Adjudicating illusions

[airwalkrr]

Say the PCs are walking along in a dungeon and there is an illusory wall or illusory floor trap the PC in the lead is, in classic fashion, jabbing the walls and floor with an eleven-foot pole (because you know ten feet is never sufficient). Well a little ways along the lead PC encounters the illusion, interacts with it using his eleven-foot pole, and succeeds on his saving. He turns back to his fellow PCs am says, "Hey! There's a huge hole in the floor here, but it's masked by an illusion." The pit covers the whole floor for a length of 10 feet, not even a centimeter of an edge to balance across. The lead PC, having cleverly brought along a piece of chalk, outlines where the pit starts. The dwarf charges forward to the edge and sticks his axe into the floor, thereby interacting with the illusion, and being resistant to magic, naturally succeeds on his saving through. "Aye," he concurs, "a huge pit 'cross the whole floor hidden by some wily wizard's spell." The same happens for most of the party as well. The poor, human ranger, however, having little knowledge of such magic, pokes around on the groun, fails his saving throw, and says, "Hmm, I just don't see it." After a bit of discussion, the group decides to jump the pit. The ranger, forced to use the chalk line as his jumping point, still doesn't know quite how far he has to jump. But he gets lucky and rolls a great jump check, far and away more than he would have needed to cross a 10 foot pit. Disaster averted.

Later, the lead PC comes across a dead-end. But while poking around with his eleven-foot pole comes across an illusory wall. This time the lead PC fails his saving throw. He turns around to the group and says, "Well, I suppose we'll have to turn around." The rogue steps up and says, "Oh that's just not possible. Let me search for a secret passage." So the rogue looks around, pokes at the wall himself, fails his saving throw, and he, too, says, "He may be right. We'll have to turn around." The gnome illusionist refuses to accept this, and steps forward to examine the wall one last time. Well, thanks to his gnomish familiarity with illusions he makes his saving throw, walks right through, and says to rest, "So, what are you waiting for? Come along now."

So how do you deal with these situations?

In situation 1, should the ranger be penalized somehow? After all he can't see the illusionary floor and might be jittery about his prospects of crossing an unknown width.

And what of situation 2? The lead PC and the rogue just witnessed the gnome walking through what they believe to be a wall. Should they receive a second save, perhaps with a bonus? But perhaps they might find it equally likely that the gnome was just playing a trick on them and casting invisibility as he walked up to the wall. Or would they automatically disbelieve after being provided with nearly incontrovertible evidence of an illusory wall? If not, what if they fail their second saving throw, still insist that there is a wall there, and refuse to walk headlong into a wall that is (they believe) is likely to only result in a bruised nose?

 

[Li Shenron]

I think 1 is fine as-is.

I'll let roleplay handle case 2, but it's fine to let the other PCs just decide to go through the wall. They still see a wall, but what the decide to do with it, believe their friend's voice or believe their own eyes, is player's decision.

Overall, IMHO it's a good way to handle these situations by asking the players "what would your character do?" (i.e. what would you do if you were there as your character) rather than think too much about rules and dice, which have already done their job.

Just a side note: IMHO prodding an illusory wall with a pole doesn't even trigger a save... if the illusion is visual only, then the PC obviously sees the pole going into the wall, because there is no physical wall. But this has nothing to do with your questions.

 

[Starfox]

But perhaps they might find it equally likely that the gnome was just playing a trick on them and casting invisibility as he walked up to the wall.

XP to the gnome!

 

[airwalkrr]

Just a side note: IMHO prodding an illusory wall with a pole doesn't even trigger a save... if the illusion is visual only, then the PC obviously sees the pole going into the wall, because there is no physical wall. But this has nothing to do with your questions.

In response to your side note. Lets jut say, for the sake of argument, that regardless of the fact that the pole is going through the wall, the character THINKS it is solid and thus responds by not thrusting at the wall enough to notice. Assume, for the sake of argument, if the character fails his save to disbelieve, his mind is tricked into believing there is a solid wall there.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

If you're not comfortable with the rest of the group realizing there's an illusion, now that a member of the best race in the game has shown it to them, give them another saving throw.

I'd just let the party member who figured it out let them through, though; it's not like you'd only let the one guy who found a secret door use it, after all.

 

[Li Shenron]

In response to your side note. Lets jut say, for the sake of argument, that regardless of the fact that the pole is going through the wall, the character THINKS it is solid and thus responds by not thrusting at the wall enough to notice. Assume, for the sake of argument, if the character fails his save to disbelieve, his mind is tricked into believing there is a solid wall there.

Yes, this is what I assumed before, in my previous post. I'd let the player roleplay it freely i.e. they see the wall but the gnome friend is telling them just to walk through it, what does the character do? It doesn't need a second save, the player chooses what to do. Obviously, if he chooses to walk through, he walks through, because there is no physical wall (he doesn't stop seeing it).

It would be different for me only if the wall is actually capable of physically stopping the character from passing by, which would probably make it more like a "subjective conjuration" rather than simply an illusion, there might be spells that do something like that... There is where it becomes more problematic because the situation is totally unrealistic (a physical object which is there to all effects for PC1 but not for PC2), in which case I'd avoid detailed arguments at the table, and make up something on the fly. A second ST is fine, but it probably doesn't matter much what is the chosen solution exactly (and note that a second ST is just an extra chance, if it fails then you're still stuck with the problem).

 

[MarkB]

In situation 1, should the ranger be penalized somehow? After all he can't see the illusionary floor and might be jittery about his prospects of crossing an unknown width.

The description of Disbelief saves says that anyone presented with proof that the illusion is unreal needs no save in order to disbelieve. So once one person identifies the illusion they need only demonstrate its unreality (by throwing an object on the end of a rope down the pit and retrieving it, or by walking through the seemingly-solid wall), and the rest of the party will be able to disbelieve it automatically.

Assuming this isn't the case, any reasonable party would surely do the ranger the favour of marking out the far side of the pit once they reached it.

But if we take the situation as read, then there's the matter of the nature of belief. If the ranger has failed his save to disbelieve the illusion, then he still believes it. He can accept the party's word that there's something amiss about that area of floor, and he can go along with them in leaping across it, but there's no fear factor to be taken into account because on a subconcious level, he's still perfectly convinced that the floor is real and solid.

 

[Starfox]

My reading of the illusion is that if you continuously interact with it, or t or have its lack of reality demonstrated to you, you get a new saving throw each round. The poor ranger may take some time to gather his wits, but sooner or later the lack of reality of the illusion will get across to him. Played this way, illusions go down pretty quick once you start interacting with them.

An example of this is an illusion of a monster. This would need to be a multisense illusion to be believable at all, but as long as the monster reacts appropriately to the players actions (and always misses its attacks - it cannot do even illusory damage), an illusory monster could be convincing. But the players attacks on it are in effect saving throws; by attacking it they are interacting with it and thus able to disbelieve it. A sneaky GM can then take the die from their first to-hit roll each round, apply their Will save modifier, and use that as their saving throw.

I just read up on Major Image in 3-5 and Pathfinder (they are the same), and neither includes a tactile component - and yet both state that "The image disappears when struck by an opponent unless you cause the illusion to react appropriately." How could an image react appropriately to being stuck if it has no tactile component? Wouldn't you feel that you are striking thin air? Does the "attack" part only apply to ranged attacks?

 

[MarkB]

I just read up on Major Image in 3-5 and Pathfinder (they are the same), and neither includes a tactile component - and yet both state that "The image disappears when struck by an opponent unless you cause the illusion to react appropriately." How could an image react appropriately to being stuck if it has no tactile component? Wouldn't you feel that you are striking thin air? Does the "attack" part only apply to ranged attacks?

Just as you ensure that the illusion never hits with its attacks, you'd have to ensure that it never gets hit - it appears to stay just out of reach and dodge every blow aimed at it by the barest of margins, even when the attacker was sure the blow had connected.

 

[airwalkrr]

In both of the cases from the OP we would probably be talking a out an illusory wall or permanent image spell.

In the case of major image monster, the illusionist can indeed cause the image to react appropriately. Perhaps it spills a little illusory blood or just flat out dodges all attacks. The illusionist has to be concentrating on the spell (using a standard action each round) to succeed in making these things happen though.