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Illusions, lighting, and reflectance
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<blockquote data-quote="Harzel" data-source="post: 7546897" data-attributes="member: 6857506"><p>Even though the spell description says "You create a sound or an image of an object", which makes it sound like you are creating a physical effect, I think it is much more reasonable to treat <em>Minor Illusion</em> and other illusion spells as <em>mental </em>effects, not physical ones. In support of this, consider</p><p></p><p>8. Alice and Bob are exploring a dungeon. Alice, in the lead, turns a corner and enters a room that Bob cannot yet see into. She finds an illusory object, interacts with it, and discovers it is an illusion. Bob now enters the room and sees the illusion. If we treat the illusion as a physical effect (as the OP does), then light reflecting from objects behind the illusory object is both passing through the illusion (for Alice) and not passing through the illusion (for Bob). OTOH, as a mental effect, the situation is a lot more plausible. The light in the room is bouncing around just as if there was no illusion. Alice's and Bob's perceptions of the illusion have nothing to do with the light that is incident on their eyes; rather the illusion magic is messing with their perception of the scene. Alice is, since her interaction with the object, able to partially resist the effect, while for Bob it is, for the moment, in full force.</p><p></p><p>Being a mental effect, an illusion need not conform to the laws of physics for illumination, sound propagation, or anything else, not even those of your fictional world. However, the greater the disparity between the situation presented by the illusion and what a character would normally expect, the more chance that I will grant bonuses to the INT(Investigation) check, or perhaps not even require the check.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Harzel, post: 7546897, member: 6857506"] Even though the spell description says "You create a sound or an image of an object", which makes it sound like you are creating a physical effect, I think it is much more reasonable to treat [I]Minor Illusion[/I] and other illusion spells as [I]mental [/I]effects, not physical ones. In support of this, consider 8. Alice and Bob are exploring a dungeon. Alice, in the lead, turns a corner and enters a room that Bob cannot yet see into. She finds an illusory object, interacts with it, and discovers it is an illusion. Bob now enters the room and sees the illusion. If we treat the illusion as a physical effect (as the OP does), then light reflecting from objects behind the illusory object is both passing through the illusion (for Alice) and not passing through the illusion (for Bob). OTOH, as a mental effect, the situation is a lot more plausible. The light in the room is bouncing around just as if there was no illusion. Alice's and Bob's perceptions of the illusion have nothing to do with the light that is incident on their eyes; rather the illusion magic is messing with their perception of the scene. Alice is, since her interaction with the object, able to partially resist the effect, while for Bob it is, for the moment, in full force. Being a mental effect, an illusion need not conform to the laws of physics for illumination, sound propagation, or anything else, not even those of your fictional world. However, the greater the disparity between the situation presented by the illusion and what a character would normally expect, the more chance that I will grant bonuses to the INT(Investigation) check, or perhaps not even require the check. [/QUOTE]
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