I want to believe

[NewJeffCT]

This quote might help you.

That means that the characters that fail the saving throw don't know anything is amiss. If you roleplay the character as having a hunch that it's not real then you are acting like something is amiss. Which is bad roleplaying since the character doesn't realize anything is amiss.

They did know something was amiss, though, the missing kama. Edited to add - and, if they knew the kama was missing and all still failed their will saves, I would think a potential magic item/treasure would be enough to warrant an additional search of the body, which would again fail the tactile/touch element of the spell.

Additionally, I would think beheading the vampire's corpse and burning it would qualify as "interacting" per the SRD. Since the two mentioned illusion spells (programmed & permanent image) do NOT have tactile/touch elements to them, I would give the PCs huge bonuses to their interaction will saves ("You go to strike the vampire, and your stake passes right through it's body like it is still in gaseous form, though the body in front of you looks solid enough.")

Heck, just being close enough to open the coffin would be close enough to interact, as the opener is within melee range, unless you use a 10 foot long crowbar as a lever while everybody else is hiding around a corner.

 

[Elethiomel]

DM is absoultely correct here.

With the failed saving throw the cleric is now convinced that he was in error about it being an illusion.

Any argument by the player to the contrary is moot. That is the point of the saving throw - to reflect how the PC perceives things.

He had a momentary thought that it was an illusion, but the saving throw (which reflects how he interprets this thought) indicated that he was "mistaken".

I disagree.

Casting detect magic will tell him there's an illusion in the coffin. He doesn't know what exactly it is, what it is covering up, but he does know there's an illusion. Failing a saving throw against the illusion doesn't make him think there's no illusion; it will make him think that the illusion must be something other than the body itself. There are many illusion spells that hide things, change things' appearance, or otherwise make things seem different than what they are. "My spell reveals an illusion in that coffin but the body is real enough. Maybe it was changed to look like the vampire - or maybe his weapon had a concealing illusion cast upon it." is a perfectly acceptable answer, for example.

Mistake on the DM's part.

The "only" reason the PC is casting detect magic is becasue the player still believes it is an illusion while the PC does not.

Absolutely meta-gaming, IMO.

He's casting detect magic because his friend said "I don't think this is the real body."

Assuming it is not the real body is perfectly legitimate from the available evidence. If it had been a different body made to look like the vampire and left there as a decoy, it would have been an equally legitimate assumption, will save or no. Sure, he still believes that there was a body in that coffin (since he failed his will save), but he's no longer sure who that body belonged to, or what *else* might be in that coffin.

An illusion is not more compelling than the real thing.

 

[irdeggman]

I disagree.

Casting detect magic will tell him there's an illusion in the coffin. He doesn't know what exactly it is, what it is covering up, but he does know there's an illusion. Failing a saving throw against the illusion doesn't make him think there's no illusion; it will make him think that the illusion must be something other than the body itself. There are many illusion spells that hide things, change things' appearance, or otherwise make things seem different than what they are. "My spell reveals an illusion in that coffin but the body is real enough. Maybe it was changed to look like the vampire - or maybe his weapon had a concealing illusion cast upon it." is a perfectly acceptable answer, for example.

Right but the "reason" he had it cast was total metagaming due to ignoring the result of the saving throw.

He's casting detect magic because his friend said "I don't think this is the real body."

After failing his saving throw to determine if it was an illusion. Which was prompted becasue he noticed the missing kama.

Now once he failed his save - he has no reason to doubt the illusion therefore the statement that he doesn't think this is the real body is total metagaming. The PC is now convinced (as reflected by the result of the saving throw) that the illusion is real.

Assuming it is not the real body is perfectly legitimate from the available evidence. If it had been a different body made to look like the vampire and left there as a decoy, it would have been an equally legitimate assumption, will save or no. Sure, he still believes that there was a body in that coffin (since he failed his will save), but he's no longer sure who that body belonged to, or what *else* might be in that coffin.

An illusion is not more compelling than the real thing.

Which was why he go the saving throw in the first place. He had some doubt as to whether the illusion was real due to noticing the missing kama.

 

[irdeggman]

They did know something was amiss, though, the missing kama. Edited to add - and, if they knew the kama was missing and all still failed their will saves, I would think a potential magic item/treasure would be enough to warrant an additional search of the body, which would again fail the tactile/touch element of the spell.

Did they or did only the one PC who noticed it and thus got to make the saving throw?

The OPs posts are not clear on how this transpired.

If the player said that he noticed the missing kama and didn't have his PC tell everyone then the other PCs did not know it.

How did the PC know the kama was missing in the first place?

Spot checks are the normal method of determining if something like this is noticed. The OP did not specify how this information came to the PC. Did everyone get to make a spot check and only the 1 PC made it?

Again important information is missing in the tale.

As written it totally reads as metagaming and not PC knowledge.

 

[NewJeffCT]

True, if one PC noticed the missing kama and did not convey that info to the rest of the party, the rest of the party is metagaming by acting like it is an illusion.

And, as I said in my post above, by interacting with the body in the coffin by attempting to behead it and burn it, everybody there should have gotten Will saves to disbelieve... and, since the illusion has no touch/tactile component, it should either be an auto-fail for the illusion, or else have given the PCs a huge will save bonus.

 

[Thanee]

Yep, the illusion would have been detected automatically, no save necessary, upon trying to "behead" it, since the weapon would go right through it (and the head would remain in place, unless the vampire was controlling the illusion to react properly, which is hardly possible at that point... and even then you would notice, that the weapon sliced through air).

Once you have such a proof, that it is not real, you automatically notice, that it is an illusion.

Same with an illusory wall; if you lean against it and fall through, you just know it's not real.


For that trick to work, it would have to be some sort of shadow illusion, that is quasi-real.

Bye
Thanee

 

[irdeggman]

True, if one PC noticed the missing kama and did not convey that info to the rest of the party, the rest of the party is metagaming by acting like it is an illusion.

And, as I said in my post above, by interacting with the body in the coffin by attempting to behead it and burn it, everybody there should have gotten Will saves to disbelieve... and, since the illusion has no touch/tactile component, it should either be an auto-fail for the illusion, or else have given the PCs a huge will save bonus.

I agree that the DM handled the illusion wrong - based on what information we have been given.

But I was commenting on how the PCs went about things - not with what should have been done via the DM in the first place.

Once the PCs failed their save (whether or not there should have even been one in the first place) the players acted metagaming-wise period.

Again all of this is based on what little information we have been given.

 

[Foxworthy]

They did know something was amiss, though, the missing kama. Edited to add - and, if they knew the kama was missing and all still failed their will saves, I would think a potential magic item/treasure would be enough to warrant an additional search of the body, which would again fail the tactile/touch element of the spell.

I agree with that and mentioned the same thing earlier in the thread. As long as they did things to find the kama rather than things to disprove the illusion. Though if the actions they took to find the kama lead to them disproving the kama than win-win.

Additionally, I would think beheading the vampire's corpse and burning it would qualify as "interacting" per the SRD. Since the two mentioned illusion spells (programmed & permanent image) do NOT have tactile/touch elements to them, I would give the PCs huge bonuses to their interaction will saves ("You go to strike the vampire, and your stake passes right through it's body like it is still in gaseous form, though the body in front of you looks solid enough.")

I agree with this and earlier in the thread I pointed out that decapitating the illusion and it not reacting to it would prove it was an illusion. You do not need a saving throw to disbelief an illusion if you have proof. But at a least it would provide a +4 to the save.

Heck, just being close enough to open the coffin would be close enough to interact, as the opener is within melee range, unless you use a 10 foot long crowbar as a lever while everybody else is hiding around a corner.

Agreed. My argument isn't about whether they are interacting with the illusion, my argument is what about how a player should have their character react when then fail their saving throw against the illusion. Which comes after the interacting part.

 

[irdeggman]

[/I]Agreed. My argument isn't about whether they are interacting with the illusion, my argument is what about how a player should have their character react when then fail their saving throw against the illusion. Which comes after the interacting part.

Exactly where my arguments come from also.

 

[Moff_Tarkin]

I know there should have been no save needed the second we tried to decapitate and burn the corpse, as our swords would just pass through it. Our DM says that if you interact with an illusion the way the illusion expects you to, you get no save and its all believable. I have a hard time arguing with him since the module put this illusion there to fool us into thinking we had killed the vampire. It would not be a very good trick if the illusion went away the second we touched it.

And after 3 pages of posts, I am still not getting the “out of character” and “metagaming” arguments. Our DM says you only get a save when you have reason to disbelieve; interaction gives you nothing. So by the time we started saying that something was wrong, we had already decapitated and burned this body. We felt the head cut off, we saw the body burn to dust. Every bit of physical evidence that the players and their PCs had said that the body was real. Yet, despite all that, we didn’t completely believe the corpse was real based on our own intuition. No one even really brought up illusion until the DM said “make a disbelieve check” We were all just thinking it was a dummy corpse.

It just seems a little overpowered the way the DM is running it. We just completed that dungeon and we left that vampire room never to return. Because now that we have failed our Will saves, we will never go back and never truly destroy that vampire.