Illusions, DD12 Styled

  One thing that always bothered me is that D&D Illusions are so limited.

How do DD12 Illusions Work

Humans have, as far as we can tell five senses. As examples, Elves are listed as having six, and dwarves have a different focus on their five, as often they travel through caves in the dark and need to rely less on sight and more on feel and sound. The other races have their own variants on things.

So when a Human casts an Illusion, their focus is on Sight. They cast a sight based spell which creates a clever illusion of something, that lasts some time.

In Game terms, they create a 'stealth' score, derived from the casters sense score, wisdom bonus, spell bonus and spells base stealth ability. Opponents need to 'pass' with their perception + sense. The GM makes a stealth check, and informs them if they do or do not think something is an illusion.

If the score to pass is above 20, no roll is needed, the player is informed its as real as real, the GM doesn't even roll dice. The player, seeing that the GM has not rolled dice, knows its either real, or their player has no way to determine if its real or not, and would be wasting their time even trying.

See that? We meta the player, No roll = must be real. Game continues.

The GM can roll for fun, maybe there is something unrelated that the player has spotted. The player stares at the wall, and the GM rolls. He informs them, they have discovered a rare moss, if they can manage to store it in a wet cloth they might gain some gropsits for their trouble.

Don't roll if nothing is there, the roll must redirect to something, else the players will waste time trying to find a hidden illusion, where there is none, or will find the illusion, even though they should not have.

Note, I said HUMAN illusions.

When a dwarf comes across an Illusion of a wall, they instead might add touch + perception. The stealth score of the spell might be stealth 12, +3 all, +12 sight Illusion, expecting the players to have only 2 perception & +2 sight bonus, leaving a score of 23. But the dwarf with a +2 touch bonus ends up with a score of 13 or less. almost 50%.

The Illusion and Image spells from many games are typically for moving, and non moving Illusions. But once discovered to be Illusions, are dispelled, or become transparent, and obviously an Illusion.

This does not compute.

If a spell is dispelled by someone 'disbelieving' in them, surely some kind of psychic link between the Illusion and the watcher is established, surely the spell would remain and just be believed to be not real.

Is an Illusion just a trick of the mind instead?

Is an Image of a wall, a pre-cast spell which affects anyone who comes into the area, to believe there is a wall, and once they disbelieve, the spell is cancelled and the victim can now see the truth? 

In some game systems, this is true enough, where an Illusion is rolled on each character, and those who do not believe, cannot see.

Priestly Illusions in DD12 are like this. The God has placed a belief of the Illusion in their mind, and each person sees or does not see the Illusion. Atheists have auto protection from such Illusions.

Why

I've done it like this, so GMs and Players have more choices. 

Illusions and Images can exist in multiple senses. Images of walls only need sight and touch for the simple versions, maybe sound to counter simple echo checks, but who'll taste a wall or smell a wall?

Illusions certainly need Sound and Sight as they wall and talk, yet maybe touch is less required for the simple wall guards or flames.

Elves almost always sense Illusions as they have no depth to them, no soul. Dwarves have often intrinsic knowledge of the weight of stone or doors, and their skills usually mean they will not fall prey to Illusionary walls, traps or the like.

So DD12 Illusions can be cast between 1st level (simple sounds) to 16th level (fully alive holograms that exist, think, feel and sense on their own akin to the Star Trek Voyager Doctor)

This (in my experience) with a creative players and illusionist, can be a very powerful character. confusing enemies with incorrect character positions, so they always miss attacks, and are so confused they are always hit. enhancing the charisma to get information, using background noises, taste effects on real poisons, fake floors over pits, fake smells over deadly plants, razor blade feeling like soft cushions, and other varieties of illusions to deal with enemies. 

something that's not clearly defined in other games.