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Posted: Tue Aug 02, 2011 4:25 pm
by TheFlatline
RandomCasualty2 wrote:
Vision control is effectively a nice way to play with the illusion rules. It involves creating some kind of vision blocker in front of your party, typically a wall or curtain. Your party puts their hand through it for automatic disbelief (meaning they can now see through it). Your enemies on the other hand can't see through it until they actively disbelieve it, which generally requires them to touch it and you can fire through it freely while having full concealment.
Now, depending on the DM, he may or may not count firing an arrow at the wall to be interacting with it, so your opponents may get a save to basically end the effect on them after they shoot it. But you still get them to waste a shot doing that and possibly more shots. And because disbelief is personal, every enemy has to at least waste one shot in this way.
I'm sorry but if a rock/arrow/fireball passed through a curtain (or a wall) and didn't interact with said blockage, I'd say that's a reasonable ground to doubt the curtain/wall's existence. Especially in a world where it's common knowledge that such illusions exist and are relatively common. Anyone with adventuring/world experience would be aware of such things being a tactical possibility.
The idea that every individual has to attack the wall to disbelieve is kind of cheesy. You're saying if an NPC charges through an invisible wall, or swings his sword straight through a curtain without it interacting, that only *he* gets to disbelieve and nobody else does? That fails a common sense test.
Posted: Tue Aug 02, 2011 4:49 pm
by fbmf
Skip's relevant rulings:
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/rg/20040831a wrote:
"Disbelief: A successful save lets a creature ignore the effect. Spells that allow this kind of saving throw usually are from the illusion school, and they usually don't have any direct effects on creatures or objects, but instead have effect or area entries. Creatures make their disbelief saves upon interacting with the area or effect in some fashion. The rules don't give any guidelines on what kind of interaction is required. As a rule of thumb, a creature interacts with something upon attacking it, studying it, touching it, talking to it, or doing something else that one might do with a real creature or object. Merely looking at something usually doesn't qualify as interaction, but using an action (standard or full-round) to study or identify it does. Sometimes a disbelief save is automatic, such as when a character tries to touch an illusory wall and his hand passes right through it (see page 173 in the Player's Handbook for details)."
And, also.
http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/rg/20060221a wrote:
"For game purposes, we can define "studying" an illusion as taking an action (which DMs can choose to make a move action since this is an extrapolation of the rules and not an actual rule) to observe an illusion effect and note its details. Some DMs I know require a Spot or Search check to disbelieve an illusion. That's going too far. Merely pausing and using an action to make the check is enough to allow a saving throw."
Game On,
fbmf