True Seeing: Does this spell protect you from phantasmal killer?
Yes. True seeing lets you "see all things as they actually are." Because phantasmal killer is an illusion (phantasm) spell and creates an image directly in the target's mind, a target with true seeing would (mentally) see the image and (physically) see that there is nothing really there, and would therefore immediately recognize that the mental image is actually unreal. Because phantasmal killer says the target "gets a Will save to recognize the image as unreal," the creature with true seeing automatically succeeds at that saving throw (no roll needed), and therefore never has to deal with the Fort-save aspect of phantasmal killer.
Change killer for curse and the text still makes sense.
Also both Phantasmal Killer and Affliction are from Phantasm Subschool and should be treated equally while dealing with True Seeing.
Hope that helped, cheers!
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True Seeing: Does this spell protect you from phantasmal killer?
Yes. True seeing lets you "see all things as they actually are." Because phantasmal killer is an illusion (phantasm) spell and creates an image directly in the target's mind, a target with true seeing would (mentally) see the image and (physically) see that there is nothing really there, and would therefore immediately recognize that the mental image is actually unreal. Because phantasmal killer says the target "gets a Will save to recognize the image as unreal," the creature with true seeing automatically succeeds at that saving throw (no roll needed), and therefore never has to deal with the Fort-save aspect of phantasmal killer.
Change killer for curse and the text still makes sense.
Also both Phantasmal Killer and Affliction are from Phantasm Subschool and should be treated equally while dealing with True Seeing.
Hope that helped, cheers!
Thanks for replying William Werminster.
I'm curious to know why, specifically, this makes sense when applied to Phantasmal Affliction. Could you elaborate?
*****
Personally, I would argue that the FAQ for PK calls out the following:
True Seeing: Does this spell protect you from phantasmal killer?
Yes. True seeing lets you "see all things as they actually are." Because phantasmal killer [...] creates an image directly in the target's mind, a target with true seeing would (mentally) see the image and (physically) see that there is nothing really there[...]
Similarly, True Seeing itself uses inherently vision based language:
You confer on the subject the ability to see all things as they actually are. The subject sees through normal and magical darkness, notices secret doors hidden by magic, sees the exact locations of creatures or objects under blur or displacement effects, sees invisible creatures or objects normally, sees through illusions, and sees the true form of polymorphed, changed, or transmuted things. Further, the subject can focus its vision to see into the Ethereal Plane (but not into extra-dimensional spaces). The range of true seeing conferred is 120 feet.
Phantasmal Affliction, conversely, mentions nothing sight based, and produces two effects that have no consistent or common visual effects when manifested in reality (in the case of poison) or fiction (curse).
Therefore, it should be clear that true seeing cannot automatically see through Phantasmal Affliction, Ghost Sound or other non-visual effects, except at DM discretion.
*****
The counter seems to be that True Seeing is often interpreted in the following way:
The subject sees through normal and magical darkness, notices secret doors hidden by magic, sees the exact locations of creatures or objects under blur or displacement effects, sees invisible creatures or objects normally, sees through illusions, and sees the true form of polymorphed, changed, or transmuted things.
where "sees through" is interpreted as in the turn of phrase, as in 'I saw through the villain's lies'. I understand this interpretation. I can see where the often repeated debate emerges, where the turn of phrase appears coupled with a technical term for a school of magic, that the spell causes the viewer to ignore the effects of the whole school automatically.
However, if we are to discuss the rules, our first assumption must be that the writers 'say what they mean and mean what they say.' Even if you have experienced examples where the literal meaning of Pathfinder rules have not reflected the FAQ outcome, it is pointless to play by the rules unless you assume that the rules express what they mean to express. By this, and by applying Occam's Razor, the simplest interpretation, that the verb "see" and preposition "through" mean to observe using eyes and to bypass respectively, results that the most likely interpretation of the wording is that the writers mean True Seeing to be purely visual.
Finally, this question has emerged a number of times, with posters often drawing the distinction on the grounds of visual versus non-visual. It seems logical to me that Paizo have FAQ'd Phantasmal Killer by repeating the same language that is used in the wording of True Seeing because the answer was already in the question.
However, I'm more than happy for further discussion, as I don't think that the true seeing issue has been fully answered, to date, and I would like to see the FAQs approach the spell more comprehensively.
True seeing should certainly treat all visual phantasms the same, and it is generally assumed that phantasms are visual (indeed the text of phantasm says it "creates a mental image" although image isn't necessarily only something visual, it does generally imply that.
There are though a few phantasm spells, like this one that don't have a visual component. And a few, that are questionable (dream, nightmare etc. the person 'sees' things with those, but isn't in fact really seeing them, and there isn't is physically 'seeing' to compare them to, which is how the faq adudicates this.)
Personally, I believe that if there isn't a physical seeing element involved, or rather a something to see to compare against an illusion, true seeing won't help.
Similarly, I don't think true seeing helps against other non-visual illusions. It won't tell you that a ghost sound isn't real.