find a wand, you can try to figure out what spell is in it. If the spell is a common spell from your spell list or is a spell you know, you can use a single Recall Knowledge action and automatically succeed. If it’s not, you must Identify Magic"
So apparently for Wands, having the spell on your list allows you the Recall Knowledge action to identify it.
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It also helps to separate the game mechanics and rules from the narrative description and expectations of reality. At the end of the day, this is a game and is only a crude approximation of reality. And sometimes things don't match up because the game rules need to be balanced.
So from a game mechanics perspective, the skills and feats do what they say that they do and not more. How you reconcile that with reality is up to you.
For game mechanics, yes - a wand only has one recipe. That doesn't mean that narratively all wands look the same even if they have the same spell on them. You still need to have a skill or ability to identify them. Same with magic items, alchemical items, or even mundane items. And the ability to craft an item doesn't grant the ability to identify that item.
There have been a few suggestions in this thread already of ways to reconcile that with reality. But those aren't needed in order to justify the rules. The rules are the way that they are for game balance and consistency.
This isn't likely to happen in practice. I cannot imagine a character who is Legendary in Crafting, and therefore likely pumped intelligence, who was neither trained in any of the four magic skills or couldn't find the room to take a first level skill feat. Most classes wind up trained in at least one identify magic skill automatically and I cannot fathom an intelligence based character skipping all of them.
My monk is a crafter mostly because of his backstory, and I didn't have ANY of the four until level 7 where we got sick of it being stupid and ret-conned his level 5 WIS bump into an INT bump to give him Trained in Nature. At level 8 I picked up the Crafter's Appraisal feat tax. I absolutely would have made it to Master Crafting before becoming Trained in Arcana at level 10 otherwise.
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Congratulations on the character building decisions.
Was it really necessary to revive this thread for that?