Veil: heightening makes it weaker?

[hyphz]

The Veil spell has the following text for Heightening:

"The spell also disguises the targets’ voices and scents; it gains the auditory trait."

This seems to be a mistake, because gaining the Auditory trait actually has the effect of making the spell ineffective against those who cannot hear. (n other words, an observer who could see the target but not hear them would be immune to a heightened Veil with the Auditory trait, but not to a non-heightened one with only the Visual trait.

In addition, it does retain the Visual trait, meaning that someone who can only hear the target speak but not see them instantly detects that the voice is not who it sounds like.

This is obviously a mistake arising from the fact that PF2 has no way of creating an "or" relationship between traits instead of an "and" relationship. Perhaps it should be worded as ".. it loses the Visual trait"?

[TheFinish]

I'm not entirely sure it works quite that way. It's not that spell autofails on people who can't see/can't hear you. Although I can see how you'd get that impression from the description of the traits in the magic section.

However, while the sidebar in the magic section doesn't go into it, the glossary has a more detailed description and says:

"Auditory actions and effects rely on sound. An action with the
auditory trait can be successfully performed only if the creature using the action can speak or otherwise produce the required sounds. A spell or effect with the auditory trait has its effect only if the target can hear it. This applies only to sound-based parts of the effect, as determined by the GM. This is different from a sonic effect, which still affects targets who can’t hear it (such as deaf targets) as long as the effect itself makes sound."

"visual (trait) A visual effect can affect only creatures that can see it. This applies only to visible parts of the effect, as determined by the GM."

I think the idea for veil's heightening is that it allows you to impersonate other senses. Sure, if the other person is deaf, then the auditory part of veil doesn't work, but you still have the visual.

Similarly, for a blind person, the visual part of the spell wouldn't work (which would mean a non-heightened veil probably auto-fails, since it's only visual), but the auditory part would, letting you still use the Deception bonus and ignoring penalties.

At least, that's how I read it. I could be wrong though.

[Nefreet]

Sounds cogent to me.