PH1L1P's page

I'd argue that *something* is there. There has to be a source of whatever sensory phenomenon is going on. For simplicity, let's call it the Effect.

...

What do your knuckle (and tongue) feel? The Effect. The Effect should generate a sensation against whatever you're doing. However, the Effect is only doing that: fooling that sense.

Thanks for that insight. So this was part that was tripping me up, like if it wasn't a mentally affecting spell, I couldn't imagine how it could fool the sense of touch, but maybe going back to the haptics that Gortle and OrochiFuror were talking about, that might be a reasonable interpretation.

The haptics would just be really really good. Like your arm would go through the table, but your body would feel your arm hit the table, and maybe you would bring your hand back and get disoriented because your hand came back a further distance than it felt like it went down.

So no physical reality causing the senses, but the illusion itself is like a projector of sorts that projects not only light but also sound, smell, taste, and EVEN projects touch. In this way it is not an mental effect (not affecting your brain) but fooling the nerves in your body to misdirect the brain.

In this way, you could grab an illusory door handle, feel it in your hand, sqeeze on it and feel how solid it is, but if you looked at your hand you would see yourself making a closed fist and phasing through the image. I think that makes the most sense to me.

This would also work for Illusory creature: https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=158

Where it says the creature feels believable to the touch, but apart from mental attacks "cannot... directly affect the physical world"

EDIT: Because I was previously wanting an example, here's a gameplay example I imagined.

You create an illusion of a door in an open door frame. A creature comes by and sees the door. Looking down the hall to his left, he reaches for the door handle and tries to open the door. He feels the brass doorknob in his hand as he turns it, but it's locked! Or... jammed. Or something? The handle doesn't even turn. He looks down at his hand, which is balled into a fist and intersecting with the handle of the door. How could that be? He feels the handle in his hand but his hand is... inside the door? He recoils slightly and then peers suspiciously at the door. He swipes a hand at the surface and feels/hears a dull *thud* on his fingertips as he hits the solid surface... but his hand has passed straight through! At this point he either uses actions to disbelieve the door or just tries stepping through. If he had never looked, he would have been completely fooled, it was only that the touch did not align with what his hand was doing that allowed him to realize the illusion.