Clouds spells and concealment

[kabreras]

Hello,

Could anyone explain me the concealement from clouds spells.
Does it affect peoples inside it ? outside it beeing hit by insiders ?

It is generally seen as a good control effect but isnt it anoying for the tanks and melers if their targets get concealement free blur to oponents is not that a good idea ?

[cc_kizz]

I've wondered about that myself. If you cloud yourself, how can you see your opponents?

[Namfuak]

Unless I'm mistaken, attacks made into and out of a cloud would have to deal with concealment penalties.

[tyckspoon]

If you have to drop a cloud or other vision-impairing effect on yourself, generally it'll be to equalize the situation between yourself and superior enemy forces, such as denying sight to ranged opponents while you close the distance or so you can deal with the melee portion of the encounter in peace, or maybe you're up against a dangerous heavy hitter where you benefit from the defensive aspects of concealment while fighting back with Targeted or Area spells that don't suffer from it. If you're throwing it on top of a group at range, it's.. well, still for the same basic purposes- you're trying to force them out of an advantageous position or stopping them from shooting you or pitching spells at you.

The various fogs/clouds are generally not something you'll often use in a confined fight. But being able to generate a largish patch of broken sight and reduced movement is pretty useful in more spread out combats.

[Wookie-ranger]

or it is a fog created by Silent image. it is stationary, makes no sound, cannot be interacted with; therefore no save to disbelief for the enemies, but you can still see normally. and if you tell your allies that it is only an illusion they can make a save at +4. sort of cheese, but its kind of what the spell is for.
Win all around. :smallbiggrin:

[kabreras]

or it is a fog created by Silent image. it is stationary, makes no sound, cannot be interacted with; therefore no save to disbelief for the enemies, but you can still see normally. and if you tell your allies that it is only an illusion they can make a save at +4. sort of cheese, but its kind of what the spell is for.
Win all around. :smallbiggrin:

How come you can still see normally ?
And why does allies get a save when enemies do not...

Or you count it as you say and no save for everyone and it become a cheap easy fog or everyone save for it and if they make it they still see the fog... they just know its a fake one but still cant see anything, friends or foes..

[Gwendol]

Gaining concealment can be a huge advantage: it denies charging for example.
Illusions of clouds are iffy, I mean; once the player is in the cloud, how do you not disbelieve (the player tries to interact with it: noticing a lack of swirl when moving through etc)
A better trick is to use the Snowsight/Obscuring snow combo, for example.

[kabreras]

But if you disbeleve an illusory cloud, ok you get ride of the movement impairement, but well the illusion dont diseapear, so you still cant see anything ?

[Andreaz]

or it is a fog created by Silent image. it is stationary, makes no sound, cannot be interacted with; therefore no save to disbelief for the enemies, but you can still see normally. and if you tell your allies that it is only an illusion they can make a save at +4. sort of cheese, but its kind of what the spell is for.
Win all around. :smallbiggrin:

This relies on "interact" being defined as something that involves getting up close and touching it.
It doesn't. "To Interact" is not defined within the illusion's rules. Plus, your definition has far too many flaws.
Better to leave it open ended: As long as the character commits an action to study or modify the illusion, it is being interacted with.
Things like careful observation, experimentation, observing how others interact with it...

[Gwendol]

But if you disbeleve an illusory cloud, ok you get ride of the movement impairement, but well the illusion dont diseapear, so you still cant see anything ?

If you disbelieve the illusion, the effects of the illusion also goes away: you'll see just fine.

[Darrin]

Could anyone explain me the concealement from clouds spells.
Does it affect peoples inside it ? outside it beeing hit by insiders ?


Mist/fog/cloud/smoke effects:

1) Is your target adjacent to you and inside a fog cloud? If yes, then your target gets concealment (20% miss chance).

2) Is there at least one full 5' square between you and your target's square? If so, then your target has total concealment. Thus, you do not have "line of sight" (LOS) and cannot target them directly. You can target their square, but they get a 50% miss chance. Area effects may work normally.



It is generally seen as a good control effect but isnt it anoying for the tanks and melers if their targets get concealement free blur to oponents is not that a good idea ?

If the meatbags are getting torn apart with ranged attacks, then it's probably a good idea. Fog clouds tend to level the playing field, forcing both sides into melee. If both sides are in the cloud, then they both have the same miss chance.

Note that you can stand inside but on the edge of the cloud to attack targets standing outside the cloud: you get concealment but they don't. You can also negate your target's concealment via faerie fire or the Pierce Magical Concealment feat.

[The Gilded Duke]

Illusions that are disbelieved become semi transparent, so you can see through them with no ill effects. Telling your allies that it is an illusion gives them +4 on saves. Disbelieving an illusion requires a move or standard action, and some manner of interacting with an illusion. Illusionary fog clouds can be interacted with, a move action to study the Fog for example would give a save.

The nice thing about Illusions is that generally you cannot disbelieve them when it is not your turn. An illusionist is great for any rogues in the party. Enemy goes first, does some stuff. Illusionist puts up illusionary cloud around them or something. The Enemy can't save against the cloud until their turn... as they cannot see they lose their dex bonus to AC. Rogues then go and sneak attack. Also great for high dex enemies like wisps. Illusions do not allow SR. Also mindless creatures cannot attempt to disbelieve illusions, although creatures with blindsense / blindsight can negate sight based illusions. Great against giant spiders and undead though.

[Namfuak]

I was just thinking, if your whole party had a spare Blindfold of True Darkness, putting down a cloud when you were fighting strong melee opponents would be very useful.

[Wookie-ranger]

This relies on "interact" being defined as something that involves getting up close and touching it.
It doesn't. "To Interact" is not defined within the illusion's rules. Plus, your definition has far too many flaws.
Better to leave it open ended: As long as the character commits an action to study or modify the illusion, it is being interacted with.
Things like careful observation, experimentation, observing how others interact with it...

hmm,true enough. in the rules for figments do say 'study' can allow a save.
none the less that is an action that the enemy would have take and couldn't use to attack/move/etc. and that still does not mean that they make the save.

if fog is to 'unbalanced' (which i don't think so) just create another object, like a big closet, a wall, a tower shield, an elephant, a simple black plane of nothing.
hide behind (or within) and you get full concealment, and range attacked are to far away to study or interact. but since you can disbelief your qwn illusions you can still see normally. but this is kind of off topic, since the question was about clouds...

[The Gilded Duke]

It's actually really nasty lock down if you can get two illusionists, or otherwise cast two illusion spells per turn. Like with a familiar casting or something. Wizard casts silent image. Familiar uses wand of Silent image. Both on the boss monster who is not immune to illusions (doesn't matter what his save is)

Boss uses Standard Action and sees through Illusion 1, Uses Move action and sees through Illusion 2, only has a swift action yet. If using wands of 50 charges each, you can keep someone locked down for a long time with that, the whole while your rogue is loving their sneak attacks.

[Talionis]

I thought I saw a link to a magical item that let you see through fog spells (cloak). I want to say it was online material, my google-fu was not up to par. Wait I found it: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fw/20050311a

[Wookie-ranger]

It's actually really nasty lock down if you can get two illusionists, or otherwise cast two illusion spells per turn. Like with a familiar casting or something. Wizard casts silent image. Familiar uses wand of Silent image. Both on the boss monster who is not immune to illusions (doesn't matter what his save is)

Boss uses Standard Action and sees through Illusion 1, Uses Move action and sees through Illusion 2, only has a swift action yet. If using wands of 50 charges each, you can keep someone locked down for a long time with that, the whole while your rogue is loving their sneak attacks.

maybe; question:
does 'immune to Illusions' means that you auto-succeed on a save?
also do you roll (and auto succeed) a save automatically even when you are not interacting, and studying the illusion?
or does it mean that you see through them automatically, and there for don't need to spend any action on rolling a save?

[candycorn]

Also, note that fog effects benefit melee characters without reach most.

Also, if you're at the edge of a fog effect, and are aiming out of it, you have concealment, but your target does not. So it can make a great hidey place for archery regiments.

[The Gilded Duke]

Things that automatically see through illusions, things with blindsight, true seeing etc, just see through them whenever they are cast. A note though that many of those abilities have limited range, so can't defeat illusions that are further away, most illusion spells are long range, so can still be effective against True Seeing. For the Image line, you have to interact with them to get a save. No automatic save when they are cast, and interaction takes an action. So unless you have some way to interact as an immediate action (there is probably a way in some book somewhere) you have to wait until your turn.

[Mystify]

If you are blind, you are immune to visual illusions. You would have a very hard time convincing me that a blind person needs to interact with a silent image to realize its not there. By extension, if you are immune to illusions from some other source, you should ignore it in the first place.

[The Gilded Duke]

I was saying blindsight, not blindness. Not every creature with blindsight or blindsense is blind. Many of them have other senses that extend outside their blindsight range. Through using illusions outside of their blindsight range you are tricking their other senses.

Lets say a dolphin, I believe it has blindsight 120 feet? If you are behind an illusion 200 feet away, blindsight does nothing for it.

Now if you were talking about a blind person with no other senses, it wouldn't even come up, they have no means of even noticing the illusion, let alone realizing that it is fake. If you have someone with blindsight 60 feet and no other senses, you can be 70 feet away and they will not see you at all, illusion or not.