Witch Familiar Identifying Spells

[SuperParkourio]

Identifying Spells

Identifying Spells wrote:

Sometimes you need to identify a spell, especially if its effects aren't obvious right away. If you notice a spell being cast, and you have that spell in your repertoire or prepared it that day (even if you already cast it), you automatically know what the spell is, including the rank to which it is heightened.

A witch's familiar knows all of the spells that the witch can prepare. The witch, of course, would only recognize the spells they actually prepared. But what about the familiar? Would the familiar be able to recognize every spell the witch could prepare on sight? Or would they fail to do so because they don't prepare spells or use a "repertoire?"

[The Raven Black]

The second. They do not prepare spells. The Witch does.

[SuperParkourio]

Hmm. Does this mean that innate spells and focus spells don't help you identify spells when you see them cast? They can't be prepared and aren't part of one's repertoire.

[Tridus]

SuperParkourio wrote:

Hmm. Does this mean that innate spells and focus spells don't help you identify spells when you see them cast? They can't be prepared and aren't part of one's repertoire.

For focus spells it feels like it should work because if it doesn't then two Clerics of the same faith with the same focus spell don't know that the other one is casting it without having Recognize Spell and making a fairly difficult check. That just doesn't sound right.

They don't use the word "repertoire" for focus spells, but you have a set that you know and can cast on demand, exactly like a repertoire. Feels to me like that case should work and I don't think it's harming the game to give that one to the players (though it comes up pretty rarely).

Innate spells... eh? I don't know. I'd be inclined to give it to the player in that case just because then every case functions in a similar manner and it's pretty straightforward at the table to understand. It feels consistent and I value consistency.

[NorrKnekten]

That is exactly what the RAW says. You dont have those in either repertoire or prepared spells.

Further more neither of them work with rules that require spellcasting class features and I do believe repetoire/prepared spells do count as that.

You would only need to use a standard recall knowledge action for it however, But I dont think its a big deal to treat it as the characters knowing those spells. If the monster uses a spell that creates an aura that gives you a -1 to attacks the player probably have already figure out its bane, especially if they frequently use that spell themselves.

[Finoan]

Agreed. By strict RAW you wouldn't immediately recognize someone else casting a focus spell or innate spell that you also have.

But that seems strange. The rules for recognizing spells are written specific to spell slot spells. I think it is appropriate to extrapolate that to also cover focus spells and innate spells.

The Familiar wouldn't normally be able to identify spells because they don't cast spells - they just act as a spellbook. I could see an argument for a familiar - even a non-Witch familiar - to be able to recognize a spell that they are (or were before they expended the spell) able to cast due to the Spellcasting ability.