D&D 5E (2014) Help me change how the identify spell works

[Milieu]

Nah. Sick germs would be all over the party, the places they sleep, cities, dungeons, the outdoors, already in their bodies being fought off successfully, etc. Even going right to sleep would often mean bad news.

Fantasy worlds are not clean places. Hell, even in the modern world where we know what to do, infections/sickness hit hospital patients often. And they have higher cons in cleaner places.

And it's not a house rule. You get con back at a rate of 1 per 6 turns unless you go unconscious. If you go below 3, full con is restored 24 hours later.

If we're going by 1e RAW, low Con for one night doesn't matter much because disease checks are done once per month (or once per week in "VERY HOT WEATHER OR HOT, MOIST WEATHER" or "FILTHY, CROWDED CONDITIONS IN WARM WEATHER"), as well as each time a character is exposed to a carrier. Con scores don't affect the likelihood of contracting a disease*, only the severity and chance of becoming a chronic disease.

*If the initial roll indicates disease is contracted, you roll a d8 for both occurrence and severity. A Con of 10–12 gets a -1 on both rolls, a Con of 3–5 gets a +1, and a Con under 3 gets a +2. If either modified roll is 0 or less, the character doesn't actually contract the disease, so a Con or 10 or higher does reduce the likelihood of disease to some extent.

 

[Horwath]

The difficulty and expense of identifying magic items was one of the elements of AD&D 1e that I absolutely hated. Simplifying it has been, as far as I'm concerned, a vast improvement and I don't see why anyone would really want the issue of vaguely understood magic items, outside of cryptic artifacts or relics, to linger.
But, if I wanted to offer a trade-off between PCs hastily identifying items in the field and risking possibly attuning to a cursed item or something otherwise not that helpful, I'd go with your initial identify spell. But then I'd want to get them off that uncertainty as soon as is reasonably possible and allow them to more fully ID an item as a downtime option between adventures. Then, they have to pay some form of lip service to having put effort into it and it won't linger for years.

this,
if item is cursed or if it's some campaign plot hook, sure, it can be hard to identify and can be another quest to do.


but for "regular" items, who cares.

especially the +X items, I don't even see them as being magical,
oh, your +1 sword gives you +10% damage on average? wow, real magic there. Like changing a x6 to x8 scope on a rifle for better long range accuracy, big intrigue on that one for sure. we must require a year long downtime to figure that one out...

 

[Lanefan]

this,
if item is cursed or if it's some campaign plot hook, sure, it can be hard to identify and can be another quest to do.

but for "regular" items, who cares.

I do.

Why?

especially the +X items, I don't even see them as being magical,
oh, your +1 sword gives you +10% damage on average? wow, real magic there. Like changing a x6 to x8 scope on a rifle for better long range accuracy, big intrigue on that one for sure. we must require a year long downtime to figure that one out...

Because the characters won't and (ideally) can't know whether an item is cursed or a plot hook or just something basic until after they've field-tested and-or Identify-ed it, and therefore the players shouldn't either. Just telling them up front "oh, this one's just a +1 sword" is giving them info they shouldn't have.

 

[Horwath]

I do.

Why?

Because the characters won't and (ideally) can't know whether an item is cursed or a plot hook or just something basic until after they've field-tested and-or Identify-ed it, and therefore the players shouldn't either. Just telling them up front "oh, this one's just a +1 sword" is giving them info they shouldn't have.

a cursed sword can appear and even work as a +1 sword, until it "activates" the curse.

 

[Lanefan]

a cursed sword can appear and even work as a +1 sword, until it "activates" the curse.

I usually have curses trigger right away, with the most common alert being that whoever's doing the field-testing (or casting the ID spell if field-testing not done first) can't put the item down or take it off.

Sometimes, though, the curse is more insidious and either takes a while to trigger or is slow-acting or requires special circumstances. Some armour and weapons, for example, have curses that won't trigger until it's actively used in combat. In these cases, field-testing won't pull the curse but Identify sometimes will.

And sometimes, a curse is merely a side-effect of something that's otherwise quite beneficial. Example: a +2 shield that makes you immune to fear but that can't be removed from your arm, ever, while you still live.

 

[YouMeetInATavern]

I don’t find making magic items hard to identify makes the game more fun

When playing in a game where the DM didn't allow SR identify (or "take a sip" for potions), and no one had the spell, I had to pay 50 gp to have a sage identify a potion we discovered. It was a regular potion of healing. Feels bad man. :/

 

[Milieu]

When playing in a game where the DM didn't allow SR identify (or "take a sip" for potions), and no one had the spell, I had to pay 50 gp to have a sage identify a potion we discovered. It was a regular potion of healing. Feels bad man. :/

I like to describe potions with consistent properties so at most you have to do this once per type. For example, once the party identifies a cloudy green potion as a potion of climbing, if they find another cloudy green potion, they know it's another potion of climbing. If they find a potion that's clear and smells like almonds, they know it's a potion of healing, etc.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

And sometimes, a curse is merely a side-effect of something that's otherwise quite beneficial. Example: a +2 shield that makes you immune to fear but that can't be removed from your arm, ever, while you still live.

The party has a special cursed berserking axe that in addition to the normal 5e properties is +2 and can cast passwall I think. (Came from either the 5e Isle of Dread or Lost Shrine of Tamoachan.)

I see the item as still potentially useful. The warlock in the party knows remove curse. Sure no one is going to be using it in a normal battle after we found out what happened. But if there is a situation where one of the melee warriors is going to be going one on one against a foe? These are 5th level characters and that's a meaningful upgrade from the +1 swords they are using.

They also have a variant cursed minor luck stone that if I recall you can use to gain advantage on a skill check, but then it imposes disadvantage on the next one. They haven't figured that one out yet because they never remember to use it.

In a 3e Ravenloft game I was in we found a cursed sentient magic mask. We knew it was both, and I don't remember what it's properties were, but we definitely considered it worth cautiously using.

I don't think I've personally really had bad (as in not fun) experiences with cursed items, or curses in general. They are rare enough that they add interesting experiences.