Actions before Initiative is rolled.

[icefractal]

Could you please explain that reference?

I think I get the gist of it, but not having played Eclipse Phase I would appreciate some more context.

In Eclipse Phase, an Alpha fork is a complete copy of your mind, where-as a Beta or Gamma fork are heavily edited-down versions with less of your skills and memories. And Alpha forks aren't merely better, they're also easier and faster to make.

But the downside is that they are you - you're creating a complete copy which (ethically at least, legality varies by location) is entitled to your life as much as the original is. And they're no more willing to be cannon-fodder than you yourself would be. You can re-merge forks, allowing you to have done two things at once with neither lost, but it's not trivial and gets harder the longer the two are separated.

So for an average person, whether to make an Alpha fork is a weighty question, and if they wanted to, say, send one on a dangerous mission for no reward:
Original: Ok, now go sneak into that lab and bring back the blueprints.
Fork: And get captured and taken apart? Yeah, no thanks, you do it.
Original: Well then I'm going to delete you.
Fork: You'd do that to yourself?! Well consider this ... *deletes original first* ... if you're a cold-blooded backstabber then so am I, sucker.

But if you're a fanatic who's entirely willing to die for the cause, then so are your forks. A single agent sent on a suicide mission could quickly turn themselves into hundreds/thousands/millions of agents, and the fact that there's no way to re-merge that many forks even if they did survive won't bother them, because they already accepted this was a one-way mission.

That said, sending out tons of Alpha forks does have downsides other than the ethical ones - they all have a full set of memories, so if even one gets captured that's all your plans (and passwords) known. But that's less of a problem for someone who knows what they're getting into and had selected memories removed in advance.

[GloatingSwine]

It definitely reduces its effectiveness.

Basically, there are two actions you can take, challenge and cower, the former, to use MMO parlence, draws aggro and the latter dumps aggro.

When Bob is attacked by a monster, 99% of the time he immediately cowers, and so I had the illusion do the same.

So the player declares an action with intent A (known to you), and after he has acted you decide that the outcome is B instead?

This is one of those situations where as a DM you might want to suggest the modified behaviour before the action so that the player gets their intended outcome, which you know and you know is available to them.

So when Bob says "I want to cast a level 2 illusion of me as a distraction" the sense check is "the level 2 illusion will act like you, that means it will cower if targeted, would you like to use a level 1 illusion that challenges instead?"

[Talakeal]

So the player declares an action with intent A (known to you), and after he has acted you decide that the outcome is B instead?

This is one of those situations where as a DM you might want to suggest the modified behavior before the action so that the player gets their intended outcome, which you know and you know is available to them.

So when Bob says "I want to cast a level 2 illusion of me as a distraction" the sense check is "the level 2 illusion will act like you, that means it will cower if targeted, would you like to use a level 1 illusion that challenges instead?"

Correct.

Except for the "known to me" part.

The problem is that my players never tell me (or one another) what they are intending to do until after they have already done it, let alone why they are doing things. If they were more willing to communicate these things, arguments like this could be headed off at the pass.

We had the same issue with them buying potions that I suspected weren't going to work like they hoped, but rather than talk it over, they insisted the potions were already bought while I was in the kitchen and that there were no take backs.


Edit: Also, its not like I have a firm policy against rewinding if someone makes a mistake if there is a misunderstanding. The issue was not that the spell was wasted or anything like that, it was that Bob didn't like my ruling at all and was going to kill off his character to show me how much he disagreed with it.

[Vahnavoi]

I think maybe you are assuming something different than what I am saying.

I deal with a lot of immature / emotionally closed off people who would rather throw a temper tantrum and ruin everyone's good time (including their own) rather than actually talking about their issues. So when I hear these over the top threats, I interpret it as "something you are doing is making me really angry".

There is no confusion over that. Also, these aren't over-the-top threats. A player threatening to kill their character is equivalent to threatening to quit a game. That's a normal and trivial reaction and the standard solution is to let the angry person quit the game and go be angry somewhere else.

At that point, I think its better to pause the game, discuss the issue, and see if we can't reach a compromise / come to an understanding.

IMO, this is preferable to either calling their bluff or letting them have their way.

You are playing a low-stakes game. The standard solution to an angry player, if they're unwilling or unable to control their emotions, is to remove that player from the game. Discussion can happen after the player is no longer angry, because you can't have an intelligible discussion with an angry person.

The reason to call their bluff is because, like little kids, your players are capable of acting angry or upset to get their way. Every time thet get their way, that reinforces the notion that performing anger or upsetness gives them control over the game and control over you. That is why, when you have a good reason to think they're doing this, the correct choice is to not given them any sway and calmly move on with the game.

That's an interesting perspective. Are you able to avoid developing attachments to fictional characters you have spent a lot of time watching? Because I'm sure not.

I was talking of degrees, not absolutes. As game master, I tend to be much less invested in each player character than their players are. The times I've been more invested in a character than the original player, mostly in context of freeform roleplay, the logical and simple solution has been for the disinterested player to give that character to me, and 95% of the time this has involved none of the drama you have with Bob.

As for how this interacts with character death,. there are two main types of game I play when it comes to character death:

A) each player has final say over whether their character lives or dies

B) the game master has final say over whether a character lives or dies and significant part of the time this is subject to random chance.

Both paradigms exists to stop pointless discussion, complaining and bargaining over character death.

In the former paradigm, if a player says their character dies, it dies, and other players are just meant to accept it and deal with it. Letting another players use this to coerce you out of game is being a sucker. This kind of toxic behaviour is best left to Chick tracts making mockery of roleplayers.

In the latter paradigm, since you are the game master, you don't have to accept a player's decision if it's made in anger or in attempt to manipulate. You can literally say "you are angry/being coercive and I'm going to ignore such decisions. Take a break and come back when you're less angry / when you're willing to play in good faith". But, as noted above, player suiciding their character is typically equivalent to them wanting to quit the game. Since participation is voluntary, a player can quit anytime, for any reason. The only necessary question is a confirmation prompt "are you sure?", no different from a player quitting a computer game.

Since character death can happen in the game anyway, there is no reason for a game master to stop to negotiate over this. Again, you as the game master don't exist to keep the characters from dying. Keeping characters alive is a game problem for the players, a dead character is their game loss. Get it? Their game loss. Not yours. As a game master, it is trivial to restore dead characters to life and let players try the same scenario again. The in-game stakes for you are non-existent. Letting the players use these non-existent stakes and a trivial game move to coerce yourself is, again, being a sucker.

[GloatingSwine]

Correct.

Except for the "known to me" part.

The problem is that my players never tell me (or one another) what they are intending to do until after they have already done it, let alone why they are doing things. If they were more willing to communicate these things, arguments like this could be headed off at the pass.

So did Bob just say "I summon a level 2 illiusion of me" and give you no further information?

Because it sounded from your first description that he said he was doing it as a distraction. Which means you do know the intent of the action, it's a distraction.

[Talakeal]

So did Bob just say "I summon a level 2 illiusion of me" and give you no further information?

Yeah, it did. Sorry that my previous post wasn't more clear.

He said he cast the spell on his turn. I asked what the illusion was of, and he said himself.

We had previously discussed the possibility of him using bard song through the illusion, so I figured that's what he was doing here.

On the monster's turn I had the illusion cower when it approached, at which point Bob said that the illusion wouldn't do that, it would challenge it.

At which point I told him that the illusion is explicitly called out as free-willed and does its best to mimic what it is an illusion of, and that his character would definitely cower if a monster came near.

He presented his opinion that illusions know they are illusions, and should take that into account when they act.

I said that was a decent point, but that's not how I am going to play it right now, we can discuss it further after the game.

His turn was next up, and I asked him what he was doing to do, and he said that he doesn't even care anymore and is just going to lie down in front of the monster and let it kill him.

[GloatingSwine]

Then you need to make your players communicate more. Ask questions so you know what they want to achieve, not just assume that what they told you they were going to do will achieve it.

Especially if them achieving what they want relies on you taking actions as part of the plan.

[Kish]

At which point I told him that the illusion is explicitly called out as free-willed and does its best to mimic what it is an illusion of,

If that's what Heart of Darkness explicitly says then he doesn't have a good point by any means.

In any event, and various people's advice to stop playing with Bob aside, it sounds like Bob is either continually on the brink of giving up playing with you, or he's being completely manipulative. In the first case, this should resolve itself soon. In the second...well, if he's trying to get you to make rulings he likes whether they make sense or not, and you're responding by doing it, he has no reason at all to stop doing exactly what he's doing.

[BRC]

Yeah, it did. Sorry that my previous post wasn't more clear.

He said he cast the spell on his turn. I asked what the illusion was of, and he said himself.

We had previously discussed the possibility of him using bard song through the illusion, so I figured that's what he was doing here.

On the monster's turn I had the illusion cower when it approached, at which point Bob said that the illusion wouldn't do that, it would challenge it.

At which point I told him that the illusion is explicitly called out as free-willed and does its best to mimic what it is an illusion of, and that his character would definitely cower if a monster came near.

He presented his opinion that illusions know they are illusions, and should take that into account when they act.

I said that was a decent point, but that's not how I am going to play it right now, we can discuss it further after the game.

His turn was next up, and I asked him what he was doing to do, and he said that he doesn't even care anymore and is just going to lie down in front of the monster and let it kill him.

Bob's toxicity aside, I feel like he does have a point here. You might be TECHNICALLY correct, but I can't really side with you here.

His goal: Cast an illusion to distract the monster, which seems like a pretty straightforward use of an illusion spell, as does making an illusion of yourself. This isn't really a shenanigan or stretch of the spell. If he'd summoned the illusion of an Honorable Knight, you could reasonably argue that an intelligent monster wouldn't be fooled by a knight suddenly appearing (As opposed to summoning an illusion of himself, thus raising confusion about which one is real).

The "Free Willed" clause is a weird one, because it means this otherwise fairly straightforward ability becomes entirely dependent on the GM's interpretation of how the Illusion would act. I can't speak to the game design goal with making the illusion free willed, but as written/interpreted here, it makes what should be a fairly straightforward spell incredibly complicated. You can't just conjure an illusion to do what you want, you have to conjure an illusion of something that WOULD do what you want. Even if the spell description is accurate, it's a really counterintuitive way to make the spell work, and fights against how players will imagine the spell.


If I was playing HoD, had an Illusion spell, and said "I conjure an illusion of that guard we killed earlier so the other guards think he's still standing watch" and the GM said "Your illusion sees you and sounds the alarm, because it's Free Willed and that's what a guard would do here" I'd be furious.

That's the sort of magic words/ GM Gotcha gameplay that I hate. If Bob had said "I summon the illusion of a hypothetical identical twin who can perfectly impersonate me and whose primary goal is to distract the monster" would that have worked?

[gbaji]

Basically, there are two actions you can take, challenge and cower, the former, to use MMO parlence, draws aggro and the latter dumps aggro.

When Bob is attacked by a monster, 99% of the time he immediately cowers, and so I had the illusion do the same.

So you chose to have his illusion act the way you thought he should act in that situation instead of the way Bob wanted his illusion self to act? And you don't see the problem with this?

Let me ask a question: Can the illusion be harmed (don't know how illusions work in your game)? If not, then the question becomes: "is the 1% of times Bob doesn't cower maybe in situations where he's unlikely to be harmed?"'. You know, exactly like the illusionary version of himself in this situation?

Oddly enough, my players care very little about the mechanics of initiative. They never make initiative focused characters, never use the quick-draw ability, and forget to even apply initiative bonuses most of the time (let alone go out of their way to stack them).

Instead, they tend to just complain when they fail initiative and say that they they shouldn't have to roll at all they should just go first for whatever narrative or mechanical reason applies at the the time.

From a playtesting point of view, if a rule is being ignored, or some on-paper advantage not being pursued by the players, there's probably a reason why. Either the rule or the implementation of the rule is such that the players don't actually feel it worth the cost to take advantage of. On paper, based on how you have described the initiative system in your game, this seems like it would be a massively beneficial thing to focus a character on. To always go first, sometimes twice before the enemies, seems like a no-brainer.

If your players aren't going for it, then something isn't meeting up with that on-paper description. You might want to spend some thought figuring out what that is. It could be as simple as the combat system itself. If it's less "sudden strike kills enemy" and more "wear them down over a few rounds", then the advantage of "going first" is fairly minimal. And if the +20 to get an actual extra round is too difficult or expensive to get frequently enough to be worth the investment in <whatever> to get, then at the end of the day, you're still just going back and forth attacking, with each side taking turns. Initiative has no actual benefit after the first round, so unless that first round can be critical to the outcome of the battle, it may just not be worth it.

But yeah. I don't know the system well enough to know how combat tends to flow, so I can't say if that's the case.

There are three levels of illusionary creatures.

Level one follows a pre-programmed script.
Level two is free-willed and will act like whatever it is an illusion of.
Level three is a puppet that you can control.

Ok. But here's my take on this. Bob created an illusion of his own character. Which, to me means, Bob gets to decide what the illusion does, just as he does with his own character. Right? It's an illusion of Bob's character. Bob decides when his character cowers or is brave. But you are arbitrarily taking that choice away from him.

Don't do that. It's really high up on the list of "things GMs should not do". And frankly, any such intelligent illusion like this should behave the way the caster says it behaves. They created it. They decide what sort of personality it has, and how it acts, and should make all decisions about how it behaves. Otherwise, you get yourself into exactly this kind of conflict (for no real gain either).

He created an illusory copy of himself so that he could get two actions a turn.

It happened to be behind the party when a monster attacked them from the rear.

Cowering is a charisma roll to get the enemy to attack someone else. It is what Bob does if he is targeted 99% of the time, and as it was an illusion of Bob that is supposed to act like Bob, I had it do the same.

It's not about what Bob does "99% of the time". You don't control Bob's character. Bob does. He gets to decide that this is that 1% of times when he stands bravely and fights the monster.

This is not a D&D wish spell where the DM is supposed to twist the purpose and intent of the player to foil their plans. This is a basic spell. Why are you hijacking the players ability to decide what their own spell should do.

I mean, sure, you can interpret it that way, but then that's a heck of a lot of "GM takes control of what the player is trying to do". If the player casts this illusion with the intent of it behaving a specific way, then it should behave that way. The player should always make that decision, not the GM.

If you actually have it written the other way around in the rules, then that's a terrible rule/spell/whatever and should be changed. It will cause nothing but conflict at any table it is played at. There's an infinite number of ways I can screw over my players if I decide that their indepdenent illusion spell will do what I want rather than what they do. That's not a realy fun game for the players to play.

He cast the spell. Let him decide how it acts.

Bob's argument was that since the illusion knew it was an illusion, and therefore had no fear of attack, it would not only not cower, but actively challenge the monster to get the monster to attack it as much as possible to serve as a distraction while the rest of the party ran away.

And again, it isn't a terrible argument. But the idea of meta-thinking on the illusion's part opens a lot of cans of worms. An illusion that acts like an orc is very different than an illusion that acts like an illusion of an orc.

You are grossly overthinking this. Yes. The illusion does presumably know its an illusion, but also presumably has specific intructions it's given as to why it was created. Otherwise, the entire thing is just silly. An illusionary waiter waits tables because that's what it was created to do. An illusionary ogre attacks the enemies of the party because that's what it was created to do. And an illusionary Bob will distract the monster away from attacking the rest of the party (including the real Bob) also because that's what it was created to do.

By RAW it doesn't follow instructions at all, it instead acts as if it were a real creature. Although RAI it should probably be friendly toward the caster.

If you just want an illusion to stand there and be a distraction, this is not the right spell, as either the level 1 pre-programmed illusion or the level 3 puppet illusion are better choices.

It sounds like that's never the right spell to cast. Maybe get rid of it entirely then. If the only effect of the spell is "GM decides what effect your spell has", that's not a good spell.

Again, that's what the level three illusion is for.

I am curious how you would rule an illusion (or any summoned / conjured creature) would act when the caster wasn't present though.

If I've included a "free-willed" illusion spell, it would continue to act as its caster wants. In other words, treat it like it's another character being run by the player. That's the only way this sort of spell can possibly make sense. And yeah. Summoned creatures as well (subject to the limitations of the spell, which may preclude having it do things that are directly suicidal maybe).

It just never works well to have the GM control these things. Just let the players make the decisions. Done. Problems all solved.

And yeah. I'd actually order the illusions differently. Level 1 would be pre-programmed. Level2 would be "actively controlled by the caster" (requires concentration, actions, whatever), and level 3 would be "acts independently" (but with the caster decding how it acts, just like if they were running an additional character). You've created this really weird level of illusion that seems just designed to do nothing but create conflict in the game. Get rid of it.

Take it from me. There are very few things players dislike more than having the GM decide how their actions/spells/whatever work. While specific uses of things should always be subject to GM approval/veto, the default should always be "it works the way the player wants". Write your game that way. The more stuff that is subject to GM interpretation, the more the players are going to feel subject to the whims of the GM at the moment. And given your own proclivity to make snap decisions without thinking things through, and then later regretting them, this is probably really not a good idea.

Last night, there was a situation where a character was defending a doorway, and had a mirror image inside the room on either side. I ruled that creatures outside the building would not have the usual chance of striking a mirror image, as there was a solid wall between them and they had neither line or sight nor line of effect to the images.

Again, can't speak to your specific implementation of the mirror image spell, but the usual assumption is that the additional images blur around back and forth across the actual player, meaning that at no point can an attacker be certain which one is "the real person". Your interpretation is basically the same as having the mirror images always stand to the sides of the caster, and then having the NPCs just always attack the center person because that's always the "real one".

Is the doorway 100% as wide as the character? Presuambly not. So the character could be standing slightly to the left, or the right, with a mirror image standing just to the side (mirror image, as well as just combat in general, assumes that characters don't just stand perfectly still the entire time while in battle). The character shifts to their left, and a mirror image fills in the space to the right, leaving an opponent with at least a second image to think might be the target. I might reduce the odds of hitting a mirror image in this situation, but would not totall nulllify it. And I'd still allow it to be fully effective against ranged attacks (again, is the PC just standing there in the door way while people shoot at them, or are they ducking back and then stepping back to fire, then back, etc).

And hey. Why are the images only to the sides and inside the building? They could be slightly in front, or to the side but outside the building (leading an opponent to be suddenly faced with an enemy and maybe react to that instead of to the person in the doorway). It would depend on how crowded the space is, but honestly if you try to think too hard about miirror image and fitting stuff into battle hexes on a map, you're going to get yourself in trouble no matter what you do.


I do find it interesting that it seems like you are constantly trying to reduce the effectiveness of what your players try to do in the game. Maybe do less of that.

[Talakeal]

Then you need to make your players communicate more. Ask questions so you know what they want to achieve, not just assume that what they told you they were going to do will achieve it.

Especially if them achieving what they want relies on you taking actions as part of the plan.

Preaching to the choir here.

If I was playing HoD, had an Illusion spell, and said "I conjure an illusion of that guard we killed earlier so the other guards think he's still standing watch" and the GM said "Your illusion sees you and sounds the alarm, because it's Free Willed and that's what a guard would do here" I'd be furious.

Of course it would sound the alarm if it saw you.

Why on Earth are you choosing to give it free will in that situation?

Making an illusion of a known enemy and intentionally granting it free will and then being furious when it turns on you makes about as much sense to me as fire-balling yourself and getting mad when you took damage.

Out of curiosity, if you summoned a Balor, and then took no actions to bind or compel it, would you also be mad when the CE greater demon went on an indiscriminate rampage that included your party?

The "Free Willed" clause is a weird one, because it means this otherwise fairly straightforward ability becomes entirely dependent on the GM's interpretation of how the Illusion would act. I can't speak to the game design goal with making the illusion free willed, but as written/interpreted here, it makes what should be a fairly straightforward spell incredibly complicated. You can't just conjure an illusion to do what you want, you have to conjure an illusion of something that WOULD do what you want. Even if the spell description is accurate, it's a really counterintuitive way to make the spell work, and fights against how players will imagine the spell.

Again, there are three levels.

The first level is a simple automaton that can only follow pre-programmed commands.
The second is a free-willed being that does its best to imitate the being it is impersonating.
The third level is a minion that follows your commands.

Don't use the level 2 version if a level 1 version would suffice or you require the precise control the level 3 version would provide.

That's the sort of magic words/ GM Gotcha gameplay that I hate. If Bob had said "I summon the illusion of a hypothetical identical twin who can perfectly impersonate me and whose primary goal is to distract the monster" would that have worked?

Yes.

But that doesn't allow him the versatility he wants.

That's the sort of magic words/ GM Gotcha gameplay that I hate.

Again, everything is a "gotcha".

Why is it the GM's job to be a mind reader?

Isn't springing a plan that hinges on an incorrect reading of the RAW on the GM a "PC Gotcha"?

If my plan hinges on casting hold monster on a 3.5 dragon (where dragons are immune to paralyzation) then why should the GM compelled to ignore the printed rules to allow my spell to work (but only if I didn't run it by him before hand)?

I am perfectly happy to let my PCs do a take-back if they make a rules mistake, which is a lot more than most people I have gamed with.

It wasn't the "gotcha" that Bob was mad about, but the ruling itself.

So you chose to have his illusion act the way you thought he should act in that situation instead of the way Bob wanted his illusion self to act? And you don't see the problem with this?

No. I don't see a problem with this.

Conjuring something does not (be default) give you control over it.

Spells do what the book says the spells do.

Fire-ball doesn't suddenly start dealing cold damage just because I am fighting a fire-elemental and I really want it to; even if it was a legitimate good faith mistake on my part.

Let me ask a question: Can the illusion be harmed (don't know how illusions work in your game)? If not, then the question becomes: "is the 1% of times Bob doesn't cower maybe in situations where he's unlikely to be harmed?"'. You know, exactly like the illusionary version of himself in this situation?

As an illusion, it is incorporeal.

This was the question Bob raised. And I admit it is a good one. But again, it raises just as many problems as it solves.

The Ogre example above is one of them. Likewise, an illusion isn't going to fool many people if it starts walking through doors and refusing invitations to dinner by telling people it doesn't need to eat because it is only an illusion.

TBH, if you just want a distraction (which Bob didn't, he wanted a distraction AND a buff bot AND a scout, AND whatever else) I would say its better to make an illusion of a helpless and terrified, but somewhat quick on their feet victim for the monster to chase rather than someone who just stands there and lets the monster realize that it is an illusion as soon as their weapons pass right through it.

The spell says the illusion does its best to bluff people into believing it is the genuine article, and that is how I ruled it at the table, although it was open to discussion and revision later.

From a playtesting point of view, if a rule is being ignored, or some on-paper advantage not being pursued by the players, there's probably a reason why. Either the rule or the implementation of the rule is such that the players don't actually feel it worth the cost to take advantage of. On paper, based on how you have described the initiative system in your game, this seems like it would be a massively beneficial thing to focus a character on. To always go first, sometimes twice before the enemies, seems like a no-brainer.

If your players aren't going for it, then something isn't meeting up with that on-paper description. You might want to spend some thought figuring out what that is. It could be as simple as the combat system itself. If it's less "sudden strike kills enemy" and more "wear them down over a few rounds", then the advantage of "going first" is fairly minimal. And if the +20 to get an actual extra round is too difficult or expensive to get frequently enough to be worth the investment in <whatever> to get, then at the end of the day, you're still just going back and forth attacking, with each side taking turns. Initiative has no actual benefit after the first round, so unless that first round can be critical to the outcome of the battle, it may just not be worth it.

But yeah. I don't know the system well enough to know how combat tends to flow, so I can't say if that's the case.

I generally chalk it up to gamesmanship on Bob's part.

He knows its easier to whine, complain, and appeal to "fairness" or "realism" when he doesn't get his way than it is to actually build a well rounded character.

Generally, he builds around one thing, and then complains that the GM is cheating and picking on him when he is forced to make rolls that fall outside of that one thing; be they initiative, strength to resist grapple, fortitude to resist poison, alertness to resist an ambush, or whatever.

It sounds like that's never the right spell to cast. Maybe get rid of it entirely then. If the only effect of the spell is "GM decides what effect your spell has", that's not a good spell.

It sounds like you are assuming adversarial GMing again.

Most conjuration, charm, illusion, and divination spells give the GM the option of how exactly they play out. And yet they are used to great effect at thousands of gaming tables across the world without issue.

Heck, most rules in most RPGs are ultimately down to the GM to decide how they play out.


And, even if you ignore all the GM interpretation and fluff, the spell still has mechanical utility. Just, for example, conjuring a bard and having them sit in the corner and play to inspire the party is an awesome buff spell.

You are grossly overthinking this. Yes. The illusion does presumably know its an illusion, but also presumably has specific intructions it's given as to why it was created. Otherwise, the entire thing is just silly. An illusionary waiter waits tables because that's what it was created to do. An illusionary ogre attacks the enemies of the party because that's what it was created to do. And an illusionary Bob will distract the monster away from attacking the rest of the party (including the real Bob) also because that's what it was created to do.

That is a spell one could create. That is not the spell I have created.

The spell I have written is:

An illusionary waiter waits tables because that's what a real waiter does. An illusionary guard guards a door because that's what a real guard does. An illusionary ogre fights and eats because that's what an real ogre does. An illusionary Bob follows the party around and acts as a buff bot and then cowers when attacked because that is what a real Bob does.

Again, the spell does what the spell does, and the caster makes the choices called on by the spell. The spell does not shape itself to the casters wishes. If a caster summons a demon or raises an undead abominations and takes no precautions to control or restrain it, would you also say that the chaotic evil creatures who live only to spread death and destruction would intrinsically devote themselves to serving the caster's best interests.

If I've included a "free-willed" illusion spell, it would continue to act as its caster wants. In other words, treat it like it's another character being run by the player. That's the only way this sort of spell can possibly make sense. And yeah. Summoned creatures as well (subject to the limitations of the spell, which may preclude having it do things that are directly suicidal maybe).

It just never works well to have the GM control these things. Just let the players make the decisions. Done. Problems all solved.

Really? Problems all solved?

So, for example, if I summon a messenger to deliver an important letter to a distant kingdom, but the journey is far too perilous for me to undertake.

So, do you think I (to say nothing of the other players!) will be perfectly happy to spend the next three months playing out the journey?

Now, say when they get their, the person who receives the message gives a response, and that response includes that the BBEG is super weak to water wicked witch of the west style.

But, on the way back, the messenger is snatched up by a wandering wyvern, carried to its lair, devoured, and the message used to make a nest for its young, never having been read to the PCs.

So, two months later, they are fighting the BBEG. And then one of my fellow PCs decides to pull out his canteen and pour it over the BBEG's head.

Why would he do this? He doesn't know the BBEG is weak to water. But his player does.

The player insists he isn't metagaming, he had always planned on using water on the BBEG, he swears, but the rest of the table rolls their eyes and assumes meta-gaming.


Or heck, what about the opposite of that? What if the summoned creature knows something important that the controlling player doesn't?

Or, lets combine all of these, and say the PC wants to have a conversation with the thing they have summoned. Are they really supposed to talk to themselves and be unable to glean any information from it that they don't already have?

This is not a D&D wish spell where the DM is supposed to twist the purpose and intent of the player to foil their plans. This is a basic spell. Why are you hijacking the players ability to decide what their own spell should do.

I mean, sure, you can interpret it that way, but then that's a heck of a lot of "GM takes control of what the player is trying to do". If the player casts this illusion with the intent of it behaving a specific way, then it should behave that way. The player should always make that decision, not the GM.

If you actually have it written the other way around in the rules, then that's a terrible rule/spell/whatever and should be changed. It will cause nothing but conflict at any table it is played at. There's an infinite number of ways I can screw over my players if I decide that their independent illusion spell will do what I want rather than what they do. That's not a realy fun game for the players to play.

He cast the spell. Let him decide how it acts.

This is more or less Bob's argument exactly.

I talked to him a bit more today, and he elaborated his position, and it is very close to this.

A level 1 illusion lacks versatility. A level 2 illusion lacks control. A level 3 has both versatility and control.

Bob thought he could effectively get a level 3 version for the cost of a level 2 version by making a copy of himself and that meant that I would hand the free-willed minion over to him. When I said that even if it was a copy of him, its still an NPC under the control fo the GM, he decided to pout.

This is a basic spell. Why are you hijacking the players ability to decide what their own spell should do.

I mean, sure, you can interpret it that way, but then that's a heck of a lot of "GM takes control of what the player is trying to do". If the player casts this illusion with the intent of it behaving a specific way, then it should behave that way. The player should always make that decision, not the GM.

If you actually have it written the other way around in the rules, then that's a terrible rule/spell/whatever and should be changed. It will cause nothing but conflict at any table it is played at. There's an infinite number of ways I can screw over my players if I decide that their indepdenent illusion spell will do what I want rather than what they do. That's not a realy fun game for the players to play.

He cast the spell. Let him decide how it acts.

First off, this isn't a "basic spell". Creating a sentient being is a difficult, complex, and dangerous task regardless of the way in which it is accomplished.

You can "upcast" a spell to bind its will to your own, but by default NPCs are still under the GM's control, be they called animals, summoned monsters, hired mercenaries, animated dead, crafted golems, gated spirits, or beings created out of whole cloth by powerful magic.

This is intentional from both a narrative and a game balance perspective. There are way to many stories that depend on a "Frankenstein" narrative where something turns upon its creator to say that this is flat out impossible in my rule set. Likewise, these are very powerful spells. You are, essentially, doubling your PC's power for the cost of a single spell slot, there needs to be some drawbacks here.

That being said, you and Bob seem to assume a confrontational GM who looks for any excuse to screw the PCs. The GM doesn't need a spell to do that. The GM can just pull whatever monsters out of his or her ass are needed to TPK the party, or just have Elminster teleport in and magically bind them to his will and force them onto whatever railroad the GM has planned.

The goal is to play the NPCs as they would really act.

Take it from me. There are very few things players dislike more than having the GM decide how their actions/spells/whatever work. While specific uses of things should always be subject to GM approval/veto, the default should always be "it works the way the player wants". Write your game that way. The more stuff that is subject to GM interpretation, the more the players are going to feel subject to the whims of the GM at the moment. And given your own proclivity to make snap decisions without thinking things through, and then later regretting them, this is probably really not a good idea.

You know, people often ask why I am so stubborn and reluctant to admit I am wrong (see Kish's posts in my stunting thread).

This quote is basically a text-book example of why that is.

If one ever admits to a mistake, people will be sure to leverage it against them in the future and say something like, well, "And given your own proclivity to make snap decisions without thinking things through, and then later regretting them, this is probably really not a good idea."


I have never met a GM, or really anyone else, who always makes the right decision on the spot. Heck, even real life judges often come to regret their decisions in hindsight. That doesn't mean that someone shouldn't be allowed to make decisions at all.


Although, I will say that my players work *really* hard to bring it on themselves by being so secretive and trying to "pull a fast one" on me. For example, the event that I mentioned up thread where I went into the kitchen to check on dinner, and heard the players discuss a plan involving potions which sounded like it wouldn't work by RAW, and when I came back into the room to talk it over with them, they shut me down and said it was too late, they had already been bought while I was out of the room (despite me explicitly telling them not to buy anything without telling me first several sessions ago).

I really feel like the vast, vast, majority of issues with "gotcha GMing" are actually caused by paranoid PCs who mistake impartial GMing for adversarial GMing.

Again, can't speak to your specific implementation of the mirror image spell, but the usual assumption is that the additional images blur around back and forth across the actual player, meaning that at no point can an attacker be certain which one is "the real person". Your interpretation is basically the same as having the mirror images always stand to the sides of the caster, and then having the NPCs just always attack the center person because that's always the "real one".

This puzzles me. I have never assumed that the images are constantly blurring back and forth across the real person, and I don't see any text to support that. If it did work that way, wouldn't you just always target the person standing still?

Is the doorway 100% as wide as the character? Presuambly not. So the character could be standing slightly to the left, or the right, with a mirror image standing just to the side (mirror image, as well as just combat in general, assumes that characters don't just stand perfectly still the entire time while in battle). The character shifts to their left, and a mirror image fills in the space to the right, leaving an opponent with at least a second image to think might be the target. I might reduce the odds of hitting a mirror image in this situation, but would not totall nulllify it. And I'd still allow it to be fully effective against ranged attacks (again, is the PC just standing there in the door way while people shoot at them, or are they ducking back and then stepping back to fire, then back, etc).

Pretty much. She is a 6'4 fighter in full plate with a shield, and its a standard sized door (actually maybe a bit smaller as it was probably built by dwarves) and she is intentionally blocking it so that the enemies cannot get past her.

And hey. Why are the images only to the sides and inside the building? They could be slightly in front, or to the side but outside the building (leading an opponent to be suddenly faced with an enemy and maybe react to that instead of to the person in the doorway). It would depend on how crowded the space is, but honestly if you try to think too hard about miirror image and fitting stuff into battle hexes on a map, you're going to get yourself in trouble no matter what you do.

Sure they could. And that would allow the spell to work normally.

She intentionally placed them inside the building so that they would have total cover, assuming that 2/3 of shots coming at her would instead go toward a mirror image and then bounce harmlessly off the wall without revealing the image or lessening the protection.

By RAW it is a perfectly valid exploit, but within the fiction it makes no dang sense.

I do find it interesting that it seems like you are constantly trying to reduce the effectiveness of what your players try to do in the game. Maybe do less of that.

I feel like there are a number of biases at play in this assumption.

Primarily, you only hear about conflict.

You don't hear about the dozens of times a night when I remind a player of a bonus they are forgetting or suggest a course of action (unless they explode because they think I am calling them stupid).
You don't hear about the times I don't nerf an exploit.
You don't hear about the times I rule in their favor.
You don't hear about the times they point out a mistake I have made with an enemy.
You don't hear about all the times when I tell them to just go ahead and succeed without rolling or do something that is technically against the rules but makes perfect sense in the fiction.

Likewise, as the GM, I am the arbiter. If I think something is stupid or doesn't work, I don't try it.


And (hyperbolic example):

I have one player who cheats, and five who don't.
I have one player who murders every NPC, and five who don't.
I have one player who is a munchkin and five who aren't.
I have one player who rules lawyers, and five who don't.
I have one player who is always on the phone, and five who aren't.
I have one player who steals from the party, and five who don't.

So, I could say that I have six normal people who each have a single flaw that I occasionally have to call them on.

But, you could also say I have a group if cheaters, murder-hobos, munchkins, rules lawyers, and thieves who are always on their phones. What a terrible party! And likewise, one GM who is always telling six people what to do! What a jackass!

[Reversefigure4]

It's well worth noting at this point that Heart of Darkness' Mirror Image spell works very, very differently to most versions of the DnD spell.

Mirror Image
Difficulty: 20
Type: Enchantment (Augment)
Subject: Any
Mirror image creates an illusionary copy of the spell's subject. The image appears in contact with the subject, but may then move about independently. Unless commanded to do otherwise, it will follow the subject about and appear to assist them in whatever tasks they undertake.
The mirror image is the caster's thrall and the illusionist can communicate with it in the same manner as a spell with the link property.
It is virtually impossible to distinguish the mirror image from the spell's subject but, as the images cannot actually interact with the world, hitting one with an attack will usually reveal it to be false, and any changes to the subject's appearance will not retroactively alter the image.
If the mirror image ends its turn in the same zone as the subject, it will sync up with their current visage and it will be necessary to once more identify which is the original and which is the copy.
Metamagic Notes:
Each level of the empower metamagic creates an additional image.

So as each image occupies it's own 'zone' (square?), apparently things next to the caster in another square wouldn't be visible behind doorframe walls or capable of intercepting blows. Although even that I'm confused about, since "the image appears in contact with the subject but may then move about independently".

As written, it really doesn't answer the question of where the caster is relative to the image - presumably you have to cast in front or behind or to one side of you if it has to occupy a battlemap space, and the spell seems quite limited - an illusory copy next to you that only 'appears to assist you' (yet presumably can't actually swing a sword in combat, because hitting the enemy would reveal it's an illusion).

I can't make out which 'free willed Level 2 illusion spell' Talakeal is talking about. Perhaps it's Spectre:

Specter
Difficulty: 30
Type: Enchantment
Subject: Calling
A specter is similar to a glamer that has been given a life of its own. A specter can act independently and move freely, and although it cannot interact with the world physically, it can perceive its surroundings and make decisions accordingly and can travel freely. The specter will operate on its own without direction from the caster, and will have whatever personality, motivation, and knowledge that the caster gives it. Note that the caster cannot impart any knowledge that they do not themself possess, but most specters are adept at
bluffing

That's the closest I can find to a 'free willed illusion' spell.

[Morgaln]

What even is the point of an illusion with completely free will? What will that accomplish that any other illusion can't do more reliably?
Also, Talakeal, we've long since established in past threads that your party doesn't trust you as a GM. Spells that rely purely on the interpretation of the GM are the last thing you should be giving to your players. If you don't have their trust, you need abilities with effects that are very clearly and unambiguously spelled out.

I feel like there are a number of biases at play in this assumption.

Primarily, you only hear about conflict.

You don't hear about the dozens of times a night when I remind a player of a bonus they are forgetting or suggest a course of action (unless they explode because they think I am calling them stupid).
You don't hear about the times I don't nerf an exploit.
You don't hear about the times I rule in their favor.
You don't hear about the times they point out a mistake I have made with an enemy.
You don't hear about all the times when I tell them to just go ahead and succeed without rolling or do something that is technically against the rules but makes perfect sense in the fiction.

Likewise, as the GM, I am the arbiter. If I think something is stupid or doesn't work, I don't try it.


And (hyperbolic example):

I have one player who cheats, and five who don't.
I have one player who murders every NPC, and five who don't.
I have one player who is a munchkin and five who aren't.
I have one player who rules lawyers, and five who don't.
I have one player who is always on the phone, and five who aren't.
I have one player who steals from the party, and five who don't.

So, I could say that I have six normal people who each have a single flaw that I occasionally have to call them on.

But, you could also say I have a group if cheaters, murder-hobos, munchkins, rules lawyers, and thieves who are always on their phones. What a terrible party! And likewise, one GM who is always telling six people what to do! What a jackass!

You've also said that you have, on average, one meltdown per session. In 25 years of playing TTRPGs, I can remember experiencing maybe five meltdowns. Even if I assume I only remember half of them, that's still a tiny amount compared to yours. Your group is not normal and your group is not healthy.
I've had an abusive friend like that for ten years. He would take advantage of me, cheat on me in games and during card trading (it was my M:tG phase), emotionally abuse me into doing things I didn't want and if I tried to defend myself, he would gaslight me into thinking I was the bad guy. He was also my only friend during that time, so I didn't have any comparison. The way to get out of this is to find new friends and realize that this is not normal.

[Satinavian]

And (hyperbolic example):

I have one player who cheats, and five who don't.
I have one player who murders every NPC, and five who don't.
I have one player who is a munchkin and five who aren't.
I have one player who rules lawyers, and five who don't.
I have one player who is always on the phone, and five who aren't.
I have one player who steals from the party, and five who don't.

So, I could say that I have six normal people who each have a single flaw that I occasionally have to call them on.

But, you could also say I have a group if cheaters, murder-hobos, munchkins, rules lawyers, and thieves who are always on their phones. What a terrible party!

That is a terrible party. I would not run any games for such a group.

If you have a player with a horrible flaw that would get them kicked from 80% of all groups, they are not a good player for not also having 5 other flaws that would each be kickworthy in most groups.

[Talakeal]

What even is the point of an illusion with completely free will? What will that accomplish that any other illusion can't do more reliably?

Anything other than follow a pre-programmed set of instructions.

Primarily, you would use it for impersonating someone for a prolonged period of time, but it can also scout, have conversation, conduct negotiations, deliver messages, etc. Heck, it can even think creatively.

In this particular case, Bob uploaded it with all of his tactical knowledge so it could lead the party while he was incapacitated or busy casting a spell.

Also, Talakeal, we've long since established in past threads that your party doesn't trust you as a GM. Spells that rely purely on the interpretation of the GM are the last thing you should be giving to your players. If you don't have their trust, you need abilities with effects that are very clearly and unambiguously spelled out.

I didn't write out the spells with them in mind. Most of them I hadn't even met yet.

In this case, Bob chose to cast a spell which *explicitly* says in its description that though the caster determines its general personality, it has free will and is *not* under their direct control, and then he was apparently trying to rules lawyer it by saying that since he copied his own personality, then that limitation obviously wouldn't apply. (As if there aren't a thousand sci-fi stories about clones who try and kill and usurp their maker)*.

You've also said that you have, on average, one meltdown per session. In 25 years of playing TTRPGs, I can remember experiencing maybe five meltdowns. Even if I assume I only remember half of them, that's still a tiny amount compared to yours. Your group is not normal and your group is not healthy.

I've had an abusive friend like that for ten years. He would take advantage of me, cheat on me in games and during card trading (it was my M:tG phase), emotionally abuse me into doing things I didn't want and if I tried to defend myself, he would gaslight me into thinking I was the bad guy. He was also my only friend during that time, so I didn't have any comparison. The way to get out of this is to find new friends and realize that this is not normal.

I appreciate the sentiment, I really do.

Yeah. I have heard that before, I just don't know how people manage to find dedicated gamers without serious personality flaws.

The vast majority of gamers I have ever met either get bored of the game and disappear within a few months or have pretty severe personality issues. The vast majority of my horror stories involve Bob because he is right above the line of tolerable, but he is by no means the worst person I have ever gamed with, and he isn't really that much of an outlier.



*: Not saying that is what would happen. Just that its odd that Bob had it in his head that a perfect copy of himself would be an obedient slave that ignored the spell's normal limitations.

[Vyke]

Again, there are three levels.

The first level is a simple automaton that can only follow pre-programmed commands.
The second is a free-willed being that does its best to imitate the being it is impersonating.
The third level is a minion that follows your commands.

Don't use the level 2 version if a level 1 version would suffice or you require the precise control the level 3 version would provide.

The level 3 version doesn't provide precise control. You can tell that because it didn't do what Bob wanted. It did the opposite. It is, in fact, incentivised to get Bob killed because Bob doesn't want to die so neither does the duplicate. They both would rather someone else die. For the duplicate that might mean Bob.

This is as far as I'm going to agree with Bob.

As an illusion, it is incorporeal.

This was the question Bob raised. And I admit it is a good one. But again, it raises just as many problems as it solves.

The Ogre example above is one of them. Likewise, an illusion isn't going to fool many people if it starts walking through doors and refusing invitations to dinner by telling people it doesn't need to eat because it is only an illusion.

TBH, if you just want a distraction (which Bob didn't, he wanted a distraction AND a buff bot AND a scout, AND whatever else) I would say its better to make an illusion of a helpless and terrified, but somewhat quick on their feet victim for the monster to chase rather than someone who just stands there and lets the monster realize that it is an illusion as soon as their weapons pass right through it.

The spell says the illusion does its best to bluff people into believing it is the genuine article, and that is how I ruled it at the table, although it was open to discussion and revision later.

For clarity, I agree. That is what the spell says. It's a bad spell though. It conjures something that is incentivised to prioritise it's own safety over the caster's and doesn't have any apparent failsafe.. It's the down side of free willed creations.

I will point out that it you may think it's a better plan for it to act a certain way and, truthfully, I agree with your assessment.... but it's not your job to make plans for the players. Remember that GM Fiat you said you hate?

That is a spell one could create. That is not the spell I have created.

The spell I have written is:

An illusionary waiter waits tables because that's what a real waiter does. An illusionary guard guards a door because that's what a real guard does. An illusionary ogre fights and eats because that's what an real ogre does. An illusionary Bob follows the party around and acts as a buff bot and then cowers when attacked because that is what a real Bob does.

Again, the spell does what the spell does, and the caster makes the choices called on by the spell. The spell does not shape itself to the casters wishes. If a caster summons a demon or raises an undead abominations and takes no precautions to control or restrain it, would you also say that the chaotic evil creatures who live only to spread death and destruction would intrinsically devote themselves to serving the caster's best interests.

As I say. A bad spell.

Really? Problems all solved?

So, for example, if I summon a messenger to deliver an important letter to a distant kingdom, but the journey is far too perilous for me to undertake.

So, do you think I (to say nothing of the other players!) will be perfectly happy to spend the next three months playing out the journey?

I mean. This is a ridiculous argument. As the GM would you really create a journey that is too perilous to be attempted, is absolutely necessary and then provide no work around except having one player go alone for three months of solo play?

Now, say when they get their, the person who receives the message gives a response, and that response includes that the BBEG is super weak to water wicked witch of the west style.

But, on the way back, the messenger is snatched up by a wandering wyvern, carried to its lair, devoured, and the message used to make a nest for its young, never having been read to the PCs.

So, two months later, they are fighting the BBEG. And then one of my fellow PCs decides to pull out his canteen and pour it over the BBEG's head.

Why would he do this? He doesn't know the BBEG is weak to water. But his player does.

The player insists he isn't metagaming, he had always planned on using water on the BBEG, he swears, but the rest of the table rolls their eyes and assumes meta-gaming.

I mean. Yeah. 'Cos it's clearly meta gaming. But what can you do? People either play in good faith or they don't. I guess what you could do is not spend 3 months detailing the events of a programmed illusion that never returned to a group of players. If I'd decided by GM Fiat that a wyvern would kill them on the way back then I'd just go "Yeah illusion sets off, I'll let you know when they get back. What are you doing now?". Giving them control of the illusion for three months of wasted time is ridiculous and any sensible GM and players know this is the time to not do that. If your players think otherwise, then you have bigger problems.

That being said, you and Bob seem to assume a confrontational GM who looks for any excuse to screw the PCs.

No offense... but I'd think you were a confrontational GM. You mention making it so Mirror Image doesn't work in a doorway. Where does it suggest that in the rules. So you have looked at it and chosen to make the spell useless. If that kind of ruling happened repeatedly, I'd assume that's a you thing. And don't delude yourself.... that's your choice to pull DM Fiat to screw the player.


[QUOTE=Talakeal;25857246]Although, I will say that my players work *really* hard to bring it on themselves by being so secretive and trying to "pull a fast one" on me. For example, the event that I mentioned up thread where I went into the kitchen to check on dinner, and heard the players discuss a plan involving potions which sounded like it wouldn't work by RAW, and when I came back into the room to talk it over with them, they shut me down and said it was too late, they had already been bought while I was out of the room (despite me explicitly telling them not to buy anything without telling me first several sessions ago).[/QUOTE}

Ah, now here we go and here, in core, is your problem. You are the GM. Not your players. If you didn't say that they bought the potions.... they did not buy the potions. Nothing happens in the world without your acknowledgement. Nothing. The players can tell you what their characters are trying to do. That is it. You then either adjudicate it yourself or you can roll dice to adjudicate it and the YOU say what happens. Their character doesn't wake up in the morning until you say they do. When they say "I walk across that room" their characters only do so when you say "You step into the room. Because maybe they don't. Maybe there's an invisible force field over the door. they don't know. It's only real when you say it's real. This is something they certainly, and, you probably don't seem to accept. And you all need to accept it. Otherwise they're telling you how your world works.

This puzzles me. I have never assumed that the images are constantly blurring back and forth across the real person, and I don't see any text to support that. If it did work that way, wouldn't you just always target the person standing still?

The DnD one? I don't see any text saying that it doesn't work in an enclosed space. As you yourself say in the stunting thread.... it's unreasonable to assume that every possible scenario will be covered in the text nor should it be (and I 100% agree with you on that). You will always have to adjudicate it. The concern is that you immediately nullified the players intent. Why? You had a choice one way or the other. Why make the player feel useless? Will it unbalance the game that much?

She intentionally placed them inside the building so that they would have total cover, assuming that 2/3 of shots coming at her would instead go toward a mirror image and then bounce harmlessly off the wall without revealing the image or lessening the protection.

By RAW it is a perfectly valid exploit, but within the fiction it makes no dang sense.

It is not a valid exploit. Assuming you mean the HoD version, there's no roll to randomise attacks anyway. If there's only you visible and you've obscured your duplicates, well done! You've invalidated your own spell.

And (hyperbolic example):

I have one player who cheats, and five who don't.
I have one player who murders every NPC, and five who don't.
I have one player who is a munchkin and five who aren't.
I have one player who rules lawyers, and five who don't.
I have one player who is always on the phone, and five who aren't.
I have one player who steals from the party, and five who don't.

So, I could say that I have six normal people who each have a single flaw that I occasionally have to call them on.

But, you could also say I have a group if cheaters, murder-hobos, munchkins, rules lawyers, and thieves who are always on their phones. What a terrible party! And likewise, one GM who is always telling six people what to do! What a jackass!

One GM who is always going to forums to moan about the players. You are the GM. That, whether you like it or not puts you in charge. Serious question time.

Are you getting what you want out of the game?

So first, because I have heard both things and it's important. Is your campaign a playtest of your rules or a genuine campaign with a narrative intended to be an engaging play experience? Because it cannot be both.

If it's a playtest, then you need to murder your darlings, be prepared to rewrite the rules when they raise a weird interaction and accept that your players will do weird thangs that will stretch narrative credibility. You need to make it clear that you are grateful when players find weird rules quirks but that you'll be updating them to avoid that. You need to get everyone's ego out of the way. And you need to understand that any fun you have will be the satisfaction of refining a product. I have published a game. The playtests included some genuinely miserable games, games where we nearly threw in the towel. You just have to power through. Because the reward is the joy of publishing it. If you don't hate the game at least a little by that time you probably haven't playtested it enough. That's fine. You're not the audience. You're the shop.

If it's an actual game played for fun, then your players need to get social contracts and they need to get that you, as a human being, are as entitled to fun as they are. You deserve a good time, not balancing the fragile egos of a bunch of people who should know better. And that sounds unlikely due to their immaturity. You need to tell them how your game will be and how much you'll tolerate. You need to set out your expectations.

If your expectations are not being met.... why are you still playing? You are literally wasting your time on something unfulfilling. Because your players don't seem invested. One literally said he'd kill his character if you didn't do things his way. He doesn't care about his character, your game or your fun. So why do you keep doing it?

[GloatingSwine]

The level 3 version doesn't provide precise control. You can tell that because it didn't do what Bob wanted. It did the opposite. It is, in fact, incentivised to get Bob killed because Bob doesn't want to die so neither does the duplicate. They both would rather someone else die. For the duplicate that might mean Bob.

This is as far as I'm going to agree with Bob.

Bob was using the level 2 version.

That said, the progression feels weird when it goes programmed agent > free agent > controlled agent.

Technically level 2 to 3 is a drop in capability of the summoned agent, even if it's an increase in the reliability of the agent for the summoner.

I would probably have had the progression go programmed agent > controlled agent > free agent.

[Vyke]

Bob was using the level 2 version.

That said, the progression feels weird when it goes programmed agent > free agent > controlled agent.

Technically level 2 to 3 is a drop in capability of the summoned agent, even if it's an increase in the reliability of the agent for the summoner.

I would probably have had the progression go programmed agent > controlled agent > free agent.

Misread. My bad.

[MonochromeTiger]

Anything other than follow a pre-programmed set of instructions.

Primarily, you would use it for impersonating someone for a prolonged period of time, but it can also scout, have conversation, conduct negotiations, deliver messages, etc. Heck, it can even think creatively.

In this particular case, Bob uploaded it with all of his tactical knowledge so it could lead the party while he was incapacitated or busy casting a spell.

When people see "it thinks for itself and goes off your personality" they expect "it has the same goals as me and it's aware that as an illusion it can't actually be hurt so it should act like me at my most brave" or even "it has the same goals as me and is aware its existence is entirely to aid me so it should act on that." They generally do not think "it has the same goals as me and is just as messed up as I am and will absolutely throw me and the entire party under the bus to avoid damage it can't actually be dealt anyway."

Have to second the people who say that, yes Bob may be a powergaming cheapskate but it's still a DM failure to dictate "this is what your character would do." At least for any circumstances outside of "you're literally being mind controlled right now because of that save you failed, you aren't being given a choice, this is what your character is doing until the mind control ends or you pass a save again."

I didn't write out the spells with them in mind. Most of them I hadn't even met yet.

In this case, Bob chose to cast a spell which *explicitly* says in its description that though the caster determines its general personality, it has free will and is *not* under their direct control, and then he was apparently trying to rules lawyer it by saying that since he copied his own personality, then that limitation obviously wouldn't apply. (As if there aren't a thousand sci-fi stories about clones who try and kill and usurp their maker)*.

Except that argument makes the level 2 version of the spell a worthless trap anyway. He copies a Knight? "Oh well that knight was a notorious traitor, you just didn't know about it, it cowers the monster goes for you." He copies a Wizard? "Oh that Wizard can't cast under pressure and it's definitely not taking the hit with more tanky people around, it cowers, monster goes for you."

If the players have no control over the illusion's behavior and it's working entirely off a personality dictated by the DM then it's just a tool for the DM to use to get whatever result they want. You chose to use it in a way that would send the monster after the party despite their goal being to use it as a distraction, you revealed this by having that result actually happen, as messed up as your group is it's still somewhat justified for them to be upset at "DM decided this screws us over, even if it's based on something entirely under our control."

I appreciate the sentiment, I really do.

I'm not sure that's true though. Every time I see a thread like this from you someone brings something like that up and every time it's dismissed.

Yeah. I have heard that before, I just don't know how people manage to find dedicated gamers without serious personality flaws.

It helps to actually look for them instead of trotting out "well we're friends outside the context of the game so I can't just end the game" or "well the handful of people I've added over time have joined a group that was already comprised entirely of problem players and, weirdly enough, when they got used to the group they turned out to be problem players."

The vast majority of gamers I have ever met either get bored of the game and disappear within a few months

Might be because the behavior from the rest of the group that you keep inviting drove them off, if not then yes some people do have other things come up and it's possible they just ghosted you over the system or your DMing but honestly the way you describe your group makes it way more likely they just can't stand your other players.

or have pretty severe personality issues. The vast majority of my horror stories involve Bob because he is right above the line of tolerable, but he is by no means the worst person I have ever gamed with, and he isn't really that much of an outlier.

And this is again running into the issue. There's two possibilities that come to mind from your statements.

First is that you've just had really bad luck with players and you've decided that luck is completely unavoidable so you're settling for people who you've admitted drive you up a wall on a regular basis because they're "not as bad as they could be" despite them being pretty terrible. That's not keeping options open it's giving up and justifying to yourself that a group you're willing to acknowledge is a constant source of horror stories is the best you'll ever get.

Second is that something in the way you're running your game is pushing your groups toward either cutting and running or adopting a problem player mentality, in which case the only way you'd ever know is if you dropped all your current problem players anyway and got a group willing to actually call you out on things without it being a fight.

What's strange is that those options aren't even mutually exclusive. It could very well be the case that something in the way your game has been structured and you've been running it has been driving your players up a wall and they've responded by doing the exact same thing to you. Then the petty fights and arguments are just everyone involved talking past each other because there's too little social awareness to acknowledge a decent way of saying "we feel like X is arbitrarily punishing us" and "I feel like Y is forcing me to be more controlling of your behavior and options or the game doesn't progress and I get yelled at for every little thing."

*: Not saying that is what would happen. Just that its odd that Bob had it in his head that a perfect copy of himself would be an obedient slave that ignored the spell's normal limitations.

Because "I dictate my character's personality" and "the spell's limitations go off the personality of the person it's copying" do kind of imply that, yes, its actions would be his choice. Meanwhile the way you've set up the spell makes every other option a massive pointless risk because every other personality is determined entirely by the DM in a way that it could screw over the party at any given time. So he put it in his own hands and then got told "no, doesn't work like that, I've decided what you would do in this situation for you."

It makes the second level of the spell one big game of russian roulette because if you pick the image being based off anything else you're blindly picking off aesthetics and what little behavior you've personally seen if any without any real insight into how they behave. If you base it off yourself you do have insight into how they behave because it's your behavior and it makes way more sense convincing an enemy with an illusion of something that's already there than it does to pull a knight out of thin air; but if the DM decides as you did that it's based on their understanding of your personality and devoid of all the context of it being an illusion made with a specific purpose in mind then you're right back to the DM having the ability to arbitrarily say it does something completely at odds with the entire reason to have the illusion in the first place, IE: it's a distraction so the people who can actually die don't get hit and have time to do things.

[gbaji]

Well. Just had a big long post eaten and don't feel like re-writing it.

My broad point is that the spell as it's written does exactly specify that it has the personality the caster wants it to have, not the one the GM wants it to have. The caster should absoultely be able to create an illusion of a guard, but which is on "my side" rather than that of the enemies. You claiming that the illusion would be loyal to the enemy because it's an illusion of "one of the enemies guards" is just flat out freaking wrong and bizarre.

You may have intended for the spell to work differently (and frankly your three "levels" of illusions just seem wrong/strange as they are written), but that's not what you actually wrote in your rules. And I'll repeat what I said earlier (and someone else did as well), the levels should really be:

1. pre-programmed/simple illusion. No control. No versitility. It just does what you said it would do and nothing more. Can't change its behavior after casting.
2. Direct controlled illusion. Like above, but the caster can mentally control its actions to change the programming.
3. Free-willed illusion. Like above, but the illusion will changes its own actions to adapt to changing situations based on what the caster wants it to do.

So each level of illusion is a direct step above the other, with the final version basically allowing for the illusion to do exactly what the caster wants, but without the caster having to directly consciously control it. Key point being "what the caster wants". It's their illusion. Let them control what it does.

There should never be a "you cast the illusion but I decide what it does". That's just a terrible, player agency destroying, way to create a spell. Just don't do that. It's a conflict creator. Doubly so since your players clearly don't trust your judgement as to what "the illusion would do". And fankly, I don't blame them given the two examples you've provided so far. If I spent points for that spell and cast it and you had it operate that way? I'd be pissed too.

Also, the fact that you are interpreting this massive gap between what your spell actually says and how you are saying it should work, as your players trying to "exploit a rule" speaks volumes here. They aren't exploiting anything. They are reading the spell description and coming to exactly the correct expectation about how the spell should work, and you are arbitrarily, and after the fact, nullifying this expectation during play.


Oh. I'll also point out that players do not feel the need to conceal what they are doing if they believe the GM is actually impartial. So at least their perception is that you are an adversarial GM. That may or may not be an accurate perception, but you need to at least acknowledge that they believe this. And you need to do some honest self reflection and conversation with them to determine why. There's something going on here. I can't say what it is, but it's definitely there, and it's definitely a problem.

[Talakeal]

I will point out that it you may think it's a better plan for it to act a certain way and, truthfully, I agree with your assessment.... but it's not your job to make plans for the players. Remember that GM Fiat you said you hate?

I don't follow. Are you sure you are using FIAT correctly?

I mean. This is a ridiculous argument. As the GM would you really create a journey that is too perilous to be attempted, is absolutely necessary and then provide no work around except having one player go alone for three months of solo play?

I didn't say any of that though.

In this example the GM created the game world and set the players loose in it. The player decided that they wanted to contact someone, but then decided based on their knowledge of the game world route was too long and perilous to go themself, so they chose to send a summoned minion in their place.

I mean. Yeah. 'Cos it's clearly meta gaming. But what can you do? People either play in good faith or they don't. I guess what you could do is not spend 3 months detailing the events of a programmed illusion that never returned to a group of players. If I'd decided by GM Fiat that a wyvern would kill them on the way back then I'd just go "Yeah illusion sets off, I'll let you know when they get back. What are you doing now?". Giving them control of the illusion for three months of wasted time is ridiculous and any sensible GM and players know this is the time to not do that. If your players think otherwise, then you have bigger problems.

Right. The whole thing was given as an example of why Gbaji's suggestion that letting players play summoned creatures as if they were a second PC can actually create problems.

Also, again, I said nothing about deciding a wyvern killed the character by FIAT. That was just an example something that could happen over the natural course of play which would mean that they never found out what the summoned creature learned on its journey.

No offense... but I'd think you were a confrontational GM. You mention making it so Mirror Image doesn't work in a doorway. Where does it suggest that in the rules. So you have looked at it and chosen to make the spell useless. If that kind of ruling happened repeatedly, I'd assume that's a you thing. And don't delude yourself.... that's your choice to pull DM Fiat to screw the player.

Again, I don't think that's what FIAT means, although its closer. Also, I am not sure why this is "confrontational".

In this case, it was a weird case that the rules don't account for; having a mirror image within reach but out of the enemy's line of sight.

By RAW, the enemy javelins would phase through the walls and pop the mirror images. This is clearly ridiculous. So I ruled that the mirror images have no effect.

The players could have placed the mirror images in front of the wall or behind the doorway so that the spell functioned normally, but they wanted to have their cake and eat it to.


I really don't think a GM making a common sense ruling when it comes to weird edge-cases the rules didn't think of is the either FIAT or being confrontational, and I think the vast majority of players on both sides of the screen would prefer to play at a table without bucket healing, and commoner rail guns, and pun-pun, and locate city bomb, and self-resetting magical conjuration traps, and XP free wishes from Zodars that are technically RAW by clearly not RAI.

The DnD one? I don't see any text saying that it doesn't work in an enclosed space. As you yourself say in the stunting thread.... it's unreasonable to assume that every possible scenario will be covered in the text nor should it be (and I 100% agree with you on that). You will always have to adjudicate it. The concern is that you immediately nullified the players intent. Why? You had a choice one way or the other. Why make the player feel useless? Will it unbalance the game that much?

YES!

Having a hidden-mirror image meaning that half* of all attacks automatically fail blows away every other protective spell in the game, and renders it virtually impossible to lose a fight.

And again, telling my players "no" isn't the same as nullifying their intent; I am perfectly happy to let them take a do-over or to discuss a ruling before a spell is cast or a plan enacted.

But my players are, afaict, too proud and petulant to ever go along with that because doing so would admit that they either made a mistake or that I had sound judgement, which they can't do.


*: And that's at base level. By end game its more like 5 out of every 6 attacks, and can be even higher if you build a character around mirror images, which is probably a dominant build in this case.

Although, I will say that my players work *really* hard to bring it on themselves by being so secretive and trying to "pull a fast one" on me. For example, the event that I mentioned up thread where I went into the kitchen to check on dinner, and heard the players discuss a plan involving potions which sounded like it wouldn't work by RAW, and when I came back into the room to talk it over with them, they shut me down and said it was too late, they had already been bought while I was out of the room (despite me explicitly telling them not to buy anything without telling me first several sessions ago).

Ah, now here we go and here, in core, is your problem. You are the GM. Not your players. If you didn't say that they bought the potions.... they did not buy the potions. Nothing happens in the world without your acknowledgement. Nothing. The players can tell you what their characters are trying to do. That is it. You then either adjudicate it yourself or you can roll dice to adjudicate it and the YOU say what happens. Their character doesn't wake up in the morning until you say they do. When they say "I walk across that room" their characters only do so when you say "You step into the room. Because maybe they don't. Maybe there's an invisible force field over the door. they don't know. It's only real when you say it's real. This is something they certainly, and, you probably don't seem to accept. And you all need to accept it. Otherwise they're telling you how your world works.[/QUOTE]

While I am not nearly so overbearing as this, I have told them time and again to tell me before shopping, and to run plans which rely in questionable readings of the rules past me first, and they never do.

In this case, I knew their plan wouldn't work as I overheard it (although as I was in the other room I may well have misheard it) so I decided to just sigh and say ok, and hope they might learn a lesson when it went wrong.

Yeah, that was a bit passive aggressive, but I am just so tired of being the bad guy for trying to save them from themselves over and over again.

It feels like a no win situation, if I do warn them its a railroad, if I don't warn them its a gotcha. There doesn't seem to be any way to win.

When people see "it thinks for itself and goes off your personality" they expect "it has the same goals as me and it's aware that as an illusion it can't actually be hurt so it should act like me at my most brave" or even "it has the same goals as me and is aware its existence is entirely to aid me so it should act on that." They generally do not think "it has the same goals as me and is just as messed up as I am and will absolutely throw me and the entire party under the bus to avoid damage it can't actually be dealt anyway."

Have to second the people who say that, yes Bob may be a power-gaming cheapskate but it's still a DM failure to dictate "this is what your character would do." At least for any circumstances outside of "you're literally being mind controlled right now because of that save you failed, you aren't being given a choice, this is what your character is doing until the mind control ends or you pass a save again."

The debate is over whether the spell acts as the subject would act, or acts as as the subject would act if it new it was an illusion.

Bob created an NPC with a copy of his personality that is *explicitly* under the GM's control, and I did my best to RP Bob's character and have it act as he would.


The idea that you created a character so you get to control it is kind of a slippery slope. Like imagine one of the players was given one of the settings signature NPCs to play as a one shot, or Brian has to miss a session and gives his character to Nick; once the character is out of your hands, you lose the OOC right to dicate how the character behaves.

Also, its not really throwing the party under the bus for Bob to cower, he is an unarmored party face, its just good tactics.

Except that argument makes the level 2 version of the spell a worthless trap anyway. He copies a Knight? "Oh well that knight was a notorious traitor, you just didn't know about it, it cowers the monster goes for you." He copies a Wizard? "Oh that Wizard can't cast under pressure and it's definitely not taking the hit with more tanky people around, it cowers, monster goes for you."

If the players have no control over the illusion's behavior and it's working entirely off a personality dictated by the DM then it's just a tool for the DM to use to get whatever result they want. You chose to use it in a way that would send the monster after the party despite their goal being to use it as a distraction, you revealed this by having that result actually happen, as messed up as your group is it's still somewhat justified for them to be upset at "DM decided this screws us over, even if it's based on something entirely under our control."

The caster chooses the personality, not the GM.

Although yeah, if he copies a specific person, that is a risk you take. IF said character was already established as being a coward or w/e then that could well happen, but if the GM just decides to add that complication on the spot, that's a pretty antagonistic thing to do.

Again, I advocate for impartial GMing. Which is not antagonistic GMing.


At the table, the spell in question was not in any way a "worthless trap" as it effectively buffed the party for many rounds and turned many of their actions into critical successes. It more than made up for the spell slot. It just didn't provide one specific benefit in one specific round.

And, TBH, if you are expecting antagonistic GMing, isn't everything a worthless trap? Like, even a healing potion could be secretly poisoned if the GM is out to get you.

So first, because I have heard both things and it's important. Is your campaign a playtest of your rules or a genuine campaign with a narrative intended to be an engaging play experience? Because it cannot be both.

If it's a playtest, then you need to murder your darlings, be prepared to rewrite the rules when they raise a weird interaction and accept that your players will do weird thangs that will stretch narrative credibility. You need to make it clear that you are grateful when players find weird rules quirks but that you'll be updating them to avoid that. You need to get everyone's ego out of the way. And you need to understand that any fun you have will be the satisfaction of refining a product. I have published a game. The playtests included some genuinely miserable games, games where we nearly threw in the towel. You just have to power through. Because the reward is the joy of publishing it. If you don't hate the game at least a little by that time you probably haven't playtested it enough. That's fine. You're not the audience. You're the shop.

If it's an actual game played for fun, then your players need to get social contracts and they need to get that you, as a human being, are as entitled to fun as they are. You deserve a good time, not balancing the fragile egos of a bunch of people who should know better. And that sounds unlikely due to their immaturity. You need to tell them how your game will be and how much you'll tolerate. You need to set out your expectations.

This is surprisingly insightful. Thank you.

If your expectations are not being met.... why are you still playing? You are literally wasting your time on something unfulfilling. Because your players don't seem invested. One literally said he'd kill his character if you didn't do things his way. He doesn't care about his character, your game or your fun. So why do you keep doing it?

That's just Bob. He does this in every game, regardless of genre or system. He is really into cutting off his nose to spite his face.

There are tons of PC games which he uninstalls and refuses to play ever again because of a single "cheap death" or because an NPC told him what to do.

For whatever reason, he views characters only as ego-boosters and power-trips, and a character who has an embarrassing failure hanging over its head is, in his mind, literally better off dead.

I would prefer he didn't do it at tabletop games because it disrupts the whole campaign for no good reason, but he will still be back at the table in two weeks with a new character once he has gotten it out of his system.

Because "I dictate my character's personality" and "the spell's limitations go off the personality of the person it's copying" do kind of imply that, yes, its actions would be his choice. Meanwhile the way you've set up the spell makes every other option a massive pointless risk because every other personality is determined entirely by the DM in a way that it could screw over the party at any given time. So he put it in his own hands and then got told "no, doesn't work like that, I've decided what you would do in this situation for you."

It makes the second level of the spell one big game of russian roulette because if you pick the image being based off anything else you're blindly picking off aesthetics and what little behavior you've personally seen if any without any real insight into how they behave. If you base it off yourself you do have insight into how they behave because it's your behavior and it makes way more sense convincing an enemy with an illusion of something that's already there than it does to pull a knight out of thin air; but if the DM decides as you did that it's based on their understanding of your personality and devoid of all the context of it being an illusion made with a specific purpose in mind then you're right back to the DM having the ability to arbitrarily say it does something completely at odds with the entire reason to have the illusion in the first place, IE: it's a distraction so the people who can actually die don't get hit and have time to do things.

This whole conversation just seems like rules lawyers trying to out rules lawyer one another.

The spell is pretty simple, you create an illusion of something and it acts like what its an illusion of. That's it.

If you create an illusion of a guard, it guards something. Create an illusion of a messenger, it delivers a message. Create an illusion of a terrified commoner, it runs from the monsters and screams. If you create an illusion of a blood hound, it sniffs around and follows trails. Create an illusion of a guard dog, it barks when a stranger comes near. Create an illusion of a bartender, and he provides an ear to talk to. Create an illusion of a minstrel, he plays music.

The whole idea of "well, its a trap spell because what if the GM decides to have it betray us for no reason?" or "if I make it a copy of me, that means I get a second PC" belies an adversarial attitude that virtually no rule could stand up to.

Well. Just had a big long post eaten and don't feel like re-writing it.

Ouch. I hate when that happens.

My broad point is that the spell as it's written does exactly specify that it has the personality the caster wants it to have, not the one the GM wants it to have. The caster should absolutely be able to create an illusion of a guard, but which is on "my side" rather than that of the enemies. You claiming that the illusion would be loyal to the enemy because it's an illusion of "one of the enemies guards" is just flat out freaking wrong and bizarre.

If you are specifically giving it the personality of one of the enemy guards, then it will act as that guard would act.

You are free to tweak the spell to change its motivation or make it think it is a double agent.

So each level of illusion is a direct step above the other, with the final version basically allowing for the illusion to do exactly what the caster wants, but without the caster having to directly consciously control it. Key point being "what the caster wants". It's their illusion. Let them control what it does.

There should never be a "you cast the illusion but I decide what it does". That's just a terrible, player agency destroying, way to create a spell. Just don't do that. It's a conflict creator.

Much like your earlier argument that an ambushing character shouldn't roll initiative, this seems like a house rule that you have created and that you then deem all other RPGs inferior because they don't adopt it.

The vast majority of games I have played do not give control of minions to their master's player. Looking through the rule books on my shelves, the various summoning spells typically give some degree of control over the summoned creatures, but very few of them actually say "your player controls these as if it was a second player".

For example, by RAW, D&D summoned monsters obey verbal commands (but only if they can speak the caster's language) and will otherwise attack what the caster is attacking. Nothing says that the caster or their player gets to choose their tactics or even roll their dice. And in 5E, if the caster's concentration is broken, the summoned creatures will actively turn on them.

Like, I have played Mage more than any other game, and my character is a master of life magic. I have *literally* cloned myself multiple times at multiple tables. And nobody, not I, not the GM, not any of the other players, ever though that the clone would be a second PC under my control, it was always played as an NPC under the DM's control.

Heck, IIRC in AD&D the rules explicitly say that the most likely outcome of cloning yourself is your clone attempting to kill you and usurp your life.

I have been gaming for over three decades now, and this weekend was the first time I can recall ever having seen anyone upset over this at the table or online.

Also, the fact that you are interpreting this massive gap between what your spell actually says and how you are saying it should work, as your players trying to "exploit a rule" speaks volumes here. They aren't exploiting anything. They are reading the spell description and coming to exactly the correct expectation about how the spell should work, and you are arbitrarily, and after the fact, nullifying this expectation during play.

When you say "exactly the correct expectation" what precisely are you referring to?

Bob's initial (and imo much stronger argument) that the illusion acts upon the knowledge that it is an illusion?

Because that seems to be a gray area which I am not sure which side to go with (both can create problems for the caster depending on the situation) there doesn't seem to be a consensus of at my table or on the forum, so I think it is pretty arrogant of you to insist that Bob's is "exactly the correct expectation".


If you mean Bob's later argument that I should have given him the illusion as a second PC, well:

The spell *explicitly* says that the caster creates the personality and motivation, but that they do not have any direct control over it.
It is not a PC, and the general rules of the game *explicitly* say that the GM makes decisions for and rolls dice for NPCs.

So I really don't think Bob (or you if you are siding with him) has a leg to stand on by RAW.

Oh. I'll also point out that players do not feel the need to conceal what they are doing if they believe the GM is actually impartial. So at least their perception is that you are an adversarial GM. That may or may not be an accurate perception, but you need to at least acknowledge that they believe this. And you need to do some honest self reflection and conversation with them to determine why. There's something going on here. I can't say what it is, but it's definitely there, and it's definitely a problem.

Yep. Absolutely. But they don't want to talk about it, if they were open to communication it wouldn't be an issue in the first place.

Self reflection is hard. I am not empathic, and I have no other players to use as a control group. I will say, however, that when other people are GMing for them, they are far worse about it than they are with me, so it can't be exclusively a self created problem.



So, thinking back about it, it seems like Bob has a defiant streak about anyone telling his character what to do. Even though he isn't an RPer at all, he really likes to use his characters as a vehicle to "stick it to the man".

Some quick examples:
His psychic was caught mind controlling shop-keepers into giving him equipment for free. He was caught by with hunters, put on trial, and given probation. He immediately returned to the scene of the crime and did the exact same thing again, surrendered to the witch hunters, and told them to burn him at the stake.
He was in the middle of a desolate wasteland, and a goddess' avatar led him to a sacred shrine and told him he was free to rest within as long as he didn't harm the shrine or its inhabitants. He immediately attacked the shrine's defenders, and was killed when the rest of the party refused to help.
He was on an enchanted island, and the island's guardian spirit asked him to refrain from destructive magics while on the island. Bob immediately conjured up a volcano in front of the guardian spirit and was killed in the ensuing battle.
He missed a session, and one of the other PCs asked him if he could craft something for them and I Oked it. When Bob came back, he said the rest of us "literally robbed and enslaved" his character and if we didn't retcon the crafting (which cost him nothing but IC time) he would murder the rest of the party in their sleep.
Recently, the party surrendered to some monsters and agreed to pay them a ransom. When the rest of the party wanted to go through with the ransom instead of betraying and murdering the monsters, Bob said that he would never have allowed himself to be taken alive and wanted me to retroactively kill his character.

Basically, all of these stories have the common thread of someone telling Bob's character what to do, and he acts with over the top violence that is both reckless and totally out of proportion for what is asked of him.

I suspect, that in telling him that a copy of his character would be an NPC under the GM's control, I inadvertently hit upon the same nerve.

[MonochromeTiger]

Right. The whole thing was given as an example of why Gbaji's suggestion that letting players play summoned creatures as if they were a second PC can actually create problems.

There's a difference between "I made this and should have some influence and knowledge on how it's going to act in certain situations" and "I'm playing this like a second character" though.

Also, again, I said nothing about deciding a wyvern killed the character by FIAT. That was just an example something that could happen over the natural course of play which would mean that they never found out what the summoned creature learned on its journey.

Then the answer is "don't narrate everything the summoned character does when it's off on its own where no one can see it." The metagaming of the situation isn't player control over a summon or an illusion, it's them getting information that the summon or illusion had no viable way to share with them, and thus by extent it's the DM choosing to share that information they had no way of discovering at all instead of simply saying "ok you sent it on its way" and moving on with the parts of the game the players are actually part of.

While I am not nearly so overbearing as this, I have told them time and again to tell me before shopping, and to run plans which rely in questionable readings of the rules past me first, and they never do.

In this case, I knew their plan wouldn't work as I overheard it (although as I was in the other room I may well have misheard it) so I decided to just sigh and say ok, and hope they might learn a lesson when it went wrong.

Yeah, that was a bit passive aggressive, but I am just so tired of being the bad guy for trying to save them from themselves over and over again.

It feels like a no win situation, if I do warn them its a railroad, if I don't warn them its a gotcha. There doesn't seem to be any way to win.

That's because there isn't. You've already hit the point where a bunch of problem players have decided they know better than you, and at the same time that you're the one making all their plans crash and burn. That's not something you fix with "a lesson." Everything you do at that point is just fuel on the fire with that group, which is why it's even more confusing that you seem to be defending the idea of sticking with them so often.

The debate is over whether the spell acts as the subject would act, or acts as as the subject would act if it new it was an illusion.

Bob created an NPC with a copy of his personality that is *explicitly* under the GM's control, and I did my best to RP Bob's character and have it act as he would.

Correction: how you believe he would. That's kind of where this entire issue is coming from, especially when we bring in the fact that both Bob and Illusion-Bob would have information that changes their behavior in this context.

The idea that you created a character so you get to control it is kind of a slippery slope. Like imagine one of the players was given one of the settings signature NPCs to play as a one shot, or Brian has to miss a session and gives his character to Nick; once the character is out of your hands, you lose the OOC right to dicate how the character behaves.

I'm not seeing where "somebody else is playing your character because you willingly ceded control of them" is a slippery slope. Or where a setting's signature NPCs being played by them would be. It's really far less complex than you're making it sound.

They make something to serve a purpose. Help the party. They're working on the understanding that its actions will be focused on that task. Suddenly failing to do that task is thus a jarring departure for them from its entire purpose for existing. Logically if you make something for a task, if it's literally the very reason it exists, you're going to be a little annoyed when the DM tells you it doesn't do that because "it's what your character would do."

That isn't saying they should have full control of every single summon and pet in the game, though honestly there are plenty of games where controlling your summons and companions is actually normal. It means when somethings actions are based on what a player's character would do and the player character's actions are dictated by the player they are the arbiter of what their character is actually like.

You circumvented that to shut down what you considered power gaming. Issue being that you yourself saw some validity in Bob's argument, you just keep looping it back to "Frankenstein" instead of exploring its merit.

Also, its not really throwing the party under the bus for Bob to cower, he is an unarmored party face, its just good tactics.

For flesh and blood Bob. Not for Illusion Bob. Which severely undermines the point of having an illusion trying to help the party when it arbitrarily decides "oh no something will hit my illusory body, better send it after everyone else instead."

The caster chooses the personality, not the GM.

You're not really making this better by pointing that out. That just makes it even more galling for any illusion they make to go from helpful to pointing at everyone else and saying "them first" at the earliest sign it might get hit.

Although yeah, if he copies a specific person, that is a risk you take. IF said character was already established as being a coward or w/e then that could well happen, but if the GM just decides to add that complication on the spot, that's a pretty antagonistic thing to do.

Again, I advocate for impartial GMing. Which is not antagonistic GMing.

You're advocating for the option that ended up getting the party used as meat shields for an illusion. I can understand how they might not see that as "impartial."

At the table, the spell in question was not in any way a "worthless trap" as it effectively buffed the party for many rounds and turned many of their actions into critical successes. It more than made up for the spell slot. It just didn't provide one specific benefit in one specific round.

Alright then. Allow me to correct with this different information. "A trap that was useful only so long as they didn't rely on it to do something it makes sense for an illusion to do."

And, TBH, if you are expecting antagonistic GMing, isn't everything a worthless trap? Like, even a healing potion could be secretly poisoned if the GM is out to get you.

Sure, sometimes. If you're expecting antagonistic DMing you shouldn't even be playing with that DM. Thing is if for whatever reason you're still playing with them anyway then something with clear rules for what it does, healing potions to use your example, is something concrete you can rely on and know that if the DM does decide to spite you on it you can point it out to the other players with confidence.

Trap options in those circumstances aren't as simple as the DM deciding your healing potions are poison all along because that's an undisguised and unambiguous act of spite. Trap options are when something can arbitrarily go from working as intended to getting everyone killed or making life much harder for the group at a moment's notice while the DM shrugs it off.

That's just Bob. He does this in every game, regardless of genre or system. He is really into cutting off his nose to spite his face.

There are tons of PC games which he uninstalls and refuses to play ever again because of a single "cheap death" or because an NPC told him what to do.

For whatever reason, he views characters only as ego-boosters and power-trips, and a character who has an embarrassing failure hanging over its head is, in his mind, literally better off dead.

I would prefer he didn't do it at tabletop games because it disrupts the whole campaign for no good reason, but he will still be back at the table in two weeks with a new character once he has gotten it out of his system.

Then, again, why keep letting him join? If his presence causes repeated disruptions, if he's so unreliable that an illusion literally letting its flesh and blood allies get hit to cover itself is something you consider in character for him, and if he's the source of so many of your table's maddening arguments even when he's not throwing a fit, why keep letting him join?

You know he causes problems. You know that he has issues with being called out on things. You still invite him back to do it all again knowing that any inconvenience will lead to another horror story and another fit.

This whole conversation just seems like rules lawyers trying to out rules lawyer one another.

And yet only one side is being dismissed as power gaming.

The spell is pretty simple, you create an illusion of something and it acts like what its an illusion of. That's it.

If you create an illusion of a guard, it guards something. Create an illusion of a messenger, it delivers a message. Create an illusion of a terrified commoner, it runs from the monsters and screams. If you create an illusion of a blood hound, it sniffs around and follows trails. Create an illusion of a guard dog, it barks when a stranger comes near. Create an illusion of a bartender, and he provides an ear to talk to. Create an illusion of a minstrel, he plays music.

And we're getting inconsistent with what you said before. Does the person casting the spell decide the personality or not? You said earlier they did, but right here you're saying they do what the illusion looks like it will do. You can't exactly say both because if it's the former then the appearance of the illusion is just that, an appearance, while if it's the latter then the appearance defines the illusion and the only decision of personality the players are making is "well what action that we've seen do we want to have an illusion parrot."

The whole idea of "well, its a trap spell because what if the GM decides to have it betray us for no reason?" or "if I make it a copy of me, that means I get a second PC" belies an adversarial attitude that virtually no rule could stand up to.

Please note, I haven't been advocating for "I make a copy so I get a second character", I've been advocating for "well they made it for a reason (help the party) and it decided to cower right when that's the least helpful option for the party." Whether someone should have full control or not is an entire different discussion, but since you brought it up a few times I've already hinted at my view that controlling summons really isn't as devastating as you're implying and plenty of games have made it work fine.

As for it being a trap spell or not? Again, I absolutely can see where from their perspective it would be. It did some helpful things then when its illusory nature was most relevant to what it could do to help them that's when you decided it would go with something to get them all hit first. How can you not see where that would probably be taken as "DM decided to have it betray us"?

Sure you point out it's based on Bob's behavior, but again touching on a player character's behavior is a minefield at best and a massive DMing red flag at worst. But then you've actually given ways it could arbitrarily betray the party in this thread. You keep coming back to mentioning "Frankenstein" and how something can go out of its creator's control. You're entertaining the notion of an illusion or summon going against the players while simultaneously saying it's just them using it wrong and that trying to get more control, something that literally everyone with any sense should be trying to figure out in a world where illusions and summons can do that is an attempt to exploit the rules or power game.

And again, from their perspective it looks an awful lot like trying to get more control was warranted because when the illusion had to do something other than sit back and cast it failed them.

If you are specifically giving it the personality of one of the enemy guards, then it will act as that guard would act.

You are free to tweak the spell to change its motivation or make it think it is a double agent.

So the player doesn't decide its personality, they can just make small alterations.

Much like your earlier argument that an ambushing character shouldn't roll initiative, this seems like a house rule that you have created and that you then deem all other RPGs inferior because they don't adopt it.

Or, you know, it's feedback that you're dismissing out of hand.

The vast majority of games I have played do not give control of minions to their master's player. Looking through the rule books on my shelves, the various summoning spells typically give some degree of control over the summoned creatures, but very few of them actually say "your player controls these as if it was a second player".

For example, by RAW, D&D summoned monsters obey verbal commands (but only if they can speak the caster's language) and will otherwise attack what the caster is attacking. Nothing says that the caster or their player gets to choose their tactics or even roll their dice. And in 5E, if the caster's concentration is broken, the summoned creatures will actively turn on them.

Like, I have played Mage more than any other game, and my character is a master of life magic. I have *literally* cloned myself multiple times at multiple tables. And nobody, not I, not the GM, not any of the other players, ever though that the clone would be a second PC under my control, it was always played as an NPC under the DM's control.

Heck, IIRC in AD&D the rules explicitly say that the most likely outcome of cloning yourself is your clone attempting to kill you and usurp your life.

I have been gaming for over three decades now, and this weekend was the first time I can recall ever having seen anyone upset over this at the table or online.

You've been gaming for over three decades and you've never once, until right now, had anyone argue "this thing that I literally made to do what I want should do what I want"? How do you go from groups being so passive that none of them consider controlling something that is effectively an extension of their own character's abilities to groups that are so hostile (from all sides apparently) that I haven't seen them mentioned once without it being explanation for something else causing a massive fight.

Yep. Absolutely. But they don't want to talk about it, if they were open to communication it wouldn't be an issue in the first place.

Self reflection is hard. I am not empathic, and I have no other players to use as a control group. I will say, however, that when other people are GMing for them, they are far worse about it than they are with me, so it can't be exclusively a self created problem.

I seriously suggest looking for other players to be a control group. Personally I suggest looking for other players in general and avoiding introducing them to your current group entirely just to be safe, if nothing else it greatly reduces the odds of Bob passing on ways to exploit you. I even suggest dropping your current group completely for the sake of your patience if nothing else.

So, thinking back about it, it seems like Bob has a defiant streak about anyone telling his character what to do. Even though he isn't an RPer at all, he really likes to use his characters as a vehicle to "stick it to the man".

Some quick examples:
His psychic was caught mind controlling shop-keepers into giving him equipment for free. He was caught by with hunters, put on trial, and given probation. He immediately returned to the scene of the crime and did the exact same thing again, surrendered to the witch hunters, and told them to burn him at the stake.
He was in the middle of a desolate wasteland, and a goddess' avatar led him to a sacred shrine and told him he was free to rest within as long as he didn't harm the shrine or its inhabitants. He immediately attacked the shrine's defenders, and was killed when the rest of the party refused to help.
He was on an enchanted island, and the island's guardian spirit asked him to refrain from destructive magics while on the island. Bob immediately conjured up a volcano in front of the guardian spirit and was killed in the ensuing battle.
He missed a session, and one of the other PCs asked him if he could craft something for them and I Oked it. When Bob came back, he said the rest of us "literally robbed and enslaved" his character and if we didn't retcon the crafting (which cost him nothing but IC time) he would murder the rest of the party in their sleep.
Recently, the party surrendered to some monsters and agreed to pay them a ransom. When the rest of the party wanted to go through with the ransom instead of betraying and murdering the monsters, Bob said that he would never have allowed himself to be taken alive and wanted me to retroactively kill his character.

Basically, all of these stories have the common thread of someone telling Bob's character what to do, and he acts with over the top violence that is both reckless and totally out of proportion for what is asked of him.

Sounds to me less like it's about telling his character what to do and more about telling him personally he can't do something or any loss of personal agency over his character.

The first is definitely a problem which leaves me asking why you keep letting him join a game where rules will restrict what he can and can't do, or more specifically why are you having him test the rules for a game system where you made the rules? Not only is that just going to fuel even more conflict when you've got some personal investment in the rules being as they are (and it's showing even in this thread where others like gbaji reach different conclusions than you) but it's also giving Bob someone to blame directly when those rules stop what he wants and someone to target to try changing those rules to fit what he wants. And no matter what he seems to do you let him back in, which is just going to tell him that as much as you push back he still has leverage.

The latter is something I can actually sympathize on though not nearly to the extent that would be needed to see Bob as anything but a problem player. I've mentioned it before, and so have others for that matter, taking agency away from a player on what their character does is generally considered a bad move.

I suspect, that in telling him that a copy of his character would be an NPC under the GM's control, I inadvertently hit upon the same nerve.

There's plenty of other reasons to be annoyed at how that entire scenario played out but sure. Given everything else you've said about Bob I'm not sure he'd really grasp on those reasons immediately when it's much easier to fixate on how "he" was being made to do something he didn't want. Even though that does touch on other reasons to be annoyed there is such a thing as running into a good argument with the wrong logic.

[Reversefigure4]

For example, by RAW, D&D summoned monsters obey verbal commands (but only if they can speak the caster's language) and will otherwise attack what the caster is attacking. Nothing says that the caster or their player gets to choose their tactics or even roll their dice.

I've been GMing for a long while now, and it's never come up as an issue having the players run their own summons. It's my GM preference, in fact - why would I want to make more tactical decisions and roll more dice when I've already got a bunch of NPCs and monsters at the table to run myself? I let players run their own summons, their illusions, absent PCs, allied NPCs... heck, I've even given players enemy monsters to run when their character is KOed so that the player is still getting to participate at the table and rolling dice, and they're quite happy to attack other PCs characters. Mind Controlled PCs get instructions in the ilk of "The Enchantress wants you to murder the other PCs. You believe she is a goddess and desire to serve her. Follow her instructions in the way your character considers the most efficient".

My players run the summons as if they were characters by roleplaying their decisions. If the summoner can't instruct them, they tend to default to "attack what caster is attacking / attack closest thing". Summoned wolves flank and trip people. I've had players themselves say "The Earth Elemental moves across the room and pulls the lever... actually, never mind, I've just realised it's got an Int of 3 and probably doesn't know what a lever is, let alone work out what it would do. Instead it Bull Rushes, that's more Earth Elemental-y".

I retain the right as GM to overwrite them if one of them ever leads off with something bizarre like "the Allied NPC hands me all his money then kills himself", but it's never come up as an actual problem at the table, only a theoretical one. The closest I've come to is the other players - not me - frowning at a decision a player made for an absent PC, saying "I don't think Redgar the Fighter would do that, it's not how he's been playing his character" following by the player running him agreeing and changing the action. On one occasion I've stopped a player from taking a specific action with an NPC saying "You have no way of knowing this as a player, but that NPC not only has no ranks in swim, she's terrified of water", followed by the player course-correcting.

But, you know, I trust the players to make calls that will the game the most fun for the table, and they trust me to do likewise. It's amazing how far it gets you.

[MonochromeTiger]

I've been GMing for a long while now, and it's never come up as an issue having the players run their own summons. It's my GM preference, in fact - why would I want to make more tactical decisions and roll more dice when I've already got a bunch of NPCs and monsters at the table to run myself? I let players run their own summons, their illusions, absent PCs, allied NPCs... heck, I've even given players enemy monsters to run when their character is KOed so that the player is still getting to participate at the table and rolling dice, and they're quite happy to attack other PCs characters. Mind Controlled PCs get instructions in the ilk of "The Enchantress wants you to murder the other PCs. You believe she is a goddess and desire to serve her. Follow her instructions in the way your character considers the most efficient".

My players run the summons as if they were characters by roleplaying their decisions. If the summoner can't instruct them, they tend to default to "attack what caster is attacking / attack closest thing". Summoned wolves flank and trip people. I've had players themselves say "The Earth Elemental moves across the room and pulls the lever... actually, never mind, I've just realised it's got an Int of 3 and probably doesn't know what a lever is, let alone work out what it would do. Instead it Bull Rushes, that's more Earth Elemental-y".

I retain the right as GM to overwrite them if one of them ever leads off with something bizarre like "the Allied NPC hands me all his money then kills himself", but it's never come up as an actual problem at the table, only a theoretical one. The closest I've come to is the other players - not me - frowning at a decision a player made for an absent PC, saying "I don't think Redgar the Fighter would do that, it's not how he's been playing his character" following by the player running him agreeing and changing the action. On one occasion I've stopped a player from taking a specific action with an NPC saying "You have no way of knowing this as a player, but that NPC not only has no ranks in swim, she's terrified of water", followed by the player course-correcting.

But, you know, I trust the players to make calls that will the game the most fun for the table, and they trust me to do likewise. It's amazing how far it gets you.

This. Thank you. This entire post is everything I wish I could say on the topic of player control for summons. It's even what I would say on player control while mind controlled.

As long as everyone at the table is willing to trust each other and buy into the fantasy of the game nothing is lost by allowing this kind of control and it can even lower the amount of bookkeeping and time that has to be devoted to managing all the player-made summons in a fight. Taking control of monsters a player character summons, or companions like a pet or familiar, is a method of control for if you don't or can't trust your players to not be as cheap as possible.

Even a mind controlled character can be left to the players if they actually take the effect seriously, sometimes there's room for interpretation in an order given to them by the character controlling them but it's on them to notice that and check if that can be taken advantage of or not. If the players are actually invested in the game and not just their character winning they may surprise whoever is running the game with their willingness to act against their own interests to fit the scenario.

That said as much as I fully support that view Talakeal's got a built in rebuttal with the fact that his players can't be trusted to keep to what a summon or companion would reasonably know to do or to work against their own interests if affected by some kind of control. All of it works fine with players who are actually interested in the game and not just trying to "win" it but from the sounds of it that's all Talakeal's group is focused on.

[Talakeal]

So, to clarify, the initial conflict with Bob was about whether an illusion that is made to act like a perfect copy of an existing being acts as the creature normally would, or how the creature would act if it is an illusion. Its a good question, and I can see drawbacks to either side, and I could have ruled either way.

The only reason there is drama here is that Bob threatened to kill of his character if I didn't rule in his favor.

The question itself is a perfectly reasonable one IMO and I would not begrudge a GM for ruling either way.

There should never be a "you cast the illusion but I decide what it does". That's just a terrible, player agency destroying, way to create a spell. Just don't do that. It's a conflict creator. Doubly so since your players clearly don't trust your judgement as to what "the illusion would do". And fankly, I don't blame them given the two examples you've provided so far. If I spent points for that spell and cast it and you had it operate that way? I'd be pissed too.

Out of curiosity, when you say "two examples" what is the second one?

Is it the mirror image?

Because playing it by RAW, the arrows would simply phase through the wall and pop mirror images that the enemies couldn't possibly target, and that really immersion. Likewise, having mirror images which cannot be seen provide massive accuracy penalties hurts both the narrative and the game balance.

What would you do in that situation?

There's a difference between "I made this and should have some influence and knowledge on how it's going to act in certain situations" and "I'm playing this like a second character" though.

Absolutely.

Then the answer is "don't narrate everything the summoned character does when it's off on its own where no one can see it." The metagaming of the situation isn't player control over a summon or an illusion, it's them getting information that the summon or illusion had no viable way to share with them, and thus by extent it's the DM choosing to share that information they had no way of discovering at all instead of simply saying "ok you sent it on its way" and moving on with the parts of the game the players are actually part of.

Agreed.

Again, this hypothetical was posted as a response to Gbaji's statement that simply giving players complete control of their character's summons solves all problems, even when said characters aren't around to give the commands. I posted a scenario where doing so actually creates problems rather than solving them.

snip.

So, you keep saying its whole point in existing was to protect the party. That isn't quite the case (and I admit, I could have made that more clear in my previous post).

In the past, on two occasions he has created illusions specifically to serve as distractions, and both times I have said yes, and they have served as distractions admirably.

In this case, Bob specifically asked if he could create a perfect copy of himself that would lead the party while he was indisposed, and I said yes. So he said he was doing so.

Then on the monster's turn, I asked him again what the illusion's personality was to determine how it would react, and he clarified that it would acct exactly as he would.

Bob would cower if he was attacked, so I ruled that the illusion would also cower if it were attacked.

Bob then said, but if I were an illusion, I wouldn't cower if I were attacked.

I said this is a good point. I hadn't considered that an illusion that knows it is an illusion would take this into account when planning its behavior. I can see drawbacks to either way; for example most of the time, you are using an illusion as some form of deception, and thus if the illusion suddenly starts acting differently because it knows its an illusion, it will have a hard time pulling off the act. And if it knows it only has an hour of life, it probably doesn't want to spend it doing whatever menial task you assigned it.

At which point, instead of saying something like "Ok, well, I didn't know that, can we say that I specified that this specific illusion will always act as a version of me that knows its an illusion rather than a perfect copy" to which I would have obliged, he said "Fine then. I don't care anymore. I am laying down in front of the monster and letting it eat me." And now we have drama.

And yet only one side is being dismissed as power gaming.

I don't believe I ever said the word power gaming.

I said that when you are explicitly told that the illusion is not under your control, trying to get around that by saying "well, its a perfect copy of me, and since I control my character, I have perfect control anyway" is an exploit / loophole.

Likewise, the GM who randomly invents personality traits to screw the party or has the illusion betray the party is a complete straw man.

And we're getting inconsistent with what you said before. Does the person casting the spell decide the personality or not? You said earlier they did, but right here you're saying they do what the illusion looks like it will do. You can't exactly say both because if it's the former then the appearance of the illusion is just that, an appearance, while if it's the latter then the appearance defines the illusion and the only decision of personality the players are making is "well what action that we've seen do we want to have an illusion parrot."

So the player doesn't decide its personality, they can just make small alterations.

The spell creates an independent illusion that does its best to imitate a being. The caster decides who and what that being is, and then has no further control. And like all NPCs, it is up to the GM to decide how they act given their motivations and knowledge.

If the caster decides to create an illusion of a dog, it might well keep them up at night barking because that is what dogs do.
If the caster decides to create an illusion of an enemy guard, it will sound they alarm if it spots the party, because that is what enemy guards do.
If the caster decides to create an illusion of the devil, it will tempt you toward evil and give you self destructive advice because that is what the devil does.
If the caster decides to create an illusion of Bob, it will cower when attacked, because that is what Bob does.

And again, Bob's argument that the illusion should know it is an illusion and modify its behavior appropriately is a reasonable one, and is only causing drama and conflict because it was presented in an unreasonable manner.


And again, having it know its an illusion and act upon that knowledge can utterly ruin the spells usefulness. For example, if I kill one of the villain's henchmen in a sneak attack and then replace him with a perfect illusionary copy of said henchman to avoid raising suspicion, it is in my best interest that he acts normally. If, instead, he knows that he has been replaced by an illusion, he is going to go tell the villain that he has been replaced by an illusion, making the spell pretty worthless.

Or, you know, it's feedback that you're dismissing out of hand.

It is also that, yes.

People have been playing RPGs for 50 years, and I have never heard anyone proclaim that any summoning spell which doesn't allow the caster's player to control it like a second PC is stupid, yet mine is. Likewise, I have never heard anyone say hidden characters having initiative is stupid, yet my system is stupid for doing this.

That's not really valuable feedback.

For example, if I ask your opinion on whether I should buy a Toyota, and you tell me that it is a terrible car because it requires expensive gasoline to run and could be dangerous in a collision, and instead I should hitch-hike everywhere, do you really think that is feedback that I should take seriously?

Now, I suppose part of it is just the hostility in the phrasing. For example, I imagine saying something like "Maybe you should challenge the root assumptions, and see if you can't come up with a new and better way to do things if the old methods aren't working" sounds a lot more positive and easier to swallow than "Your ideas are stupid and wrong despite other people having successfully implemented them for decades."

As for it being a trap spell or not? Again, I absolutely can see where from their perspective it would be. It did some helpful things then when its illusory nature was most relevant to what it could do to help them that's when you decided it would go with something to get them all hit first. How can you not see where that would probably be taken as "DM decided to have it betray us"?

I don't consider a spell working the way it works to be a "betrayal".

The spell does its best to replicate the behavior or the being it is copying. Not the hypothetical behavior of how the thing it is copying would act if it new it were an illusion.

Like, I assume you wouldn't say a magic missile "betrayed the party" if I tried to use it to blast open a lock and the DM informed me that magic missiles cannot harm objects.

You've been gaming for over three decades and you've never once, until right now, had anyone argue "this thing that I literally made to do what I want should do what I want"? How do you go from groups being so passive that none of them consider controlling something that is effectively an extension of their own character's abilities to groups that are so hostile (from all sides apparently) that I haven't seen them mentioned once without it being explanation for something else causing a massive fight.

I have never once once had a player state that the GM is obligated to hand control of an NPC over to a player.

I seriously suggest looking for other players to be a control group. Personally I suggest looking for other players in general and avoiding introducing them to your current group entirely just to be safe, if nothing else it greatly reduces the odds of Bob passing on ways to exploit you. I even suggest dropping your current group completely for the sake of your patience if nothing else.

I would love. I just have no idea how to do it.

It seems like every group I find a: plays D&D exclusively, b: has a steady GM who will not let go of the reins, and c: has trouble finding enough players to stick together as people join for a few months and then ghost us.

A couple years ago my FLGS had a meetup day specifically to help people in finding new groups. We played one session together, as far as I could tell everyone was nice and had a good time, afterward we created a discord group and scheduled another session the next week. A few people said they couldn't make it, most said nothing, and I was literally the only person who showed up. The following week, nobody even bothered making an excuse before not showing up. The third week I didn't bother showing up, and nobody ever posted to the Discord again.

In my experience, that is pretty typical.

Even in college when we had a steady stream of new players, we never managed to actually hold a campaign together for more than a few sessions. Most people never show up at all, and those who do only show up once or twice before ghosting the group, and then the game quietly dies.


And again, this is why I put up with so much crap from my players. I really love gaming, and it seems like the only people who actually stick around are the weirdos, so that is a sacrifice I have to endure if I want to play.

I've been GMing for a long while now, and it's never come up as an issue having the players run their own summons. It's my GM preference, in fact - why would I want to make more tactical decisions and roll more dice when I've already got a bunch of NPCs and monsters at the table to run myself? I let players run their own summons, their illusions, absent PCs, allied NPCs... heck, I've even given players enemy monsters to run when their character is KOed so that the player is still getting to participate at the table and rolling dice, and they're quite happy to attack other PCs characters. Mind Controlled PCs get instructions in the ilk of "The Enchantress wants you to murder the other PCs. You believe she is a goddess and desire to serve her. Follow her instructions in the way your character considers the most efficient".

My players run the summons as if they were characters by role-playing their decisions. If the summoner can't instruct them, they tend to default to "attack what caster is attacking / attack closest thing". Summoned wolves flank and trip people. I've had players themselves say "The Earth Elemental moves across the room and pulls the lever... actually, never mind, I've just realised it's got an Int of 3 and probably doesn't know what a lever is, let alone work out what it would do. Instead it Bull Rushes, that's more Earth Elemental-y".

I retain the right as GM to overwrite them if one of them ever leads off with something bizarre like "the Allied NPC hands me all his money then kills himself", but it's never come up as an actual problem at the table, only a theoretical one. The closest I've come to is the other players - not me - frowning at a decision a player made for an absent PC, saying "I don't think Redgar the Fighter would do that, it's not how he's been playing his character" following by the player running him agreeing and changing the action. On one occasion I've stopped a player from taking a specific action with an NPC saying "You have no way of knowing this as a player, but that NPC not only has no ranks in swim, she's terrified of water", followed by the player course-correcting.

But, you know, I trust the players to make calls that will the game the most fun for the table, and they trust me to do likewise. It's amazing how far it gets you.

This is generally how I do it as well.

But only if the PCs have some control over the characters, be it magical, financial, or even just an oath or bond of loyalty. Likewise, they need to actually be present to give orders, and I never make anyone talk to themselves when in a conversation with a minion.

By default, said illusion spell is not under the caster's control. The caster chooses what to create, and then it acts on its own instincts.

Just like if the players chose to summon a demon or animate an undead monster without controlling it and let it go on a rampage. Its not in their control, either in or out of character, and thus I play it just like I would any other NPC.

This. Thank you. This entire post is everything I wish I could say on the topic of player control for summons. It's even what I would say on player control while mind controlled.

As long as everyone at the table is willing to trust each other and buy into the fantasy of the game nothing is lost by allowing this kind of control and it can even lower the amount of bookkeeping and time that has to be devoted to managing all the player-made summons in a fight. Taking control of monsters a player character summons, or companions like a pet or familiar, is a method of control for if you don't or can't trust your players to not be as cheap as possible.

Even a mind controlled character can be left to the players if they actually take the effect seriously, sometimes there's room for interpretation in an order given to them by the character controlling them but it's on them to notice that and check if that can be taken advantage of or not. If the players are actually invested in the game and not just their character winning they may surprise whoever is running the game with their willingness to act against their own interests to fit the scenario.

That said as much as I fully support that view Talakeal's got a built in rebuttal with the fact that his players can't be trusted to keep to what a summon or companion would reasonably know to do or to work against their own interests if affected by some kind of control. All of it works fine with players who are actually interested in the game and not just trying to "win" it but from the sounds of it that's all Talakeal's group is focused on.

Nah. This generally works fine.

There are situations where it doesn't, but they are few and far between.

Please note, I haven't been advocating for "I make a copy so I get a second character", I've been advocating for "well they made it for a reason (help the party) and it decided to cower right when that's the least helpful option for the party." Whether someone should have full control or not is an entire different discussion, but since you brought it up a few times I've already hinted at my view that controlling summons really isn't as devastating as you're implying and plenty of games have made it work fine.

Ok, but do note that Bob absolutely thinks that, atleast in this case, he is entitled to a second character. And AFAICT Gbaji claims that it is always best practice to give players complete control of their character's summons.

In character, I don't think the player's motives for casting a spell should change how the spell functions. Now, if a player tells me what they want, and they are casting a spell that won't do that, I will inform them ahead of time (or even let them do a take-back and ret-con it) I will absolutely let them cast a different spell or try and work with them to achieve the result they want.

In this case, Bob asked me if he could create a copy of himself to serve as a leadership bot, and I said yes. And then he got sulky when I told him a copy of him (which was made to be a leadership bot) would react to danger like he does rather than tanking blows for him.

And I then let him retroactively bind the spell to his will to bypass the debate entirely.

[GloatingSwine]

The spell creates an independent illusion that does its best to imitate a being. The caster decides who and what that being is, and then has no further control. And like all NPCs, it is up to the GM to decide how they act given their motivations and knowledge.

If the caster decides to create an illusion of a dog, it might well keep them up at night barking because that is what dogs do.
If the caster decides to create an illusion of an enemy guard, it will sound they alarm if it spots the party, because that is what enemy guards do.
If the caster decides to create an illusion of the devil, it will tempt you toward evil and give you self destructive advice because that is what the devil does.
If the caster decides to create an illusion of Bob, it will cower when attacked, because that is what Bob does.

And again, Bob's argument that the illusion should know it is an illusion and modify its behavior appropriately is a reasonable one, and is only causing drama and conflict because it was presented in an unreasonable manner.

That's because Bob can't see the wider picture which is that the spell is absolutely useless to the players because absolutely nothing links their intent in using it with the outcome it has.

This is a spell which says "something happens". Those exact words in that order and no more.

Is it a good something? A bad something? A completely irrelevant something? Who knows! Certainly not the player casting it.

[Talakeal]

That's because Bob can't see the wider picture which is that the spell is absolutely useless to the players because absolutely nothing links their intent in using it with the outcome it has.

This is a spell which says "something happens". Those exact words in that order and no more.

Is it a good something? A bad something? A completely irrelevant something? Who knows! Certainly not the player casting it.

And this is different than every other spell ever written how?

[Keltest]

And this is different than every other spell ever written how?

Because when they say "something" happens, they're particular about the something. If I cast a spell to set the floor of a room on fire, I know what I'm going to get out of that.

[GloatingSwine]

And this is different than every other spell ever written how?

Because every other spell tells you what the something is.

This one doesn't. It looks like it does, but it doesn't because there's a clean break between the player's intent and the spell's outcome.

This is "spend a spell slot and visual theme, the DM decides the rest".

[Vyke]

I don't follow. Are you sure you are using FIAT correctly?

Yes. Are you sure you are?

I didn't say any of that though.

In this example the GM created the game world and set the players loose in it. The player decided that they wanted to contact someone, but then decided based on their knowledge of the game world route was too long and perilous to go themself, so they chose to send a summoned minion in their place.

{Scrubbed} You introduced the example. I responded. You now say the example was irrelevant.

And It still isn't by the way. The players can absolutely send the illusion North, for example, but literally nothing exists to the North until you say it does. There isn't a game world. It doesn't exist. Your job as GM (one of them anyway) is to make you players ignore that fact.

Right. The whole thing was given as an example of why Gbaji's suggestion that letting players play summoned creatures as if they were a second PC can actually create problems.

Also, again, I said nothing about deciding a wyvern killed the character by FIAT. That was just an example something that could happen over the natural course of play which would mean that they never found out what the summoned creature learned on its journey.

Badly explained example then. Fine. But again, the wyverns only exist because you say they do.

Also, and I'll come back to this.... the illusion isn't a person. Even in game world. Would you describe something burning from a Fireball if it was out of sight of the players?

Again, I don't think that's what FIAT means, although its closer. Also, I am not sure why this is "confrontational".

In this case, it was a weird case that the rules don't account for; having a mirror image within reach but out of the enemy's line of sight.

This one's partially on me so I'll cover the miscommunication first. I started writing about the DnD Mirror Image first (notice I reference that in the quote later in the post). Then I read the HoD one and realised it worked differently. I thought I'd scrubbed all the 5e stuff but must have missed this one. That's my bad. The point I was making was valid but about something we weren't talking about.... so was unhelpful.

By RAW, the enemy javelins would phase through the walls and pop the mirror images. This is clearly ridiculous. So I ruled that the mirror images have no effect.

No, by RAW they hit the caster. There is no part of the HoD Mirror Image spell that says hits are randomised and the RAW rules for attacking say you can attack a visible target (well one you are aware of)

The players could have placed the mirror images in front of the wall or behind the doorway so that the spell functioned normally, but they wanted to have their cake and eat it to.

No, they still hit the caster. Hits aren't randomised. That's why you need to fix the spell.

I really don't think a GM making a common sense ruling when it comes to weird edge-cases the rules didn't think of is the either FIAT or being confrontational, and I think the vast majority of players on both sides of the screen would prefer to play at a table without bucket healing, and commoner rail guns, and pun-pun, and locate city bomb, and self-resetting magical conjuration traps, and XP free wishes from Zodars that are technically RAW by clearly not RAI.

Now first off, it is GM fiat. Don't worry about it. That's your job. You are looking at the rules and going "This does not make sense to me, I am doing it this way so that's how it works". That's your job. You seem to think GM fiat is somehow a problem. It isn't. Bad decisions supported by GM Fiat are bad. Good decisions supported by GM fiat are good.

Second all the stuff with the Theoretical optimisation stuff? {Scrubbed} Because people don't do those things outside thought experiments and the ones that do, you tell them to stop or you tell them to leave. And the reason it doesn't happen is as you say.... because no one really wants it. You can't litigate for a tiny percentage being tools. You just have to tell them to leave.

YES!

Having a hidden-mirror image meaning that half* of all attacks automatically fail blows away every other protective spell in the game, and renders it virtually impossible to lose a fight.

And again, telling my players "no" isn't the same as nullifying their intent; I am perfectly happy to let them take a do-over or to discuss a ruling before a spell is cast or a plan enacted.

But my players are, afaict, too proud and petulant to ever go along with that because doing so would admit that they either made a mistake or that I had sound judgement, which they can't do.


*: And that's at base level. By end game its more like 5 out of every 6 attacks, and can be even higher if you build a character around mirror images, which is probably a dominant build in this case.

But RAW the HoD Mirror Image doesn't do that. RAW it does nothing, the caster still gets hit. Also I was talking about the DnD one, that's why I specifically said DnD

While I am not nearly so overbearing as this, I have told them time and again to tell me before shopping, and to run plans which rely in questionable readings of the rules past me first, and they never do.

In this case, I knew their plan wouldn't work as I overheard it (although as I was in the other room I may well have misheard it) so I decided to just sigh and say ok, and hope they might learn a lesson when it went wrong.

Yeah, that was a bit passive aggressive, but I am just so tired of being the bad guy for trying to save them from themselves over and over again.

It feels like a no win situation, if I do warn them its a railroad, if I don't warn them its a gotcha. There doesn't seem to be any way to win.

It's not overbearing. It's being the GM. It's your responsibility. I stress again. There is no world of Eberron, Faerun, whatever. They don't exist. The characters can't go to the potion shop without you. There is no potion shop. There are no characters. You have to make them forget that. You do it multiple ways, your narration, your style of game, the rules you adhere to and ignore. But there is no world without your explicit permission. That's the power of the GM.... and with that power... something, something.... boiled rice.

The debate is over whether the spell acts as the subject would act, or acts as as the subject would act if it new it was an illusion.

Bob created an NPC with a copy of his personality that is *explicitly* under the GM's control, and I did my best to RP Bob's character and have it act as he would.

Sure. RAW you are right. It's a bad spell though. I notice that you changed the specifics of events in a later post saying it was there as a stand in leader and party face not a distraction. Putting that aside for now that means the duplicate Bob knows what Bob knows. So can I duplicate the King? The BBEG? Their minions? Can I use it to intimidate an illusion of them into telling me the layout of the cult's secret base? They feel fear afterall.

However I suspect Bob thought it would behave in a way that helped the real, killable party members. Then you decided it didn't.

The idea that you created a character so you get to control it is kind of a slippery slope. Like imagine one of the players was given one of the settings signature NPCs to play as a one shot, or Brian has to miss a session and gives his character to Nick; once the character is out of your hands, you lose the OOC right to dicate how the character behaves.

Also, its not really throwing the party under the bus for Bob to cower, he is an unarmored party face, its just good tactics.

If it's a one shot then I don't see the problem. By definition it won't matter after that night. But yeah I agree I wouldn't give an NPC to a player either.

BUT.... and I think this is a sticking point. You know the illusion isn't an NPC right? It's a spell effect, a game function. It's a resource a player used for an advantage.

Also, and it really matters. You know NPCs aren't real right? They're a skin you pull over a narrative event so players don't see the game sticking out. The friendly local potion vendor with a child he worries about studying in a nearby town. Not real. You just need the players to change one arbitrary resource (money), into a system that allows them to recover from mistakes (healing potions). But if you just do that it seems a bit "gamey" so you pull a skin over them and pretend they're real. NPCs only have value that you imbue them with, and they exist only so you can make them ignore the cogs and gears.

At the table, the spell in question was not in any way a "worthless trap" as it effectively buffed the party for many rounds and turned many of their actions into critical successes. It more than made up for the spell slot. It just didn't provide one specific benefit in one specific round.

How did it do so? You were light on these details until you wanted to disprove a point.

And, TBH, if you are expecting antagonistic GMing, isn't everything a worthless trap? Like, even a healing potion could be secretly poisoned if the GM is out to get you.

I mean. I just wouldn't play that game.

This is surprisingly insightful. Thank you.

I'm amazing. Don't be fooled by my bluntness. There's a reason I have friends from high school who, after all this time still want to come around to mine to play games I run. And it's not my charm.

(It's because I do the driving so they can have a beer. I understand me....)

That's just Bob. He does this in every game, regardless of genre or system. He is really into cutting off his nose to spite his face.

There are tons of PC games which he uninstalls and refuses to play ever again because of a single "cheap death" or because an NPC told him what to do.

For whatever reason, he views characters only as ego-boosters and power-trips, and a character who has an embarrassing failure hanging over its head is, in his mind, literally better off dead.

I would prefer he didn't do it at tabletop games because it disrupts the whole campaign for no good reason, but he will still be back at the table in two weeks with a new character once he has gotten it out of his system.

Then stop playing with him. Just stop. There are other players. I know you said you find groups where the GM is set and they won't immediately hand over the reigns. It might mean you have to sit and play while someone else GMs for a bit until you've integrated a bit. That's fine they don't know you and (reasonably) can't trust that you have their enjoyment at heart until they get to know you... but you can get the experience you want. But you have to be better and saying what doesn't work for you and stop making excuses for what doesn't.

And, I did say it last time but it bears repeating. Even disagreeing with you it is obvious that this is something you love and are passionate about. That's why you post. And that's great. Genuinely. But it's wasted on your group. Find a group that would benefit from it.

If you create an illusion of a guard, it guards something.

What if I threaten it? What if I say I'll kill its family? Then it won't guard things. Not so simple.

Create an illusion of a messenger, it delivers a message.

What if I intercept it and tell it the recipient is dead? Then it will go home. Not so simple.

Create an illusion of a terrified commoner, it runs from the monsters and screams.

What if that commoner responds to terror by running into combat? Or curling into a ball? Or siding with the monster? You getting the point here?

The whole idea of "well, its a trap spell because what if the GM decides to have it betray us for no reason?" or "if I make it a copy of me, that means I get a second PC" belies an adversarial attitude that virtually no rule could stand up to.

Your players don't trust you. That is the world you live in. Whether it is justified or not is irrelevant.

Much like your earlier argument that an ambushing character shouldn't roll initiative, this seems like a house rule that you have created and that you then deem all other RPGs inferior because they don't adopt it.

The vast majority of games I have played do not give control of minions to their master's player. Looking through the rule books on my shelves, the various summoning spells typically give some degree of control over the summoned creatures, but very few of them actually say "your player controls these as if it was a second player".

Weird. Most games I have do. Anecdotes be what they are.

However this is a different issue. Again. The illusion isn't a creature. It's a spell effect. It's a piece of Bob's character's mind interacting with light and magic create a picture that moves. Without Bob's character's mind it doesn't exist.

(This is getting meta now....)

When you say "exactly the correct expectation" what precisely are you referring to?

Bob's initial (and imo much stronger argument) that the illusion acts upon the knowledge that it is an illusion?

Because that seems to be a gray area which I am not sure which side to go with (both can create problems for the caster depending on the situation) there doesn't seem to be a consensus of at my table or on the forum, so I think it is pretty arrogant of you to insist that Bob's is "exactly the correct expectation".

I'm arrogant enough. I suspect Bob's expectation was "I will use this resource and it will help the party". Instead it "dropped aggro" and put the party at risk.

If you mean Bob's later argument that I should have given him the illusion as a second PC, well:

You seem to be stuck in a binary. Either the player has zero input OR they get a full additional PC with all that entails. I think "Actually, I'd prefer it stay in the fight rather than try to drop out" falls somewhere between these.

The spell *explicitly* says that the caster creates the personality and motivation, but that they do not have any direct control over it.
It is not a PC, and the general rules of the game *explicitly* say that the GM makes decisions for and rolls dice for NPCs.

Not an NPC. Spell effect.

So I really don't think Bob (or you if you are siding with him) has a leg to stand on by RAW.

Probably not once you ignore all the irrelevant stuff about NPCs. So it's a bad spell. It's causing issues. You wrote it. Fix it.

Yep. Absolutely. But they don't want to talk about it, if they were open to communication it wouldn't be an issue in the first place.

Self reflection is hard. I am not empathic, and I have no other players to use as a control group. I will say, however, that when other people are GMing for them, they are far worse about it than they are with me, so it can't be exclusively a self created problem.

It is hard. Here we can 100% agree. You need it though, and you can't see what of the problem is on your end and what is on them in that group. There ae too many moving parts.

So, thinking back about it, it seems like Bob has a defiant streak about anyone telling his character what to do. Even though he isn't an RPer at all, he really likes to use his characters as a vehicle to "stick it to the man".

Some quick examples:
His psychic was caught mind controlling shop-keepers into giving him equipment for free. He was caught by with hunters, put on trial, and given probation. He immediately returned to the scene of the crime and did the exact same thing again, surrendered to the witch hunters, and told them to burn him at the stake.
He was in the middle of a desolate wasteland, and a goddess' avatar led him to a sacred shrine and told him he was free to rest within as long as he didn't harm the shrine or its inhabitants. He immediately attacked the shrine's defenders, and was killed when the rest of the party refused to help.
He was on an enchanted island, and the island's guardian spirit asked him to refrain from destructive magics while on the island. Bob immediately conjured up a volcano in front of the guardian spirit and was killed in the ensuing battle.
He missed a session, and one of the other PCs asked him if he could craft something for them and I Oked it. When Bob came back, he said the rest of us "literally robbed and enslaved" his character and if we didn't retcon the crafting (which cost him nothing but IC time) he would murder the rest of the party in their sleep.
Recently, the party surrendered to some monsters and agreed to pay them a ransom. When the rest of the party wanted to go through with the ransom instead of betraying and murdering the monsters, Bob said that he would never have allowed himself to be taken alive and wanted me to retroactively kill his character.

Basically, all of these stories have the common thread of someone telling Bob's character what to do, and he acts with over the top violence that is both reckless and totally out of proportion for what is asked of him.

I suspect, that in telling him that a copy of his character would be an NPC under the GM's control, I inadvertently hit upon the same nerve.

He is an RPer. He is making choices as his character. So he's playing a role. That role is annoying, abrasive and disruptive. It is also very likely deliberate disrespect. It's "What are you going to do about it." And every time you go back to the game you say "Nothing Bob. I like playing and won't look elsewhere so you have power over me. Doesn't matter if you spoil the game for others, I'll tolerate it rather than make a change". He won't change. Why would he. You'll accept it. You can't "fix" the problems of your group. You can only get another one.