Magic is not the red-headed stepchild.

[Arlough]

But [MENTION=92511]steeldragons[/MENTION], Phantasmal Killer's will save is for disbelief. When you make the save, it is because you know the horrible sight is fake and can't hurt you.

Then if you are stricken blind, anything you see is fake and a figment of your imagination. So when the mage projects a phantasmal killer into your mind, you know it is an psychic attack and the killer can't hurt you. Then the phantasmal killer disappears no harm no foul.

Actually, when you save vs. Phantasmal Killer, you are hoping that some part of your mind won't buy it. But it only needs to do that because the magic directly effecting your mind bypassing all filters that would indicate that it isn't real.

Ask someone with phantom limb syndrome if they really feel pain. The part is gone, but they still feel it.

Or talk to someone with PTSD and flashbacks, and see if living in a non-combat zone makes it easy to dismiss the flashbacks.

And have you recently cast visions into a blind person's mind and then interviewed them afterwards to find out it's effect? (this is obviously hyperbolic, unless my belief about magic in reality is wrong.)

I don't mind spells having keywords and then there being resistances or immunities to those keywords, but if it is in the description then someone who in real life has a powerful personality and a high skill at rationalizing will almost always get his/her way, as a player or a DM.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Personally it seems like too much work to adjudicate. And frankly, a lot of the blind people are not gonna be adventuring anyway, and if they have some kind of compensation, they become vulnerable all over again.

And again, I would agree this is mostly illusions, not other kinds of magic. Saying you can avoid a fireball by not hearing the spell being cast would have a lot of invincible deaf adventurers running around.