I want to believe

[MichaelK]

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.

I agree with this rules interpretation.

 

[Vegepygmy]

I agree with this rules interpretation.

I also concur.

 

[Vegepygmy]

Again you keep attemoting to insert literature and "real world" exampples in an attempt to jsuty your opinion on D&D rules and role-playing.

And there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing so. Some D&D fans are more simulationist and less gamist than others.

 

[Moff_Tarkin]

Let my try to pose a simple question. I’m interested in how the “metagaming” crowd answers this.

Because they failed their saving throw, our PCs fully believe the corpse to be real, as in not an illusion. It looks and feels real to all our senses. The question is, can our PCs believe the corpse to be fake even though it looks and feels real in every way to them.

Because this DM runs illusions in a special way, the corpse fooled all our senses at first without even allowing a saving throw. When we said we interacted with the corpse the DM implied it was perfectly real. We felt the resistance as the sword cut through his neck, we felt the weight of the head as we picked it up and moved it from the body. “As players” all of our physical senses pointed to the corpse being absolutely real and corporeal. And still, we decided it was a fake.

So the question I pose is this. If we “as players” can suspect a corpse to be fake despite all physical evidence telling us otherwise, why cant our PCs have the same suspicions?

 

[irdeggman]

Let my try to pose a simple question. I’m interested in how the “metagaming” crowd answers this.

Because they failed their saving throw, our PCs fully believe the corpse to be real, as in not an illusion. It looks and feels real to all our senses. The question is, can our PCs believe the corpse to be fake even though it looks and feels real in every way to them.

Because this DM runs illusions in a special way, the corpse fooled all our senses at first without even allowing a saving throw. When we said we interacted with the corpse the DM implied it was perfectly real. We felt the resistance as the sword cut through his neck, we felt the weight of the head as we picked it up and moved it from the body. “As players” all of our physical senses pointed to the corpse being absolutely real and corporeal. And still, we decided it was a fake.

The fact that your DM runs illusion is a very strange way (and not per the RAW of any edition) is an entirely separate issue than the "metagaming" one.

So the question I pose is this. If we “as players” can suspect a corpse to be fake despite all physical evidence telling us otherwise, why cant our PCs have the same suspicions?

This is the basic premise of "metagaming".

Players know more things than do PCs.

The players didn't make any saving throws, the PCs did (and failed).

The players never make spot or knowledge checks (PCs do).

The players made conclusions based on past patterns the DM uses - they know how he runs things. The players engaged in the argument over whether the DM ran things correctly - the PCs did not.

The PCs got 2 separate attempts to figure out it was an illusion and failed both times.

The PCs are now convinced it is not an illusion.

The players know that their PCs failed their saving throws - the PCs know nothing of the kind.

It is this player knowledge that separates the 2 and when acting on player knowledge and not PC knowledge it is called "metagaming".

 

[Starbuck_II]

I have a question: why did the Vampire have to have a Kama again? Couldn't the object that the vampire used be an illusion of a Kama (thus not real)?

 

[irdeggman]

I have a question: why did the Vampire have to have a Kama again? Couldn't the object that the vampire used be an illusion of a Kama (thus not real)?

Very, very good point.

The failed save against illusions might have (if role-played well) led a PC to that conclusion.

The other question asked earlier was how did the PC's know the kama was magical in the first place?

I'm still looking for knowledge/experience the PCs have had with vampires in the past - since they sure seemed to know how to deal with them, as if they had read the MM.

 

[irdeggman]

I agree with this rules interpretation.

Well the other part of the rules state that -

A successful saving throw against an illusion reveals it to be false. . .

When combined with the remainder of the text

. . .A failed saving throw indicates that a character fails to notice something is amiss.

Sure makes it seem like you need to succeed on the saving throw to know it is false.

My statement that a failed saving thrown means the character believes it to be true is actually more limiting than "fails to notice something is amiss" which can apply to everything in the area and not just the illusion itself.

 

[Elethiomel]

Sure makes it seem like you need to succeed on the saving throw to know it is false.

To know for certain that it is an illusion, yes.

My statement that a failed saving thrown means the character believes it to be true is actually more limiting than "fails to notice something is amiss" which can apply to everything in the area and not just the illusion itself.

Regardless, the "fails to notice something is amiss" is what the rules say and is what we have to interpret. Again, I think that it refers to noticing something "amiss" that reveals the illusion as such immediately, as that is the result of a successful saving throw (the thing that is "amiss" is good enough to completely reject the illusion and see straight through it). I don't think a failed saving throw versus illusions convinces the character making the save about anything they weren't convinced was true before the save was rolled.

Illusions are a very different form of magic. The sorts of illusion that fool the senses work by default (they look [and may taste, sound, give off heat, and feel] like what they are representing), and then you get a save to change that. I say failing the save fails to change how you look at it.

 

[Moff_Tarkin]

What information do we have as players that our PCs don’t? The claim is that our knowledge as players comes from previous game experience with this DM and his brand of illusions. But we experienced all those things through our characters so they have the same information. When we play D&D, we don’t magically teleport ourselves into a fantasy world. We create characters that act as our means of interacting with that world. Everything we experience from that world, be it magic or monsters, we experience through our characters. So, by default they have just as much information as us. Perhaps more since they experienced this things first hand.

So with the same information as our PCs, the players called the body a fake. Not an illusion necessarily, but a fake. You can’t claim we were using out of character knowledge because out of character knowledge doesn’t exist in real life. You cant know something you don’t know.