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From: cc100jr@gitpyr.UUCP (Joel M. Rives)
Newsgroups: net.games.frp
Subject: Re: Illusionists
Message-ID: <1044@gitpyr.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 19-Nov-85 16:40:03 EST
Article-I.D.: gitpyr.1044
Posted: Tue Nov 19 16:40:03 1985
Date-Received: Wed, 20-Nov-85 08:33:25 EST
References: <620@drutx.UUCP>
Reply-To: cc100jr@gitpyr.UUCP (Joel M. Rives)
Organization: Office of Computing Services, Georgia Tech
Lines: 53

Sue -

I must agree with you. Illusionists are often difficult to judge for.
The question of belief is a big one and the answers you decide upon 
can make the illusionist character either very powerful or very ineffectual 
if you aren't careful. One of the major obstacles to overcome is a systematic
method for determining when a PC (or NPC) gets to save versus the illusion.
One method, which I used with some success, is to come up with a dice table
for disbelief of illusions based upon the character's intellegence. The table
could then be used by the GM for NPCs as well as PCs to determine whether they
doubt the reality of what they see. Bonuses could be given for certain cir-
cumstances - such as the presence of a known illusionist or a poorly concieved
illusion (i.e. the presence of a white dragon in the middle of the dessert).
You might also give bonuses in favor of the illusionist based upon their level
and for cleverly contrived illusions. If the character makes his/her disbeleif
roll, then they may make their savings throw versus the spell. Or alternately,
you may wish to make the disbelief roll THE savings throw vs. Illusions in 
general.
The efffective reality of an illusion will depend largely upon the type of 
illusion it is. As you know there are gradiated levels of illusions based 
upon whether the illusion contains sound effects, tactile senses, etc...
In general, if a character believes an illusion and is struck by a spell
or spell-like power from that illusion, that character will act in all ways 
as if they had indeed been effected by the spell (unless they manage to save 
against it). However, no real effect can be produced directly from the 
illusionary spell. In other words, a character struck by an illusion of
a fireball will believe that they are engulfed by a real fireball (assuming
they fail their disbelief roll) and react accordingly. However, no real 
damage is done to the character from the spell. Damage could accrue in-
directly, though. For example, if a character is climbing a rope and an 
illusionist creates the illusion that the rope has suddenly turned into a snake
which in turn bites the character, the character may believe that they have 
taken damage from the snake bite - which they have not. The character may, 
however, take damage from falling when he lets go of the rope-turned-snake.
In reference to the illusionary bridge you mentioned, It may be possible to
fool a party into believing there is a bridge there. I might even allow a 
character to be fooled into believing they are actually walking across the  
bridge - until they actually strike the bottom of the ravine that is!
Some, more powerful illusions do have a modicum of reality intertwined 
amoungst the strands of illusion (Demi-Shadow Magic for example). The 
effectiveness of the reality aspect of these spells must be adjudicated 
on a spell-by-spell basis. 
I hope this is of some use to you.    

			   the never-present whisper spirit


Joel Rives
Georgia Insitute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332
...!{akgua,allegra,amd,hplabs,ihnp4,seismo,ut-ngp}!gatech!gitpyr!cc100jr

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