Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Charlaquin" data-source="post: 9666020" data-attributes="member: 6779196">Solid analysis of the illusion rules in both books, I agree with your interpretations. I do have a bit of a nitpick though:D&D is an inherently asymmetrical game, so the rules for how NPCs interact with illusions don’t necessarily need to be the same as those for how PCs do, and in fact I think they probably shouldn’t be. Because when a PC encounters an illusion, the player doesn’t immediately know if it’s an illusion. But when an NPC encounters an illusion, the DM always knows that it’s an illusion. The DM can’t fairly make the decision of when/if the NPC should think to try to inspect the illusion, as their certainty that it is an illusion will inevitably bias that decision in one way or another. There really should be some mechanical way to determine when/if an NPC decides to inspect an illusion.Personally, here’s how I would do it: when a PC encounters an illusion, simply describe to the player what the PC perceives, and leave it to the player to deduce its illusory nature from context. If the player has their character interact with the illusion in some way that would reveal its illusory nature, just skip the Investigation roll. They’ve already figured it out, the “roll to disbelieve” is just redundant.On the other hand, when an NPC encounters an illusion, make an Investigation check right away (no action required), not to dispel the illusion, but to determine in an unbiased way if the NPC thinks it might be an illusion. If they fail, just have them treat it as if it were real, until and unless they witness something that proves otherwise. If they succeed, they suspect it of being an illusion, but still need to take an action to interact with it in some way to be certain. Again, no need to make a check when they do so, you’ve already made it.</blockquote>

Verification