So, how does major image even work?

[RandomCasualty]

Yeah, seeing someone else interact with the illusion doesn't grant an automatic successful save, ever.

If you yourself fall through it however, then you automatically save. Of course by then, it won't do you much good.

[Fwib]

1185473869[/unixtime]]Yeah, seeing someone else interact with the illusion doesn't grant an automatic successful save, ever.

If you yourself fall through it however, then you automatically save. Of course by then, it won't do you much good.

Are you sure you automatically save? You could fail your save when you pass through an illusion, and believe that whatever it was was you passed through was turned incorporeal by magic, or any other explanation the GM chooses to use, or the players invent.

[cthulhu]

1185402887[/unixtime]]LCDs have two mods, active and passive. Active mode LCDs don't blur, but in fact change faster than we can see the change. Passive only change when the change has happened long enough to fill the buffer.

Then why is motion blur a problem with LCD monitors and screens? (less so now, but when a 40ms or even 8ms response was standard) I thought it was because each cell white/black transition could be plotted as a continuous graph that takes time, and when something is moving faster than the screen can successfully represent with the limitations of it's transition times, it has motion blur.

And my LCD on my desk at home is an active mode TFT...

I was also under the impression that CRT's didn't do that because they access the video buffer each time they repaint the screen resulting in a discrete transition?

[Immortius]

A CRT pixel loses brightness very quickly, so they've mostly faded by the next sweep. The sweep lights them up extremely quickly to the right colour.

A LCD pixel keeps brightness, but it takes some time to switch them from their old colour to their new colour each pass. Blurring is caused because pixels from where the, say, cursor was at the beginning of a mouse movement haven't finished changing before the pixels later in the movement have noticeably changed.

With a 25ms response time (and we'll ignore the fact that these values are generally somewhat misleading, when they're not outright lies), and when your monitor is being updated 60 times a second, the screen is being updated every ~17ms but it takes 25ms for a complete pixel change to take place. So you can notice blur from 1-2 frames ago. This is most noticeable moving a white cursor over a black screen, which maximises the time taken.

This also explains why 16ms was the big threshold for LCDs to start to become a serious option for gamers, although given the issues with the inaccuracies of the response rate value (it completely ignores changing between colours, for instance) 12ms or less are more acceptable.

[RandomCasualty]

1185480953[/unixtime]]

Are you sure you automatically save? You could fail your save when you pass through an illusion, and believe that whatever it was was you passed through was turned incorporeal by magic, or any other explanation the GM chooses to use, or the players invent.

Yup

A character faced with proof that an illusion isn’t real needs no saving throw.

Falling through something would certainly qualify as proof that the illusion isn't real.

The real question with illusions that's the grey area is what "interacting" with them actually means. From examples in the book, we know that studying an illusion up close for a bit is interacting, as is poking it with a stick.

But what about the following:
-Casting a fireball on it
-Casting a mind affecting spell on it
-Firing an arrow into it.
-Casting an area spel that doesn't directly damage the illusion (web for instance).

We're not really sure if any of that stuff actually counts as interaction.

Also, I'm not sure if a figment counts as a creature or not. If for instance you create an illusionary giant, what happens if you magic missile it? Does the spell simply fail because it's an invalid target, or do the missiles strike through it without effect?

[Crissa]

Even if you know it is an illusion does not mean you 'automatically save', ever. It still looks and feels (or whatever components it has) as much as it did before until you pass the save.

You can say, 'the darkness is an illusion' and it may actually /be/ an illusion, but you don't save until you save.

Okay?

Sure that means you get to see funny things. That's a feature, not a glitch.

-Crissa

[Fwib]

I have a problem with the level of proof suggested. In a world with incorporeal creatures and weird magic etc., passing through something does not seem to be high enough proof to grant an auto-pass on your save.

[RandomCasualty]

1185681624[/unixtime]]Even if you know it is an illusion does not mean you 'automatically save', ever. It still looks and feels (or whatever components it has) as much as it did before until you pass the save.

Well, if you get "proof" that it isn't an illusion, then no save is necessary. That's what the rules say anyway. Note that proof isn't just making a random assertion or someone else telling you it's an illusion. You have to actually know.

You can say, 'the darkness is an illusion' and it may actually /be/ an illusion, but you don't save until you save.

I'm actually not even sure you can create illusory darkness.

As written, the image spells create figments of a creature, object or force. Now, obviously darkness doesn't fall under the first two, and generally I wouldn't think it would fall under the third category either. Creating environmental effects seems to be limited to hallucinatory terrain.