For those that are interested, although it’s not perfectly applicable to the current questions, Jeremey Crawford did an episode of Sage Advice centered around illusions. If you are interested here is the link:
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I get what you are trying to say, and i also very much agree with you and your points, but there is much more though that can be put into this thing. And where some of your thinking turn wrong is the example of translating persiving of people to a computer world understanding of light to pixels. That is a good idea, but don’t tell the full story.
races have different vision, thats clear by anyone from the rules, and they see the world differently, we as humans are very constrained by only being able to see a certian spectrum of light, there is no way a dwarf and a elf 'isn’t able to see somewhat different spectrum them humans, humans suck at vision on dnd, the other races must have some sort of difference, and all of them can be summed up to negligent, but what when the caster is tortle, i belive JP mentianed they lived underwater, their vision spectrum must go in the direction of fish.
All that can be ignored untill you get to the point of illusion spells creating something a person can see, but not interact with, sure thats easy to work and imgine with. But light have energy and heat in them, its a wave and particle depending on physiscs. and lets not talk about radiation. Why can any creature see something, its because light bounces of the inner working of thier eyes, with that part of the eye because invisable (light not interacting with it) they would be blind, as no light signal would ever reach they brain. And why can’t you interact with illusion spells, you can see them so something must be. not be there, not be around, just be. something is the cause of the creature seeing something, if the illusion spell made light, it would also be heat, then why not create a illusion that is of wave lenghts that will create nuceluar radiation and burn everything alive with fusion reactions. the spell must be able to produce different wavelenghts to create color, and if we asume what i said about creatures vision spectrum being different, it needs to be able to create light waves, that specificle taget the creature looking at it.
i didn’t really wanna say anything about anyone being wrong, every point made is true, but the illusion spell dosn’t work with our physics at all. The best ratioal for a illusion spell i get to is that it creates a magic area/item/location, that emits a effect that makes creatures that fail saving throws think thats what they see, and not actualy create light, the latter illusions being able to affect other senses are just a flawed as most things only asume a person have 5 senses, how does a spell caster replicate a magic creatures ability to feel radation (as a example) human dont have a way to feel it, imagine a human wizard making a illusion of something and a creature who can feel radiation somehow, not smell, or see radation, but sense it, have a organ made for it. its like describing color to a blind man, or imagineing how something how a fantasy dinner taste. you cant.
tldr: illusion spells don’t work with creature biology and physics.
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Ha, yeah fair points as well. I definitely had a couple “why am I writing this, it’s magic” moments lol. There are for sure plenty of other holes when trying to look at these spells in a real world sciency way. Only went down that rabbit hole because I think (may be recalling correctly) they specifically mentioned the whole “illusion of a light refracting object” when they first used it for invisibility, which I thought was silly haha
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Ah, he actually talks about a very similar situation around 41 minutes where he first talks about how objects from Minor Illusion wouldn’t cast shadows (or, you could have a shadow as part of the illusion, but it wouldn’t move if the light source moved). He then talks about how you could create a mirror, but the image would not move so it would become pretty obvious as you move around, which is a a pretty close parallel to the invisibility situation.
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Right now it’s like, just a “cool skin” but it’s tied to the Agni x Imix side quest that we might see in a future arc. For now it’s just a big inert stone arm.
The city is HUGE and they’re spreading slowly, not destroying but absorbing. Also the PCs are in the most defended place in the whole city, right?
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I have learned not to “expect” anything anymore and just roll with things as they come.
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Thanks for all the illusion feedback, y’all - I think I have a better handle on it, now!
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So does anyone know where the “Flowers” first appeared? Since i begun watching CoS around the end of the time that Azure Vortex was around so i have propably not seen that episode.
Before that. It was with the first set of characters, prior to the enslaved group.
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For now it’s just an arm. Cosmetic purely, maybe a little tougher than a regular arm but no serious mechanical effects.
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One interesting note from Jeremy’s discussion of illusion magic in the video is the part about interacting with the illusion. I believe the example he gave was the illusion of a cup on a table. While all people in the area see the cup as appropriate, the shadow of the cup on the table does not move as a light source in the room changes position. One does not have to try to pick up the cup in all cases to determine that it is an illusion.
And as he mentions, it is one of the most wide open spaces in the game, so obviously there are many questions surrounding how it works. He has some good guidelines for how to deal with it, but per usual, ultimately, it is up to the DM.
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Oh i found the episode with the Shadows, and Dan’s quote “That town SUCKED!” i guess the City of Brass is sucking even more in a sense but it’s just too good from a rollplaying perspective, everything interwinding with each other, so many mysteries to unravel (most of them will probably stay hidden since it’s just too much lore, they could stay in the city for a year of rollplay and there would still be mysteries to be uncovered).
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this is something I am excited to say is true now and whatever happens, will remain true.
- the city is saved and can be rebuilt
- the city is destroyed by the Tower, and the Star shines on the ruins
- the city is taken by the Farang and occupied, with the secondary slow war burning for years
- the city falls somehow into the clutches of the mara and well, damn
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I’ve had some rising tension around a city in my campaign and the faction actions (ported from SWN) have started converging around there too. I’ve been pretty reluctant to let campaigns slip into war/battle states as I’ve had trouble reconciling the reality of the huge scope of a war with keeping the party at the forefront of the action (i.e., with so many people/creatures involved in a war, it can feel like the PC’s are not very significant). I think that has in part stemmed from assuming too much structure and organization in the military powers involved, which can obfuscate the individuals. Seeing how you’ve handled the battle in the City of Brass and how desperate and uncertain the actions of all sides involved allowing the PC’s to have (or at least feel like they’ve had) a major impact has been super fun to watch and has me really psyched for when my players end up in a similar situation!
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[spoiler]I’m guessing the guards had a breakdown of command, and the Tower took advantage. Their recently dead commander influenced under the Mara, Ramus’ riling them up with doom prophecies, and general situation pretty FUBAR, probably was enough chaos that the Tower needed .Hassan was pretty cynical about the treaty working to begin with, and with his information network, he probably knew the party was captured, and was in no position now to broker a deal.
It’s probably not the Mara or the Farang. While they are deep down, remember that Kalimat managed to make noise loud enough for that guard to hear him from 2 (1?) floors up. Mara CAN kill quietly, but I imagine they’re on high alert for the mara The Farang also don’t seem to be the “quiet” type. If it was either, I imagine the guards wouldn’t of left them in there, and/or the assault be unheard. Assassins of the Tower? Seems most likely.[/spoiler]
Few other possibilities, [spoiler]they all turned on each other, or possibly had a crisis of faith and sacrificed themselves to the tower.[/spoiler] feels less likely, but who knows.
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I don’t think it can be the bag, it wouldn’t leave bodies, and also I think it’s limited to consuming one person per day, though that might be incorrect.
I wonder if Ramus was so convincing that they bought the Tower’s angle, lost all hope and killed themselves. Also, hasn’t Adam stated in a GM Prep episode that [spoiler]one of the Immortals will be/is corrupted by the Mara?[/spoiler] Perhaps Justice and the Aharisa uncovered something deeper and there was a bit of a civil war.
Edit: Monstercloud1 above beat me to it, but I posted without reading everything. D’oh!
Adam, your hair now matches your hat!
The thing about the radiation you’re describing is that the photoreceptors in the eye are extremely sensitive (it has been shown that a human can notice a single visible-spectrum photon) and that the luminance of vision is relatively low. The power consumption of making something of light that looks real and making something intense enough to cause harm is several orders of magnitude. Compare a lightbulb (70W is quite bright, and much of the energy is lost as near-IR) to a microwave (700W is fairly weak). Or, compare a lightbulb to a campfire, or sunlight on Earth. In terms of energy, then, a minor illusion is limited to something around 300W and Major perhaps 10kW. They could then burn somebody who held still for it, but it would only be a small (0.01m^2, or thereabouts) area, and would take time, just as would microwaving your arm. It would be interesting mechanically to allow this sort of manipulation, but of course the PC would need to have the knowledge of the invisible spectra of light to apply such, which isn’t likely to happen in D&D.
I suppose one could attempt to concentrate the energy, as with a magnifying glass or laser, but then you just have Scorching Ray.
With the tarot reading playing heavily into theme of the show, and now zeke’s character doing readings from time to time, it’ll be neat to have them tie into the goal xp system.
Maybe as a Bonus 4th goal or Overall Party Xp goal mechanic, what about having the tarot reading be an extra xp goal they party can shoot for or get if they let it influence their play or whatever. Finding a way to meld the readings into the goal system would be pretty neat, and we’d get to see them more often. Even without the chaos, we don’t get to see them often, but if they were apart of the Goal mechanics the party would get to have more readings.
I would say that would make things more interesting, no?
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