Illusions are one small facet of the once grand and now lost art of Mathemagics. Illusions are just one minor part of a whole lost art. Yet not quite.. Two hundred years earlier, a would-be mathemagician was refused as a student owing to a long standing curse which disfigured him and his family.
Gelt was his name, and in an act of petty revenge and to fill his desire to learn, he stole a Grimoire Of Illusions. Teaching himself, he soon became a very powerful Illusionist and made himself weathly preying off the weak-minded and naive.
Nature Of Illusions:-
The fact that there are the two forms of Illusion :
The Common and the Pure, is one of the guilds most closely guarded secrets. Common Illusions are those readily accessible to the Illusionists Guild and are also the simpler, easy to cast variety. Some of these Illusions can only be used once on any particular being as the being is then familiar with the Illusion and can see right through it.
Pure Illusions are the very height of the art. Each one has to be individually crafted before it can be added to the Illusionists repertoire. These are solid gold to Illusionists. They can be sold between Illusionists but it is rare that this happens, any Illusion widely seen is of little good to any Illusionist.
There are also rumors of the existence of what has been called True Illusions which are not so much Illusions but spells or creation that allow the caster to create what he thinks of. However, these are just mindless chatter.
Common Illusions have NO EFFECT on any undead, golems or non-living (mindless) creatures. Curiously, Illusions can do REAL damage to Demons as a form of magic. Some have speculated that demons being creatures of deception accept what is false as a reality and are affected by Illusions. Animals more used to using a range of sense will often be confused by Illusions and may or may not disregard them.
REALISE YOUR DREAMS, THIS UNIVERSE BELONGS TO YOU
CREATE AND LIVE IN ABUNDANCE, THIS UNIVERSE BELONGS TO YOU
Seeing through Illusions
Common – Detect Illusion, True Sight, Detect Magic, Rec Magic, Rec Spirit, Spirit Sight, Scouts Smelling and Scouts Hearing.
Pure – Detect Illusion, True Sight. In some cases Scout Smelling and Scout Hearing may also reveal its nature. The “spirit senses” will reveal that there is no spirit but not that the target is an illusion.
Illusionist Characteristics
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Illusionists have to buy their common spells from the guild like element lists, however they can only cast above their level when casting Pure Illusions.
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Illusionists like any form of magic user are limited to three daggers worth of metal and cannot carry a shield as they require both arms to make spell gestures.
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Illusionists do not require a focus as they do not draw power from elemental planes but use what is present already.
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Illusionists can do ‘singles’ in combat with any one-handed weapon (metal restrictions apply). All other weapon specialities are denied them except in special cases (ie some backgrounds).
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Illusionists can appear to do more damage with Illusions like Illusion Blade III and Phantas.
Pure Illusions
Despite the appearences of the Common Illusions, here is where the real power of Illusionists lies. It is the mechanic whereby really creative minds can come up with all manner of really neat stuff (as long as it is possible and not too unbalanced). Basically, the Pure Illusion rules enable the character to invent Illusions to their own specifications (this allows for some of the more outrageous Illusions to be). What I have tried to set out here are rules to keep them relatively balanced and proportional.
The Illusionist begins by stating what She desires the Illusion to achieve. Comparing it to the criteria given, a level and research time is applied (and ideally the character should develop ideas about phys repping or declaring that it will only be a downtime / timeline event). The character then sends these details to a ref who decides whether the level is correct and the Illusion is balanced for game play.
The research time for any Illusion is equal to one week multiplied by the level of the spell. Therefore it takes about a month to create a semi-decent 4th level Pure Illusion. This should stop power gamers churning out hundreds of 8th level Illusions but keep a steady flow of low level inventiveness going. Creativity is the key to Illusionists power.
