Illusion

You can create false sensory impressions and trick a target into perceiving what you want, not what's really there. This ranges from visual images to phantom sounds, smells, or even radar or mental images. For 1 point per rank, you can create an illusion affecting a single sense type. For 2 points per rank, you can affect two sense types. For three points per rank, you can affect three sense types. At 4 points per rank, you can affect all sense types. Visual senses count as two sense types. Your rank determines how convincing your illusions can be, and more outlandish illusions require a more skilled illusionist to pull them off. How believable your illusion is depends on your choice of an illusion and your ranks in the FX:
ILLUSION MODIFIERS	ILLUSION MODIFIERS 	ILLUSION MODIFIERS
Modifier 	Plausibility 	Example Illusions
3 penalties 	Impossible 	A tap-dancing outer-space potato man appears on a mailbox singing a habanera
2 penalties 	Dubious 	A long-dead loved one appears and acts uncharacteristically cruel
1 penalty 	Unlikely 	A commanding officer's voice yells out "stand down!" in the middle of a no-retreat operation
0 penalties 	Possible 	An untrustworthy teammate is training his weapon on the target
1 bonus 	Believable 	You're holding a gun in your hand
2 bonuses 	Likely 	A dog runs through the park to happily greet the target on a sunny day
3 bonuses 	Incredibly Realistic	A bus honks furiously behind the target to distract him during a fight on a busy city street
To determine whether the target believes the illusion or not, roll your FX ranks + the modifier in the table above against the target's Perception resistance. Characters who successfully percieve an illusion as such can communicate this to allies, who can take a perception check on their turns as a free action with 1 Bonus for each ally who communicated to them that the illusion was a fake.
Note that this doesn't end the illusory effect: it simply means that the target recognizes the illusion as not being real. In order to "see through" the illusion, the target must make a successful Will check (DC 10 + ranks in FX; note that the Illusion Modifiers above do not apply to this Will check), with a Cumulative +1 for each previous attempt.
Your can generate an illusion up to the size of a Large-sized object, or smaller, if you wish.
==Illusory Effects==
Illusions have no substance and cannot have any real-world effect. So illusions cannot provide illumination, nutrition, warmth, or the like (although they can provide the sensations of these things). Likewise, an illusory wall only prevents people from moving through an area so long as they believe it’s real, and an illusory bridge or floor is revealed as false as soon as someone tries to walk across it, and falls through it!
==Maintaining Illusions==
Maintaining an active illusion (such as a fighting creature) requires concentration, but maintaining a static illusion (one that doesn’t move or interact) is only a free action, effectively a sustained duration.
==Extras==
* Damaging (+3/rank): Your Illusion is so realistic it can actually inflict psychosomatic harm on anyone fooled by it. Your illusions are capable of making attacks, which automatically hit (since your illusions are as “skilled” as you choose to imagine) and inflict damage up to your Illusion rank, or the damage normally inflicted by whatever you’re creating an illusion of, whichever is less. Anyone who successfully overcomes your illusion cannot be harmed by it and immediately recovers any damage inflicted by it. This extra is essentially the same as a Linked Damage effect with perception range, so the GM may allow you to apply other modifiers directly to the Damaging extra like an independent effect.
* Extended Duration: Reducing Illusion’s duration affects the type of action required to maintain an active illusion. Sustained Duration Illusion allows you to maintain an active illusion as a free action each round. Continuous Duration Illusion allows you to create illusions that continue to exist (even interacting) until you choose to dismiss them.
* Progression: Each time you apply this extra, your Illusion’s size increases (so 1 rank leys you create Huge illusions, a second allows Gargantuan, a third Colossal, and a fourth Awesome). You can create a smaller illusion than your maximum area, as usual.
* Selective Attack: With this extra, you choose who perceives your Illusion and who doesn’t.
* Subtle: Illusion is a Subtle effect by default, since it wouldn’t be much use otherwise. Therefore, Illusion doesn’t require (and cannot apply) this extra.
==Flaws==
* Feedback: Although Illusion does not have a physical “manifestation” per se, it can apply this flaw, in which case a successful damaging attack on one of your illusions causes you to suffer damage, using the guidelines given in the description of the Feedback flaw.
* Limited to One Subject (–1/rank): Only a single subject at a time can perceive your Illusion.
* Phantasm: Only creatures with Intelligence -5 or more can perceive your Illusions, making them a mental sensory FX. They are undetectable to machines like cameras and microphones. This flaw is commonly combined with Selective Attack, making your phantasms detectable only to those intelligent beings you choose.
* Reduced Range: It is left to the GM’s discretion whether or not Illusion’s range can be reduced at all, since being able to perceive the affected area is important in creating and directing the illusion. If Illusion is touch range, the character is only able to alter the appearance of subjects in physical contact. In order to solely alter your own appearance, see the Morph FX, possibly with the Phantasm flaw.
* Sense-Dependent: Illusion is already sense-dependent and so cannot have this flaw.
Category:Rulebook
Category:Characters
Category:FX
Category:Sensory FX