Illusions and saves

[Uller]

The SRD regarding illusions and saves:

Saving Throws and Illusions (Disbelief): Creatures encountering an illusion effect usually do not receive saving throws to recognize it as illusory until they study it carefully or interact with it in some fashion.

A successful saving throw against an illusion reveals it to be false, but a figment or phantasm remains as a translucent outline.

A failed saving throw indicates that a character fails to notice something is amiss. A character faced with incontrovertible proof that an illusion isn't real needs no saving throw. If any viewer successfully disbelieves an illusion and communicates this fact to other viewers, each such viewer gains a saving throw with a +4 bonus.

Most illusions (especially figments and phantasms) included text in their short or long descriptions that indicates characters receive a save if they interact with it.

Invisibility and Silence are both illusions (glamers) and make no mention of any saving throw.

So...if you interact with an invisible creature, do you get a save? If you are in the area of a silence and realize that something is wrong, do you get a save?

I say no. Glamers should not allow any save. They change the subject's (i.e. the invisible or silenced characters) sensory qualities (the light or sound coming from them) and do not affect the perceptions of those around them. You can try to disbelieve all you want, it won't change the fact that no light or no sound is getting to you from the subject. This is how I've always run it, but a player of mine pointed out this passage the other day and I didn't have the ammo to argue with him (not that I changed my ruling...I just said "You don't get to disbelieve invisibility...you can make a spot check vs DC 20+ to guess where the invisible creature is" and he seemed satisfied with that).

 

[IceBear]

Actually, I read it as silence affecting the actual sound (not the character's senses).

From the SRD:

Glamer: A glamer spell changes a subject's sensory qualities, making it look, feel, taste, smell, or sound like something else, or even seem to disappear.

"making IT....sound like..."

From this it appears to me that the silence spell is actually affecting the SOUND in the area not the character's auditory senses themselves (that should get a saving throw, if it was the case).

Also, Sean K Reynold's rant on invisibility stated that it was affecting the light itself, not the viewer's eyes.

IceBear

 

[KarinsDad]

Actually, some figments do not even get a save such as Mirror Image. Then again, Mirror Image probably should have been a glamer.

As far as I can tell, most figments and phantasms get saves, but only if you interact with it or attempt to study it.

Most glamers do not, regardless of what you do.

 

[AuraSeer]

This confusion seems to come up fairly often. I wonder whether it would make more sense to list glamers under the Transmutation school. After all, a glamer actually makes a change to light, sound, or other sensory qualities; it's not "illusory" in the sense of something that can be disbelieved.

 

[IceBear]

I agree AuraSeer - that tends to make more sense to me too.

As for the Mirror Image, I think that hitting them or targetting them with spells is meant to be "interaction" and thus why they disappear.

IceBear

PS - I'm starting to shudder everytime I see Mirror Image in a thread now. Can we start picking on something else now?

 

[dcollins]

The SRD text only details qualifiers for those illusions with saving throws.
It does not follow that all illusions having saving throws -- only those which specify so allow saves.