Splitting Spellcraft into Arcane and Divine

[heavyfuel]

Why should the Wizard know just as much about a Raise Dead spell - one he's never prepared, cast, or even has access to - as he knows about the Teleport - the spell he's been preparing and casting (twice) every single day?

There's a pretty famous OOTS strip about it (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0650.html) where V considers Divine spells to be "not real magic".



So what if we had Arcane Spellcraft and Divine Spellcraft and cut all DCs by 5 across the board?

Psicraft is already a different skill, even if the standard transparency rules says magic and psionics are very similar. And it's not like casters will mind the change with their high tier-ness.

This would be most for ****s and giggles.

[Ramza00]

The separation of arcane and divine and magic with psionics is an arbitrary thing done because of just history and the imagination and folklore of a person who created D&D 40+ years ago

In reality there is no reason to have them seen as separate forms of magic, and there is no reason why you should not "divide the magics even further" into more discrete categories. In both cases the separation is completely arbitrary for its only based off flavor.

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Divine magic is based off to some extent our concept of religion and thus what we are familiar with. That said the sources of divine magic could have just as been different in how they implement magic with their followers.

This was how it was in 2nd edition where the deity you worshiped had more influence in the spells you could cast as a 2nd edition cleric vs a 3rd edition.

Druids and clerics are also both divine but their magic systems are completely different, why then is the wizard vs the cleric any more different? One is prayer to alter fundamental rules of the universe, while the other is "pushing" by tweaking special knobs of the fundamental rules of the universe, and with psionics you are just willing the tweaks of the fundamental rules of the universe?

All the differences are in the end arbitrary, and its up to the Dungeon Master when he is crafting the rules that he starts with the typical 3.5 arbitrary choices on the flavor and mechanics of the rules or how much houseruling and custom world building that she or he wants to implement.

[Vizzerdrix]

I fail to see what this would bring to the table. What about spells that are in both catagories, and if lack of access is the splitting point, then why can a cleric identify a ranger only spell so easily? Maybe a hit to the check if the spell isnt on your class list instead? But I feel that a bonus would be in order to balace things.

[Thurbane]

The 3.5 skill system is bloated enough - Knowledge (arcana) and Spellcraft are kind of already double ups. Splitting Spellcraft into two skills would unnecessarily penalize any class without a ton of spare skill points.

[Kelb_Panthera]

For an argument in the other direction; once the spell effect is in place, there's no difference between the arcane and divine versions of spells that are on both sides of that divide and it is, in fact, impossible to tell what kind of caster produced it. Really, this is the same logic that makes psicraft redundant.

If you want to make this divide in flavor in somewhat more elegant way, some minor alterations to the extant spellcraft skill should do the trick.

Say a -4 penalty to recognize a spell being cast if its being cast by a caster on the other side of the arcane/divine divide or even a member of a different class. Perhaps even a penalty for each.

Likewise, allow something like a DC 30 spellcraft check to determine whether a spell effect already in place was cast by a divine or arcane caster. DC 50 to determine the exact class.

These are just suggestions and I doubt I'd implement them myself but it's a thought.

[Darth Ultron]

You already have the Knowledge religion and Knowledge arcane split.

And remember spellcraft does not do all that much. A wizard seeing a cleric cast a spell can....Identify a spell being cast. And that is it. So they get the spell name and a one line of what it does(maybe). They don't get all the details, unless your think ''identify equals know everything''.

A wizard can know some food was made by magic like a heroes feast.

A wizard can identify a spell target on them that they make a save for, again getting the spell name and a one line of what it does(maybe).

Nothing in the skill says ''the character knows everything about the spell''.

[Eisfalken]

If you want to make this divide in flavor in somewhat more elegant way, some minor alterations to the extant spellcraft skill should do the trick.

Say a -4 penalty to recognize a spell being cast if its being cast by a caster on the other side of the arcane/divine divide or even a member of a different class. Perhaps even a penalty for each.

Likewise, allow something like a DC 30 spellcraft check to determine whether a spell effect already in place was cast by a divine or arcane caster. DC 50 to determine the exact class.

These are just suggestions and I doubt I'd implement them myself but it's a thought.

I think this isn't actually a bad idea anyway; it doesn't necessarily follow that a wizard should know about cure spells, even if bards can cast them.

How about a sliding scale? -1 per level of spell that doesn't appear on your spell list (you might have a "theoretical" knowledge, but not practical), -5 if the source is something you can't cast. So if a wizard needed to know if a cleric is casting raise dead, that's a -10 to identify it (he barely knows what that spell would look like), but for a bard casting cure light wounds it's only a -1 (he's likely to have run across at least some mention that that's an arcane spell but only for bards).

Just apply the same thing to psionics: -1 per power level, -5 if the power has no identical spell on the magic side of things. Metamorphosis, for example, is essentially polymorph, so that's just a -4, but my light has no equivalent, making it a -6 (-1 for level, -5 for no spell equivalence) to identify.

I like that. It means Spellcraft is really more of a theoretical study of magic in general, but unless you actually have levels in a given class you are less likely to really grasp the fundamental concepts at work. Getting Skill Focus and other stuff would even offset the penalty for cross-realm abilities, showing that your intense study of such things makes it easier to ID something not usual to your given class(es).