Group info

[Yemin]

Since the group command shows all current HP, MP and SP of everyone in the group.

Is there any IC way for a member of a group to determine someone's current MP.

I mean HP is pretty obvious and SP could be that they look out of breath. But what about MP?

I know Path finder has a spell to roughly determine how many spell slots a caster has left in a roundabout fashion and would be one of those spells like prestigitation and mage hand that we usually relegate to smotes rather than code here.

But would it be acceptable to people for say, a caster to use a self made divination in a smote to determine this? And if so, how would fighters go about it?

What do you think?

[Alitar]

I feel like if your toon spends a LOT of time travelling with another, and has seen them cast a bunch of stuff, it's probably fair for you to assume your toon might have about as good an idea of what sort of spell capacity the other has. Guesswork on your part being supplemented a little bit by the MP shown on group command doesn't seem obtuse in that situation. If it is a stranger, or even a friendly who you don't adventure with much, I think assuming an awareness of their MP is a bit out of line. I tend to have my characters wait for the other toon to speak up if they need to recover spells.
Curious to hear others' thoughts on the topic.

[Lirith]

I think asking if someone needs to rest is fine, for any class leading a group. It's possible that if someone knew a caster very very well as Alitar said, then they might be familiar with someone's spell list, but in most cases, you probably can't tell IC since one caster might need to rest when their MP is at 60% and another might not need to until they are at 20% depending on how their list is set up. Being able to see the numbers in a group is convenient so that you can get an idea when a rest might be coming, but I see the MP part in particular as pretty OOC compared to the other two since it's not something you can determine through IC means.

[Areia]

I've always imagined (and roleplayed my characters this way) that expending large amounts of magic will have a physically draining effect on the caster. Like people who've seen Areia especially during and after those insanely massive fights with imm events and spawns might notice her growing visibly tired in the face and slower in speech and reflex, all the way up to that one time she legitimately just passed right the hell out despite 100s in HP and MV both (man, that one was fun. One fight drained her from 100m to like mid teens lol). Even putting aside the sometimes physically demanding gestures and motions an arcane caster has to make to throw his spells, I always come back to thinking of the sheer amounts of Weave energy one would have to manipulate, and thus bear in himself, to actually make all that magic happen. Probably nearing deadly amounts in all, to loose over a hundred spells most of which are well over the minor cantrip level, or so I envision. Ditto for primary divine casters, only its pure (un)holy divinity that threatens to tear them apart instead of the Weave.

Ultimately, as with most things, I try to keep my thinking to my own PCs and let others RP it how they will as best as my imagination can. So if I see low MP, I'll usually not say anything IC unless the caster gives a sign first, but in my head I invariably go, "Man, that guy has some really strong magical fortitude to keep on going like that," if they don't. The one exception to this is people like rangers and paladins, whom I rarely if ever imagine tiring out by praying because they do so relatively little of it.