Illusionist Fog of Jeer spell - some questions

[Tattered Rags]

Undying, there's a 3rd option.

The Aggressive Stance is forced but remains until the end of the round, even if you leave the fog. However, if you are not in the fog at the beginning of the next round, you can choose not to be in the Aggressive Stance.

[The Undying]

It's a fair point. Some/many players are playing a game versus role playing. That isn't bad, per se, it just lends itself more to situations like this.

That being said, remember that the GM has a huge amount of leeway on things like this, especially when it comes to Illusions. If the player (and yeah, let's be clear, this is the player, not the character) is going around, stabbing every body, make him roll an attack on each. You can be blunt and tell him that if he's going to be foolish, you're going to penalize him for it, but you can also just say you have to do it to determine how much damage he does. Attacking is the Sensing test, and you need it to determine whether they'd sense through the illusion. If they succeed on the test but fail to Sense it, then they are 100% sure that they stabbed that guy, the blade went in, blood came out, the corpse didn't move. Doesn't matter than, in realize, he just stabbed the ground beside the corpse because the Illusion compelled him to do so. This is 100% fair, IMHO.

[Lys]

One of the things that I always loved about the "Buffy the vampire slayer" TV show, was that when a character was affected by a mind effecting spell, they committed to it. It was never halfway, or winking - They now believed something wholeheartedly. I am especially thinking of the time when Buffy's friends talk to her about her sudden deep love for the vampire Spike. She was willing to consider that somebody might have tried to cast a spell on her, but figured she must have been immune. Because the thought that her love for Spike might not be natural was just not even worth considering.

Many role-players on the other hand refuse to commit to illusions. I have one player whose character once was fooled by a dead fall. He now often stabs apparently dead bodies with swords, not because he is role-playing a character who does not want to be fooled again, but because he as a player refuses to accept that the dead fall talent includes a compulsion to leave the subjects body alone. If he does ever run into another enemy illusionist, he is likely to just poke his sword into the guys waterskin and think he was poking it into his chest. And then when he finds that the illusionist skipped away later, he is going to be very angry again, and tell me that he made really certain they were all dead, and I am once again going to read the part of the talent description where it specifically says that making sure that the bodies were really dead does not work against the dead fall talent. And he will stay mad and insist he made really sure. It's funny how some players just refuse to believe that illusions can affect their characters.

This reminds me of when my Swordmaster rolled a 1 on her Willpower roll when the group encountered some kind of Horror-tainted book. All the GM said was that the book called out to her, and when she picked it up, he added that it was the most compelling and interesting book she had ever read. It talked about the lands from whence the Horrors came, and i described her becoming utterly enthralled by it. Her companions could sense the book's malevolence, and tried to get her to put it down, but she refused to listen to them. Instead she showed it to the Troubadour to prove that the book was harmless, and he immediately screamed and started clawing at his eyes, but she didn't even notice.

She kept reading as blood started to pour out of her nose, her mouth, her eyes. The rest of the group, now panicking, tried to physically wrest the book from her hands. The GM said in a conspirational tone, "They want your book, you see the envy in their eyes." So my Swordmaster drew her sword with one hand, kept her book open in the other, and held her own friends at bay while stealing glances at the tome. Finally the Warrior decides to cut the bullshit, draws own sword, and cleaves the book in twain from her hands, at which point she passes out. When she woke up several minutes later the bookshelf was on fire, and she had no memory of what happened. After being told she tried to remember the book's contents, but was disappointed to find that it was a complete blank.

It's still one of my favourite scenes of the entire game. It's also my personal idea of how you do mind control right. The GM just tells the player what their character now believes, and the player has their character act accordingly. As you say though, it doesn't work if the player refuses to buy into it.

As for the comment you quoted, you might notice that i say the opposite position is just as sensible. The point is that what is obvious to one person is not obvious to another. Hell i started this conversation convinced that Illusionists can see through their own illusionists, and after considering what arguments could be made against that position, wound up convincing myself that actually they can't. That's precisely why the GM has to make a specific ruling as for which way it is, and also probably why the game leaves such things open, in order to allow for different styles of play.

[Slimcreeper]

That is cool, Lys! Mind control, fear effects, social rolls, illusions; I think you probably have to talk about these things at the beginning of the game along with character death.

[True Neutral]

So here's what I'm thinking:

• Anyone in the Fog is immediately affected by it and is Harried. If they have not already declared Aggressive and burned a Strain they must do so.

• If the target steps out of the Fog they are no longer Harried, but the Aggressive option will still be in force until next round as normal.

• If someone steps into the Fog 'knowing' that it is an illusion (say because of the code phrase), they are still affected by it as above, but they will get +5 to their Sensing tests.

[The Undying]

That all sounds reasonable. Record it, make it known to the players, and maybe add a sticky in your player's guide to keep track out of it. Changes for ambiguity are always great, just got to apply them consistent.

[ChrisDDickey]

Yes, I like your current interpretation of Fog of Jeer as well.

As for whether illusionists are affected by their own spells.
Some spells and talents by their nature require that the caster not be affected by it.

Dead Fall, for example is a talent that uses illusion, it probably does not convince the target that they themselves are dead.

Also, almost any illusion that requires concentration probably can't work unless the caster is mostly unaffected. Displace Image for example requires that the caster maintain concentration and keep the image within 4 yards of the target. He can't do that unless he can see both the target, and the illusionary image. So I would think that the caster would by necessity be excluded from the effect that keeps others from seeing the target. Otherwise how can he keep the image within 4 yards of the original?

But Fog of Jeer on the other hand, does not require concentration, so I would say that it would work much like a fireball would. It could affect the caster. But yes, he would automatically have AT LEAST the standard +5 to sense through it.

Presto is another interesting case. Anybody making a successful sensing test destroys the link. I think that the tone of the spell is such that the magician is not forced to make sensing tests, I would say he can destroy the link at will, but actions he takes with the link do not count as sensing tests that can destroy the link!

One easy way to treat this is that the spellcasting test itself is a sensing test to see if the magician is confused by his own spell. If the result of the spellcasting test succeeds, but (after being given a plus 5 bonus) is not high enough for the magician to sense it, he might be affected by it. If a spell is ended by anybody sensing it, sensing tests by the caster do not count, so he is not fooled by it, but can still use it.

[True Neutral]

I like the spellcasting counting as a sensing test idea. It accounts for both the independent existence of enduring illusions and the skill of the caster. I'm going to add that in as well.

[Tattered Rags]

This seems like it unnecessarily hampers Illusionists. Why force them to be subjected to most of their own spells? I would say that most spellcasting tests should count as automatically successful sensing tests with rare AOE exceptions (like Fog of Jeer). In those cases, treat as a normal sensing test +5. If you must.

(I like the Fog of Jeer is like Fireball simile; that makes sense to me where before I would outright say Illusionists shouldn't be affected by their own illusions ever.)

[The Undying]

I think the litmus test for Sensing is interaction with the illusion. If the illusion doesn't affect Spellcasting, and the spell cast doesn't affect the target(s) in a way associated with the illusion, why would it provide an opportunity to sense the illusion ?