Item Identification and Ritual Specialization

For a long time now, it's been obvious that the item identification system is pretty worthless.  The crux of the issue is the classic separation between in-play and out-of-play knowledge.  If you know what a treasure tag says, having your spellcaster buddy read it for you is a bit superfluous to the whole process.  Of course, we could always move to a more robust system that doesn't include the full properties of an item on the tag until it's been identified, but that would be cumbersome for logistics and a nuisance to players.  Tellingly, if you look at the RPG genre in general, item identification has become more and more of an automatic process over the past few years.  Compare old-school Diablo to World of Warcraft or third and fourth edition D&D and you'll see what I mean.

Thus, we're officially nixing the Identification skill and the first rank of the Class Secrets skill (the cost will be doubled to compensate; using another class' items is still really handy).  Items can now be identified automatically by anyone upon inspection.

Now, I've held off on this decision for awhile because I felt it necessary to give spellcasters a skill to help compensate for their newly diminished utility in a party.  The answer came to me when I asked myself, "Outside of combat, why is it nice to have spellcasters around?"  The answer was obvious: Rituals.  Spellcasters create useful items and enchantments, some of which are very powerful but out of reach.  What if we gave them a way to use rituals more effectively?

Thus, I'm happy to introduce the Ritual Specialization skill.  For every rank in Ritual Specialization, your character is counted as one level higher for the purposes of developing and casting rituals.  Thus, for example, an 8th-level sorcerer with four ranks in Ritual Specialization counts as a 12th-level sorcerer for developing and casting rituals.  This allows the character to research powerful rituals more effectively, cast simple rituals more quickly, and cast collaborative rituals with less help or even no help at all.

Affinity for this skill goes in line with the most magically-inclined.  Among the races, empyreans, fairies, gnomes, humans, and ixifar have a weak affinity.  Among the classes, alchemists, disciples, druids, sorcerers, and wizards have a moderate affinity, while bards, paladins, and warlocks have a weak affinity.

Bear in mind that ranks in Ritual Specialization don't count when qualifying to learn a ritual; if it's a level 10 ritual, you still have to be level 10 in the appropriate class to learn it, not level five with five ranks in Ritual Specialization.  If you've got more than one class with rituals, however, you gain the benefits of the skill for each class; it doesn't have variations like Class Secrets.

The skill is approved and available to learn immediately.  I'll be working on removing Identification and Class Secrets over the next few days.  If your character knew Identification, you can elect to instantly respend those skill points in Ritual Specialization; just drop me a message if that's what you want.