See Secrets spell

[Kromm]

The point is that the spell doesn't detect motives, past or present, or even require the secret to result from a motive. It enhances pattern recognition and visual contrast in a way that allows the user to penetrate nonmagical tricks that make it hard to see a secret sitting in front of him. This means things like careful carpentry to camouflage the joins of a secret panel as simple relief, trick masonry to minimize the gap around a moving flagstone, a paint job that disguises a dark hole with dark colors, a portrait with a peephole in its eye, or a statue with a dart gun hidden in its mouth. It breaks down if a suitably skilled person couldn't use Search, Traps, or whatever to locate the secret with vision alone, and would need to physically move something aside or at least touch it.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Kromm

The point is that the spell doesn't detect motives, past or present, or even require the secret to result from a motive.

Question on that then. It says deliberately hidden. not lost. Also Aura is a prerequisite which would lean towards a motive.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Kromm

The point is that the spell doesn't detect motives, past or present, or even require the secret to result from a motive. It enhances pattern recognition and visual contrast in a way that allows the user to penetrate nonmagical tricks that make it hard to see a secret sitting in front of him.

Oh really?

See Secrets
This spell works only on things that were deliberately hidden – not lost.

Remove Aura
When cast on an inanimate object, this spell turns it into a blank slate for spells such as Ancient History, History, See Secrets, or Seeker

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by jeff_wilson

It's cheating to stipulate a spell has a dualistic moral basis for working and then justify a countermeasure with materialism.

Huh? I'm at loss as to where I'm using materialism to justify the countermeasure. Using a trowel would increase the separation and thus reduce the strength of the signal, just probably not by enough to matter. If I were really concerned I'd have cumulative penalties based on the size and length of the steps taken to distance the source of intent from the actual process of hiding, or if I were being simple I'd just give the spell the same penalty as the penalty to spot the object normally, assuming the creator of the hidden thing has at least basic familiarity with magical security. None of this is particularly weird, it's basically just applying the law of contagion.

[Kromm]

I don't dispute what Remove Aura says – I just don't think it's right. For one thing, it's a lot harder on the GM to have to debate motive, which is what the aura presumably conveys. For another, it raises odd questions as to whether a no-mana "bath" is a countermeasure. That spell's origins in Grimoire, where I happen to know the playtesters called out this problem and were ignored, doesn't fill me with confidence, either.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Kromm

I don't dispute what Remove Aura says – I just don't think it's right. For one thing, it's a lot harder on the GM to have to debate motive, which is what the aura presumably conveys. For another, it raises odd questions as to whether a no-mana "bath" is a countermeasure. That spell's origins in Grimoire, where I happen to know the playtesters called out this problem and were ignored, doesn't fill me with confidence, either.

Ah. Thank you. A lot of the Grimoire stuff seems like it has been an issue. Unfortunately common when dealing with add on stuff rather then part of the core testing and design.
I wish we could have a redesign of that book.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Kromm

I don't dispute what Remove Aura says – I just don't think it's right. For one thing, it's a lot harder on the GM to have to debate motive, which is what the aura presumably conveys. For another, it raises odd questions as to whether a no-mana "bath" is a countermeasure. That spell's origins in Grimoire, where I happen to know the playtesters called out this problem and were ignored, doesn't fill me with confidence, either.

We know that See Secrets is based on History and Aura. We know that it only works on things that are deliberately hidden. We know that the history spell allows determining the user's personality. Aura does not normally work on objects at all, but also functions primarily to detect the subject's personality. We can conclude from Prehistory that the fact an object took part in an important event is relevant.

To me, it's a very obvious implication that it's a form of psychometry, that is specifically focused on willfully hiding things. This is not a particularly esoteric interpretation of GURPS Magic, an awful lot of things focus on intent. As far as difficulty for the GM goes, the easiest option by far for the GM is removing the spell, like many information spells in GURPS Magic it's grossly overpowered as written.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Refplace

Ah. Thank you. A lot of the Grimoire stuff seems like it has been an issue. Unfortunately common when dealing with add on stuff rather then part of the core testing and design.
I wish we could have a redesign of that book.

I wish I had been able to oversee the creation of GURPS Magic for GURPS Fourth Edition. As one of the playtesters of Grimoire, back before I worked for SJ Games, I know that a lot of playtest input was lost or squeezed out by the schedule; as one of the authors has since informed me, even some final-draft changes met that fate. Questions like "How do spells know motives?" and "What is an aura, who has one, and how is it contagious on objects?" came up and weren't addressed. Consequently, that work's handling of Knowledge spells, Information-class spells, and countermeasures against these is highly suspect.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Anthony

We know that See Secrets is based on History and Aura. We know that it only works on things that are deliberately hidden. We know that the history spell allows determining the user's personality. Aura does not normally work on objects at all, but also functions primarily to detect the subject's personality. We can conclude from Prehistory that the fact an object took part in an important event is relevant.

To me, it's a very obvious implication that it's a form of psychometry, that is specifically focused on willfully hiding things.

My point is that this is roundabout and argument-prone. "Finds secrets made hard to see through physical craft" is straightforward, and reduces the spell to sensible power levels. "Finds anything that someone with a mind thought about hiding and then hid" is complex, open to overpowered interpretations (or complete nerfings), brings up weirdness about people changing their mind or brainwashing themselves with Autohypnosis, and still doesn't address the mundane sensory limitations on vision (can the user see this aura even in total darkness, or a mile away?), where going with physical detection implies at least some chance of seeing something using eyeballs. The appeal to prerequisites convinces me of nothing; most prerequisites are pretty arbitrary, and reading them as "based on" is wishful (how is Dream Viewing "based on" Truthsayer, for instance?).

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Kromm

I wish I had been able to oversee the creation of GURPS Magic for GURPS Fourth Edition.

I know this has come up before, but is a 5th edition of Magic out of the question?