Spellcraft: How is it useful besides Incantatrix fuel?

[Endarire]

Greetings, all!

For my Solo Savage Aasimar Fun, Powerful Sorcerer I was considering taking Spellcraft beyond a token rank or few. Still, how is that useful? I'm not going Incantatrix (and likely just staying single classed) for personal reasons and I don't plan on counterspelling with dispel magic and such.

Are there any notable feats or thingies I should have a large Spellcraft around for?

Spellcraft's Usefulness
-INCANTATRIX!
-Counterspelling (especially via dispel magic et al)
-Magic circle casting for planar binding et al
-Detect magic
-Prerequisites
-Scribing spells into spellbooks (Wizards) and prayerbooks (Archivists)

[Troacctid]

It allows you to identify magical effects that are already in place at DC 20 + spell level, which is very useful. It allows you to identify magic items by casting Detect Magic instead of Identify, at DC 25 + spell level (or 1/2 caster level for a non-spell effect). Potions can be identified without the aid of a spell with a flat DC 25 check.

[Uncle Pine]

You know how threads about optimized spellcasters spend a ton of paragraphs about how to counter one spell effect with another one's (not necessarily through counterspelling)? However, they assume that you know what you're up against, but if you don't have enough ranks in Spellcraft - or a rather lenient DM who has all Wizards scream "Freezing Ray!" when they're about to cast such spell - to actually do it, you're left with guessing. And with the amount of spells found in all the various books the odds are not in your favour.
Knowing the most effective spell to penetrate another caster's defenses? Deciding the best course of action when you cast Celerity before being hit by a magical beam? You're really gonna need Spellcraft in these situations.
You can also identify ongoing magical effects and IIRC even items, but you're gonna need an artificer's monocle for the latter.


Oh, and in PF you can use it to craft impossibly fancy items by skipping all the crafting prerequisites.

[MisterKaws]

The only thing outside of those would be epic magic, but that's really rare stuff, so yeah, you've found all uses for spellcraft.

There's also Exemplar's SkillPlomancy™ cheese, so you COULD go around gathering a legion of fanatical followers just by appraising every single spell cast near you.

[Beheld]

As a poster above said, Spellcraft helps you know what spell is being cast by opponents, and what spell effects you are dealing with. It is basically a god tier skill tied with perception and stealth skills and UMD.

[Fizban]

I've had this desire to make a sort of "street wizard" build, ignoring Know: Arcana and Spellcraft and relying on the build in Read Magic for reading spellbooks. Unfortunately, not knowing what spells other people are casting is a line I can't cross, spellcraft is broken in the "everyone who can have it must have it or they suck" way.

[amalcon]

Identifying a spell being cast if its effect is non-obvious (usually defensive buffs like preemptive Resist Energy or Freedom of Movement)
Identifying spell effects in place if they are non-obvious (e.g. Desecrate)
Identifying a spell being cast when you cannot see the effect (from Invisible Spell, or because it's cast on the other side of a door or something). Especially note the Ring of Spell Battle.
The DC 30 "Understand a strange or unusual magical effect" check. There's no other way to do this in the game, and it's a pretty common occurrence at high levels.
Deciphering a scroll without using Read Magic. This is actually nice for Sorcerers, eliminating the need for Read Magic: it's not worth taking a skill for on its own, but it's a nice bonus.

The first 4 plus Detect Magic (which you mentioned) make it one of the best general use skills in the game. At least in my experience, these come up a lot -- much more often than (e.g.) Tumble, which is generally a highly regarded skill.

[Agincourt]

There are immediate action spells or special abilities that really require that you know what is coming for them to be effective. Since you're playing a sorcerer, you might want to cast Wings of Cover or Ruin Delver's Fortune. Both of those are excellent defensive spells, but if you don't know what is coming, you won't know that you need to cast them. For Ruin Delver's Fortune you wouldn't even know which beneficial effect to select.

Likewise, a wizard with abrupt jaunt might not know that he should activate his special ability to move out of range of a spell unless he knows what is coming. This isn't even an exhaustive list. Nearly anyone who has some sort of defensive, immediate action, whether it's from a magic item or a class, would be better off being able to identify what spell is coming.

[Hecuba]

I seem to recall some spell casting at-scale system with similar skill elements to Circle Casting and Epic magic, but I can't seem to find it at the moment. It's not in Cityscape, which I have handy. Anyone known what I'm talking about, or am I just delusional?

[Snowbluff]

There are immediate action spells or special abilities that really require that you know what is coming for them to be effective. Since you're playing a sorcerer, you might want to cast Wings of Cover or Ruin Delver's Fortune. Both of those are excellent defensive spells, but if you don't know what is coming, you won't know that you need to cast them. For Ruin Delver's Fortune you wouldn't even know which beneficial effect to select.

Likewise, a wizard with abrupt jaunt might not know that he should activate his special ability to move out of range of a spell unless he knows what is coming. This isn't even an exhaustive list. Nearly anyone who has some sort of defensive, immediate action, whether it's from a magic item or a class, would be better off being able to identify what spell is coming.

Yeah, I think this would be the primary use. Most tables I've been at play it loose with "oh you know what kind of attack it is beforehand," but really you should have to roll a spellcraft.

[ksbsnowowl]

Greetings, all!

For my Solo Savage Aasimar Fun, Powerful Sorcerer I was considering taking Spellcraft beyond a token rank or few. Still, how is that useful? I'm not going Incantatrix (and likely just staying single classed) for personal reasons and I don't plan on counterspelling with dispel magic and such.

Are there any notable feats or thingies I should have a large Spellcraft around for?

Spellcraft's Usefulness
-INCANTATRIX!
-Counterspelling (especially via dispel magic et al)
-Magic circle casting for planar binding et al
-Detect magic
-Prerequisites
-Scribing spells into spellbooks (Wizards) and prayerbooks (Archivists)

Also needed for overcoming planar traits that impede magic. My group once had a druid who was the only one who could cast Daylight. They found themselves on the Plane of Shadow, and he couldn't successfully cast Daylight, because he had almost nothing invested in Spellcraft.

Impeded magic. Spells that use or generate light or fire may fizzle when cast on the Plane of Shadow. A spellcaster attempting a spell with the light or fire descriptor must succeed on a Spellcraft check (DC 20 + the level of the spell). Spells that produce light are less effective in general, because all light sources have their ranges halved on the Plane of Shadow.

[Optimator]

It comes up all the time in my games.

[ATHATH]

I think Sha'ir use Spellcraft to learn new spells.

[Âmesang]

I recall 3.0 Alchemy allowing identification of substances (DC 25) and poisons (DC 20), along with potions; since identifying potions has since become a Spellcraft option (see epic rules), I don't see why those earlier options couldn't also be translated over (and wonder why they weren't… or why they weren't just kept as Craft [alchemy]).

Otherwise I keep my sorceress' Spellcraft fairly high, to the point of having her wear a custom "ring of improved spellcrafting" for a +10 competence bonus, for everything mentioned here including (future) epic spells (although she technically substitutes a permanent arcane sight for detect magic when it comes to identifying magic item properties via the Magic Item Compendium options).