Illusion contest and rulings

[michaelmichael]

It seems that we need a more solid body of rules for illusion spells.

Can the illusions for example, make a vacuum, and by which spells? Damage and disabling effects, are they purely limited to the shadow spells? Or is there some sort of illusory damage/death condition that merely renders unconscious? What should the area and reactivity limits of the lower level spells be? What constitutes interaction with and illusion of, for example, fog?

Lot's of questions afoot, so please, post your most dubious illusions, that me may form case studies.

:thog:

[supermonkeyjoe]

Illusion rules from the SRD:

Illusion

Illusion spells deceive the senses or minds of others. They cause people to see things that are not there, not see things that are there, hear phantom noises, or remember things that never happened.
Figment

A figment spell creates a false sensation. Those who perceive the figment perceive the same thing, not their own slightly different versions of the figment. (It is not a personalized mental impression.) Figments cannot make something seem to be something else. A figment that includes audible effects cannot duplicate intelligible speech unless the spell description specifically says it can. If intelligible speech is possible, it must be in a language you can speak. If you try to duplicate a language you cannot speak, the image produces gibberish. Likewise, you cannot make a visual copy of something unless you know what it looks like.

Because figments and glamers (see below) are unreal, they cannot produce real effects the way that other types of illusions can. They cannot cause damage to objects or creatures, support weight, provide nutrition, or provide protection from the elements. Consequently, these spells are useful for confounding or delaying foes, but useless for attacking them directly.

A figment’s AC is equal to 10 + its size modifier.
Glamer

A glamer spell changes a subject’s sensory qualities, making it look, feel, taste, smell, or sound like something else, or even seem to disappear.
Pattern

Like a figment, a pattern spell creates an image that others can see, but a pattern also affects the minds of those who see it or are caught in it. All patterns are mind-affecting spells.
Phantasm

A phantasm spell creates a mental image that usually only the caster and the subject (or subjects) of the spell can perceive. This impression is totally in the minds of the subjects. It is a personalized mental impression. (It’s all in their heads and not a fake picture or something that they actually see.) Third parties viewing or studying the scene don’t notice the phantasm. All phantasms are mind-affecting spells.
Shadow

A shadow spell creates something that is partially real from extradimensional energy. Such illusions can have real effects. Damage dealt by a shadow illusion is real.
Saving Throws and Illusions (Disbelief)

Creatures encountering an illusion usually do not receive saving throws to recognize it as illusory until they study it carefully or interact with it in some fashion.

A successful saving throw against an illusion reveals it to be false, but a figment or phantasm remains as a translucent outline.

A failed saving throw indicates that a character fails to notice something is amiss. A character faced with proof that an illusion isn’t real needs no saving throw. If any viewer successfully disbelieves an illusion and communicates this fact to others, each such viewer gains a saving throw with a +4 bonus.



I don't see how you're supposed to be producing all of those effects with an illusion spell, are you going by the "the rules don't say I can't therefore I can" line of thinking?

[Cog]

Also, are you talking about the Illusion school, or the Image line? There's a very big difference.

[Gamer Girl]

It seems that we need a more solid body of rules for illusion spells.

Can the illusions for example, make a vacuum, and by which spells? Damage and disabling effects, are they purely limited to the shadow spells? Or is there some sort of illusory damage/death condition that merely renders unconscious? What should the area and reactivity limits of the lower level spells be? What constitutes interaction with and illusion of, for example, fog?

Lot's of questions afoot, so please, post your most dubious illusions, that me may form case studies.

The 3E rules cover quite well what an illusion can and can't do.

1.There is not a core spell that can create an illusion of a vacuum, per say. Anything that 'hid' whatever was in an area to make it look like an illusion would be a glamer type illusion spell. You need a Hallucinatory Terrain type spell to make an vacuum looking area(but not that spells, maybe variant).

2.Tons of illusions have damage and disabling effects, not just shadow type illusions. Look at color spray, phantasmal killer or nightmare for example.

3.Color spray can knock a foe unconscious, so can Scintillating
Pattern.

4.This is found in the spell descriptions under area of effect.

5.The players handbook/core rules has the rules for this.

[The Glyphstone]

Illusions don't work like they do in Another Gaming Comic. You can't make illusionary air or illusionary vacumn that suffocates people, since those are real effects. The best you could make is an illusion of vacumn that looks like it has no air...so it'd look like air.

[michaelmichael]

Illusions don't work like they do in Another Gaming Comic. You can't make illusionary air or illusionary vacumn that suffocates people, since those are real effects. The best you could make is an illusion of vacumn that looks like it has no air...so it'd look like air.

Illusions need not be strictly visible in nature. The vacuum being an example of a strictly non-visual one. A person can feel as though they are suffocating without actually doing so. Similarly, a room with a vacuum may contain the illusion of air, a much more evil application IMO. As far as core goes, I usually refer to major image, programmed illusion,or screen, since I regard them as the benchmarks of the school.


The 3E rules cover quite well what an illusion can and can't do.

They still suffer some problems. For example, the glamer subschool says that it cannot protect you from elemental damage, but silence, a glamer, does protect against sonic attacks.

Perhaps my pitch was too broad for an overhaul. I should have phrased things more specifically. Let's consider the more narrow range of figments and glamers of 3.5. Real damage may not be caused, but is it possible to convince someone they have taken real damage? If so, to what extent, if not, why? Can a one armed man be fooled into thinking he has regrown a new arm? Can another be fooled into believing himself an amputee? Experiments in the field of prosthetics and neurology suggest that this may be possible for real world tech, so why not for magical effects?
:thog:

[theForce017]

Another member I am playing in a campaign with came up with an interesting use of illusion. He figured you could encase an enemy NPC in a steel box that was air tight. This would make the NPC feel as if he couldn't breathe and after a few rounds (w/o Holding Breath Rules/Suffocation) he would go unconscious due to the fact that his mind shut down thinking he couldn't breathe. Once unconscious however, his subconscious would take over and he would not suffocate because he really could breathe the whole time. This would then lead to the party manacling the NPC and questioning him or just coup de grace.

[FMArthur]

I don't think making an illusory vacuum works unless they understand all the things that implies, though. What medieval warrior would even know that an airless empty space is possible, let alone its effects on breathing beings?

[Rejakor]

Any medieval warrior who has been underwater. Or trapped underground.

'I can't breathe, omg, omg, omg' is pretty universally understood to be Bad.

Illusions are pretty stupid in the way they work. They should either be able to give false sensory input (like 'omg I can't breathe'), or they shouldn't. Not this half/half bullcrap.

[The Glyphstone]

Any medieval warrior who has been underwater. Or trapped underground.

'I can't breathe, omg, omg, omg' is pretty universally understood to be Bad.

Illusions are pretty stupid in the way they work. They should either be able to give false sensory input (like 'omg I can't breathe'), or they shouldn't. Not this half/half bullcrap.

Being underwater and being in a vacumn are different - one is visually obvious, the other isn't. If you stick a medieval warrior in a room where the only clue something is wrong is that he can't hear any sound, his first thought will be 'silence magic', not 'I'm in a vacumn, I can't breath aaaaargh'.

[cfalcon]

Many of these ideas are brought over from 2ed or 1ed, where illusions were much more real. The "image" lines, which are the inheritors of Phantasmal Force, Improved Phantasmal Force, Spectral Force, Permanent Illusion, and Programmed Illusion, all are now "figments". Figments create sensations, and they are limited as to what sensations they create.

It is also quite clear that you can't create a figment that "erases" something. In other words, while you could create an illusionary that is solid steel, and thus obscure line of sight to someone on the other side for those affected, you could not create an "illusion of air" around you (an attempt to duplicate a glamor, such as invisibility).

Illusion of vacuum is not replicatable with a figment, and not with any generic glamours in the book.
Illusions no longer deal "fake damage" unless you "disbelieve"
Touching a figment grants automatic disbelief in said figment, no save needed.
Interacting with most illusions grants a save. Interaction can be interpreted as loosely as studying carefully. The sage did a pretty good section on illusion, but he seems to make up some rules that restrict illusions to pretty dumb things.

Being in an illusion of a fireball would grant automatic disbelief.


In 2ed, there were a lot of funny things you could do. Most of them don't work any more.

[Rejakor]

Being underwater and being in a vacumn are different - one is visually obvious, the other isn't. If you stick a medieval warrior in a room where the only clue something is wrong is that he can't hear any sound, his first thought will be 'silence magic', not 'I'm in a vacumn, I can't breath aaaaargh'.

Until he tries to breathe. And then he can't. And he's like 'holy crap, I can't breathe'.

He wouldn't understand WHY he couldn't hear himself gasping and clawing at his throat, but he would still know that it was a bad thing. Most probably the explanation he would come to was that the room had been filled with unbreathable gas, as they used to come across that in mines, it killed a lot of miners back in the day.


@ cfalcon;

See, I would really prefer if illusions were mind-affecting. Like, you saw the sorcerer toss a fireball, and you thought it had burned you. So instead of say, charging at him, you run away and seek a cleric. When you looked at your limbs you see burned flesh, and feel pain, etc.

[The Glyphstone]

Until he tries to breathe. And then he can't. And he's like 'holy crap, I can't breathe'.

He wouldn't understand WHY he couldn't hear himself gasping and clawing at his throat, but he would still know that it was a bad thing. Most probably the explanation he would come to was that the room had been filled with unbreathable gas, as they used to come across that in mines, it killed a lot of miners back in the day.



Except he can breathe, because he's only in the illusion of a vacumn. There is breathable air there, and your respiratory system is not a sense - sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell (and heat for Major Image, apparently). He wouldn't stop breathing - if anything, he'd struggle harder to breath...and when it worked, that'd cause him to disbelieve the 'unbreathable gas'.

[michaelmichael]

Until he tries to breathe. And then he can't. And he's like 'holy crap, I can't breathe'.

He wouldn't understand WHY he couldn't hear himself gasping and clawing at his throat, but he would still know that it was a bad thing. Most probably the explanation he would come to was that the room had been filled with unbreathable gas, as they used to come across that in mines, it killed a lot of miners back in the day.

Exactly. There are sensations of being unable to breathe, even though a "lack of air" is not an object, just like cold is the absence of heat but there is still a distinct sensation for it.


Many of these ideas are brought over from 2ed or 1ed, where illusions were much more real. The "image" lines, which are the inheritors of Phantasmal Force, Improved Phantasmal Force, Spectral Force, Permanent Illusion, and Programmed Illusion, all are now "figments". Figments create sensations, and they are limited as to what sensations they create. It is also quite clear that you can't create a figment that "erases" something. In other words, while you could create an illusionary that is solid steel, and thus obscure line of sight to someone on the other side for those affected, you could not create an "illusion of air" around you (an attempt to duplicate a glamor, such as invisibility).
How about a movable duck blind? or a black square at night?


Illusion of vacuum is not replicatable with a figment, and not with any generic glamours in the book.
I would agree that a vacuum should probably be a glamer not a figment.


Illusions no longer deal "fake damage" unless you "disbelieve". Touching a figment grants automatic disbelief in said figment, no save needed. Interacting with most illusions grants a save. Interaction can be interpreted as loosely as studying carefully. The sage did a pretty good section on illusion, but he seems to make up some rules that restrict illusions to pretty dumb things.
If touching grants automatic disbelief then why do some figments and glamers have tactile components?


Being in an illusion of a fireball would grant automatic disbelief.
In 2ed, there were a lot of funny things you could do. Most of them don't work any more.
True. I think 3rd could benefit from some overhaul of illusion rules to allow a few more things in.

:thog:

[Bhaakon]

Until he tries to breathe. And then he can't. And he's like 'holy crap, I can't breathe'.

He wouldn't understand WHY he couldn't hear himself gasping and clawing at his throat, but he would still know that it was a bad thing. Most probably the explanation he would come to was that the room had been filled with unbreathable gas, as they used to come across that in mines, it killed a lot of miners back in the day.

Then make it an illusion of a unbreathable gas filling the room, with (for instance) the sound of an opening valve, the hiss of gas, winking out of any torches or lanterns, and the sensation a light breeze as the gas fills the chamber. As was pointed out, medieval, and even D&D-style fantasy, people would have no conception of a vacuum, and , were I the DM, I'd give them a substantial circumstantial bonus on any saves against an illusory vacuum. Good illusions work by insinuating themselves into the viewer's perception of reality, not by blatantly challenging their beliefs.

[bloodtide]

They still suffer some problems. For example, the glamer subschool says that it cannot protect you from elemental damage, but silence, a glamer, does protect against sonic attacks.

Well, a sonic attack is not an elemental effect.



Perhaps my pitch was too broad for an overhaul. I should have phrased things more specifically. Let's consider the more narrow range of figments and glamers of 3.5. Real damage may not be caused, but is it possible to convince someone they have taken real damage? If so, to what extent, if not, why? Can a one armed man be fooled into thinking he has regrown a new arm? Can another be fooled into believing himself an amputee? Experiments in the field of prosthetics and neurology suggest that this may be possible for real world tech, so why not for magical effects?


1.Making someone 'think' they have taken damage is what the shadow type illusion spells do. You don't want figments or glamers doing real damage or even the 'just make them think they took real damage', as that is the same thing. But a phantasm can do real damage, so you can have illusions of this type do damage

2.A glamer could sure make you think you had a new arm or lost one.

3.You can make an illusion that makes someone think they are without air. Again this would be a phantasm

[holywhippet]

Illusions don't work like they do in Another Gaming Comic. You can't make illusionary air or illusionary vacumn that suffocates people, since those are real effects. The best you could make is an illusion of vacumn that looks like it has no air...so it'd look like air.

That isn't quite what they were doing in that game. The vacuum was real - all the air was removed from the room. The illusion was that they thought they were able to breath normally when they were actually suffocating. I'm not sure if this was legal or not since they were playing a 2nd edition game at the time.

[michaelmichael]

Well, a sonic attack is not an elemental effect.

1.Making someone 'think' they have taken damage is what the shadow type illusion spells do. You don't want figments or glamers doing real damage or even the 'just make them think they took real damage', as that is the same thing. But a phantasm can do real damage, so you can have illusions of this type do damage

2.A glamer could sure make you think you had a new arm or lost one.

3.You can make an illusion that makes someone think they are without air. Again this would be a phantasm

Phantasms are mind affecting, so this is correct. However I should have used better language. By 'make them think' I am talking about the more mundane deceptions of senses, rather than any direct control, however partial, over someone's mind. So is it your opinion that glamers cannot create pain? Losing an arm usually counts as damage if it is done painfully. Also phantasms are generally non shared hallucinations, or illusory effects that are observer dependent, of which this is neither. As far as 'fake damage' goes, there are some game play considerations. Do you tell them, you seem to be on fire according to all your senses, except for your infallible 'hit-point sense'? To what effect does a character know their own hp except based on observation of pain and other sensations. Another case study would be numbness. Is it possible to create magical local anesthetics with glamers?
:thog:

[cfalcon]

If a figment specifies a tactile component, then you could touch it and not automatically disbelieve. That's really uncommon for a figment, though, and not at all in the core spells. Which figment were you thinking of?

Anyway, here's the figment stuff again.

Skip Williams wrote a pretty big thing on this:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/rg/20060207a

That's one of like four or something. Note that he does assume some extra limitations on illusions that aren't in the rules.


Figment

A figment spell creates a false sensation. Those who perceive the figment perceive the same thing, not their own slightly different versions of the figment. (It is not a personalized mental impression.) Figments cannot make something seem to be something else. A figment that includes audible effects cannot duplicate intelligible speech unless the spell description specifically says it can. If intelligible speech is possible, it must be in a language you can speak. If you try to duplicate a language you cannot speak, the image produces gibberish. Likewise, you cannot make a visual copy of something unless you know what it looks like.

Because figments and glamers (see below) are unreal, they cannot produce real effects the way that other types of illusions can. They cannot cause damage to objects or creatures, support weight, provide nutrition, or provide protection from the elements. Consequently, these spells are useful for confounding or delaying foes, but useless for attacking them directly.

[cfalcon]

Ok, so the way we played the "fake damage" back in 2ed:

If a player took illusory damage (as from an illusionary fireball that they did not try to actively disbelieve), then they believed themselves to be burned, or otherwise damaged. You would tell them the damage as DM (or the player would tell you the damage). I believe there was a saving throw granted if you dealt more damage than you possibly could, but that was a pretty silly thing. So players would wonder, do I have illusory damage? If one of your buddies saw it for being fake, then he would communicate that to you, and then you would get another save, this time with a +4 bonus (or a save at all, if you never tried to disbelieve).

If someone came up and healed you, it would heal your real wounds, and you would also believe it healed your fake wounds. I don't recall if this was a houserule, but it's similar to the way nonlethal damage is healed.

In any event, if your number of believed hit points ever dropped to 0, you were knocked out, because your mind told your body it was dead, or something.


As you can see, there's some balance issues here. For instance, a party with a bunch of intelligent familiars or followers would frequently always have a disbeliever or two. Meanwhile a smaller party of 2-4 characters would frequently have to deal with every illusionist as if he was pretty much any old thing.

Oh, there was a flipside: if you said "I disbelieve" and it was NOT an illusion, then you didn't get a save.


Overall, yes, it was a blast, but it played very differently in each group.

One of the more famous spellduels in any of my campaigns involved an illusionary fireball with below average damage, which let the victor let the loser be knocked out instead of killed.


I think most of these rules, or various versions of them, are descendants from 1ed. In 1ed, illusionist was its own class. It had its own spell list, with 7 levels. You were basically a wizard in all ways, except your spell list was totally different. A magic-user (wizard) couldn't really do any illusions, and you couldn't really do any real effects. So illusions HAD to be amazing, because there was a class just about them. Moving to 2ed, the illusionist was rolled into the mage, and so the mage became this double class, and had better illusions than he should have. 3ed still has really good illusions- they just can't damage people unless they are tagged shadow, and you actually have to roll dice instead of being like "take just TONS of fire, this is a HUGE fireball". Which, don't get me wrong, was also awesome.

[bloodtide]

Phantasms are mind affecting, so this is correct. However I should have used better language. By 'make them think' I am talking about the more mundane deceptions of senses, rather than any direct control, however partial, over someone's mind.

For an illusion to 'make you think' something, it would need to be mind effecting. That is the point of mind effecting spells.




So is it your opinion that glamers cannot create pain?
No, glamers are not mind-effecting. And having mind-effecting glamers brings up all sorts of sticky problems. Keeping illusions that cause pain as shadow and/or phantasms is much better and simpler.




Losing an arm usually counts as damage if it is done painfully. Also phantasms are generally non shared hallucinations, or illusory effects that are observer dependent, of which this is neither.

This is true of the Core spells, but there are many more spells.




As far as 'fake damage' goes, there are some game play considerations. Do you tell them, you seem to be on fire according to all your senses, except for your infallible 'hit-point sense'? To what effect does a character know their own hp except based on observation of pain and other sensations. Another case study would be numbness. Is it possible to create magical local anesthetics with glamers?

This is one of the reasons why illusions are given such detail in 3E. In the old days you could tell a player 'the fire burns you for 100 damage and you die', then once they 'die' you say 'oh, well that was just an illusion of fire and your just knocked out.' This does not make for very happy players. People don't like to be tricked and/or lied too. And simply not telling someone a detail or two to 'keep it real', is wrong.

But you can make spells that do such things, such as Phantasmal Burning that would make a person think they were on fire and do real damage. You can do the same thing with shadow magic, make a spell 'Flames of Shadow'.

[michaelmichael]

If a figment specifies a tactile component, then you could touch it and not automatically disbelieve. That's really uncommon for a figment, though, and not at all in the core spells. Which figment were you thinking of?

In core tactile is only in glamers, but the figment subschool does not forbid it.(For example the delude epic seed.) Though you do have a point.


For an illusion to 'make you think' something, it would need to be mind effecting. That is the point of mind effecting spells.
Keeping illusions that cause pain as shadow and/or phantasms is much better and simpler.

It does make some things simpler, to restrict pain to mind-affecting effects, but is it realistic? After all, stepping on a nail hurts anyone that has intact nerves in their foot. While exact degree of pain is subjective, the signals start in the foot, and they are just as objective as the nail. Pain should be a sense just like heat and pressure. Both of which I consider tactile senses because in people with severe burns or other skin damage, these senses are often lost in that area.
:thog:

[bloodtide]

The real trick with the type of illusion spells your talking about is the power level. You could make a spell that made the 'illusion' of pain from a wound, but it should not do any more effect then existing spells. So, you could just 'use the real thing'.

For example a spell of under 8th or 9th level that made an illusion of 'a person losing a limb' would be too powerful. The illusion that you 'lost' a limb is too much. It's one thing to give a penalty, but another to take the ability away.

[Toliudar]

In-game logic: I can't find any core glamers or figments that actually create the sensation of touch. And none at all that change pain receptors, proprioreceptors, or the internal information of the body. So growing or losing an arm, for instance, or the sensation of being unable to breath seem to be well outside the realm of these spells. And given the astonishing number of things that an imaginative caster CAN do with illusions, I'd say that's a good thing.

Metagame logic: illusion is already a powerful and fun school. Enchantment is all about changing the way the brain works. Why take away one of the few things it does well by trying to give it away to illusion?

[cfalcon]

I will also add that outside of core, very few spells are as genericly powerful as the image series, and the few area-glamour spells.

In the last game we were in, the group was observing a temporary smuggler hideout, hidden in the basement of a fishing shop. They waited for hours, until some of them left for lunch. They snuck in the back, and then found the concealed basement door. The rogue opened the door, the pixie cast the illusion, choosing cubes that descended down the ladder and into the room, and then he had the images of the crew he had just seen descend quickly into the room. This (and the noise he had them make) covered the noise that opening the hatch would make. He then had them burst into flame and die writhing. Inits were rolled. Without this clever ruse, the PCs would likely have had to deal with readied actions, should they have simply descended the ladder (these guys pointed poisoned arrows at the entrance when they heard the hatch open).



Now, did I play this correctly?

First, I let the pixie have the illusion talk. By the rules, permanent image cannot (programmed image can). I houseruled this away long ago (and made it official this game because the pixie was worried that I would change my mind), because Spectral Force, which Major Image really is, did let people talk.

Second, there were multiple creatures. I think Skip Williams would disagree with this usage or interpretation of what the spell lets you do, but again, I have always let the player dictate the contents of the illusion. By the rules it is debatable, of course, with the vagueness of "...or force". Besides, I wouldn't want to hear the nonsense logic I would get if I did try to tell them it was one image of a creature only inside the boundary boxes:

"Ok, this is an image of a plant-creature as visualized by me. The plant creature consists of very fine, essentially invisible tendrils, but the way it lures its prey is its hooligan-shaped growths, that are independently animated and look and sound like people..."

That's not even bad logic, is the thing. It's supposed to be an illusion.


The biggest thing is that YOU figure out how they work in your game, and be consistent. The baseline rules are for sure a good place to start.