[AE] Seeming of Form, huh?!

[virgil]

There's a spell in Arcana Evolved and Book of Eldritch Might III, called Seeming of Form. It's a mind-affecting glamer that makes an object look and feel like something else of roughly the same size category. It even describes using a helmet as a lockpick as an example of it bestowing inherent qualities; which violate every understanding I have of glamers and mind-affecting spells.

Does anyone have an answer to this befuddling spell?

[Schleiermacher]

This is simply a Bullshit Third-Party Publisher Spell. Don't bother with it.

[virgil]

[angelfromanotherpin]

No, you are simply correct; the types on that thing are completely fucked. As written, there is no way to reconcile it with the rules.

[hogarth]

A glamer can make something feel like something else, but it's not clear what that means.

On the other hand, having a mind-affecting spell that only works on objects is just plain stupid.

[virgil]

It does remind me of one thing D&D doesn't handle terribly well, disguising stuff other than the caster. As far as I'm aware, you can't go "You're eating maggots. How do they taste?" or turn their sword into a snake; and that's always been a shame for the illusionist archetype.

[Username17]

It does remind me of one thing D&D doesn't handle terribly well, disguising stuff other than the caster. As far as I'm aware, you can't go "You're eating maggots. How do they taste?" or turn their sword into a snake; and that's always been a shame for the illusionist archetype.

The lost Boys maggots technique is a [Phantasm]. Only the target can sense the maggots, everyone else sees rice. Turning a sword into a snake would probably be done with [Shadow], unless no one else saw anything weird about the character's sword while they were freaking out, in which case that would be a [Phantasm] as well.

But Seeming of Form can't be reconciled at all. Every part of that spell is contradicted by at least two other parts of the spell.

-Username17

[virgil]

The lost Boys maggots technique is a [Phantasm]. Only the target can sense the maggots, everyone else sees rice. Turning a sword into a snake would probably be done with [Shadow], unless no one else saw anything weird about the character's sword while they were freaking out, in which case that would be a [Phantasm] as well.

I presumed that would be how the spell types would work for doing such effects, and it would be [Glamer] or [Shadow] if everyone saw/tasted the rice as maggots, but as far as I'm aware there isn't actually a spell that does that effect. In theory, I guess you could use seeming as an indirect way to change what they're holding, but even that's only visual and a 5th level spell...

[hogarth]

The core spell Mirage Arcana is ambiguous in a similar way. It's a glamer and you can use it to create illusory structures with tactile components, but what does that mean? Can you ram someone's head into an illusory brick wall?

[CapnTthePirateG]

I always thought it was stupid that Major Image could create thermal illusions that apparently didn't burn or feel like burning.

[Thymos]

To be honest it's magic. I don't mind if an illusion spell can actually alter metaphysical properties of an item.

Just treat it as if physically the item is the same, but metaphysically in it's philosophy and base nature it's temporarily different.

[darkmaster]

The core spell Mirage Arcana is ambiguous in a similar way. It's a glamer and you can use it to create illusory structures with tactile components, but what does that mean? Can you ram someone's head into an illusory brick wall?

I'd say yes but it wouldn't do any damage and presumably they'd just pass right though it.

[Archmage]

The core spell Mirage Arcana is ambiguous in a similar way. It's a glamer and you can use it to create illusory structures with tactile components, but what does that mean? Can you ram someone's head into an illusory brick wall?

I'd say yes but it wouldn't do any damage and presumably they'd just pass right though it.

Why do they pass right through it if it has tactile components? You can obviously put your hand on it and "feel" a solid wall; does the increased velocity mean the illusion doesn't hold?

[Username17]

Why do they pass right through it if it has tactile components? You can obviously put your hand on it and "feel" a solid wall; does the increased velocity mean the illusion doesn't hold?

In 2nd edition, getting thrown through a tactile illusion that you didn't make your disbelief check against would cause you non-lethal damage equivalent to getting thrown through a real object. But you know, just in your mind, and it would wear off after a while when you fully internalized that you hadn't actually been thrown through a brick wall and hadn't actually suffered a concussion. Thermal illusions worked the same way, with illusionary fires causing non-lethal temporary fire damage to believers.

This was jettisoned in 3rd edition because it was horribly broken. Since you control the vertical and the horizontal and can fill it with whatever the fuck you want, it was trivial to put in illusionary lava avalanches or illusionary prism dragons or whatever the fuck to cause "Go Fuck Yourself" amounts of virtual damage to anyone who didn't make their save such that major image turned into a multi-target Save or Lose spell. If you were clever and knew about Banshees, you could group Save or Lose with minor fucking image.

The problem here is that when they removed the "as much virtual damage as you feel is reasonable" clause from the Image spells on the grounds that that was broken as a Jenga pile made of rice flour, they never really replaced it with anything that made any sense.

-Username17

[virgil]

What would a good set of illusion rules even look like for 3.X?

[zugschef]

What would a good set of illusion rules even look like for 3.X?

well, there are really good illusion spells like mirror image which tell you what they actually do. the image chain of spells, on the other hand, is way too open worded. you could just design spells differently.

[nockermensch]

What would a good set of illusion rules even look like for 3.X?

Where's that tumbleweed gif when I need it?

[darkmaster]

The core spell Mirage Arcana is ambiguous in a similar way. It's a glamer and you can use it to create illusory structures with tactile components, but what does that mean? Can you ram someone's head into an illusory brick wall?

I'd say yes but it wouldn't do any damage and presumably they'd just pass right though it.

Why do they pass right through it if it has tactile components? You can obviously put your hand on it and "feel" a solid wall; does the increased velocity mean the illusion doesn't hold?

The way I see it is for a tactile illusion to to work it has to stop you from just running through it somehow. But since an illusion that doesn't have the shadow tag isn't actually real it's got to be some kind of mental thing. My ruling would be that the illusion forces you to subconsciously stop from just reaching through it if you fail your save, which isn't too far fetched, I mean most people don't try to reach though walls they come across. But if you're being tossed through the choice has been taken away and what is essentially thin air actually can't interrupt your trajectory. Similarly if you lean on an illusory the wall gravity doesn't give a fuck if you believe that air there is a wall.

[nockermensch]

I'd say yes but it wouldn't do any damage and presumably they'd just pass right though it.

Why do they pass right through it if it has tactile components? You can obviously put your hand on it and "feel" a solid wall; does the increased velocity mean the illusion doesn't hold?

The way I see it is for a tactile illusion to to work it has to stop you from just running through it somehow. But since an illusion that doesn't have the shadow tag isn't actually real it's got to be some kind of mental thing. My ruling would be that the illusion forces you to subconsciously stop from just reaching through it if you fail your save, which isn't too far fetched, I mean most people don't try to reach though walls they come across. But if you're being tossed through the choice has been taken away and what is essentially thin air actually can't interrupt your trajectory. Similarly if you lean on an illusory the wall gravity doesn't give a fuck if you believe that air there is a wall.

If a Figment can force beings to "subconsciously interact with it", then shouldn't it be a Pattern? And why stop at patterns? If I actually know what someone's biggest fear is, can I simulate a phantasmal killer effect with major image?

[Voss]

What would a good set of illusion rules even look like for 3.X?

I'm not sure it is even doable, because the spells are so inconsistent. Sometimes they actually kill people (even if it is a lower level save[twice] or die), but other times creating an partial of illusion of a fireball is more difficult than casting an actual fireball, and summoning creatures vs illusions of creatures is all over the map. You'd think it would be easier, and in some cases (planar binding) it is safer to do illusions, but summon monster i-ix is so trivially done as to make illusions laughable.

It doesn't help that it often wanders off into magical tea-party land, and you can't quite tell what happens when real summoned celestial bulls charge into combat along side illusionary celestial bulls. The 'I disbelieve' bullshit gets pretty thin when the same wizard can alternate actual walls of fire out of nowhere with bullshit walls of fire out of nowhere.

D&D magic badly serves the illusionist simply because so much is left to 'whatever the fuck,' and how magic works is sort of handwaved. And the fakery aspect is problematic since D&D really just rewards you for killing the fuck out of people at stage 1, and not bothering with more complex efforts.

[ishy]

What would a good set of illusion rules even look like for 3.X?

well, there are really good illusion spells like mirror image which tell you what they actually do. the image chain of spells, on the other hand, is way too open worded. you could just design spells differently.

The problem is with the general illusion description. Which in turn means the individual spells need to be written to function without those as much as possible.
On that note: how does disbelieving a mirror image work?

[Username17]

On that note: how does disbelieving a mirror image work?

Technically, anyone who touches a Mirror Image should get a saving throw, and if they pass it, they get to see through all the images and target the real wizard. Similarly, if an invisible dude hits you or you hit them, you should get a save and if you pass it you should see the invisible dude.

Invisibility and Mirror Image have their own rules for how they are ended, and for the most part this actually works pretty well and people just sort of assume that it supersedes the gobbledygook that is the standard rules for disbelieving illusions. But technically it doesn't, and those garbage rules of incoherency still apply.

-Username17

[virgil]

As mirror image and invisibility both work as illusion spells, it sounds like the answer is to figure out the specific tricks of the illusionist and then build either a system or a set of spells that fill those effects.

• Terrain Addition - Fake walls, pits, rocks, etc. Most are for hiding inside, but the false bridge is a classic.
• Disarm - Turning swords into snakes. Distracting them to release their grip, which works even better while climbing.
• Threat Enhance - Make a man into an ogre, or an attack dog into Cerberus
• False Threat - Illusory monsters to make people act defensively at thin air. The more advanced ones will actually make them mistake friends for foes
• Disguise - Light one to make guards not question you and a more advanced one where you can sleep with a person without them noticing
• Mindscape - A more elaborate version of sleep, but for some reason you can't just CdG them

[hogarth]

By the way virgil, have you started your Arcana Evolved game yet?

[virgil]

Yes. Got about two sessions in so far. Shall I start throwing up the session notes like my other campaigns?