Stacking Blur and Mirror Image

[werk]

The complicating question is, "Does a creature affected by blur look blurry?"

Surely it does.

Looking blurry is not a blur spell effect miss chance, that's the whole thread.

(and the thread is officially hilarious at this point.)

 

[Koewn]

I'm honestly proud of this thread, I'm glad I asked.

For what it's worth; half my players didn't show up Saturday, so the NPC I asked for didn't end up using either spell, since he didn't have to worry about the Warlock's zappy blasts.

 

[Nail]

...and is said NPC now dead?

 

[Nail]

(and the thread is officially hilarious at this point.)

Agreed.

 

[KarinsDad]

I see this as yet another case where, if there are two possible reasonable interpretations of the rules, then you go with the FAQ interpretation because that's the one that WOTC put their official seal of approval on. Only if the FAQ intepretation cannot be right because it is not one of the reasonable choices for how to interpret the rules should the FAQ answer be discarded.

But that is not the case with this example. An illusion might gain the benefit of concealment from being blurry, and it might be that the blurry part is also part of the illusion and therefore it should gain no benefit. Both positions are reasonable, and both can make sense depending on which analogy you depend on, which reasoning, etc.. So given there are two reasonable intepretations, and the FAQ chooses one of those, I am going with the FAQ one.

Except that this is not true. The FAQ interpretation is not valid because it does not follow the actual rules.

The Blur spell affects a creature. That's the rule.

A Mirror Image is a figment. That's the rule.

According to the rules, a Blur spell does not affect a Mirror Image.

Mirror Image does have a special caveat concerning Invisibility, but that caveat does not apply to other illusions. Mirror Image does not have a caveat that "strictly visual effects of other spells are added to the figments". That is something the FAQ added that the Mirror Image spell does not.

 

[Nail]

Mirror Image does have a special caveat concerning Invisibility, ....

What's interesting here is that Mirror Image doesn't say the figments gain Invisibility. Rather, it says that Mirror Image "has no effect".

So not only does Mirror Image specify its valid target (creatures only), but it also gives precident that other spells don't give their benefits (the images are NOT invisible; they just aren't there at all!).

 

[werk]

Mirror Image does have a special caveat concerning Invisibility, but that caveat does not apply to other illusions. Mirror Image does not have a caveat that "strictly visual effects of other spells are added to the figments".

Right, this is key. It doesn't say that the figments are made invisible, it says, if you are invisible, the spell has no effect.

EDIT: ...or a couple minutes late.

 

[pawsplay]

Your PH is written on stone tablets?

That must be a killer to carry around. I understand WotC is looking into "portability issues"......

Hey, I'm not the one claiming other people's opinions are invalid and wrong BECAUSE. No stone tablets here. The opposing viewpoint is supportable, but still, in my view, mistaken.

 

[KarinsDad]

Hey, I'm not the one claiming other people's opinions are invalid and wrong BECAUSE. No stone tablets here. The opposing viewpoint is completely rules supportable, but still, in my view, mistaken.

Corrected that for you.

The problem with your POV is that there are really no rules support for it.

Blur is a spell effect. It affects Creatures.

Mirror Image gives the visual aspects of the caster, but does not state that any visual spell effects from other spells on a creature also occur on the image. That benefit is just not written anywhere within the Mirror Image spell. Without that rules support, your POV is not a rules POV, rather a game preference POV (which is fine, but it still is not supported by rules).

The fact that the FAQ introduced a brand new game concept just muddies the waters of the rules discussion.


The FAQ Displacement interpretation is even harder to justify from a non-rules perspective (and cannot be justified via rules). The caster is displaced. The images look like the caster, but the caster does not "look displaced" he looks like himself. No visual changes whatsoever. Hence, the images merely show the caster as he looks and gain no benefit.

 

[werk]

Hey, I'm not the one claiming other people's opinions are invalid and wrong BECAUSE. No stone tablets here. The opposing viewpoint is supportable, but still, in my view, mistaken.

I guess I don't understand why using stone as a medium would make the rules any more concrete that writing them in the official published rulebooks...where they are written.

I really don't see support for your interpretation at all, even in your posts. The fact that the FAQ echoes your opinion doesn't give it support. (two wrongs do not equal a right)

Your point is that illusion effects are visual and therefore would be carried to the figments.
Our point is that is not possible by the RAW and the spell is easily described and ran to support both the rules and the fluff visual effect.

I guess what I really am curious about is WHY you would run it the way you do. Do you think MI is underpowered? Do you think figments should be targetable? Do you have a relationship with the FAQ and if you don't say she's right you'll have to sleep on the couch? I'm not saying your opinion is without merit, far from it, I'm just trying to understand what that merit would be.