Arcane sight: a DM's nightmare?

[Callum]

Has anyone run a game with a PC using arcane sight (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/arcaneSight.htm)? Unless I'm misreading the spell description, you must be constantly having to roll Spellcraft checks for every magic item that NPCs are carrying, and every spell that NPCs have running. And all this in no in-game time at all, with no action on the PC's part! Do you have any suggestions as to how to handle this spell?

[gbprime]

So don't roll dice. You're the DM, you can do that.

Give the player all the information most of the time, and when it's important you can arbitrarily fail his roll on him and tell him "hmm, this one's tricky, you're not sure". This also has the side effect of drawing the player's attention to said item for whatever reason you as the DM need. :smallamused:

[Sudain]

Get their spell-craft check, add 10. Then see if it beats the DC of items(I generally use 20-25. If they do they get the schools of items and can see the auras. That's if you care about doing it with numbers. I suggest following gbprime's suggestion - it's much faster and easier.

[Cog]

If the items or creatures bearing the auras are in line of sight, you can make Spellcraft skill checks to determine the school of magic involved in each.
There is no 'constantly have to'. It's up to the caster.

[Mystify]

Generally, you just say "Yeah, the NPC has a few dozen auras up" ,and they won't bother trying to figure out what. Its not like the school of all their magic items will be particularly illuminating.
Its mainly useful for other things. Seeeing that magical trap, noting the magical items in the pile of loot, seeing that illusion aura on the wall, etc. Or if there is something abnormal about the aura's, like "That guy only has one aura" *rolls* "Its illusion", telling them that guy probably isn't there. Or see the aura on an invisible creature.
If the player really wants to know all the schools present on the person, ask them if its really worth the time. If they have a specific reason they are trying to do it, you can, but generally tell them its not worth the effort.

[Eldest]

You have to concentrate on one NPC to even find out if he/she can cast spells. And all you find out then is how strong the highest slot spell they have left is.

[Alefiend]

Being constantly exposed to a visual overlay of magic auras on top of normal reality would be very distracting, possibly even maddening, when left running all the time.

Assign minor penalties to other actions and skill checks, remind them that they're hooking their eyes up to a fire hose of information (in a setting where there's no TV to get you ready for it), or something like that—the player might just voluntarily back off from the "all the info, all the time" nature of Arcane Sight.

Penalties aren't the only way to do this. Feed the character information you think they should have from Arcane Sight to give hints or move the plot along. Particularly powerful or strange effects should be noticed whether s/he is actively concentrating on the Arcane Sight or not.

A few drawbacks combined with a few boons will make the spell an interesting addition to an arcanist's abilities, without having to give away the farm.

[Bakkan]

I think you could get used to it before too long, actually. Think of how quickly people can filter out or adjust for ambient noise when it isn't relevant. I remember hearing somewhere that the human brain filters out over 90% of the information the senses gather before sending it to the consciousness. A caster who regularly uses arcane sight (or more likely, gets it permanencied) would adjust to it in short order.

On topic, I haven't run a campaign with a character with arcane sight, but I have been that character. The way it turned out, my Spellcraft check was decently optimized, so I automatically determined the school of any spell effect I saw with no rolls necessary, which sped things up. Such optimization is not hard to do; the DC is 15+spell level, so a max of 24 pre-epic (or 25 if it's a nonspell magical effect), so a bonus of +23/24 is sufficient to obviate any need for rolling Spellcraft to determine school. This can be expected by level 9 (when you get permanency) or so on a Wizard: 12 ranks, 3 Skill Focus (if taking 1-2 levels of Master Specialist, which is usually a good idea), +6 Int, +2 synergy (Knowledge[arcana]). It can be achieved much faster by playing as an Azurin and taking the Shape Soulmeld (mage's spectacles) feat, which winds up giving you a +6 bonus to Spellcraft (as well as Decipher Script and Use Magic Device). If you do this, by the time you reach level 5 and are able to cast arcane sight, you don't have to roll anything: 8 ranks, 3 skill focus, 5 Int, 2 synergy, 6 mage's spectacles = +24 bonus.

[demigodus]

I think you could get used to it before too long, actually. Think of how quickly people can filter out or adjust for ambient noise when it isn't relevant. I remember hearing somewhere that the human brain filters out over 90% of the information the senses gather before sending it to the consciousness. A caster who regularly uses arcane sight (or more likely, gets it permanencied) would adjust to it in short order.

Of course, if the character is filtering out a bunch of information, anyone who is aware of that spell, can simply disguise magical mcguffin so that it gets filtered out as well.

Also, now I'm imagining a really elitist wizard who decided to make everything he has out of magical materials. So, every strand of his cloak for example, is magical. The effect of the entire cloak is minor to none (so the PCs can't sell it for much), but it has 10,000 auras of magic. His cave is constructed out of bricks, and every single piece is magical, but has no effects. Except the 2 dozen traps of doom. Which only start 50 meters into the tunnel, after the PCs had walked past a thousand magical bricks, and have long since given up checking out each brick.

[Mystify]

Of course, if the character is filtering out a bunch of information, anyone who is aware of that spell, can simply disguise magical mcguffin so that it gets filtered out as well.

Also, now I'm imagining a really elitist wizard who decided to make everything he has out of magical materials. So, every strand of his cloak for example, is magical. The effect of the entire cloak is minor to none (so the PCs can't sell it for much), but it has 10,000 auras of magic. His cave is constructed out of bricks, and every single piece is magical, but has no effects. Except the 2 dozen traps of doom. Which only start 50 meters into the tunnel, after the PCs had walked past a thousand magical bricks, and have long since given up checking out each brick.

It takes at least 1 day to enchant something. So, it will take you decades of enchanting to pull that off, for minimal gain.

[ericgrau]

I agree with the post where the DM says "That NPC has a dozen auras (give or take) of various schools." Don't get into details unless the PC asks for them specifically or unless there's only 1 aura, because most of the time it doesn't matter. It's also realistic b/c the character wouldn't pay attention to details most of the time anyway. If it's out of combat he might also choose to take 10s on all his checks.

I think penalizing the player to try to get him to stop using the spell only adds wasted time and says "I'm not going to ban this spell, I'm just going to make it worse than nothing so that you waste a spell known so that it's worse for you than banning it". Don't do that.

[Callum]

Thanks for the ideas. I decided to go for a slight mix of them, by initially saying "The guy has a dozen auras about him" but also giving the school of the most prominent aura, and then requiring a standard action to pick out all the other auras (if desired).