Illusory object has the following spell description:
You create an illusory visual image of a stationary object. The entire image must fit within the spell's area. The object appears to animate naturally, but it doesn't make sounds or generate smells. For example, water would appear to pour down an illusory waterfall, but it would be silent.
Any creature that touches the image or uses the Seek action to examine it can attempt to disbelieve your illusion.
Makes sense. Incorporeal visual illusions are a staple of D&D 5e and I think I have a firm grasp on the difference between disbelieving and knowing-it-is-an-illusion. No problem. However, the heightened version of the spell:
Heightened (2nd) Your image makes appropriate sounds, generates normal smells, and feels right to the touch. The spell gains the auditory trait. The duration increases to 1 hour.
FEELS RIGHT TO THE TOUCH?
How do I - how does an - what? It's an illusion. It's incorporeal. Touch is a VERY Corpreal sense. Baroreceptors man... touch is a sense that requires force. How the heck does an illusion "Feel right"? A brick wall only feels right if it supports my weight, but I don't expect an illusion to be able to do that. A hot coal only "feels right" if it burns me.
Does anyone have any idea how this actually manifests in gameplay or how we are supposed to interpret this? Does this somehow make the illusion semi-corporeal? Can I suddenly place a dagger on top of my illusory table? How does one touch an illusion at all?
Was thinking about this all last night, I'm flummoxed. Any help would be appreciated.
Yeah...I hate illusions in this edition, they're very different from PF1 illusions. At minimum you generally have to spend at least one action interacting with an illusion to be granted a save, and if you fail somehow you believe it's still real and that "something" happened. Because your weapon totally didn't go right through that wall with no resistance. Or worse, the illusion actually somehow convinced you to stop your swing just so it didn't pierce the illusionary wall.
Frankly it's all BS to me and I hate it.
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Yeah...I hate illusions in this edition, they're very different from PF1 illusions. At minimum you generally have to spend at least one action interacting with an illusion to be granted a save, and if you fail somehow you believe it's still real and that "something" happened. Because your weapon totally didn't go right through that wall with no resistance. Or worse, the illusion actually somehow convinced you to stop your swing just so it didn't pierce the illusionary wall.
Frankly it's all BS to me and I hate it.
You just listed all the reasons I love illusions in this edition. I think illusions are meant to be a little BS.
That's something that I've been wondering about too when I first read the spell last week. I'm not too keen on illusions.
I'm also curious as to how "feels right to the touch" interacts with this line: "Any creature that touches the image or uses the Seek action to examine it can attempt to disbelieve your illusion."
Specifically with touching the image, attempting to disbelieve the illusion might not even be appropriate at all if it "feels right to the touch" to the creature. At least, in most cases. Still, that's a pretty crazy illusion.
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I think "Touch" refers to the sense here, not the activity of actually touching something.
So "feels right to the touch" probably refers to things like temperature. Like an illusory bonfire would feel warm if you get close to it, the illusory waterfall would feel like it slighly splashes you and so on. You can perceive these things without coming in direct physical contact with the object. With the first level version, anybody would notice quickly that those things are missing.
You just listed all the reasons I love illusions in this edition. I think illusions are meant to be a little BS.Yeah...I hate illusions in this edition, they're very different from PF1 illusions. At minimum you generally have to spend at least one action interacting with an illusion to be granted a save, and if you fail somehow you believe it's still real and that "something" happened. Because your weapon totally didn't go right through that wall with no resistance. Or worse, the illusion actually somehow convinced you to stop your swing just so it didn't pierce the illusionary wall.
Frankly it's all BS to me and I hate it.
That reminds me of how illusions were explained in an earlier game (I think D&D 2nd) where you would try to justify how the illusion felt.
I guess a wizard did it.
Still, it does make some sense. And the illusion is sitll an illusion and not, say, trying to do damage.
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I like that illusions are in the game again. It is engaging and requires players to think more. It was very annoying in the older system you could just take True Seeing and ignore illusions.
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Back to the topic of the thread. I'm not really understanding your confusion. The illusion is creating an image of something. At higher level it includes sound, smell, and feel.
So when you reach out to touch it it still feels like it is there. Something about the illusion creates the sensation of touch in your fingers.
But it is still not really solid or actually there. So if you take a seek action or touch it you still get a chance to disblieve.
How do you touch something with Virtual Reality gear on? With haptic feedback through your gloves. It feels like its there but its not. I guess its the same, but magic and no gloves required.
Back to the topic of the thread. I'm not really understanding your confusion. The illusion is creating an image of something. At higher level it includes sound, smell, and feel.
So when you reach out to touch it it still feels like it is there. Something about the illusion creates the sensation of touch in your fingers.But it is still not really solid or actually there. So if you take a seek action or touch it you still get a chance to disblieve.
How do you touch something with Virtual Reality gear on? With haptic feedback through your gloves. It feels like its there but its not. I guess its the same, but magic and no gloves required.
Thanks for asking for clarification here, I think this is a good area for discussion.
Touch is a quite complicated sense, there are actually a few different types of "touch" sensors we have in our body. There's hot/cold, pain, texture, and pressure sensors in our skin (or just below), and there's probably a little more nuance in there but for this discussion I think that's fine.
So anyway, touch / my confusion - In order for something (say, a table) to "Feel right" my hand needs to stop when it comes in contact with it. One feels objects not just in their fingertips but also in one's knuckles, shoulder, etc. This is how you feel the "flatness" of the object and the "solidness" of the object, which are both parts of the "feeling" experience.
I like your example of haptic feedback in VR. That is a great example of what I was thinking as a potential description of what the book was going for here, but the problem is (and people who have used haptic feedback systems before will know) that while you do get a sensation, it's anything but "right". You can feel sensation but it's little more than fingertip stimulation. As an analogy this would be like an illusion of a bird opening its mouth and letting out a solid tone *Beeeep*. Yes it's auditory stimulation, but it isn't right.
The ONLY situation in which I could imagine this working is if you made an illusion of a satin sheet over a real brick wall. Your hand will touch the brick, but you will feel satin.
Now, I'm operating under the premise that an illusion is like a hologram, however it may be closer to a pure mental manifestation.
We all know illusions are not really the objects they represent, but do they even exist at all or are they purely in the mind of the beholder? If illusions are like global enchantments (they affect the mind / senses of everyone who can see them rather than actually being a hologram that you could take a photo of) then I could imagine more leeway in the touch realm. For example, I could imagine someone "touching" a brick wall and the illusion just makes them think they are touching it. If their hand passes through it a little, the illusion fools them to think that their hand did not pass through it.
I'm really looking for the INTENTION of the authors here, which I guess could be a subject of a lot of debate but I think the discussion so far has been helpful.
If you had that same VR experience suddenly in the real world, would that not be jarring? If the contact was brief would you even know to think it could be fake? I think that is why you get a save, you suspect something is wrong but you have to take a few moments testing out why.
Thinking of illusions in rational or technological terms works to a point, but as mentioned, it's magic, not science. So illusions could be "essences", "reflections of Platonic ideals", "shadow or dream substance", or a myriad of other types of immaterial woo (or all of them depending on the caster's tradition and culture).
As for harmful touching (like fire), I'd have to suppose it does hurt, it simply doesn't harm, though one might feel like it did. Much like it'd feel wet, though you'd be dry. Okay, now I'm wondering what'd happened to somebody "drowning" in illusory water.
Don't overthink it, it's magic and will never make sense.
Since this has come up twice in the last few comments I do want to point out that I don't mind a magical explanation but there needs to be SOME EXPLANATION of what happens. Knowing HOW it works is helpful but not necessary, I just need to know what happens in the rules-as-intended when someone touches an illusion that "feels right". Otherwise this becomes pretty difficult to predict or rule in a consistent basis as a game master.
If you had that same VR experience suddenly in the real world, would that not be jarring? If the contact was brief would you even know to think it could be fake? I think that is why you get a save, you suspect something is wrong but you have to take a few moments testing out why.
Yeah it would be jarring, I agree with this, however, the "feels right" feature (if interpreted this way) doesn't really give the player much tangible (No pun) benefit. So why include it at all? Regardless, the book specifically says "Feels right to the touch" which implies it would not arouse suspicion. Otherwise I would have expected it to say "Feels uncanny to the touch".
illusions could be "essences", "reflections of Platonic ideals", "shadow or dream substance", or a myriad of other types of immaterial woo (or all of them depending on the caster's tradition and culture).
It would be great if the book had some indication of the above, do you know of anywhere that talks about illusions in depth in this way?
Basically I could give up on all the theoretical talk if I could just answer the following questions:
1. Does "Feels right" mean the illusion can be touched?
2. Does touching the illusion still arouse suspicion?
3. Can objects still pass through the illusion unaffected or does the illusion now exert some force on objects now
4. Can illusions be used in this way to cushion falls, hold doors, deflect projectiles, trip creatures, make surfaces slippery, keep food cold, keep players warm, etc? IE: is the touch real? IF the illusion doesn't have the mental property, I guess it must be? Can an illusory spike draw blood?
I'm really looking for some official source I can go to. Like anywhere else in the rules that would clarify this. It seems like a really dramatic change to the original spell without any explanation.
And maybe it is just poor wording. I guess maybe at this point I can say for sure it's poor wording. Putting a subjective statement like "Feels right" into a spell description is kind of asking for these kinds of cans of worms.
Maybe it should just be ruled as "No longer arouses suspicion if touched, and the touching creature rationalizes whatever effects it perceives as a result of not being able to touch the illusion" like in phantasmal force from D&D:
The target rationalizes any illogical outcomes from interacting with the phantasm. For example, a target attempting to walk across a phantasmal bridge that spans a chasm falls once it steps onto the bridge. If the target survives the fall, it still believes that the bridge exists and comes up with some other explanation for its fall—it was pushed, it slipped, or a strong wind might have knocked it off.
Anyway, right now, because it doesn't have the mental tag, I'm leaning more toward "you just can't touch illusions" and chalk it up to a print error. Because it's not clear how this is meant to affect gameplay.
"Anyway, right now, because it doesn't have the mental tag, I'm leaning more toward "you just can't touch illusions" and chalk it up to a print error. Because it's not clear how this is meant to affect gameplay."
That seems a bit overreacting. Even backward since pointing out that it's not mental, in the minds of the witnesses, would mean there's some objective "thing" which the illusion is, and which according to the spell can be interacted with...which then would be what prompts potential disbelief. Not being able to touch something would be automatic disbelief, which isn't how the spell works.
It's obvious that creatures can touch these illusions, and that the illusion (Heightened) can convey to the creatures the sense of having touched said thing. The illusions bounce photons, trigger aroma receptors, and more, including giving resistance as per touch if need be albeit minimal.
I'm unsure why you'd need a rigorous breakdown of PF2's flavor of illusions, when you can choose ANY flavor you'd like, whatever suits the caster in question. And part of PF2's design style is leaving cases w/ vast variation to the adjudication of the GMs. Illusions w/ their limitless options would fall into that territory where "rule of cool" clashes with verisimilitude, balance, and context. It'd take far more pagespace to thoroughly hash out minutiae than could be warranted.
I'd argue that *something* is there. There has to be a source of whatever sensory phenomenon is going on. For simplicity, let's call it the Effect. When you cast Illusionary Object or any other 'normal' illusion, you put a thing there.
The issue becomes what that thing is. Let's use a table as an example. The Effect is now 'fake table'.
It looks like a table, obviously. If someone were to lean in to sniff, it'd smell like a table (and look weird), and presumably if you licked it it'd taste like a table (and look even weirder).
Touch and sound (and taste since you're touching it) are trickier. I'd say at that point you're interacting enough for a save, so let's assume you fail it. So you've licked it, and you can probably rap a knuckle against it. It'll thunk like a table.
What do your knuckle (and tongue) feel? The Effect. The Effect should generate a sensation against whatever you're doing. However, the Effect is only doing that: fooling that sense.
So when you decide to put your beer on the table, the Effect can't fool the beer. It feels nothing until it hits the floor. And you get another save against the illusion.
Finally, Braun Strowman comes up and throws you through the table. You'll feel the Effect fooling your back into thinking you're hurt, and there may be a loud thud. If the illusion's better, it might 'break'. But if not, the Effect will still be there. Braun will get a new saving throw to disbelieve the illusion.
I'm pretty sure since it's been forced, you'd already disbelieve.
And all the while, the Effect is still there. Waiting to lure in someone else into setting down a beer while the bartender wizard laughs madly at their scheme to increase sales.
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I'd argue that *something* is there. There has to be a source of whatever sensory phenomenon is going on. For simplicity, let's call it the Effect.
...
What do your knuckle (and tongue) feel? The Effect. The Effect should generate a sensation against whatever you're doing. However, the Effect is only doing that: fooling that sense.
Thanks for that insight. So this was part that was tripping me up, like if it wasn't a mentally affecting spell, I couldn't imagine how it could fool the sense of touch, but maybe going back to the haptics that Gortle and OrochiFuror were talking about, that might be a reasonable interpretation.
The haptics would just be really really good. Like your arm would go through the table, but your body would feel your arm hit the table, and maybe you would bring your hand back and get disoriented because your hand came back a further distance than it felt like it went down.
So no physical reality causing the senses, but the illusion itself is like a projector of sorts that projects not only light but also sound, smell, taste, and EVEN projects touch. In this way it is not an mental effect (not affecting your brain) but fooling the nerves in your body to misdirect the brain.
In this way, you could grab an illusory door handle, feel it in your hand, sqeeze on it and feel how solid it is, but if you looked at your hand you would see yourself making a closed fist and phasing through the image. I think that makes the most sense to me.
This would also work for Illusory creature: https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=158
Where it says the creature feels believable to the touch, but apart from mental attacks "cannot... directly affect the physical world"
EDIT: Because I was previously wanting an example, here's a gameplay example I imagined.
You create an illusion of a door in an open door frame. A creature comes by and sees the door. Looking down the hall to his left, he reaches for the door handle and tries to open the door. He feels the brass doorknob in his hand as he turns it, but it's locked! Or... jammed. Or something? The handle doesn't even turn. He looks down at his hand, which is balled into a fist and intersecting with the handle of the door. How could that be? He feels the handle in his hand but his hand is... inside the door? He recoils slightly and then peers suspiciously at the door. He swipes a hand at the surface and feels/hears a dull *thud* on his fingertips as he hits the solid surface... but his hand has passed straight through! At this point he either uses actions to disbelieve the door or just tries stepping through. If he had never looked, he would have been completely fooled, it was only that the touch did not align with what his hand was doing that allowed him to realize the illusion.
Illusions are one of these 3 things:
1) in the mind of the target only.
2) sensory things that we all can percieve, but don't exist in substance.
3) quasi real stuff made of shadows or other conjured materials. While they are not fully real, there are at least partially real. Just not exactly what they are pretending to be.
I think they need to be treated separately in the rules but they are not. Typically you can pick which one you are dealing with. The first type have the Mental trait.
It should affect how you interpret the spell.
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Not sure why anyone would think this is a problem with 2E illusions. 1E had tactile illusions too.
Whatever their faults, 2E illusions by and large are a lot more clear than they were in classic Pathfinder.
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I'd argue that *something* is there. There has to be a source of whatever sensory phenomenon is going on. For simplicity, let's call it the Effect.
...
What do your knuckle (and tongue) feel? The Effect. The Effect should generate a sensation against whatever you're doing. However, the Effect is only doing that: fooling that sense.
Thanks for that insight. So this was part that was tripping me up, like if it wasn't a mentally affecting spell, I couldn't imagine how it could fool the sense of touch, but maybe going back to the haptics that Gortle and OrochiFuror were talking about, that might be a reasonable interpretation.
The haptics would just be really really good. Like your arm would go through the table, but your body would feel your arm hit the table, and maybe you would bring your hand back and get disoriented because your hand came back a further distance than it felt like it went down.
So no physical reality causing the senses, but the illusion itself is like a projector of sorts that projects not only light but also sound, smell, taste, and EVEN projects touch. In this way it is not an mental effect (not affecting your brain) but fooling the nerves in your body to misdirect the brain.
In this way, you could grab an illusory door handle, feel it in your hand, sqeeze on it and feel how solid it is, but if you looked at your hand you would see yourself making a closed fist and phasing through the image. I think that makes the most sense to me.
This would also work for Illusory creature: https://2e.aonprd.com/Spells.aspx?ID=158
Where it says the creature feels believable to the touch, but apart from mental attacks "cannot... directly affect the physical world"
EDIT: Because I was previously wanting an example, here's a gameplay example I imagined.
You create an illusion of a door in an open door frame. A creature comes by and sees the door. Looking down the hall to his left, he reaches for the door handle and tries to open the door. He...
This is basically correct, and is essentially the explanation the rulebook gives on page 298:
Disbelieving Illusions
Sometimes illusions allow an affected creature a chance to disbelieve the spell, which lets the creature effectively ignore the spell if it succeeds at doing so. This usually happens when a creature Seeks or otherwise spends actions to engage with the illusion, comparing the result of its Perception check (or another check or saving throw, at the GM’s discretion) to the caster’s spell DC. Mental illusions typically provide rules in the spell’s description for disbelieving the effect (often allowing the affected creature to attempt a Will save).
If the illusion is visual, and a creature interacts with the illusion in a way that would prove it is not what it seems, the creature might know that an illusion is present, but it still can’t ignore the illusion without successfully disbelieving it. For instance, if a character is pushed through the illusion of a door, they will know that the door is an illusion, but they still can’t see through it. Disbelieving an illusion makes it and those things it blocks seem hazy and indistinct, so even in the case where a visual illusion is disbelieved, it may, at the GM’s discretion, block vision enough to make those on the other side concealed..
So illusions create things that fool your sensory input but inconsistentcies on how that object or input should work can trigger disbelieve checks. But you need to succeed at those checks. You can intellectually know that the door isn't real but your eyes and low key tactile senses tell you otherwise.
Which means one of the tricks of illusions is figuring out things that won't create those inconsistencies, or that creatures will simply avoid. For example, instead of making a locked door, you could just make something look like another unremarkable bit of wall. No one is going to try the handle on that, though depending on how thoroughly they search they might eventually touch the wall. If you were intent on making someone avoid touching the wall at all, you could make it appear sharp or dangerous to touch.
...
Yeah, I think my biggest hangup was trying to imagine a gameplay situation in which tactile stimulation would EVER make sense on an illusion or add to its verisimilitude. I guess a key example would be something that (apparently) gives off some heat or provides a tactile sense without much force (wind or molten iron at a distance, for example).
It seems like pain would also be on the table in that case, so running head first into an illusory wall of spikes would provide no resistance and do no damage, but it would hurt a ton. This might stretch beyond the spells intention but it seems to be within it's theoretical capabilities, as long as it's a stationary object and the senses are appropriate for the object in question. We have phantom pain, a first level spell that actually does damage with illusory pain, so a 2nd level illusory object I think would not be overpowered if it were also able to simulate pain without damage.
...Yeah, I think my biggest hangup was trying to imagine a gameplay situation in which tactile stimulation would EVER make sense on an illusion or add to its verisimilitude. I guess a key example would be something that (apparently) gives off some heat or provides a tactile sense without much force (wind or molten iron at a distance, for example).
It seems like pain would also be on the table in that case, so running head first into an illusory wall of spikes would provide no resistance and do no damage, but it would hurt a ton. This might stretch beyond the spells intention but it seems to be within it's theoretical capabilities, as long as it's a stationary object and the senses are appropriate for the object in question. We have phantom pain, a first level spell that actually does damage with illusory pain, so a 2nd level illusory object I think would not be overpowered if it were also able to simulate pain without damage.
Sure, but said pain would also trigger a disbelief check in this case. So the trick is you want to make it so the creature would never try it in the first place. If they pushed their hand into it hard enough they'd realize they weren't bleeding.
In the example of a spiked wall, how often do players actually go up and test spikes? Those could be poisoned for all they know. Or fire out like missiles or something.
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As the famous bard Devinyl Descartes said to his illusions in his second most famous saying: "when I touch you, I think about myself."