RobbyPants wrote:RC: could a figment of a person cup its hands over a pebble on a table, obscuring it completely from vision?
Why or why not?
Personally I'd say no.
Basically how I would handle it is that figments can't occupy the same space as another object, and figments are always considered "solid" for that purpose, even if they're not. That is, as was stated above, you can make a figment of orcs playing a card game, but the space between the orcs still counts as part of the illusion.
Or more concretely, the test is that you can draw a line between any two points in a figment and no solid object can exist between any of those lines.
So if you had say a gem on a table, your figment could put its hands just above the top of the gem, which may well shield it from one side, but it couldn't actually lower its hands such that it blocks more than one side of the gem.
Now I'd also say that such contact would have to be maintained. You can throw a rock through a figment wall without any problems, but if you throw the rock such that it lands and stops inside the wall, then it would result in a problem.
So momentary mistakes with an illusion wouldn't necessarily give it away if your illusion was making quick moves, because I don't consider that truly a disguise. For a disguise the effect has to be prolonged, so I'd allow momentary contact because it wouldn't be breaking the disguise clause.
Now keep in mind these are my personal rulings on this matter, and different DMs may vary. The only thing truly concrete and written in stone is that figments can't disguise things. How you go about achieving that is totally up to the DM.
@Violence: Yeah I did forget seeming. And yes, I agree with you that it seems like way too high level magic to get the job done. But I'm not saying here what I think the rules should be, I'm saying what the rules actually are. I do believe there should be a low level disguise glamer. There should be a "disguise other" so to speak that works like disguise self.
@Ice9: You're missing the point. I'm not designing the game or proposing house rules here. Yes, I realize that there's no innate balance reason to "protect" glamers. But I'm not writing my own system here, I'm trying to make a ruling in an existing system, and clearly in 3E figments are supposed to do one thing, while glamers do another.
@Crissa: The train thing is an edge case, but one that ultimately applies to all spells equally, such as wall of force on a train. However your DM rules in that case is effectively the same as for an illusion. But note that you can't anchor walls of force to people or objects, only scenery. In the case of moving scenery, generally the DM makes some ruling there.
@Kaelik: You're right that on its face, assuming that you provided ample empty space in the cottage, it wouldn't classify as a disguise, the main reason I don't allow that is simply because it becomes an adjudication problem as to when too small becomes a disguise. Everyone can probably agree that putting a form fitting "blue cover that looks exactly like a red car" over a red car is a disguise, just like putting a suit of full plate over a human to make him dress the same way as the guards is a disguise. Now, as far as when your DM draws the line between disguise and scenery props is largely up to him. I present my ruling because it's something people can test in game easily. It's also somewhat heavy handed in that it does eliminate some legitimate scenery.
I honestly can't think of a codified ruling that's going to allow a cottage but disallow you creating illusory shell disguises. Thus for the sake of consistency I present a ruling that's easy to adjudicate, though somewhat limiting.
However, when you said "The intent is to use Silent Image to make the inside of a Torture Dungeon with Torture implements on the walls look like a nice playpen for kids filled with butterflies. "
You are flat out wrong. There's no room for interpretation here, that's just flat out fucking wrong. 100% wrong. As quoted by the SRD
Figments cannot make something seem to be something else. Clearly this is exactly what you're doing and therefore it is not allowable by RAW nor is it designer intent. And honestly if you can't agree with me on that, then I'm not even going to bother talking to you on this thread anymore because you're either determined to ignore the rules or are simply incapable of comprehending them. Like I said earlier in the thread, this stuff is basic logic. You want to do A and the rules say not A. So unless you ignore the rules, you can't do A. If you can't at least agree to that, then we basically have nothing to talk about.