Identify (spell)

Determines the structure and purpose of a magical or mundane item that is touched or handled by the caster. Once the spell is in effect, the caster cannot be affected by the item being examined, whatever the item's power.

Any item may have, as part of its existence, certain powers, purposes for its creation, dangers that might accrue to the user, circumstances surrounding its existence and so on. The caster of identify has a percentage chance to know one such detail per level of the caster. The chance of success equals 15% +5% per level.

As an example, a 5th level mage rolls the percentage dice five times, each time having a 40% chance of success. The mage succeeds three times ~ and thus learns three details about the item being identified.

The order of details known is as follows:

• Any possible dangers the item possesses for the user.
• The item's least powerful ability, then so on up through each ability upwards through power. Note that regarding objects with a set number of charges or uses, this number is treated as a separate detail, and will be known before the ability is known. The same is true with a bonus weapon, which might also be a "flame tongue" or similar addition: these would be treated as two pieces of information.
• A full discussion about the item's intended purpose (treated as one detail).
• Details about each previous user of the item, including when or where the item was lost if that is the case.
• Other details about the item that might matter.

Once the caster has attempted to identify a particular item, another application of identify will produce no further information about the same object until the caster has increased in experience level.

Artifacts are immune to the identify spell.