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

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="jgsugden" data-source="post: 7091693" data-attributes="member: 2629">I understand why you'd consider ruling this way, but it is contrary to the text of the spell.  An action must be chosen to be spent by the target, and the spell provides many reasons why the target shouldn't take that action due to the impact of the spell.Note that this spell, even under the most liberal of interpretations, still has limits.  The phantasm doesn't move to follow the target.  If you make an archwizard, the dragon will believe it is real - but that doesn't mean the dragon will stand there and attack it every round and ignore the rest of the party.  If you put a bag on a T-rex head (love that idea), the T-rex will be blind, but may attempt to thrash at PCs nearby blindly, anyways.  The monster still behaves as intelligently as ever in the face of the phantasm.The real value of the spell is the wide range of utility.  I've created a phantasm and placed it right in front of an enemy - only to have that enemy decide that that it would be wiser to retreat from the phantasmal entity and deal with other foes.  My phantasm just sat there.  I've used the example straight from the book and made a phantasmal bridge that the enemy feel off of - twice.  I've made phantasmal gold, paid someone with it, and then walked away (he was a bad, bad man).  I've convinced a guard that he was trapped in a collapsed tunnel.  As a DM, I used a phantasm on the party's scout to convince him that the edge of the cliff was 10 feet further out than it really was... The thing to remember is that you're not just creating an illusion like you do with other illusion spells - you're implanting something into the mind of one target.  You're messing with their perceptions *and* beliefs, explicitly.  You're explicitly altering what they believe to be real to an extent where they make mental leaps to justify why something that doesn't make sense would make sense.</blockquote>

Verification