D&D 3E/3.5 3.5 Identify vs other editions

[Menexenus]

To Gwaihir: GO BUCKEYES!!!! (Sorry, couldn't resist.)

To answer Gwaihir's original question, in my campaign we were using 3.0 Identify for a while. But it became a little tiresome for me to have to remember what magic items they were carrying that they had not completely Identified all the features of yet. So when a player pointed out to me the change in 3.5, I leapt at it gratefully. Now we use 3.5, and I have absolutely no trouble with it.

The duration, the expensive material component, and the limited number of items Identified limits overuse of the spell at lower levels. There's usually a little mystery about the stuff that they don't have time/cash to Identify. At higher levels, the party has bigger fish to fry anyway.

 

[irdeggman]

To Gwaihir: GO BUCKEYES!!!! (Sorry, couldn't resist.)

I'll raise you one.

GO BLUE!!!!!

U of M
BSChE '81

 

[irdeggman]

Here's an idea I came up with for identify. Not sure how well it'd go down with spellcasters, though.

Remove the expensive material component. Instead, there is an XP component, equal to 1/10 the amount of XP required to craft the item, minimum 1 XP.

Remove the 1 hour casting time. Instead, the casting time is 1 minute per XP the spell costs, to a maximum of eight hours.

This makes the spell cheap and simple to cast when identifying something cheap and simple like a cure light wounds potion, but more expensive when identifying an 18,000 gp sword.

Due to the variable nature of the XP component, scrolls and wands of identify would exclude this cost, which would be paid by the character activating the item.

The XP cost and casting time apply to all versions of the spell. However, Artificers may substitute Craft Reserve points for XP when using the identify infusion, and characters with the Legendary Artisan feat may reduce the XP cost by 25%.


Possibly the precise value of the XP cost should be adjusted. It's pretty cheap as-is, but I think if it got much more expensive, casters would begin to really resent having to spend their own XP to identify gear that others will be using.

Interesting concept - but how would the caster know he could afford to cast the spell?

If he didn't have enough xp to avoid dropping a level then the spell wouldn't work (although usually that means all spell components are spent) and if it didn't work then the caster could narrow it down as to "how good" an item it really is.

 

[MarkB]

Interesting concept - but how would the caster know he could afford to cast the spell?

If he didn't have enough xp to avoid dropping a level then the spell wouldn't work (although usually that means all spell components are spent) and if it didn't work then the caster could narrow it down as to "how good" an item it really is.

Hmm, good point. I'm tempted to allow a caster to spend "up to his limit" in either time or XP, and then cease spellcasting with no loss of XP, having learned only that the item has a base XP cost above a certain value. However, that might be over-generous, and is inconsistent with normal spellcasting.

An alternative would be for the spell to simply fail, with no XP expended, because an item whose XP requirements exceed the caster's available XP is not a valid target for the spell.