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. 

Detection Magic

While designing an adventure, I needed my players to have an excuse to cast 'detect Poison' on several items. Knowing that the spell is a little expensive, I felt that plausibly something could be done, sure, I could make it more obvious, by giving them a scroll or two, or have someone teach the spell to a mage in the party, but even then it needs to be used more often.

And I asked myself.. What is Detect Poison? What is Detect Magic?

What is detection magic:

Consider first, how does it work. Is the magic sending out sound waves, when it hits the target object, it detects 'waves' of magic, and sends back to the caster some feedback his/her brain interprets as an Aura, and lets them know, YES this is magical?

Is it then, that they take that skill, and further it, identifying the particular waves to determine what KIND of magic it is? 

What about the other direction, if they reduced its ability, and lessened the cost. could the spell merely detect 'something'?

Side Note: Would Detect Magic, detect Radiation? would a caster assume its 'magic' but of unknown variant, and take it home, expecting to find out from a more powerful mage, and slowly become sick?

Would it make more sense, that the early mage, in learning the spell, would have gone through the weaker version? 'detect something'?

In which case, would it make far more sense that a "detect" Spell be learnt far earlier? and that spell likely improved on also.

I'd like to think, given that magical items are rare, that its far more cost effective for a mage to learn to cast 'detect' far in advance of 'detect magic/poison/undead/evil'

I give you the Detection Spells:

Detect

Base Cost: 5mp
Possible components: glass prism/lens/obj smaller than 4cm  - consumed 50% reduction.
Range: Touch
Initiative: 1 Round.

Caster concentrates and absorbs the sense of the object, If the Object is imbued with any effect, or is of pure metal, it will give a positive feeling to the casters hand.

Detect- Enhanced

Base Cost: 5mp [-10%mp*]
Possible components: glass prism/lens/obj smaller than 4cm  - consumed 50% reduction. [+10%]
Additional components: 5% gestures, +5% somantic CR
Range: Touch [+1/2m]
Effect: [directional focus: 180o 120o 90o 75o, etc]
Multiple senses: [+1]
Initiative: [Half Round, Action, Half Action, Free Action]

As Above, the Enhanced spell can be improved to detect objects at a distance, using the component to search in a direction or a whole room. A Caster could in effect search a room for 'any' effected item, and sense the direction of the items.

Example: Search Room, lvl 4
Base Cost: 17mp. & 20% imperfection. Final Cost 2mp.
Components: glass lens [-8mp], 4 small candles[-3mp], small rug[-1mp] and humming the incantus majori[-3mp]. 
Range: 5 x 5m room

Caster seated on the small rug, a lit candle in each cardinal direction, peering with one eye through the monocle, and humming the incantus majori, concentrates for 3 rounds and absorbs the sense of the room. If any item of importance exists in the room, the candle nearest will glow, giving the caster (and anyone watching) the direction of the most powerful object in the room.

Quick Detect lvl 1
Base Cost: 2mp,  & 3% imperfection. Final Cost 1mp.
Components: glass/crystal object [-1mp]. 
Range: Touch

With a small quarts crystal in hand, The caster quickly detects the item in the same hand, is effected of some force. Most magi would take their detect spell to this level with only 3 restudies.

But if they want to take it further:

Free and Easy Detect: lvl 6.

Base Cost: 0mp,  & 30% imperfection.
Range: 1.5m, no line of sight

As a Free Action, The Mage is able to hold their hand within a metre and a half of an object and detect if it may have an effect. This is a more likely end point to such a spell, taking it further to search rooms comes at such cost to negate the effectiveness without serious levels of study. 

Conclusion of Detect Magic 

As you can see, having some improved level of magic detection, which is inexpensive, is far more effective than attempting to cast 'detect magic' on every single item. The cost of studying 'free and easy detect' might seem worth it, yet, given a mage has limited study time between adventures, the player has to determine if indeed this is worthwhile, and is maybe influenced by how often you include small to mundane magical items in your campaigns.

So What of detect Poison? Undead? Evil? or just plain 'pure' metal?

In theory, they should have some kind of similarity, yet we have a few modifiers.

Undead and or Evil, might have tell tale signs before the mage/priest/monk even attempts the ability to detect, and the detection merely confirms what they suspect. Where for example a mage might look at a glowing stone, and assume its magical, so the exertion to determine is quickly ascertained as a yes, should mean some kind of feedback cost reduction. 

i.e. if the meta-physics is that mid expenditure of power, you confirm what you already expect, you can cancel the spell before it comes to completion. So then we need to add to the above spells, casting on already obviously magical items can have a -1 cost to cast. This allows GMs some good story telling arcs and plot paths, where maybe the item is glowing from paint, small bugs or some other bioluminescence, and the players just assume its magical. The Mage casts 'detect' and gets nothing, either assuming he failed the roll, or that the item has counter magic on it, to prevent detection. So they need to track down a better mage to properly counter the magic. Along the way they can meet other people for other plot paths.