Identifying Magic Items

[the Jester]

Do the "experiment" route too much, and it isn't magical anymore, either.

I disagree on this, but that's okay. Different strokes and all that.

Plus, if you are playing in a campaign with lots of low-level magic (potions of healing, +1 swords, etc.) then people ought to have an easier time identifying the common stuff.

Only if all +1 swords look like each other and look differently from +2 swords.

Also, it is a pain in the behind when you force "experimentation" on everything, and someone finds a weapon with an unknown plus. They don't even know what their total is, now! They way they are going to find out is make you tell them if they hit or miss until they happen to roll close and narrow it down. So why not just hand out that information the first time they swing in earnest?

Oh, I usually let them know after a few attacks in a real combat, though not through practice. You can't learn a magic weapon's plus without a real fight!

So let's say someone found a sword +1, +4 vs. women and children in my campaign. There might be some clue in its appearance ("the blade is etched with the image of an impaled baby"), but the pc wielding it might figure it for a simple +1 sword after their first combat with it. Only three sessions later, as the pcs attack a bandit camp (with plenty of female bandits!) does the sword's owner realize there is more to it.

This all helps keep some of the magical mystery of magic items mysterious and magical. You never know when you're going to discover that as-yet not unearthed property or power!

That said, I do favor things like History checks, sage consulting, etc. as additional ways to get clues, if not to outright identify, an item.

Some of the coolest items I've either had or seen in play were ones that the pcs in question never fully figured out. But that relies on a game that doesn't require constant item upgrades for the math to work.

 

[Li Shenron]

I think this is one of the easiest possible issues to house rule, because whatever your group's choice is, it hardly makes any difference in relation to published material.

Let's say that the PHB has a 1st level wizard spell which identifies magic items automatically. The 3.0 version takes 8 hours to cast, meaning that a not so forgiving DM will require the party to take a day off. The 3.5 version takes 1 hour to cast, which means "not in the dungeon" but otherwise you almost always just don't count the time.

Whatever the PHB standard, the DMG can have a small (half a page or less) chapter dedicated to the issue, suggesting that the DM can change the casting time of the spell:

- want the spell to be "off adventuring"? -> 8 hours
- want the spell to be "not in the dungeon"? -> 1 hour
- want the spell to be "not in combat"? -> 10 min
- want the spell to be "anytime"? -> 1 action

The DMG can also just tell a DM to ditch the spell completely if the group wants automatic identification OR on the other end of the spectrum if they want the "hard way" of experimenting.

Just as with the timing, the DM can make up whatever variant on how many properties are revealed, how many items can be checked with one casting, if curses are revealed etc...

What changes really? In terms of gaming experience, it changes a lot! But whatever version your group chooses to use, the worst that can happen with relation to published material is that perhaps one NPC in a while will have this one spell while your DM has house ruled it out of the game.

So IMO the game needs one version as a reference starting point: let designers make it whatever they want and don't revised it later, it would be useless (and it would imply that they do think everyone should handle this issue in the "right" way)! Then let a good half-page discussion in the DMG highlight how changing this for your own gaming group will change the gameplay experience.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Also, it is a pain in the behind when you force "experimentation" on everything, and someone finds a weapon with an unknown plus. They don't even know what their total is, now! They way they are going to find out is make you tell them if they hit or miss until they happen to roll close and narrow it down. So why not just hand out that information the first time they swing in earnest?

Even in 1E, magical weapons usually reveal their nature when used in combat. This means that you tell the player what the plus is once it is used. Secondary abilities or properties might not become apparent until later. A sword +1 (+3 vs lycanthropes) would reveal itself as a +1 sword in any combat. If the first creature fought happened to be a lycanthrope it would reveal as a +3 weapon.

The player would thus discover the swords properties through use.

I like the trial and error method, especially when introducing new magic items into the mix.

 

[Tortoise]

Lets not have the rules tell us at all how to handle magic items. If the DM wants to let their players know what it is right away, that should be their decision. If a DM wants to make their players "work for it", then that's their decision.

That way DMs playing low-magic settings aren't restricted by rules that say a player automatically knows what this shiny new sword is. That way DMs playing high-magic settings can allow their players to be "intuitively knowledgeable" about magic items. That way DM's who want to do their own thing might tell their players they need to take the items to the local Sage and get it evaluated, for a fee of course.

While there should be rules for this kind of thing, DMs have always been free to run things their way. The rules are always guidelines and it is the DM that makes the call.

That has been a foundational element from the earliest editions onward, but I'm surprised how often I run across people that do not remember it.

 

[fjw70]

I agree that identification of magic items is tied to the availability of items in the campaign. If there are a lot of items them the identification/experimenting thing can take up too much game ime for my taste. If magic items are few and far between then experimenting can work.

 

[kitsune9]

I agree with the OP, particularly for gamers who want the "Make magic wonderful and mysterious again!"

If spells such as identify are unreliable or non-existent, it puts a crimp in any magic economy, because such spells are part of the weights and measures toward the establishment of any kind of trade. If you can't identify something for what it really is, how can you price it's value?

 

[Crazy Jerome]

So let's say someone found a sword +1, +4 vs. women and children in my campaign. There might be some clue in its appearance ("the blade is etched with the image of an impaled baby"), but the pc wielding it might figure it for a simple +1 sword after their first combat with it. Only three sessions later, as the pcs attack a bandit camp (with plenty of female bandits!) does the sword's owner realize there is more to it.

Mainly, my point is that this kind of thing doesn't scale well with number of items (and number of players, either, though mainly because that will tend to increase the number of items).

When you are playing, say, BECMI with approximately five 3rd level characters, that kind of thing can work great. I just need to remember that the fighter has that sword, and the dwarf has a shield that glows in the presence of orcs, and so forth.

OTOH, when I'm playing something like 3E with seven 9th level characters, after the first 100 or so experiments, we are well into the "DM of the Rings" bits, where Aragorns' player is wanting to just ... get ... on ... with it. (Meanwhile, Legolas' players is still milking it for all its worth. ) Worse, because I'm pushing the party and making things tense, they don't have time to identify all this stuff. So now I'm supposed to either let off on the tension, or remember 20 item properties they don't know about yet?

I have run a 3E campaign with the rule that every player could track which items they had identified, and could automatically identify anything that was substantially the same (e.g. potions of healing made with current timeline formulas, but not ancient ones.) For a resource heavy, exploration/operational style game, that can be a lot of fun. It takes a few minutes to go down the list when the party finds a big treasure, but they quickly key in on the list of things that that they don't know, which are automatically then more interesting.

I'd like a little more help from the system than that kind of house rule and book keeping to zeroing in on the interesting stuff--without being forced to do what I've done in other games, which is have very little magic at all. That's fun too, but I don't want that every game.

I guess, when it comes to stuff like this, don't build in assumptions that the magic item mix will be a set amount, and that the party will always have 4 or 5 players.

 

[Spatula]

Meh. IME, not being able to easily identify items leads to items getting bagged until the party gets back to town, where they can safely ID everything. That or lots of identify scrolls.

 

[Rhenny]

I agree about how easy it is to house rule identifying magic.

Personally, I think people think magic items are lame in 4e because many of them are lame. I hate the items that have daily powers. They are a book keeping nightmare and most of the times we forget about them while we are playing. The older magical items, even the swords were cooler. To me, many of the 4e magical items just take up space.

 

[Mattachine]

This conflict always bothered me:

1. Magic items are hard to identify, especially learning all of the important properties.
2. Many adventures assume that magic treasure will be used during the adventure.

I think that the DMG should present two or three identification options:

a. requires a spell or ritual
b. requires trying it out, figuring a command word, etc.
c. easily accomplished through a skill check or something even easier