Illusion (The Painter’s Spell)

This extremely versatile spell changes the appearance of something – from a tiny object or detail, to an entire landscape. The Illusion spell is extremely limited, in that it cannot produce sounds, smells, or other non-visual sensory impressions. At the same time, there are some who devote their entire lives to mastering it. The great difficulty of working with Illusion is that the caster must visualize the image they want to create, with great precision and attention to detail – and if one wishes to fool any observers, an artist’s powers of observation are required. As such, much of the time this spell is used for entertainment or minor cosmetic touches.

The base difficulty of Illusion is d6 for a hand-sized object or smaller, and the base cost is one strain plus one strain per minute for as long as it is maintained. Increasing the size or the time unit by one step also increases the difficulty by one step. In addition to the normal spell-casting roll, however, the caster must also roll a Craft (Illusion) challenge; anybody seeing the illusion opposes this roll with their Perception (Sight) and if they win, they notice an odd or out-of-place detail, the illusion is potentially revealed. Attempting to cover large or shifting areas or objects may penalize the caster’s check; interacting with the reality covered by the illusion will usually give a bonus to the observer.