I want to believe

[Flatus Maximus]

... "do I see right through this illusion, or does it seem as real as everything else in the world on the surface?"

It is implied in such a question that the character already knows the illusion is in fact an illusion, and the only thing left to determine is whether or not the illusion seems real or is obviously an illusion. This is just not how a Will save to disbelieve works, no matter how much you'd like it to be otherwise.

No Will save roll. In character knowledge.

???

 

[Elethiomel]

It is implied in such a question that the character already knows the illusion is in fact an illusion, and the only thing left to determine is whether or not the illusion seems real or is obviously an illusion. This is just not how a Will save to disbelieve works, no matter how much you'd like it to be otherwise.

No. The person rolling the will save knows there's an illusion as he's asked to roll a will save to disbelieve. That obviously doesn't mean that the character knows it is an illusion. The character doesn't even know what a will save is, and so talking about a will save from a character's point of view makes no sense.

The question of whether the illusion seems real or is obviously an illusion is answered by the will save. If the illusion seems real but you have other in-character knowledge indicating that it may be an illusion, you may still suspect that it is so - especially if you have encountered illusions before where you at first failed your save and then had it proved to you that it was an illusion after all.

 

[Flatus Maximus]

No. The person rolling the will save knows there's an illusion as he's asked to roll a will save to disbelieve. That obviously doesn't mean that the character knows it is an illusion. The character doesn't even know what a will save is, and so talking about a will save from a character's point of view makes no sense.

The question of whether the illusion seems real or is obviously an illusion is answered by the will save. If the illusion seems real but you have other in-character knowledge indicating that it may be an illusion, you may still suspect that it is so - especially if you have encountered illusions before where you at first failed your save and then had it proved to you that it was an illusion after all.

The "I" in the question I quoted must certainly be the character, since the player isn't seeing an illusion. And who said anything about the character knowing anything about the Will save? The Will save tells me, the player, what my character believes or does not believe. The default is that the illusion appears real; a Will save may reveal otherwise. You seem to be saying that illusions are perceived to actually be illusions (never mistaken for reality), and the Will save merely determines how realistic the illusion is -- am I misinterpreting?

 

[Elethiomel]

The "I" in the question I quoted must certainly be the character, since the player isn't seeing an illusion. And who said anything about the character knowing anything about the Will save? The Will save tells me, the player, what my character believes or does not believe.

Here's where we differ. I think the Will save tells me, the player, what my character perceives.

The default is that the illusion appears real; a Will save may reveal otherwise. You seem to be saying that illusions are perceived to actually be illusions (never mistaken for reality), and the Will save merely determines how realistic the illusion is -- am I misinterpreting?

Yes you are. What I'm trying to say is that even if you fail your will save you may still suspect that an illusion is an illusion, just as you may suspect that a real object is an illusion. That you cannot perceive any difference between a real object and an illusion does not mean that all suspicions that an object or creature may be an illusion are allayed.

 

[Flatus Maximus]

Here's where we differ. I think the Will save tells me, the player, what my character perceives.

You are willfully ignoring the Saving Throw entry "Will disbelief" and replacing it with "Will perceive true nature" or some such.

 

[Elethiomel]

You are willfully ignoring the Saving Throw entry "Will disbelief" and replacing it with "Will perceive true nature" or some such.

No, because I do not believe "disbelief" and "belief" are the only two states possible versus an illusion. There's also "agnostic". And there is nothing in the "illusions and disbelief" section that say that if you fail your will save you unconditionally believe the illusion to be real.

 

[Flatus Maximus]

No, because I do not believe "disbelief" and "belief" are the only two states possible versus an illusion. There's also "agnostic". And there is nothing in the "illusions and disbelief" section that say that if you fail your will save you unconditionally believe the illusion to be real.

So, what result on a Will save results in "agnostic"? Or equivalently, how badly do I need to roll so that my character is 100% fooled by the illusion? Or maybe you have some other game mechanic in mind? This is at the heart of the matter: What game mechanic should we use to decide whether or not our characters are suspicious?

If you can't answer my questions, then I can only conclude that you are using your Int or Wis instead of your character's Int or Wis to perceive, reason, etc. This is metagaming.

 

[Elethiomel]

So, what result on a Will save results in "agnostic"? Or equivalently, how badly do I need to roll so that my character is 100% fooled by the illusion? Or maybe you have some other game mechanic in mind? This is at the heart of the matter: What game mechanic should we use to decide whether or not our characters are suspicious?

If you can't answer my questions, then I can only conclude that you are using your Int or Wis instead of your character's Int or Wis to perceive, reason, etc. This is metagaming.

Knowledge (arcana), Spellcraft, other knowledge skills, and roleplaying can all make for a character that is suspicious about a certain situation. Wait... roleplaying? Yes. There's no game mechanic that tells you that if you have int above say 2, you can remember that someone walked through a doorway and figure out that if you want to reach them you should also go through that doorway. In the absence of such a mechanic you have to consider your character's stats and personality and then pose the question, "could my character reason that out?".

You are not the only one to have memories of previous campaign events. Your character also has these memories. If your character has a decent intelligence and/or wisdom score they should be able to apply the same thought processes to those memories as you can, without of course including any out-of-character knowledge.

I think this is the place for another example.
An Arcane Trickster is on a solo adventure hunting a bad guy who has done evil deeds. She has learned that he's made his lair under an abandoned temple to an ancient, forgotten god.

Situation A:
The bad guy, who is a mage, has hidden the main entrance to his basement lair behind a Permanent Image of a statue (cast from a scroll, the highest level spells he can cast himself is 4th level spells). The Arcane Trickster searches the temple for secret entrances. During this search she examines the statue closely (as she's searching for secret entrances) and fails her will save. As she has no other suspicions about the statue at this time she believes that it is real.

Situation B:
Having found the rear entrance to the mage's lair the Arcane Trickster has entered the lair and confronted the mage about his wicked deeds. Instead of meekly coming along he decided to try to kill the Arcane Trickster. There was a prolonged battle, and both characters exhausted most of their spells. At the end, most of the Arcane Trickster's buffs were dispelled and she had to cast See Invisible to go after the mage who'd just cast Greater Invisibility. She has very few other spells left, among them not a single divination. The mage casts his ace-in-the-hole, Evard's Black Tentacles, trapping the Arcane Trickster in place while he makes his escape. He runs through a hallway the Arcane Trickster has yet to enter. After a while, the Arcane Trickster gets loose from the black tentacles and follows the mage through the hallway. See invisibility is still up and she hasn't seen the mage escape through any other doors. The hallway ends in what appears to be a small, empty room. This makes the Arcane Trickster consider several possibilities. Among them are:
- There is a secret exit somewhere in this room.
- There is an illusion covering some part of the room and the mage is hiding in the other part of the room.
- The mage has fled by magical means (teleport, dimension door, etc).
To make sure none of the two first possibilities are true, she decides to examine the room in this order:
1) Search the room for secret doors and traps.
2) Poke the walls with a stick to make sure they aren't illusory (she doesn't want to poke the walls first because that may set off any traps that are there).

Scenario 1:
There are no secret doors or illusory walls. The mage has fled via Dimension Door (again off a scroll, which he had stashed here for just such an eventuality). The Arcane Trickster searches all the walls for secrets and traps and find none. She then proceeds to poke all the walls, and finding them solid is forced to conclude that the evil mage has gotten away.

Scenario 2:
The mage has cast Silence and then (metamagic-silent) Silent Image to cover up the whole half of the room that the Silence effect covers. He's desperately staring at the searching Arcane Trickster, hoping she doesn't find him. The Arcane Trickster searches all the walls for secret doors and traps. In doing so she triggers the "closely studying" clause of Illusions and Saving Throws, fails her Will save and thus does not notice anything amiss with the wall that happens to be a Silent Image. She then proceeds to the second stage of her plan, which is to poke all the walls with a stick to make sure they're not illusory. Only, according to some posters in this thread she doesn't get to do that, because it would be metagaming - she's already failed her Will save and is so convinced the silent image of a wall is actually a real wall she won't actually bother to check that wall... she'll just check the other walls which aren't illusory.

I hold that "doesn't notice anything amiss" means that she doesn't notice the wall is an illusion by searching it for traps, but that does not mean she is more convinced that it is not illusory than she is about any of the other three walls in the room.

 

[Moff_Tarkin]

I really should have said this in the beginning, but I thought it was understood. We assumed the corpse was a fake and went to investigate further. We were not saying that we knew it was an illusion, only that some form of trickery was going on and a further investigation was needed. Detect magic is always the first step in such an investigation. It’s a level 0 spell that the spell caster casts multiple times per day, and reveals all forms of magic. Our spell casters always fill up their 0 level slots with detect magic, and almost always run out by the end of the day. After all, it is arguably one of the most useful utility spells a spell caster has. It could of revealed the corpse to be an illusion, the magical kama sitting near by, or perhaps a magically hidden passage to the real coffin. Its an infinitely useful spell which is why its typically one of the most casts spells in any game. I don’t know if other people games are different then ours, but “Is it magical” is probably the most commonly spoken phrase at our gaming table.

And the reason I fell the need to argue is because the situation is so mind-boggling. I still cant see the meta-gaming argument as having a valid point. Our assumption about the body being a fake, and our need to investigate, came before the Will save. How is it possible for us to use out of character information that we didn’t have? Imagine a player who has never faced a troll before, doesn’t even know what a troll is, hasn’t even ever heard the word troll. This player decides to cast fireball on the troll and you accuse him of metagaming for knowing that fire kills trolls. How can a player use out of character information when the player knows nothing about the situation? The metagaming argument in this situation crosses into the realm of science fiction, claming that people have the psychic ability to know things they don’t actually know.

 

[Moff_Tarkin]

Let me use a bluff/sense motive example. Social skills would seem to fit into this illusion argument because they both deal with your characters being convinced something is true because of a failed roll.

While walking through town, you see a short, fat, dirty, hunched over man in ratty clothes trying to sell expensive jewelry at extremely low prices on the street corner. Obviously you would be suspicious of such a man, and might suggest you party steer clear of him. But at that time the DM calls for a sense motive check. The DM tells you that you failed to beat his bluff. You must know fully believe that this man is honest is doing completely honest business. If fact, you character must now make a purchase from him. After all, these prices are too good to beat, and the only reason you wouldn’t buy them is because your using out of character knowledge about how they are stolen or fake. So your character is now forced to buy from this man, then you get arrested when the town guard suddenly shows up and sees you doing business with him.

You have every right to be suspicious if this man. Based on the evidence at hand, you make an assumption about whether he is trustworthy or not. Your DM can’t just roll a dice and tell you what you think and what you do. That’s not role-playing, that’s “roll” playing.

Oh, and as for the continuting argument? There seems to be a decent split in on this topic from what I have seen. Which means its a very two-sided debate. Not open and closed in the least. If everyone were on one side or the other, I wouldent see the need in fighting a already lost or won battle.