Mental Illusions: Can attacks look like nothing?

[mrnate4ta]

Can you give insight as to how Mental Illusions work?

1. Can an illusion be an invisible man attacking a character who cannot see him? Can that do damage to the character?

2. Can an illusion be that the character attacked w/illusion doing the same thing they were doing (watching TV, sitting in a chair)with nothing out of the ordinary happening in the illusion and they still take damage? Would it be harder or easier to cause damage if the illusion was of fire, a tiger, a gun?

3. If four people were in a room with a window (Rob, Nate, Kevin, and Eric) and Illusion Man cast an area effect illusion that effected everyone in the room of Kevin being shot by a bullet coming through the window:

A.could everyone take damage?

B.only Kevin could take damage?

C.would everyone see themselves getting shot?

[RadeFox]

Re: Mental Illusions: Can attacks look like nothing?

 

Can you give insight as to how Mental Illusions work?

1. Can an illusion be an invisible man attacking a character who cannot see him? Can that do damage to the character?

2. Can an illusion be that the character attacked w/illusion doing the same thing they were doing (watching TV, sitting in a chair)with nothing out of the ordinary happening in the illusion and they still take damage? Would it be harder or easier to cause damage if the illusion was of fire, a tiger, a gun?

3. If four people were in a room with a window (Rob, Nate, Kevin, and Eric) and Illusion Man cast an area effect illusion that effected everyone in the room of Kevin being shot by a bullet coming through the window:

A.could everyone take damage?

B.only Kevin could take damage?

C.would everyone see themselves getting shot?

 

Wow, thats a lotta stuff, lets break it down

 

1: This would be best handled as an EGO attack, with the special FX being the target thinks they are being hit by an invisible man

 

2: Im not sure what you're asking on this one, Sounds like you're asking if you attack someone with an Illusory fire, can you mask the 'scene' of the attack so it looks like the victim is still just sitting in the chair. You can do it with a Mental Illusion, stong enough in power to get to the 3x ego level to do actual damage. The "type" of attack (fire/tiger/gun/etc) is irrevelant. You would need a second power of standard Illusions to cover over the scene, with full senses, plus a possible Darkness field 1 Hex vs sound to cover the shouts of the victim. The effect you are asking for is complicated and I dont see it being handled with a single power.

 

3: This is the easiest one, this is a standard Illusions power use, bought with AOE, radius. It would affect anyone in the AOE with whatever you describe happening, in your siutation above they would all see Kevin getting shot, if you roll was enough to overcome Kevins EGO X3 he would take damage, possibly resulting in a presence attack on the other affected targets.

[Arkham]

Re: Mental Illusions: Can attacks look like nothing?

 

Can you give insight as to how Mental Illusions work?

1. Can an illusion be an invisible man attacking a character who cannot see him? Can that do damage to the character?

2. Can an illusion be that the character attacked w/illusion doing the same thing they were doing (watching TV, sitting in a chair)with nothing out of the ordinary happening in the illusion and they still take damage? Would it be harder or easier to cause damage if the illusion was of fire, a tiger, a gun?

3. If four people were in a room with a window (Rob, Nate, Kevin, and Eric) and Illusion Man cast an area effect illusion that effected everyone in the room of Kevin being shot by a bullet coming through the window:

A.could everyone take damage?

B.only Kevin could take damage?

C.would everyone see themselves getting shot?

 

1. Yes.

2. No. In the section for Mental Illusions, it specifys that the damage that can be dealt is limited by both the DC of the power, as well as the DC of the illusion. So a convincing illusion of an 8 year old punching someone can't do much more than 1 or 2d6, regardless of how well the effect is rolled. And sitting around doing nothing doesn't normally inflict any damage at all, so cannot be illusioned to do so. However, if you give them an illusion that random cuts start opening up on them, as if by some magical or invisible attack, then they could take damage from it. Note that IDHMBIFOM, so I might be wrong on some details, but this is what I remember.

3. a. No. b. Yes. c. No.

[Houston GM]

Re: Mental Illusions: Can attacks look like nothing?

 

Expanding on the previous answers.

 

1. Can an illusion be an invisible man attacking a character who cannot see him?

A mental illusion can be felt, so the target would feel an unseen force striking him.

 

Can that do damage to the character?

Yes, but the mechanics of the power limit the damage to the damage that a non-illusory attack would do. How much damage does an unseen force striking you normally do? As a GM, I would say it normally does very little. However, if the target was expecting to be attacked by an invisible super-powered martial artist, the unseen force might hurt a lot more.

 

2. Can an illusion be that the character attacked w/illusion doing the same thing they were doing (watching TV, sitting in a chair)with nothing out of the ordinary happening in the illusion and they still take damage?

Not under normal circumstances (as Arkham stated), but you might be able do a convincing illusion of a heart attack on the couch potato, which could do some damage.

 

Would it be harder or easier to cause damage if the illusion was of fire, a tiger, a gun?

It would be much easier to do substantial damage with an illusion of fire, a tiger, or a gun. People expect fires, tigers and guns to hurt. Sitting in a chair watching TV ... not so painful, even if you get a cramp from not moving.

 

3. If four people were in a room with a window (Rob, Nate, Kevin, and Eric) and Illusion Man cast an area effect illusion that effected everyone in the room of Kevin being shot by a bullet coming through the window:

A.could everyone take damage?

No. If Kevin gets hit by a bullet, Eric isn't going to expect it to hurt him. Illusion Man would have to do a different illusion to cause damage to the other three.

 

B.only Kevin could take damage?

As described, yes.

 

C.would everyone see themselves getting shot?

Illusion Man could do an illusion of everyone getting hit. He could either make everyone think that one bullet came in and only hit them, or he could do an illusion of several bullets coming in and hitting each one of them. In either case, all of them could take damage from it.

 

Furthermore, an AE Mental Illusion that can do damage to multiple targets (even normals) is going to require a lot of points.