Identifying Magic Items

[Dungeon Master]

Ive been thinking about strating this thread for a while, particularly since Cathmhaol's shield and the little banter that was started afterwards. Everything discussed here is not know by characters, to keep it fair.

Ill start by listing spells and their respective descriptions, to give yoyu some idea of the power of each of the spells.

Detect Magic - shows magic items and the school of magic they broadly belong to. Attack = evocation, Defense = abjuration, misc = transmutation. Also shows broadly the power of the magic relative to those around it, so the items glow in a relative strength. eg. a +2 sword will glow more than a +1 sword beside it.
If its on its own, then it would be difficult to gauge its strength. Obviously artefacts and very powerful items will glow the most bright.

Identify - will identify all powers and charges of an item it touches. eg. it would say that a wand of frost was a wand of frost, with 6 charges left and its command word was kazzam. But its limited to one item a spell and its material components cost at least 100gp. So cost of this would be 100gp (multiplied by the level of the caster) + the material components cost. So a 10th level wizard would charge 1,100gp.

Legend Lore - reveals all the history & myth of a place, item, person, etc. So for a magic item youd get all its history plus what you get from identify above.

Now it would seem that fro Identifying, Identify would be the best spell.

Additionally, you have Bregl's
Bardic Knowledge - which seems to be a cut down version of Legend Lore. Due to his story telling skills, songs, poems. He has a chance of knowing a little something about anything. Be it a person item or anything else (locations et al.)

My final comment is based around what would an actual person in the Forgotten Realms know?

Would a fighter know he is carrying a +3 sword or would he know its a sword that defeated Troll in the high moor at the battle of the crossed bones. What Im saying is that doesnt it kill the atmosphere a little knowing that you have a sword +3 rather than the Trollslayer. Id like to keep that mystique if possible.

Thoughts

[Dace]

Whatever you think works best, works for best for me. And I totally agree that you ought to keep the exact bonuses/penalties of an item secret, until it is identified (and I mean fully identified).

I think it's accepted that in the Forgotten Realms your average person knows more than in most other campaign worlds, but this doesn't mean you have to have that as standard. I basically don't think of this as D&D anyway, it's far better than "Generic D&D Land".

[Dungeon Master]

Well I have tried to create something more than a generic world, which I think FR can be if its done traditionally. Something I wanted to avoid and I think Ive mentioned before that I think sometimes worlds get too magic rich (Ye Olde Magick Shoppe's on every street corner).

What I try to do is to make each magic item as unique as possible. Therefore no two +1 swords are alike they both have different histories and feel, one famously killed a Giant, the other was in the hand of a lover who died - one seems to be cursed, but isn't - thats a great idea. Ill have to use that.

I do like that fact that everyone has embraced the idea somewhat. Im loving the fact that both Zeric and Dace have non magical items they seem happy to use or keep. i.e. The eagle sword and the solid silver hand. As a side note I am watching this and you are being rewarded for this type of thing.

[Cathmhaol]

I agree with not knowing exact details of +1, +2 etc, it was more the transmutation powers of the rings that interested me. There's obviously untapped potential there!

[Dungeon Master]

Yes you haven't really tapped into them much yet. They are definately 'useful'

[Cathmhaol]

I definitely need to know what they'll do!!