Belief of Illusions

[Marcel Liberty]

Scott,
   Pretty much what the spell reads is that if they believe it is real it
does real damage EVEN AFTER it is disbelieved by anyone who believes it. In
other words it is actually made real in the game until it is disbelieved.
But the tricky thing is that it has no substance. IN REALITY it pretty much
states in the County Mordor (sp?) module that Illusions have no substance
(see the pit trap illusion entering the mouth of the cave for the harp?). So
the only way you really can have them per the game is that the mind reacts
to the illusion and thus stops your swing. How you are left with physical
wounds is a matter of physical projection. The mind can actually cause
physical wounds to appear (I read an interesting medical text on this,
concerning male menstruation as well as female, as well as other oddities
such as menstruation from previous wounds and from the eyes, ears, etc... it
also was an excellent reference for stigmatic versus menstruation from these
locations... it also had some interesting hypnotism cases where wounds were
(re-)created physically on the body due to recall on subconscious memories
of previous accidents). Whew, suffice to say illusions are not real (can be
passed through if one has to obey the laws of physics). One such distinction
would be the proverbial "Solid Wall". Character one can see it is an
illusion. Character two cannot. Character one walks through the wall,
Character two can now disbelieve (if he has reason to believe the person
cannot "stone walk"). If he still believes the wall is solid, he cannot pass
(his mind won't let him). Alternately, if Character one had simply picked up
Character two and threw him through the wall he would have  landed on the
other side. I would say the actual self passing through the wall would be
like a x5 multiplier and the simply seeing someone else do it would be a
recheck or 1-3x multiplier depending on additional coaxing.

... I would note also that a good GM trap is to have a real wall/pit with
illusionary spikes... keeps them form actually having something to climb out
with... grin.

-Marcel

                -----Original Message-----
                From:   Scott Adams [mailto:longshot at DARKTECH.ORG]
                Sent:   Thursday, January 18, 2001 3:57 PM
                To:     POWERS-AND-PERILS at geo000.CiTG.TUDelft.NL
                Subject:        Belief of Illusions

                Heres oomething for the quiet list.

                Player bought this up to me...interesting question.

                How do you guys handle illusions in terms of being solid.
If you swing a
                sword
                at a illusion does
                it go through or stop?  I've always done it to where your
brain (especially if
                human the non
                humans might have a less firmness belief) believes it then
it will stop at the
                boundary of
                the illusion and thus your brain will tell your arm you hit
something.  How do
                you guys do it?