Class and Level Geekery XV - What's the Damage of a Thrown Pineapple?

[Aquillion]

Yeah, I think concluding Belkar has spellcraft from that is a bit silly for several reasons:

1. Spellcraft allows you to determine spells and magical effects by examining them. It is not a prerequisite to recognizing a spell via casual familiarity - you can know what a Fireball is in a general sense, or know that a wizard is capable of Teleportation, and broadly recognize that a wizard might throw a fireball or teleport away when it happens, without having ranks in Spellcraft. Unlike Knowledge, Spellcraft just represents one possible avenue to identify magical effects.

2. More importantly, Belkar explicitly has to ask ("...this peace of paper has that Explosive Runes spell cast on it?") He doesn't know based on his own abilities, he makes a guess and Roy confirms it.

The CSW scrolls are better evidence. I mean, it's still probably just there for the gag, but going by the rules of the thread that one would indicate he has Spellcraft or Read Magic somehow, since he couldn't have figured out what the scrolls are any other way (he might have known that Durkon carried healing scrolls, but it's really unlikely he'd know what exact spell they contain.) Whereas I feel that the Explosive Runes one doesn't work even under the strict rules for the thread - he unambiguously has to ask to be sure, so if anything it's evidence against him having Spellcraft.

If he said "oh, a piece of paper that has Explosive Runes on it!", that would be different. But asking "is that a piece of paper with that Explosive Runes spell on it?" shows that he wasn't able to identify it himself.