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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FrankTrollman" data-source="post: 1143739" data-attributes="member: 14225">Why should the target's perception matter at all?Flanking as actually described in the book is all about a positional advantage gained from attacking from a direction that leads directly into the melee weapons of another enemy of your target. Maybe it is as simple as the additional chance of pushing your foe onto a spear if you don't actually penetrate armor.Who cares? The rules say that figments cannot flank. I can provide perfectly good "common sense" answers for why that might occur. So why would "common sense" lead us to play some other way than the books actually say?Flanking is not described in detail from a "real world" standpoint. It is described in great detail from a "game mechanical" standpoint. The job of the DM, thus, is to describe the "real world" element in a manner consistent with the rules. Come to think of it - that is always the DM's job in all cases - so I truly don't see why there is any problem here.---Note that figment spells are still extremely powerful. Of the 4 examples in the PHB of "a creature, force, or object" - one of the examples is "several orcs fighting" - so you can in fact make large groups of warriors to draw fire (I prefer archers). If your DM won't go for that - just make the extremely rare "Multiple Orc Beast" which happens to look exactly like a dozen Orcish Warriors with bows connected by invisible and odorless microfiliments (remembering that figments don't have to produce real things).Also fun is the "smoke in eyes" trick. You can put opaque clouds into the face of all your enemies - and everyone who fails a Will Save is blinded while your whole team smacks on them.Remember also that Skeletons and other mindless things do not normally walk into walls or search areas unless ordered to do so - so you can put all the zombies into "stone boxes" and they don't even get a save to avoid standing around like shut down toys until your fighter walks up and kills them.So I'm just not crying for your inability to flank with figments. You can do a lot of awesome stuff, and I still think that Silent Image is hands down the best first level spell. So you can't flank - you can still give effective miss chances to all of your enemies and blind a bunch of your enemies on top of that with a single casting. It can turn the tide of battle even at high level, and it's a first level spell - so I just don't see a game mechanical imperitive to change it.-Frank</blockquote>

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