Per the rules as written, when using Identify on a magic item, "...you learn its properties and how to use them, whether it requires attunement to use, and how many charges it has, if any."
How specific or general should this be? If certain powers are dormant, would they register? Or only after the proper conditions are met?
(I admit that, specifically, I'm thinking of the Jewel of Three Prayers from the Netherdeep book. It's been a nagging issue for me the entire campaign, though, that a first-level spell can reveal something far more powerful spellcasters might wish to keep hidden.)
I would rule it that identify can only inform of the properties an item currently has, so you would only learn the properites of a vestige in its current state (dormant, awakened, exalted), so you wouldnt learn the awakened properties of a dormant vestige.
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"The D&D rules help you and the other players have a good time, but the rules aren't in charge. You're the DM, and you are in charge of the game" - Dungeon Masters Guide
Generally it should tell you the active properties of an item. Over the different editions there have been a number of different types of items that could or did have latent properties for special conditions (specific classes/levels/races/etc) I would not expect these to normally show up under an identify. One way I have allowed it was as an upcast spell, but it’s been so rare a case I haven’t developed rules for how upcast it needs to be for X property.
I would only allow an item that is Legendary or Artifact to beat an Identify in any way shape or form.
As the Jewel is legendary, I would rule you only get it's powers that are currently active. I might give a hint that there is more. Something along the lines of "Your Identify ends abruptly, rather than smoothly as usual."
I would however allow a spell like Legend Lore to give more information. At the very least the steps nessecary to advance it to Awakened.
Unless a magic item is cursed or i have reasons to keep it secret, i generally let the Identify spell learn all its properties and how to attune to it and use its powers, this regardless of its rarity. There can always be exception though.
If a character has any clue a magic item is cursed, chances are it will not attune to it and avoid it entirely. Cursed items are usually bit of a gotcha, catching clueless people. A DM can always drop hint of a curse on the item. After doing so, from experience, players tend to be a lot more cautions with it until they can be sure.
Some cursed items specificy that Identify does not work on them.
Others activate on touch / when you Identify them.
And of course a lot of Artifacts have curses that people accept. We have a Headband of Intellect 24 that makes you arrogant and greedy. For many mages, this is an acceptable curse, and sometimes we use it when we have to pass an Intelligence based test. Then we Subtle cast Remove Curse and remove it.
I let identify find curses as a kind of reward for using it (unless specified by the item) as opposed to just short resting to figure it out, where I don’t tell about curses.
To the OP. I’d do something similar to what mog dracov said. Tell them what it can do, but give them some hint that it can do more. You could even say something like, “you feel like something is hidden from you.” Then if you’re playing in a world where there are things like the vestiges of divergence, I might allow a history or arcana check for a PC to realize for a PC to realize what they have is actually one of these items. Like in “Temple of Doom” when Indiana Jones figures out that the village actually had one of the stones all along. I mean, if it’s a “legendary” item, it stands to reason the characters may have heard a legend or two about it.
Yes legend lore should be used for more if you have L5+. Spells. However that is level 9+, until then basically all you have is detect magic and identify. While we are used to upcasting combat spells technically any spell could be upcast and this is one of those places where upcasting might be useful. The problem is there are no guidelines so to a DM decision.
Unless a magic item is cursed or i have reasons to keep it secret, i generally let the Identify spell learn all its properties and how to attune to it and use its powers, this regardless of its rarity. There can always be exception though.
I still find the not identifying curses thing to be a bit much. Even if not doing so outright, it should give hints. Or at least, once you know something to be cursed, give some clue as to the nature of the curse.
Nah, curses aren't a big deal really. The worst one I've ever encountered, dealt a frightening but non-lethal amount of psychic damage to my character upon attempting to attune. Our Fighter has been using a sword that forces him (if he fails a saving throw) to kill anybody who injures him. You know... Like he already would. He went like 6 levels before deciding to spend the money to get the curse broken, because it just didn't matter.
They can be pretty easily removed, and honestly they're not even that harsh if you don't remove them. I say, embrace the cursed items. Don't fear them.
Unless a magic item is cursed or i have reasons to keep it secret, i generally let the Identify spell learn all its properties and how to attune to it and use its powers, this regardless of its rarity. There can always be exception though.
I still find the not identifying curses thing to be a bit much. Even if not doing so outright, it should give hints. Or at least, once you know something to be cursed, give some clue as to the nature of the curse.
Nah, curses aren't a big deal really. The worst one I've ever encountered, dealt a frightening but non-lethal amount of psychic damage to my character upon attempting to attune. Our Fighter has been using a sword that forces him (if he fails a saving throw) to kill anybody who injures him. You know... Like he already would. He went like 6 levels before deciding to spend the money to get the curse broken, because it just didn't matter.
They can be pretty easily removed, and honestly they're not even that harsh if you don't remove them. I say, embrace the cursed items. Don't fear them.
Well if the DM only gives cursed items that are really minor, agreed that it does not matter.
I'm looking through the entire published list (minus Netherdeep). Demon Armor would be rough... If you were fighting lots of demons, which you typically aren't. Aside from legendary and artifact items, which I'm just not reading because they're super wordy and spoilery, nothing else strikes me as more than an inconvenience. And the majority of them still function as potent magical items even if you are cursed.
Yeah, if your DM amps up the danger of cursed items beyond the norm, then my statement about the norm doesn't apply. You sure that's not an Argument of Backbiting you're using there? :P
Maybe the really important items are scarier. But that just means you should use them *more!* How lame would it have been if Frodo had been like, "hey Gandalf, is this Ring cursed? Oh, it is? Well, then I'll throw it in the Bag of Holding and never use it ever," and then he threw it in the Bag of Holding and never used it ever? (I recognize that this is a separate argument from the previous one, yes.)
I personally have always found it odd that a first level spell could identify items of immense power. At my table, we use a homebrew rule that you have to roll an ability check using your primary spellcasting modifier when you attempt to identify an item, with increased DC for items of higher rarity, as well as the side rule that any one spellcaster can only attempt one identification spell per object per 24 hours. I do a tiny bit of varying degrees of success here, such as if they only miss by one or two points, I might give them what primary school of magic the item was built upon, or hint at one of the features. Sidenote, we absolutely do not do the "you can spend an hour identifying an item" (no magic required) rule as we all agree it is absurd.
This has worked out fairly well for us, and sometimes the party ends up seeking out more powerful spellcasters to help identify more powerful objects that they just can't quite figure out.
Thanks for the replies. That was the response I was hoping for. D&D is always tricky because so much is explained...if you know where to look. And there are so many places to look...
I personally have always found it odd that a first level spell could identify items of immense power.
And I find it odd that an item of immense power would somehow be more difficult to discern. Stronger magic should be easier to detect, not harder. A powerful blessing should speak readily to the pure of heart, just as a terrible curse should give you the heebie-jeebies from across the room. I can see arguments to the contrary based on the details of magic in your setting, but my point is that if you can poke holes in the verisimilitude of either approach then you might as well go for the one that makes a better game.
And game-wise I just don't see the point in being coy with magic items. Instead of having the excitement of discovery happen right after the climactic challenge to obtain it, you bury it in downtime activity. For me it just totally kills the pacing of the adventure, and it feels like an additional chore tacked on after the fact. Obtaining treasure should be the hard part except in the rare case where being inscrutable is the defining aspect of the treasure. And I would make that kind of loot more of a plot device than an item a PC is going to want to use daily.
All of this to say basically what was said above - in my experience the overall effect of being "mysterious" about magic items is that the party just gets too paranoid to ever use them. To the point where you might as well just not include them in the first place. This is one of those things that might be fun for the DM, but is rarely fun or interesting for anyone else.
You learn all of the present qualities of the item, except for curses. If you can identify a curse nobody's ever going to fall for it. I might leave a hint, like having the item appear a bit foreboding, but I don't make it obvious. If I make the curses inconsequential or make the bad ones too easy to detect, then why bother having the curses at that point? I just as DM need to make sure not to over use curses to the point where they become a tedious annoyance instead of a fun 'oh no' moment.
At the start of a campaign identify's 100g pearl cost can be a bit of an obstacle to get but once the party has one, identify can be cast as a ritual so it's not even really much of a resource cost to spam it on every item they find if it's a wizard casting it and not a bard.
For items with dormant qualities that aren't presently active, I don't show those. Partly because in my games it's probably a homebrew item anyway and I may not actually know for sure what I want to unlock in the item later. And it leaves some sense of excitement. Waiting to see what they'll get when the item awakens/is reforged or whatever the case is for a given item.
All my games are also online and it'd be a pain to only put 'some' of the qualities on an item I put in a PC's character sheet and then have to go back and edit it later when they figure out that 'it also does 1d4 fire damage to goblins' or something.
Per the rules as written, when using Identify on a magic item, "...you learn its properties and how to use them, whether it requires attunement to use, and how many charges it has, if any."
How specific or general should this be? If certain powers are dormant, would they register? Or only after the proper conditions are met?
(I admit that, specifically, I'm thinking of the Jewel of Three Prayers from the Netherdeep book. It's been a nagging issue for me the entire campaign, though, that a first-level spell can reveal something far more powerful spellcasters might wish to keep hidden.)
I would rule it that identify can only inform of the properties an item currently has, so you would only learn the properites of a vestige in its current state (dormant, awakened, exalted), so you wouldnt learn the awakened properties of a dormant vestige.
"The D&D rules help you and the other players have a good time, but the rules aren't in charge. You're the DM, and you are in charge of the game" - Dungeon Masters Guide
Generally it should tell you the active properties of an item. Over the different editions there have been a number of different types of items that could or did have latent properties for special conditions (specific classes/levels/races/etc) I would not expect these to normally show up under an identify. One way I have allowed it was as an upcast spell, but it’s been so rare a case I haven’t developed rules for how upcast it needs to be for X property.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
I would only allow an item that is Legendary or Artifact to beat an Identify in any way shape or form.
As the Jewel is legendary, I would rule you only get it's powers that are currently active. I might give a hint that there is more. Something along the lines of "Your Identify ends abruptly, rather than smoothly as usual."
I would however allow a spell like Legend Lore to give more information. At the very least the steps nessecary to advance it to Awakened.
Unless a magic item is cursed or i have reasons to keep it secret, i generally let the Identify spell learn all its properties and how to attune to it and use its powers, this regardless of its rarity. There can always be exception though.
If a character has any clue a magic item is cursed, chances are it will not attune to it and avoid it entirely. Cursed items are usually bit of a gotcha, catching clueless people. A DM can always drop hint of a curse on the item. After doing so, from experience, players tend to be a lot more cautions with it until they can be sure.
Some cursed items specificy that Identify does not work on them.
Others activate on touch / when you Identify them.
And of course a lot of Artifacts have curses that people accept. We have a Headband of Intellect 24 that makes you arrogant and greedy. For many mages, this is an acceptable curse, and sometimes we use it when we have to pass an Intelligence based test. Then we Subtle cast Remove Curse and remove it.
Yeah it always depends on the magic item curse of course so YMMV
I let identify find curses as a kind of reward for using it (unless specified by the item) as opposed to just short resting to figure it out, where I don’t tell about curses.
To the OP. I’d do something similar to what mog dracov said. Tell them what it can do, but give them some hint that it can do more. You could even say something like, “you feel like something is hidden from you.”
Then if you’re playing in a world where there are things like the vestiges of divergence, I might allow a history or arcana check for a PC to realize for a PC to realize what they have is actually one of these items. Like in “Temple of Doom” when Indiana Jones figures out that the village actually had one of the stones all along. I mean, if it’s a “legendary” item, it stands to reason the characters may have heard a legend or two about it.
Yes legend lore should be used for more if you have L5+. Spells. However that is level 9+, until then basically all you have is detect magic and identify. While we are used to upcasting combat spells technically any spell could be upcast and this is one of those places where upcasting might be useful. The problem is there are no guidelines so to a DM decision.
Wisea$$ DM and Player since 1979.
Nah, curses aren't a big deal really. The worst one I've ever encountered, dealt a frightening but non-lethal amount of psychic damage to my character upon attempting to attune. Our Fighter has been using a sword that forces him (if he fails a saving throw) to kill anybody who injures him. You know... Like he already would. He went like 6 levels before deciding to spend the money to get the curse broken, because it just didn't matter.
They can be pretty easily removed, and honestly they're not even that harsh if you don't remove them. I say, embrace the cursed items. Don't fear them.
I'm looking through the entire published list (minus Netherdeep). Demon Armor would be rough... If you were fighting lots of demons, which you typically aren't. Aside from legendary and artifact items, which I'm just not reading because they're super wordy and spoilery, nothing else strikes me as more than an inconvenience. And the majority of them still function as potent magical items even if you are cursed.
Yeah, if your DM amps up the danger of cursed items beyond the norm, then my statement about the norm doesn't apply. You sure that's not an Argument of Backbiting you're using there? :P
Maybe the really important items are scarier. But that just means you should use them *more!* How lame would it have been if Frodo had been like, "hey Gandalf, is this Ring cursed? Oh, it is? Well, then I'll throw it in the Bag of Holding and never use it ever," and then he threw it in the Bag of Holding and never used it ever? (I recognize that this is a separate argument from the previous one, yes.)
I do miss the days when the Identify only gave out one feature per use on an item... It made getting items a bit more fun as a guessing game.
I personally have always found it odd that a first level spell could identify items of immense power. At my table, we use a homebrew rule that you have to roll an ability check using your primary spellcasting modifier when you attempt to identify an item, with increased DC for items of higher rarity, as well as the side rule that any one spellcaster can only attempt one identification spell per object per 24 hours. I do a tiny bit of varying degrees of success here, such as if they only miss by one or two points, I might give them what primary school of magic the item was built upon, or hint at one of the features. Sidenote, we absolutely do not do the "you can spend an hour identifying an item" (no magic required) rule as we all agree it is absurd.
This has worked out fairly well for us, and sometimes the party ends up seeking out more powerful spellcasters to help identify more powerful objects that they just can't quite figure out.
Thanks for the replies. That was the response I was hoping for. D&D is always tricky because so much is explained...if you know where to look. And there are so many places to look...
And I find it odd that an item of immense power would somehow be more difficult to discern. Stronger magic should be easier to detect, not harder. A powerful blessing should speak readily to the pure of heart, just as a terrible curse should give you the heebie-jeebies from across the room. I can see arguments to the contrary based on the details of magic in your setting, but my point is that if you can poke holes in the verisimilitude of either approach then you might as well go for the one that makes a better game.
And game-wise I just don't see the point in being coy with magic items. Instead of having the excitement of discovery happen right after the climactic challenge to obtain it, you bury it in downtime activity. For me it just totally kills the pacing of the adventure, and it feels like an additional chore tacked on after the fact. Obtaining treasure should be the hard part except in the rare case where being inscrutable is the defining aspect of the treasure. And I would make that kind of loot more of a plot device than an item a PC is going to want to use daily.
All of this to say basically what was said above - in my experience the overall effect of being "mysterious" about magic items is that the party just gets too paranoid to ever use them. To the point where you might as well just not include them in the first place. This is one of those things that might be fun for the DM, but is rarely fun or interesting for anyone else.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
The way I've always treated it:
You learn all of the present qualities of the item, except for curses. If you can identify a curse nobody's ever going to fall for it. I might leave a hint, like having the item appear a bit foreboding, but I don't make it obvious. If I make the curses inconsequential or make the bad ones too easy to detect, then why bother having the curses at that point? I just as DM need to make sure not to over use curses to the point where they become a tedious annoyance instead of a fun 'oh no' moment.
At the start of a campaign identify's 100g pearl cost can be a bit of an obstacle to get but once the party has one, identify can be cast as a ritual so it's not even really much of a resource cost to spam it on every item they find if it's a wizard casting it and not a bard.
For items with dormant qualities that aren't presently active, I don't show those. Partly because in my games it's probably a homebrew item anyway and I may not actually know for sure what I want to unlock in the item later. And it leaves some sense of excitement. Waiting to see what they'll get when the item awakens/is reforged or whatever the case is for a given item.
All my games are also online and it'd be a pain to only put 'some' of the qualities on an item I put in a PC's character sheet and then have to go back and edit it later when they figure out that 'it also does 1d4 fire damage to goblins' or something.