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I'm curious of the official stance on hiding what spell you cast. The question is, if a player wishes to hide what they are casting, can they hide which spell or do they have to announce it? As far as the casting, the somatic components have to be spoken clearly and confidently, and does this mean that they will be heard if you are close to the mage?

Rifts Underseas explains that spells can be cast silently, it just takes twice as long.

It's up to your group to interpret if that applies to all types of spells or if it's limited to ocean magic (or whatever it's called). The official stance isn't clear.

--flatline

Dinne wrote:I'm curious of the official stance on hiding what spell you cast. The question is, if a player wishes to hide what they are casting, can they hide which spell or do they have to announce it? As far as the casting, the somatic components have to be spoken clearly and confidently, and does this mean that they will be heard if you are close to the mage?

Officially there is nothing that says that the spell can be identified by the casting. One reason for this is the mentioned fact that the 'magic words' are often hidden, jumbled, translated and otherwise confused... So just because you hear the caster chanting you don't know if it is a See Aura... or a Dominate. (As a house rule I often allow a roll against principles of magic (perhaps with a penalty or minimum target of success) to identify spells that you can hear being cast. I stress that this is a highly unofficial house rule.).
The spoken portion of magic is required for all spell casting... except when its not.
Some examples: Ocean Magic has rules for casting silent casting... but those rules may or may not only be for Ocean Magic, and they may or may not only be available to the Ocean Wizard OCC; Line Drawings appear to only require being draw and have no verbal component; Chi Magic is again meditative and may or may not require words; There are other examples but most of them are even more specialized and even less relevant to "normal" "spell casting".

The take away here is probably this. Do what is best for your game. If your game is enhanced by covert spell casting then go for it, there is support for that. If you would prefer that mages have to be obvious when they cast spells, but can keep the exact spell secret that too has precedent. And if you want a game where mages go around calling their attacks "Fireball" "Summon Serpent" etc... well guess what? There is precedent for that as well.

Since Eli has covered the canon answer….

I would say that since magic is a personal thing, subjective, the words that are being used to spark the mind to create a spell form are unique to each caster. With each spell caster using different words to cast the same spell.

Thus if you had heard that spell caster casting a spell once before, you might be able to recognize him casting that same spell.

But you would not know what another (new) spell caster was casting until she finished the spell.

Thus, of your group's spell caster had a "rain death from the sky" spell, your char might recognize it and might be able to time his 'Run Away' to get out of the area of effect. If the caster had used that spell before within that char's hearing.

There is also a magic proficiency that lets the char cast by thought alone. Thou, I do know GMs that do not allow it.

Dinne wrote:As far as the casting, the somatic components have to be spoken clearly and confidently

This throws me off a bit... I could have sworn I read in one book that the stuff they speak aloud is nonsense meant to distract listeners and that the actual words of power that create the spell are muttered almost silently in between the nonsense...

Could this still be the case? Maybe magic requires confident utterings of nonsense that can't identify the spell and they can still keep the key words barely audible?

Axelmania wrote:

Dinne wrote:As far as the casting, the somatic components have to be spoken clearly and confidently

This throws me off a bit... I could have sworn I read in one book that the stuff they speak aloud is nonsense meant to distract listeners and that the actual words of power that create the spell are muttered almost silently in between the nonsense...

Could this still be the case? Maybe magic requires confident utterings of nonsense that can't identify the spell and they can still keep the key words barely audible?

That is what Palladium Fantasy says

Glad I wasn't imagining it... maybe it just didn't get included in explanations of casting in the other games' core books?

Answer Accepted.

This thread was very helpful.

Axelmania wrote:Glad I wasn't imagining it... maybe it just didn't get included in explanations of casting in the other games' core books?

Or maybe it works differently in the other games?
They are different games with their own rules after all.

True, perhaps silent casting is only possible on Rifts Earth because of it being so saturated with magic.

There ought to be SOME benefit to being on the planet, given that PF2 saw fit to give it superior (equal by Ultimate) PPE from the ley lines.

Axelmania wrote:True, perhaps silent casting is only possible on Rifts Earth because of it being so saturated with magic.

There ought to be SOME benefit to being on the planet, given that PF2 saw fit to give it superior (equal by Ultimate) PPE from the ley lines.

Well its magic is 100x more powerful...

Unless you're a non-damage spell =/