How do you handle magic item identification?

[Klandare]

I was wondering how DM's have been doing magic item id'ing.

My party is currently going through Princes of Apocalypse and they just picked up Ironfang. I know that they can spend a short rest concentrating on it to gain the knowledge of it's properties. But the thing I am wondering about is the fact that it also has the curse part attached to it. (The I like to break things and cause ruin.)

In FG, how to work around exposing all of it? Do you make a note of it but edit the description of the item that is on the character that is carrying/wielding it?

Thanks for any help on this.

[Zacchaeus]

It's up to you I think. There's probably (at least) two schools of thought. The first being that once identified you know that the item is cursed or secondly that you don't know. The first is obviously easier to handle. For the second you would need to duplicate the item (I would suggest) and edit the duplicate so that the cursed information isn't there any more. Then you can substitute the edited copy for the real one in the parcel. Once the PC becomes aware of the curse you can swap the real one back in. Whilst that is going on all you can do is take a note of whatever thing should be happening to the PC. For some things like a negative to a stat or to hit etc you can place an effect on the player in the CT but set it to hidden so that the player doesn't know. Some things however are a bit more nebulous and can't really be automated - so all you can do is adjudicate at the time. And keep notes.

[Dracius]

Group found a cursed sentient item I made recently.

To deal with the curse, I didn't let them know what the curse was until they attuned to it. I gave hints that this was something evil and was causing harm to them, but that didn't deter the Warlock from attuning to the Great Axe anyway to just to find out more about it.

As for the personality of the weapon, I made a story note and linked to it on the item but didn't share the story note. I could easily view it by opening the item and clicking the link, but the players got an error whenever they tried. I was fine with this because they knew it was sentient but I didn't want to reveal all the details about it's personality right away.

[Mavrik6666]

We do the same sort of things.... unshared story/notes in the item description for unique/ cursed / enhanced items

Un-attuned items - we ID ( no curses, just basic usage) with 1 hour of messing about with it - great for potions, wand of MM etc... but we dont give out charges, so at players risk
Attuned - you have to attune - we ID (no curses, but all other info - inc charges) an hour to attune
Identify - gives you item names, command words, usage, charges and if its cursed ( we think there has to be a good reason to use the spell, not having to attune, thus activating good and bad, plus curse info makes it worth the spell)

[Dracius]

Un-attuned items - we ID ( no curses, just basic usage) with 1 hour of messing about with it - great for potions, wand of MM etc... but we dont give out charges, so at players risk
Attuned - you have to attune - we ID (no curses, but all other info - inc charges) an hour to attune
Identify - gives you item names, command words, usage, charges and if its cursed ( we think there has to be a good reason to use the spell, not having to attune, thus activating good and bad, plus curse info makes it worth the spell)

This is a great way to handle it and I agree with allowing the Identify spell to trump the other forms of identification, especially in regards to cursed items.

[lostsanityreturned]

I make characters take an Int [arcana, religion or nature] check (depending on where the magic comes from) during a short rest if they don't wish to use identify. This check is DC 10 + (item rarityx2)
(common =1, uncommon=2, rare =3, very rare=4, legendary=5

This will give them basic information on the item such as the schools of magic involved in it's construction, maybe the age, if it seems to react to them, possible dormant powers and such. Anything else has to be discovered through trial and error or identify.

Identify figures out all of the general magical abilities of an item however curses are left unknown. Because identify can be cast as a ritual and has no material cost, curses would be a non effect otherwise.

This said I allow other spells to give hints as to a curse being active, detect magic, legend lore or environmental hints are all good. Detect evil is a fun one... I like to have curses be subtle sometimes, effecting a player without their knowledge or slowly ramping up.

I don't use them often, but I feel like they are option to add some tension and uncertainty.