Archamus's page

Malachi: that is still revolutionary.

How is that revolutionary? That's exactly how touch spells have always worked.

You can automatically touch one friend or use the spell on yourself

You can automatically touch one friend, not possible while pinned since you're unable to move to do so; or simply use the spell on yourself. No mention of touching yourself there, since you already are.

My experience is that every edition of D&D that ever required you to touch for a spell considered that if you could restrain the caster from touching himself you can stop him from gaining benefit of a spell. Your idea is that you are always touching yourself is a new one at least from my experience.

In my experience this has never been the case. The benefit of restraining the caster is keeping him from casting in the first place.

For that matter, this would change grapple rules too. If you grapple someone holding a spell would you (using your rules) automatically discharge the spell? The implication from your interpretation is that yes, you would. After all, you are touching the person holding the spell arent you?

The grapple rules would still work normally. I think this was addressed in the succubus level drain question. Grappling wouldn't automatically discharge the spell since touch spells don't work that way, but the caster could certainly attack on his round.

Once pinned the caster would not be able to make that attack, since it doesn't fall under the actions he's allowed to take. If for some reason he wanted to discharge the spell on himself he could simply use the spell on himself, just like the touch spell description says.

This was not as interesting as I thought it was going to be when I misread the title as Raging Beard.

RAW is very clear here. D20 has keywords to help with these situations. They clearly define this situation. As Ughbash pointed out with his snippet of rules, the phantasm is not a visual illusion that harms you. It is a "mind-affecting" effect that harms you. Mind affecting is the keyword that is important to the game mechanics here. True Seeing does not see through mind affecting effects. You should be able to see through the illusion aspect of the phantasm, but the save isn't against an illusion, a glamer, or a figment. It is against a mind affecting effect. So if you fail that save, then somehow your mind doesn't allow you to believe your eyes. A cool GM would probably give you a bonus to the save versus the mind affecting aspect of the phantasm though. I know I would.

Not everything in the Illusion school of spells is purely illusion. Shadow magic is its foray into conjuration and a few, like phantasmal spells reach reach into the realms of enchantment.

Also RAW True Seeing is only good for vision. Everything about the spell makes that clear. The spell name indicates this and it constantly restates that it is vision only throughout the description. You are focusing on one aspect of it and inferring things that just aren't there. The illusion aspect of it is powerful and cool, but that is just one of the perks of the spell. It's focus is vision. It does some other fun things for vision too, such as see into the ethereal plane and see in darkness.

Every instance describing how it affects the sense that I could see in the spell description:
"see all things as they actually are"
"The subject sees through normal and magical darkness"
"sees the exact locations of creatures or objects"
"sees invisible creatures or objects normally"
"sees through illusions"
"sees the true form of polymorphed" (I didn't realize it did that, nice!)
"can focus its vision to see"
"True seeing, however, does not penetrate solid objects" (Just like vision, so a ghost sound behind a bush would be terrifying, until you walk around so you could see the sound somehow)
"X-ray vision or its equivalent" (Just normal illusion peircing vision)
"viewer see through mundane disguises"
"spot creatures who are simply hiding"

There are only two reference in it which could possibly affect something other than vision. One is the word "notice". The other word, and the only clear indication of sound, is this part "clairaudience/clairvoyance" which it says True Seeing doesn't work with. Of course that part is only referring to a spell name, but I just wanted to point out that the only clear indication of a sense other than sight explicitly is not affected by True Seeing.

The saying "I see through your lies" doesn't correlate to a spell description. Spell descriptions are designed to be clear and explanatory. They will be as literal as possible. Figures of speech like often make no sense and are rarely literal. Using that argument is like trying to make the claim that excrement is a good building material, because there is the saying (altered for the kids) "defecating bricks".