Identifying Magical Effects on Creatures Reasonably Quickly

[Balkoth]

Say a PC casts Heroism or Mage Armor on themself and walks into a room with an NPC wizard/cleric/bard/whatever, someone with high magical ability.

What would be the quickest and/or most reasonable way for the NPC to figure out out effect(s) are on the PC?

Baseline seems to be Detect Magic plus 10 minutes of trying to identify each individual effect which obviously isn't great, especially if there are multiple such effects.

[shroudb]

Quick Identification would drop that to 1min/3 actions/1 action instead of 10 mins depending on the other people skill levels.

[SuperBidi]

As a side note, you don't need Detect Magic to identify magic.

[Balkoth]

SuperBidi wrote:

As a side note, you don't need Detect Magic to identify magic.

What other methods exist to spot effects that otherwise would presumably be not visible?

Something like a Fire Shield would be obvious.

[Gortle]

It is a skill check

[SuperBidi]

Balkoth wrote:

SuperBidi wrote:

As a side note, you don't need Detect Magic to identify magic.

What other methods exist to spot effects that otherwise would presumably be not visible?

Something like a Fire Shield would be obvious.

You technically don't need Detect Magic to Identify Magic. Now, you can choose to force its use, it's just GM's choice and not part of the rules.

About the "visibility" of effects, it's really a question of mind eye. Mage Armor, for example, is quite obvious. And you can decide that Heroism is not visible but perceptible through some form of sense motive. Your choice (or the one of your GM).

[Balkoth]

SuperBidi wrote:

Mage Armor, for example, is quite obvious.

Huh. Apparently it does actually say shimmering energy in PF2.

I guess I'm still thinking of the Neverwinter Nights implementation where it was an invisible buff (unlike Shield, Stoneskin, Resist Energy, etc).

In this case I am the GM.

What if someone was under, say, a infernal contract or geas or something?

Assuming it's not something that gives explicit indications of visible stuff like https://2e.aonprd.com/Equipment.aspx?ID=931

Can someone who's Legendary in Religion literally just walk up and go "Huh, I see you've bound yourself to an imp" with one action? That just feels a bit off, but maybe the problem is me here.

I guess I was thinking of stuff like Arcane Sight in PF1 where it was clear the NPC would be scanning for magic and identifying it. Or conversely, of course, the PCs noticing effects on NPCs.

[shroudb]

SuperBidi wrote:

Balkoth wrote:

SuperBidi wrote:

As a side note, you don't need Detect Magic to identify magic.

What other methods exist to spot effects that otherwise would presumably be not visible?

Something like a Fire Shield would be obvious.

You technically don't need Detect Magic to Identify Magic. Now, you can choose to force its use, it's just GM's choice and not part of the rules.

About the "visibility" of effects, it's really a question of mind eye. Mage Armor, for example, is quite obvious. And you can decide that Heroism is not visible but perceptible through some form of sense motive. Your choice (or the one of your GM).

You still need a way to find that's something is magical before you can identify it.

you can't simply randomly start identifying.

Quote:

Once you discover that an item, location, or ongoing effect is magical, you can spend 10 minutes to try to identify the particulars of its magic.

The way for that could be simply visual, in some cases. Or it can be something like a skill action that the GM calls for. But somehow you first need to find that's something is magical BEFORE you can attempt to identify said magical effect.

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Basically, the way I see this working is simple: You notice something, be it from Detect, Read Aura, a shimmering wall in the air, a person's empty gaze, etc, but you do notice something clearly magical (<-which would be the perceiving part), and then you go "I wonder which spell effect/item/whatever can do that thing that I am perceiving" (<-which would be the identifying part, probably alongside "testing" the effect with various techniques along the way)