Slaved said:
All of the uses in the spot skill from the players handbook are for various forms of hiding or being hidden, disguise, and reading lips.
Given I just quoted you two items from the spot check that are not that, I am not sure how you can come to that conclusion. The distance an encounter begins at has nothing to do with hiding, disguising, or reading lips. And when it said not hidden just hard to spot, how did you conclude that meant hidden, disguised, or reading lips? Come on Slaved, the skill is clearly used for purposes other than just the three you named. It's spelled out as such.
I do not see anything at all about reading at a distance or judging how well you can make something out aside from what I mentioned above.
No that part is just logic. If your characters can read any size writing at any distance in your games because you couldn't find a rule on it, and the skill titled "spot" wasn't enough for you, then I guess you and I have very different games. For me, and probably 99% of people playing this game, we would use a spot check (and we would not consider it a house rule to do so). Call it the distance at which the encounter of reading words on the sign of a barn a mile away begins, if you must, to use the skill.
A dungeon master is free to use whatever he feels is appropriate, of course, but I do not see anything explicit about it. It looks like anything that you have line of sight on that is not trying to be hide, and was not hidden, you can simply see.
So when it said sometimes things are just hard to see but not hiding, that sentence had no meaning for you?
Actually, there is another major difference, darkvision stops at a specified range. Beyond that range nothing can be seen.
So does normal vision, if you account for the spot rules.
Where is this maximum range under the spot rules???
When you get to such a high negative that no check can succeed, you have reached the maximum range.
Everything I have read so far says that your normal sight goes until something blocks it.
So your players can see around the curvature of the planet and spot the back of their head with equal degree of difficulty and detail as their own hand in front of them?
I did find this while looking around though..
Which at least says reading and spot are different.
I think they mean normal reading does not require any skill check. Reading something at a distance I think requires a spot check. Your game might vary, but that seems a logical and normal use of the skill. They shouldn't have to include every conceivable use of the skill in the text to be able to draw a natural conclusion from the text without calling it a house rule.