| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Tonight I had a mid-level ranger roll a natural 1 against a cloaker's mirror image-like shadow shift effect - which was just good enough to pop the image per the FAQ due to their Favored Enemy (aberrations).
Never come up before in 5+ years of playing PF; so nice timing, FAQ system :-)
@ Elro the Onk: Yeah, I never once considered this sort of thing to happen, but with other similar mechanical options out there, not to mention the times it happens that isn't actually brought out to the public and instead resolved at-the-table with a GM call (with no follow-up from the players after input from messageboards like these), I imagine a question like this was going to happen eventually. (I take that back, it already did happen.)
@ thaX: The hangup with Blur/Displacement and Mirror Images is that Concealment-based effects (i.e. Miss Chances) only occur if you successfully roll to hit a target's AC. If you miss by not equaling or exceeding the target's AC, then no miss chance is rolled.
Missing a target (i.e. the miss by 5 or less clause) doesn't trigger the Miss Chance because the attack in question wasn't a hit, it was a miss; a near miss, in fact.
So, mechanically speaking, Blur/Displacement wouldn't affect Mirror Images on a near miss, or even if you hit the target's AC, simply because a hit on the intended target (the caster) was never made, so the rules regarding Concealment are never applied.
Even if they somehow did, it'd also be an extremely powerful combination in the right hands. A Dex-based Magus with this combination going would be almost impossible to kill in melee combat, since you're running around with an average of 4+ Mirror Images, all of which have a 50% chance to not be destroyed on a given attack roll (and you having a 50% chance to not be hit on a given attack roll), and the numbers only increase as you gain in levels.
Quite frankly, something like that would be the power of a higher level spell, which means that spell combination functioning in the manner I described above is most likely unintended.
|
Here is what happens at my table.
Roll to hit (D20) succeeds. Roll for images. If an image is not popped, roll for concealment, if successful, roll damage.
Now, I understand the rules are not playing nice with each other and my thought is to resolve each instance with each rule in play to have an effect at some point, making for a very hard to hit wizard for a number of rounds, but not nigh impossible to chip at to gain some measure of success at mitigating defenses normally without one invalidating the other.
Just as the FAQ above, the normal rolls are metted out normally, and concealment doesn't matter if a Mirror Image is taken out and "missed" the "real" target anyway.
That is my take on Blur interacting with Mirror Image, with the understanding that a direct "RAW" reading may not allow for some interaction in this way if taken individually from each source.
And that's how I'd rule at my table too, simply because ruling otherwise leads to wonky results, the most common example being that even if you hit and rolled an image, you have a 50% miss chance on the image because you rolled a hit, whereas missing by less than 5 automatically destroys the image anyway.
Had a similar problem come up with Mirror Image and Invisibility. Enemy attacked the square and missed by less than 5. Rather than think about it too hard, I just had it be a miss that didn't pop an image, since it wasn't critical to the fight.
Invisibility on a creature that also has mirror image negates the mirror image effect (for those that cannot see through invisibility).
Mirror image must be able to be seen to have any effect (or any interaction with attacks). Invisible mirror images can't be seen. If the caster is invisible, so are his images.
An attacker must be able to see the figments to be fooled. If you are invisible or the attacker is blind, the spell has no effect (although the normal miss chances still apply).