Identify completely broken?

Ok, isn't identify completely broken?

1. It works like analyze dwomer instead of identify. Identify should detect ONE ability of an item and notify you there is more, not all of them at once.
2. Why the hell do merchants all cast it for you, unlimited times per day, at 100 GP per cast?
First it costs YOU 100 GP for the material costs... However merchants should charge for the actual cast. Not to mention none of them are wizards capable of casting it. Even if they WERE, the only way they could cast it that many times a day was if they had it on wands or scrolls, which means EXTRA charge for their XP and their Gold used to make those wands and scrolls, Learning the spell is absolutely worthless since its CHEAPER to get it from a merchant since they "cheat" like that.

 

Actually, in 3.5 Identify tells you all the abilities of an item. As for the shopkeepers, it's unrealistic, but D&D video games have worked that way since the old Gold Box games. It's just easier to click an "Identify" button than to spend a ton of time going through the interface repeatedly memorizing and recasting Identify. Especially since in TT you can just tell your DM "Hey, we're going to stay in town a few days to Identify all this loot we got."

 

Well, its more to do with the 100 gold per cast, not the time.
Also, so what if games did it that way for a while? its time for a change.
Lastly, ok so in 3.5 they changed it to identify all the properties. None the less, the cost difference is rediculous aswell as all the vendors being able to do it. Only magic using vendors should be able to do it, and they should charge more. That way there will actually be a POINT to memorizing the spell. (why waste a slot or a spell known for it when it costs the exact same to pay someone to do it for you).

 

I think the merchants doing it is perfectly fine, and the reason is that otherwise you'd just have to truck yourself over to Burne and get it done over there. I'll trade this stretch of the imagination over more boring walking around town any day. I don't see why you're upset about the money. It costs them 100gp, so they take that much from you to recoup their losses. As for the wands, it shouldn't cost you more if that's how they're doing it, because that is BY FAR the best way to do it. You get 20 identifies for like 30xp and 300gp. Plus, if you use 18 or 19 and then sell it, you get about 600 back, actually earning money in the deal.

 

Incorrect, 50 units of material components must be spent at creation.

So you get 20 identifies for 30xp and 300gp (did you make sure those are the correct numbers or just guess?) AND 2000 GP for components. On the other hand, just casting it 20 times costs 2000 GP, without that extra 300 GP and 30 XP. As such its a waste of money. The cost to craft are in addition, otherwise everyone would craft items to cast expansive spells. Here is my wand of 50 wishes, cost as much XP as 5 wishes, but damn it was worth it!

Ofcourse you could make it cheaper, but thats cheating. its changing the rules in your favor.

 

Well, when I make the wand, the game doesn't charge me 2000 gp, it charges me 300-something gp and that's all. I did not make the numbers up, but couldn't remember the exact figure, which is why I put "like" in there. Certainly, by the rules of 3.5, this wouldn't work, but it does in ToEE, or at least the version I have.

 

Yeah, crafting is bugged in regards to the required XP and money amounts for items that require more than the base. I never bother to create wands of identify and the like anyway.

I personally don't mind have the shop keepers doing it because it's just easier than casting identify a whole bunch of times. It's already annoying enough casting read magic over and over again when I find a bunch of scrolls. If you think it's "cheating" then go ahead and do it the hard way.

Where being able to cast identify comes in handy in the game is if you're in a dungeon and don't want to take the time to run back to town before finding out what the nifty new widget you just found does.

 

It's also nice when you're picking up thirty or so potions and filling up your inventory. You can only memorize so many read magics (even assuming you're using a patch that lets you use that to identify potions). I always craft a couple of ident wands before leaving town. They're so cheap, why not?

 

I find that having a spell-caster learn and cast identify spells, while normally unnecessary given that shopkeepers can cast it for me, is useful when I can't visit town or access any shopkeepers for some reason (such as having Scorpp in my party and most townsfolk will not serve me, and the shopkeepers who will still serve me are inaccessible, being dead or hostile, etc). This also applies when I play a party with undead tagging along; non-evil shopkeepers, like Brother Smythe, hate undead and attack, and many townsfolk similarly get upset when they see undead, making travel about town difficult sometimes, so having undead in the party means a restricted access to traders. In other words there are times when accessing traders is inadvisable for some reason, and that's when learning and casting identify spells, or using an identify wand, is better.

 

its also useful to start the game with a +25 sword of godslaying. Its still cheating.

I don't mind a little cheating here and there, but if the game has any intention of following the rules then this should be changed. And currently, its not following the rules!

My argument was that its not following the rules, not that the rules are very wise or reasonable. I cede that its more comfortable to have shopkeepers able to identify them all for you cheaply (although it annoys my party's wizard who feels useless). I ask you to cede that its not following the rules in many regards, and is "broken" on several counts.

 

Okay, sorry to have offended your sensibilities so. Anyway, I don't think there's anybody here who will dispute the point that toee isn't following the rules in this regard, since it does one thing and the rules say another. Whether that counts as "cheating" when its the way this game is set up is really an interpretive question. Label it what you will. I find this aspect of the D&D rules annoying, personally, and I am glad it is the way it is here. If you prefer to play by a different set of rules, I have no problem with that. You have the honor of claiming yours fit more precisely with what is printed in a certain set of books, but if I don't put too much stock in that, that's my own choice, right?

 

If you think that the cheap Identify at the shops is bad, wait'll you read these tips:

1.) The Read Magic cantrip will identify any scrolls AND ALSO will identify POTIONS!!! And it doesn't cost a dime to cast.

2.) Any wizard or sorcerer with the Craft Wand feat can create a Wand of Identify (as long as Identify is in his spell list). And it only costs 375 gold pieces to do it!! That's just as little as a Wand of Cure Light Wounds, or a Wand of Magic Missiles... and it has somewhere between 25 and 35 charges too... ( I never kept track). If you don't want the Craft Wand feat, I recommend hiring Spugnoir to join you for a moment. The common room of the Welcome Wench is considered a safe place, too, so you can hire him, have him make you a couple of Wands of Identify right there on the spot, take the wands from him, and then kick him back out of the party. If you do it nicely, you can have him rejoin and do it again when you use up what you've got!

 

Well, the read magic to ID potions was added with the Co8 patch because in the core rules, a character with the Craft:Alchemy skill can ID them without using magic. Since the skill isn't in the game and it really sucks having to spend 100gp a pop to ID potions to let Read Magic work.

(Though personally I'm also annoyed you can't just make a Spellcraft roll to ID a scroll as per the 3.5 the rules without having to cast Read Magic. Sitting in the Inn resting and recasting Read Magic over and over again is a pain.)

 

This works with just temple.zip from moebius too.

Usually, I just set both my cleric and wizard to read magic with all of their first level spells. Situations in which you get more than ten or twelve potions (plus scrolls) before having to rest anyway aren't all that common, and then resting once will do the trick. Still it is durn silly you can't use spellcraft or alchemy here. Maybe they didn't figure we'd drop the bugbears so quickly, and so we wouldn't be getting so many potions throughout the game... I know I wind up selling most of mine.

 

Well, if the bugbears drinking potions trigged AOOs like they should, they'd get dropped even sooner.