How illusions interact with Truesight.

[Dark Immortal]

It's been a while since I have posted, however, I figured that I could shed some light on this issue and perhaps receive feedback in the event that I am incorrect.

Many posts dance around this issue or provide what I feel is decidedly erroneous information. This post should clarify and if I am wrong, provide accurate information in the responses.

True Seeing is a nasty spell. It sees through illusions and shows things as they truly are. This is not detailed explicitly in the spell but we do have two specific sources of information to clarify exactly what the result should be under some circumstances that I will mention.

Illusions and disbelief

A successful saving throw against an illusion reveals it to be false. What does this mean? It's a valid question because the next words tell us that phantasms and figments leave translucent outlines when disbelieved. This means that the other subschools do not leave said outlines. So what happens when you make your save vs an illusion that isn't a phantasm or a figment? You see nothing? You see the illusion exactly as presented but just know it isn't real?

The text linked above gives us some clues but a bit of spell research plays a part as well. In the case of glamers, the result should be that you simply don't see the illusion. You would ignore the typical +10 bonus provided by most glamers and probably similar spells since the bonus is coming from the illusory manipulation and if you can see that then the target gets that bonus on their actual disguise. This obviously doesn't make sense and undermines the nature of the True Seeing spell. So True Seeing must reveal nothing. True Seeing penetrates glamers and ignores the disguise bonuses provided by them revealing only the physical entity being observed and none of the illusory elements.

Shadow spells are partially real. Most of the time making our save against a shadow spell simply makes it less effective. The shadow spell doesn't become a faint outline or translucent. It's really there and still creating real effects. All making your save does is reduce the effectiveness once you make your save. What does it mean to disbelieve a shadow in practical terms? Unknown. That's fluff for the gm and player, I think.

This leaves us with True Seeing and the FAQ which informs us that in the case of phantasmal killer you still see the mental impression but True Seeing reveals that nothing is PHYSICALLY there so you know the image is all in your head and therefor not real. You would then see a translucent outline of the phantasmal killer.

In short:

True Seeing reveals translucent outlines of phantasms, and figments within 120'.
True Seeing does not see glamers, at all. If it did, it would be paradoxical.
True Seeing sees shadows exactly as they are. Shadows are actually real (if only partially). Making your save reveals exactly what you see (it's just less effective)

So what happens when you see a pattern with True Seeing? Almost all are mind affecting. Patterns are real, though. You see light. Does true seeing not see the pattern or does it see the pattern and you still have to make the save (because knowing it is an illusion doesn't stop the effects of a pattern spell, necessarily).

I await your thoughts.

[Grovestrider]

Situations like this is why I appreciate Spheres of Power. It divides magic more uniformly, which helps both players and gms alike these sort of interactions.

For example, patterns in SoP are not effects from the Illusion sphere, but from the Light sphere. In addition, the interaction between special senses (Blindsight, True seeing, etc) and illusions are explored and defined more in-depth, not to mention handling things like disbelieving and interacting with illusions. The guide to handling illusions can be found on the sphereswiki here.

[willuwontu]

Dark Immortal wrote:

So what happens when you see a pattern with True Seeing? Almost all are mind affecting. Patterns are real, though. You see light. Does true seeing not see the pattern or does it see the pattern and you still have to make the save (because knowing it is an illusion doesn't stop the effects of a pattern spell, necessarily).

As you suspect true seeing has no effect on patterns, it only helps you disbelieve illusions. When you make a will save against a pattern it is to see if it affects you, thus true seeing offers no benefits.

[gnoams]

I would say yes true seeing protects you from patterns, because of the ruling on phantasmal killer. My reasoning is this:

A pattern spell creates some visual, like dancing bands of light. In reality if you saw that, you would be like huh, wow, that's pretty cool, but seeing such a phenomenon would not completely rob you of you faculties and cause you to stand and stare ignoring all else. The fascination effect caused by the spell is mind affecting magic, so seeing the illusion is causing your mind to be attacked by magic. This is exactly the same thing phantasmal killer does, it makes you see some illusion and seeing the illusion cause your mind to be attacked by magic. If knowing the visual part is fake makes you immune to the magic of the one spell, it follows that the same would apply to other spells.

That aside, in my opinion it should work the opposite way. True seeing shouldn't make you immune to phantasmal killer or the like. True seeing prevents your senses from being fooled, but knowing that something is illusion shouldn't protect you from the mind affecting magic that is invading your brain part of the spell.

[Meirril]

And I disagree with Gnoams.

Just because the source of a pattern is an illusion doesn't mean you can't be mesmerized or dazzled by the lights/sounds. The source isn't nearly as important as the displayed effect. Who cares if its from an illusion, an evocation, or burning magnesium the effect created is still fully visible.

And the big argument for phantasmal killer not being effective is that phantasmal killer tries to project the target's innermost fears. Once you can see through the illusion it might still be frightening, but not to the point you'll have a heart attack. You know the illusion attacking you can't really hurt you.

As for shadow type spells, you clearly see the shadow sculpted as what the spell creates and phantasms cloaked over the shadow that make the illusion seem real to others. Only the shadowy parts will look 'real'.

[gnoams]

Paizo set a precedence with phantasmal killer that knowing an illusion is an illusion makes you immune to the mind affecting effects that come with seeing it. I disagree with this decision, but there it is. I think it's especially silly with phantasmal killer because it is a phantasm, like phantasmal steed. That means it is real. Disbelieving the steed doesn't make you fall through the horse and not be able to ride on it.

I was trying to point out that you aren't being dazzled by lights and sound. The "fascinated" condition is not normal to seeing stuff, it is magical. The lights and sounds made by the illusion are incidental to the effect. It is magically overwhelming your mind. Just like people don't actually die from seeing scary things or we'd have piles of bodies from all the horror movies out there. It is magic overwhelming your mind that makes phantasmal killer function, the visual is again incidental to the effect.

Now if an illusion created a bright blinding light and said fort save or be blinded then yeah, it still works even with the paizo ruling. The effect is from looking at a bright light, not from mind affecting magic, but this sort of spell gets assigned under evocation magic in pathfinder.

So yeah, I do agree that true seeing shouldn't make you immune to mind affecting effects just because they came from illusion magic, it should only prevent your senses from being fooled. In a home game, I will run it this way, however for pfs I am supposed to run it using paizo's version.

[willuwontu]

gnoams wrote:

Paizo set a precedence with phantasmal killer that knowing an illusion is an illusion makes you immune to the mind affecting effects that come with seeing it.

No. It set set a precedent that spells that you roll to disbelieve, or to recognize as fake are foiled by true seeing. Pattern spells are neither of those.

FAQ wrote:

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.

True seeing does not stop pattern spells, because you do not roll to disbelieve them.

[Dark Immortal]

I would imagine that True Seeing works one of two ways regarding patterns:

1.) You do not see the illusion at all and therefor are immune.

or

2.) You can see the illusion for exactly what it is, and need to make a save.

While evocation might create bright, blinding light, illusion can create complex patterns that affect the mind. You can do this in real life without magic. A pattern (it doesn't have to be light based) can cause nausea, vomiting, headaches, disorientation, dizziness, etc.

With that said, Hypnotic Pattern (and others like it) don't affect sightless creatures. So we know they must be seen. Also, after reading through the illusion descriptions again, I think I have confidently come to a conclusion.

Patterns are like figments:

Pattern Rules wrote:

Pattern: Like a figment, a pattern spell creates an image that others can see, but a pattern also affects the minds of those who see it or are caught in it. All patterns are mind-affecting spells.

So we already know they are similar to figments but that they do not leave behind anything when disbelieved because the illusions rules make this clear. The pattern remains but the mind affecting element is what you are resisting and has no impact on you with a successful save.

However, the key to this is the line in the figment description itself.

Figments rules wrote:

Figment: A figment spell creates a false sensation...........Because figments and glamers are unreal, they cannot produce real effects the way that other types of illusions can.

Now we know that patterns are real and produce real effects. True Seeing has no falsehood to uncover so you see the pattern and must save vs the effect just like everyone else. The pattern isn't a trick or deception. Willuwontu was correct. There is no disbelief with a pattern, you're actually resisting the induced sensations from viewing the very real pattern, just like in the real world.

I think this issue has been thoroughly resolved unless there is a conflicting interpretation of the rules as presented or oversight was made on my part.

* Note that all emphasis was added by me.

[Cevah]

Per True Seeing:
The subject ... sees through illusions, ....

Per Saving Throws and Illusions (Disbelief):
Creatures encountering an illusion usually do not receive saving throws to recognize it as illusory until they study it carefully or interact with it in some fashion.

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

I take this to mean that they automatically make the save to disbelieve. For figment and phantasm, you see outlines. For all other illusions, you still see them, but know they are false. At no point does it prevent the magic of the illusion, unless the illusion's magic depends upon belief. This means that Color Spray still works. [It is Will Negate not Will Disbelief.] Disguise Self still works: True Seeing just tells you they don't really look like that.

/cevah