Question: You can use spellcraft to identify a spell as it is being cast. But does this check let you know the target of the spell? As an example of when this could matter quite a lot, *Dominate* allows you to control someone telepathically. You'll really want to know who the evil wizard just tried to dominate!

The rules (3.5/PF) do mention that

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> You make all pertinent decisions about a spell (range, target, area, effect, version, and so forth) when the spell comes into effect,
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so clearly for spells with a longer casting time, you can't know the target until the very end. 

I believe the RAW are simply silent on this issue (certainly the spellcraft skill itself provides only minimal guidance) but I'm wondering if there's something I've missed. Also, I chose target for concreteness, but the situation in general applies to each of the "decisions" mentioned above.

Answer: 
**No.** [Spellcraft only allows you to identify the spell](http://www.d20pfsrd.com/skills/spellcraft), so you just learn what spell it is. No other attributes of the spell as cast (target, exact duration if it varies by caster level, other results of variable rolls, DCs, CLs, etc) are given to you. Expectation otherwise is not supported by the text or commonly used in play in my experience.

You would expect to get the information in the spell description, at least for commonly available spells - like 'that can target one humanoid' - but not which humanoid got Charm cast on them, that it's going to last for 5 rounds, or where the demon Teleported to. In some cases (fireball) it's obvious, in others you might allow a Perception or other check (possibly opposed by Bluff if they're being sly) to determine things that could reasonably be determined, like a spell's target. If it's a custom or rare spell not known to the Spellcrafter in question, I would require some more intensive-DC Knowledge:Arcana rolls to get some description elements, just like when identifying a monster.
**RAW doesn't state it explicitly, but I'd be forced to lean no**. d20srd's table for possible Spellcraft checks notes this among the possible uses for Spellcraft:

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> 20 + spell level : Identify a spell that’s already in place and in effect. You must be able to see or detect the effects of the spell. No action required. No retry.
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I mention this because it implies that **although a Spellcraft check will let you identify the spell being cast, it doesn't give you any information about the effects of the spell**. You have to deduce that information from what you know about the spell and the caster, or whatever other sources of information are available to you. Fortunately, most spells make this pretty obvious. When the caster points in a given direction and a fireball flies out that way, you can get a good idea of what the target is. But spells like *dominate person* (and its cousins) are more subtle. They're designed not to leave clues quite so out in the open.

**If the goal is to detect when someone has been dominated, there are other ways to do that**. The spell has an ongoing effect, so you can look for its aura with *detect magic*. Once you've detected the effect, you could then work backwards: for example, attempting a Spellcraft check to figure out that this was the work of a *dominate person* spell.