An enemy wants to ambush the party but wants to talk first.
he creates a major image while the party is some distance away then when the party is close enough he has it walk into the middle of the road prompting them to stop.
from about 30 to 60 feet away he starts talking to them, conversation doesnt matter he is basically declaring his intention to kill them.
its likley that the party will charge or shoot the image which will prompt his attack.
my question is this.
BEFORE any attacks are made or any one gets any special interaction with him. while he is standing in the road declaring his intention to kill them all for the glory of his master.
should the party get will saves to disbelieve?
note: this assumes that they have not used any special spells or abilities like detect evil/magic/etc, nore have they had any back and forth conversation. although I wonder if back and forth conversation with the caster in control would make a will save or if interaction means direct phisical interaction.
my thoughts on this would be to allow the illusionist a perform check opposed by the party perception as there may be some very subtle clues about being not quite right.
maybe the words are out of synch with the mouth movements or perhaps the body language is just not quite natural.
in any event I would give the party some sort of check before making the will save to identify something amiss.
If not an oppsed skill check then maybe a static DC based on the cater level of the illusionist.
anyway just a thought
interesting...
my problem is that illusion spells seem too hamstrung. like why is seeing a silent image not enough to spark a will save (which makes sense) but hearing a ventriloquism or ghost image an automatic will save? (which does not make sense)
thanks for the web link I will look it up.
Here's a decent article on it.
cheapy i love you for using that, i thought i was the only person aware of those articles.
unless you found that through the several times i have mentioned it in my posts, then thank you lots for propagating it.
i really think every gm should be aware of those 4 articles, at least as suggestions on how to rule illusions in games.
and i think its a good generic rule that you are not allowed to get a saving throw against an illusion until you have spent an actual action interacting with it in some way. but communicating with it would count as that in the OP example.