Can True Seeing tell that there is an illusion?

[Stephen Ede]

I know that True Seeing lets you see through Illusions but are you still aware that the Illusion spell exists?

Say you see the Assassin with Greater Invisibility walking up to your friend.
Your Friend can't see the Assassin but do you just see a man strolling up to your friend, or do you see a man with an Invisibility on him walking up to your friend?

Thanks

[dragonhunterq]

This FAQ strongly infers that you can discern the presence and effects of an illusion.

[taks]

I'd certainly rule it that way. That's part of the benefit of casting the spell, IMO, knowing that the illusion exists in the first place.

[Plausible Pseudonym]

dragonhunterq wrote:

This FAQ strongly infers that you can discern the presence and effects of an illusion.

There is not FAQ I hate more than that one. I have a minor stroke every time I see them believe there's a distinction between physically and mentally seeing something.

[Matthew Downie]

dragonhunterq wrote:

This FAQ strongly infers that you can discern the presence and effects of an illusion.

FAQ wrote:

...a target with true seeing would (mentally) see the image and (physically) see that there is nothing really there

Yes, based on this it looks like true seeing works in the same way as saving against an illusion does:

Core Magic Chapter wrote:

A successful saving throw against an illusion reveals it to be false, but a figment or phantasm remains as a translucent outline.

[Matthew Downie]

Plausible Pseudonym wrote:

I have a minor stroke every time I see them believe there's a distinction between physically and mentally seeing something.

Really? I'd say a hallucination is something you see mentally but not physically.

[born_of_fire]

Plausible Pseudonym wrote:

dragonhunterq wrote:

This FAQ strongly infers that you can discern the presence and effects of an illusion.

There is not FAQ I hate more than that one. I have a minor stroke every time I see them believe there's a distinction between physically and mentally seeing something.

I dunno, the one that says there are perceptible manifestations to all spells--even ones with still and/or silent metamagic applied--making it utterly impossible to cast on the sly unless you are a psychic is pretty wretched.

[Stephen Ede]

LOL. Just read that one.
It read like a Political speech.
Lots of words saying almost nothing.

[Plausible Pseudonym]

Matthew Downie wrote:

Plausible Pseudonym wrote:

I have a minor stroke every time I see them believe there's a distinction between physically and mentally seeing something.

Really? I'd say a hallucination is something you see mentally but not physically.

Everything you think you see is a mental hallucination generated from neurological input, whether its impulses via your optic nerve as a result of photons hitting your retina, or weird neurochemical interactions caused by a drug or organic brain disorder. Your brain is constantly editing out things your eyes can see (your nose) or inventing things they don't (the blindspot from the optic nerve), and can predictably create false visual illusions that misinterpret what is happening for certain nonstandard geometric shapes. Depth perception and color (is that dress white and gold, or blue and black?) are purely artificial artifacts of the brain doing some aftermarket processing of received signals. Then there are dreams, where you see made up internally generated images rather than the backs of your eyelids.

Both a phantasm and a divination are necessarily inputting something new into this fake mental picture. They aren't doing different things. You can say one trumps the other via fiat, but you can't say one is doing something substantively different that trumps the mechanism of the other.

So much for neurology and metaphysics. From a balance perspective this is bad because there should be room for phantasms, which have plenty of limitations already (always require an upfront save, SR: yes, mind affecting and subject to immunity, usually single target) to give high level illusionists a useful tool against high level creatures that have True Seeing.

This ruling also just doesn't work with lots of phantasms. True Seeing doesn't let you hear or smell what's really there, which becomes a problem for multisense phantasms. There are also phantasms that do a lot more than just give you an image. If you're sleeping, have True Seeing, and get hit with a Nightmare, does the blackness of your closed eyes overpower the image of the nightmare? Does it overpower your normal dreams? Apparently not. And Mindscapes make this a particular cluster with all kinds of issues and weird/undesirable interactions.

The real problem is that Phantasmal Killer is a badly balanced legacy spell that shouldn't be a SoD at that level (compare to all others that switched to 10 points of damage per CL or like Psychic Crush give save bonuses and don't straight out kill) and the designers wanted to pare it back. The problem is Phantasmal Killer, not all phantasms.

born_of_fire wrote:

I dunno, the one that says there are perceptible manifestations to all spells--even ones with still and/or silent metamagic applied--making it utterly impossible to cast on the sly unless you are a psychic is pretty wretched.

I think you meant "even if you are a psychic."

I think both the spell art and especially the text of the Spellcraft skill, which requires that you see the spell being cast, not components like somatic waving around, and certainly never hearing verbal components, as sufficient evidence that it should work this way. Otherwise spellcraft by its own langauge could never identify a V only spell, there'd be nothing physical to see.

[Dave Justus]

I would rule the true seeing lets you see the entire truth, both the truth of an illusion being there, and the truth of what the illusion is concealing.

That being said, I don't think that this particular faq has relevance on all illusion spells, and my above ruling is just an interpretation that I don't have strong rules evidence for.

Phantasmal Killer, is a phantasm, a class of illusion spells that only create the illusion in a subject's mind. The FAQ says true seeing will allow the recipient to simultaneous discern a phantasm in their mind (which apparently true seeing doesn't erase) and the physical reality that nothing is there. So certainly the idea that true seeing will let you be aware of the existence of any phantasm you are subject to is well supported.

Not all illusions are phantasms though. Figments and Glamers project a physical image, not a mental one so there isn't the 'mental' image to see to compare against the 'physical' image that you apprehend with true seeing. Unless the true seeing lets you still see the illusion while simultaneously seeing what is real you wouldn't be able to detect it that way.

[John Murdock]

Matthew Downie wrote:

Plausible Pseudonym wrote:

I have a minor stroke every time I see them believe there's a distinction between physically and mentally seeing something.

Really? I'd say a hallucination is something you see mentally but not physically.

and the brain is not capable of distinguishing what is real and not real when it see something so because of the wording of the FAQ then someone with true seeing automatically failed their will save against illusion because they really see something, mentally and physically seeing something is the same thing, go ask any medicine specialist and they will say that, especially neurologist, what your eyes see is interpretated by your brain, and if your brain decide you see something else that no one see just to bad but you really see it since its real for the brain

[Matthew Downie]

In real life, the signals that reach your brain are all you can ever know, irrespective of how they got there. In Pathfinder, the spell True Seeing knows which of those signals represents objective reality. Those that don't have an external physical source are identified as such.

[Dave Justus]

John Murdock wrote:

and the brain is not capable of distinguishing what is real and not real when it see something so because of the wording of the FAQ then someone with true seeing automatically failed their will save against illusion because they really see something, mentally and physically seeing something is the same thing, go ask any medicine specialist and they will say that, especially neurologist, what your eyes see is interpretated by your brain, and if your brain decide you see something else that no one see just to bad but you really see it since its real for the brain

I don't think many neurologists have a very good grasp of how magic interacts with the brain.

Based on the faq, which from the perspective of a universe governed by the mechanics of the Pathfinder system is more definitive than any scientific law is when applied to the real world, you can indeed see both a mental image and what is physically really when under the effect of a true seeing spell. That is one of the 'laws' of the universe we are discussing.

[John Murdock]

Dave Justus wrote:

John Murdock wrote:

and the brain is not capable of distinguishing what is real and not real when it see something so because of the wording of the FAQ then someone with true seeing automatically failed their will save against illusion because they really see something, mentally and physically seeing something is the same thing, go ask any medicine specialist and they will say that, especially neurologist, what your eyes see is interpretated by your brain, and if your brain decide you see something else that no one see just to bad but you really see it since its real for the brain

I don't think many neurologists have a very good grasp of how magic interacts with the brain.

Based on the faq, which from the perspective of a universe governed by the mechanics of the Pathfinder system is more definitive than any scientific law is when applied to the real world, you can indeed see both a mental image and what is physically really when under the effect of a true seeing spell. That is one of the 'laws' of the universe we are discussing.

the thing is they based their thing on physical law and also denies them, like the human is a normal human, and since the human brain is incapable to make the distinction making them being able would make them go mad and insane, there is no other way, something that goes to a level that is so opposite to you is impossible to grasp. and if we take the first line of true seeing

''You confer on the subject the ability to see all things as they actually are.''

you should not be able to see the illusion, since it is not actually there, you see only what is actually there not you see both, again they did not read their spell/rule before making the FAQ.

and if you want any ounce of credibility when making anything you should always respect some fundamental thing, like the brain cannot make a difference in what mentally and physically seeing is or if something make it so they become mad or insane

[Dave Justus]

John Murdock wrote:

and if you want any ounce of credibility when making anything you should always respect some fundamental thing, like the brain cannot make a difference in what mentally and physically seeing is or if something make it so they become mad or insane

Well, since Pathfinder magic plainly violates far more fundamental laws of our universe than this one, I find that argument entirely unconvincing.

Be that as it may, this is the rules forum, and should discuss what the rules are, not what they would be in a game that you would design where everything conformed exactly to the best understood scientific theories of the real world.

[justaworm]

Dave Justus wrote:

I don't think many neurologists have a very good grasp of how magic interacts with the brain.

The best thing I've seen on here in a while...

However, I think maybe there is some area of psychology we could make some money in counseling with coping with the unreality of fantasy gaming.

[Ravingdork]

That spellcasting manifestation FAQ is the worst! There is literally nothing outside that FAQ that directly supports it. Of the thousands of groups I've encountered since starting Pathfinder, not one has ever played it that way before reading the FAQ. Most continue to be unaware of the FAQ, still identifying spells based off the spell components, and not the non-existent, undefined, unsupported spellcasting manifestations. And those groups that I introduce to the FAQ always say the same thing: "That's silly/stupid. We'll be ignoring that in our home games."

For every person I find that supports that FAQ I can find 100 that are against it.

[Dave Justus]

Ravingdork wrote:

That spellcasting manifestation FAQ is the worst! There is literally nothing outside that FAQ that directly supports it.

This isn't really true. The Spellcraft skill description says that you need to clearly be able to see the spell as it is being cast to identify it, and it doesn't give any modifiers for the presence or absence of components (a spell with only a verbal component is not harder to identify than one with V/S/M.)

This strongly implies that there is 'something' that characters can perceive beyond the components of a spell that can be used to identify it. In the rules the particular 'flavor' of what this is it indeed undefined, but that there is something is obvious, and using the components as a method of identification or a modifier on how difficult a spell is to identify was always a house-rule.

If one wants to be particularly close in parsing the language, Spellcraft says you have to be able to 'see the spell.' So either spells are visible (not spell effects, but spells themselves) or Spellcraft would never be able to identify a spell. Now, by itself that is a narrower parsing of language than I would advocate for rules interpretations, and 'see a spell' could just be a shorthand for see a spellcaster casting a spell but given the lack of components being a factor in identifying a spell as well, I think it is additional evidence.

[Matthew Downie]

Ravingdork wrote:

There is literally nothing outside that FAQ that directly supports it.

It's supported by the front cover of the core rulebook.

[John Murdock]

Dave Justus wrote:

Ravingdork wrote:

That spellcasting manifestation FAQ is the worst! There is literally nothing outside that FAQ that directly supports it.

This isn't really true. The Spellcraft skill description says that you need to clearly be able to see the spell as it is being cast to identify it, and it doesn't give any modifiers for the presence or absence of components (a spell with only a verbal component is not harder to identify than one with V/S/M.)

This strongly implies that there is 'something' that characters can perceive beyond the components of a spell that can be used to identify it. In the rules the particular 'flavor' of what this is it indeed undefined, but that there is something is obvious, and using the components as a method of identification or a modifier on how difficult a spell is to identify was always a house-rule.

If one wants to be particularly close in parsing the language, Spellcraft says you have to be able to 'see the spell.' So either spells are visible (not spell effects, but spells themselves) or Spellcraft would never be able to identify a spell. Now, by itself that is a narrower parsing of language than I would advocate for rules interpretations, and 'see a spell' could just be a shorthand for see a spellcaster casting a spell but given the lack of components being a factor in identifying a spell as well, I think it is additional evidence.

spellcraft say you use the same penalties as perception, so if we go with that in perception you have penalties for unfavourable and terrible condition, +2 or +5 to the DC, so if the person has no visual cue whatsoever then we can assume it is a terrible condition and can increase the DC by 5

[Stephen Ede]

I have to admit I fail to see the point of the Silent and Still Metamagic feats except in very rare circumstances with that FAQ.

Player - "I Silent and Still Cast the Spell so they don't notice me casting"
GM - "They notice all the glowing lights around you and attack you for casting a spell".

Damn, I just realised by those rules if you are invisible and cast a spell the enemy instantly know where you are because they can see the manifestations. Even if you Silent cast it.

Which means they should be able to AOO you even if you are invisible because they know what square you are in.

Also doesn't that mean you can't sneak attacks with a spell because they're aware of where you are and that you are attacking, even if you are invisible?

[John Murdock]

Stephen Ede wrote:

I have to admit I fail to see the point of the Silent and Still Metamagic feats except in very rare circumstances with that FAQ.

Player - "I Silent and Still Cast the Spell so they don't notice me casting"
GM - "They notice all the glowing lights around you and attack you for casting a spell".

Damn, I just realised by those rules if you are invisible and cast a spell the enemy instantly know where you are because they can see the manifestations. Even if you Silent cast it.

Which means they should be able to AOO you even if you are invisible because they know what square you are in.

Also doesn't that mean you can't sneak attacks with a spell because they're aware of where you are and that you are attacking, even if you are invisible?

invisibility make anything from you invisible, and even if the manifestation is still visible they can't take an AoO since you have total conceal, the only thing it will do at worst is you are pinpoint

[Ravingdork]

Manifestations might still be visible if the GM rules that they glow.

The FAQ (I refuse to say "rules") is unclear on the matter.

Matthew Downie wrote:

Ravingdork wrote:

There is literally nothing outside that FAQ that directly supports it.

It's supported by the front cover of the core rulebook.

As with nearly all such images, you can't tell if that is a spell effect or a spellcasting manifestation. It doesn't directly support anything.

Even if it did, non-diagram images are hardly rules (nor should they be).

[Stephen Ede]

True, they can't make an AOO because of total Concealment, but they can still use Readied actions, Even if the spell is something as innocuous as a silent comprehend languages.

[Agodeshalf]

I get why it was FAQ'ed this way. Having casters able to cast spells virtually undetected would be bad. But I always figured that having to "see" the caster meant that you we detecting the verbal/somantic/material components, not some ephemeral and basically undefined manifestations.

So for a normal caster to get something off undetected, not only would you need silent/still/eschew materials but you need to add conceal spell which requires deceitful and ranks in bluff/sleight of hand/disguise Pretty hefty tax, and then it still just a roll.

[Ravingdork]

Agodeshalf wrote:

I get why it was FAQ'ed this way. Having casters able to cast spells virtually undetected would be bad. But I always figured that having to "see" the caster meant that you we detecting the verbal/somantic/material components, not some ephemeral and basically undefined manifestations.

The biggest problem with the FAQ (besides lacking any real rules support) is that it flat out contradicts tons of existing material. Players and GMs the world over weren't the only ones who believed it worked a certain way; a great many game developers and writers thought the same thing!

There's plenty of evidence for it. There are official Paizo modules with villains casting spells on the PCs while invisible up in the shallow rafters above them, or similar scenarios where casters rely on greater invisibility to evade the PCs WHILE CASTING SPELLS--something that is completely impossible as written for anyone adhering to the FAQ. The succubus and lots of other magical ambush monsters no longer function as originally intended. The doppelganger can't even read minds any more without giving up the whole game!

This FAQ single-handedly killed a great many BBEGs, common fantasy tropes, modules, monsters, and untold number of PCs.

It's no wonder so many are upset about it and refuse to use it in their games!

Agodeshalf wrote:

So for a normal caster to get something off undetected, not only would you need silent/still/eschew materials but you need to add conceal spell which requires deceitful and ranks in bluff/sleight of hand/disguise Pretty hefty tax, and then it still just a roll.

Cunning Caster is better if you're going to get those other feats anyways. You only need Bluff, and can pump the DCs to expose you much higher than you could with Conceal Spell.

[Dave Justus]

There is certainly good reason to believe that spells cast by invisible people are also invisible. True that hasn't been clarified, but there is nothing that says otherwise either. Pointed choosing the least workable interpretation to try and 'prove' that a FAQ is bad isn't particularly convincing.

Whatever the perceived emanations are they certainly don't give any bonus to perception checks or that would be spelled out. So an invisible creature is just as hard to locate or pinpoint as before.

[Ravingdork]

Probably best to differentiate between spell effects and spellcasting manifestations, Dave. Fireballs don't become invisible just because the caster happens to be invisible. :P

[Succubus Erislilith]

Ravingdork wrote:

The biggest problem with the FAQ (besides lacking any real rules support) is that it flat out contradicts tons of existing material. Players and GMs the world over weren't the only ones who believed it worked a certain way; a great many game developers and writers thought the same thing!

There's plenty of evidence for it. There are official Paizo modules with villains casting spells on the PCs while invisible up in the shallow rafters above them, or similar scenarios where casters rely on greater invisibility to evade the PCs WHILE CASTING SPELLS--something that is completely impossible as written for anyone adhering to the FAQ. The succubus and lots of other magical ambush monsters no longer function as originally intended. The doppelganger can't even read minds any more without giving up the whole game!

This FAQ single-handedly killed a great many BBEGs, common fantasy tropes, modules, monsters, and untold number of PCs.

It's no wonder so many are upset about it and refuse to use it in their games!

+1

I remember very well that before in DnD 3.0/3.5e when playing in a campaign very focused on spies, intrigue and betrayal was something that could be quite competitive and very exciting to play, especially if in the struggle for power between the factions there was a succubus and a doppelganger of the same level or CR in each faction, both with powerful prestige classes, intriguing by influence and power.

The closer they got to each other, the more danger they both faced of dying and the few times they met and those encounters occurred, it was something very exciting to observe because the situation became tense, each one moved his humanoid pieces as if they were pieces of Chess.

The funny thing was that before when both met in the same room with several people, the situation was so tense and interesting because of the mental scan they made between the two.

Now with all the changes in Pathfinder, it would be very difficult for both of them to sneak up on each other, especially using their detect thoughts without both of them noticing the other, although it would be useless anyway because both used rings of mind shielding.

In the case of the succubus, she could also hide her presence because she could possess creatures and she did not need the ring because she had the Mind Shielding (Su) and Hide Presence (Ex) from other prestige classes, and in the case of the doppelganger this either, because this would have that Mind Blank from a prestige class.

But now the problem with the new rules of Pathfinder would be that before they can try to hunt each other. Their abilities to detect thoughts of both, and the ability of the succubus to charm and use suggestion in others to influence their actions, would cause both to be caught before doing something.

I understand that magic missile, fireball or darkness can be seen perfectly even though they are spell-like abilities, because their effect is clearly visible to the eye.

But I consider it ridiculous that charm monster, suggestion and detect thoughts being spell-like abilities are detected only by sight or hearing or other perception, it is supposed that they should be discreet and not attract attention, especially detect thoughts, it is supposed to be used to spy.

I understand that if they are spells if they can be detected because they have verbal and somatic components and some even need materials to be able to use them; but the spell-like ability does not occupy absolutely any of that.

Currently I always use the skill of bluff in PF before using any spell-like ability, in fact I prefer to use the skills of bluff and diplomacy directly to avoid attracting unwanted attention, since 'charm monster' can be detected by detect evil, detect magic and detect charm.

If the effect is not magical, then there is nothing to detect and the best thing is that due to the high charisma of the succubus, this can get others to do what she wants even without using her spell-like abilities of charm monster or suggestion.