Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wofano Wotanto" data-source="post: 9285539" data-attributes="member: 7044704">It was introduced in AD&D, when Identify worked like this:[SPOILER="AD&D Identify Wall of Text"]When an identify spell is cast, magical items subsequently touched by the wizard can be identified. The eight hours immediately preceding the casting of the spell must be spent purifying the items and removing influences that would corrupt and blur their magical auras. If this period is interrupted, it must be begun again. When the spell is cast, each item must be handled in turn by the wizard. Any consequences of this handling fall fully upon the wizard and may end the spell, although the wizard is allowed any applicable saving throw.The chance of learning a piece of information about an item is equal to 10% per level of the caster, to a maximum of 90%, rolled by the DM. Any roll of 96-00 indicates a false reading (91-95 reveals nothing). Only one function of a multifunction item is discovered per handling (i.e., a 5th-level wizard could attempt to determine the nature of five different items, five different functions of a single item, or any combination of the two). If any attempt at reading fails, the caster cannot learn any more about that item until he advances a level. Note that some items, such as special magical tomes, cannot be identified with this spell.The item never reveals its exact attack or damage bonuses, although the fact that it has few or many bonuses can be determined. If it has charges, only a general indication of the number of charges remaining is learned: powerful (81% - 100% of the total possible charges), strong (61% - 80%), moderate (41% - 60%), weak (6% - 40%), or faint (five charges or less). The faint result takes precedence, so a fully charged ring of three wishes always appears to be only faintly charged.After casting the spell and determining what can be learned from it, the wizard loses 8 points of Constitution. He must rest for one hour to recover each point of Constitution. If the 8-point loss drops the spellcaster below a Constitution of 1, he falls unconscious. Consciousness is not regained until full Constitution is restored, which takes 24 hours (one point per three hours for an unconscious character).The material components of this spell are a pearl (of at least 100 gp value) and an owl feather steeped in wine; the infusion must be drunk prior to spellcasting. If a <a href="https://adnd2e.fandom.com/wiki/Stone_of_Good_Luck" target="_blank">luckstone</a> is powdered and added to the infusion, the divination becomes much more potent: Exact bonuses or charges can be determined, and the functions of a multifunctional item can be learned from a single reading. At the DM's option, certain properties of an artifact or relic might also be learned.[/SPOILER]Taking that all in, Identify was a de facto downtime spell with large failure chances and significant component cost at low levels, with no retries until your next level if you did fail.  Then add a crippling CON hit to the caster that meant you really only wanted to cast someplace you expected to be safe for at least 8 hours, and preferably right before bedtime.  You only get to Identify one item function per caster level, so multi-function items eat up more of that item with separate failure chance each time, and if you roll badly enough on any given attempt your GM just gets to lie to you outright.  And it's imprecise at best when it comes to actual charges and bonuses unless you powder a very potent magic item as an added material component. TL;DR Identify was nearly unusable until you were approaching double-digit levels, and even then it wasn't very reliable at all.  Gygax couldn't have made it any clearer that it was intended to punish players for refusing to engage blindly with his cursed items via random testing Russian roulette.  That's also part of why some cursed items are described as visually identical to other, very potent magic items - the OP items are bait to lure you into skipping out on even trying Identify and just hope you weren't hitting a curse.  The Eversmoking Bottle was the "trap" variant of an Efreeti Bottle, for ex, and there are at least a half dozen pairings like that in the DMG, including the problematic Girdle of Femininity/Masculinity, which was the "cursed" version of the various Girdles of Giant Strength.Thankfully, there are other options than that school of thought in D&D these days.</blockquote>

Verification