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Rune Spell "Hallucinate"


Storm Khan

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15 hours ago, g33k said:

No, they'd just be wandering around where they started, interacting with people & buildings &c that nobody else could see.  They'd be much like a demented mime.

Perhaps a slight rephrasing - could they Hallucinate that they'd been Teleported there, and then be there?

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11 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

Perhaps a slight rephrasing - could they Hallucinate that they'd been Teleported there, and then be there?

I wouldn't say that they could hallucinate having been teleported, any more than they could hallucinate being healed, becoming illuminated, or having Flight or Bear's Strength or Become Giant cast on them. It's not a Wish spell.

Just think how many points of illusion you would need to truly hallucinate being in a different city. The entire city within your eyesight and earshot would have to be illusionary, that's millions of points of spell. Maybe if you did have Hallucinate 1,000,000 then that would be powerful enough to warp reality so far that the universe decides that it's just easier to pop the caster over there than to run all that simulation. If you want to try it, start saving up those Rune Points and tell me how it went!

Edited by PhilHibbs
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1 hour ago, PhilHibbs said:

I wouldn't say that they could hallucinate having been teleported

Why Hallucinate "being" teleported when you can simply Hallucinate that you are in a room in a different city and the door leads out into it (and it does!). Or Hallucinate that you are on the side (or top) of Kero Fin. Etc.  The "transporting" is irrelevant, you simply ARE there.

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14 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

Perhaps a slight rephrasing - could they Hallucinate that they'd been Teleported there, and then be there?

I am with the limited munchkinery crowd when GMing  - so: Not as I read it.  They can make a new "there" around them.  It just takes, as written above, somewhere on the order of a million Rune Points to make the "place", 1 point per 60kg or 12 SIZ points.   GMs choice between those units.  So making a hallucinated closet is easier than a city or ocean.  A hallucinsated ladder or starcase would be about the capacity of most folks.  Hallucinated air and a door  in place of a stone jail wall?  I am not sure that un- creating the stone is in the spell.  But max fun, sure I'd bend the rule a little.

Being teleported is a concept ( in RW physics  terms an instant  change in coordinates) while the Hallucinate spell makes things / perceptions  in a limited way.  "motion, odor, sight, sound, substance, or taste."  No coordinates in that list.  Coordinate systems are not a Gloranthan thing as far as I can see.

But I would grant a lot of Wile E. Coyote play value.

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16 hours ago, Shiningbrow said:

Perhaps a slight rephrasing - could they Hallucinate that they'd been Teleported there, and then be there?

"Hallucinate" is a spell of Illusion, not "delusion."  In Glorantha, illusions are "temporary reality"

It seems to me that it'd be a few points of "Illusory Movement" to emulate a Teleport spell.

The real-world effect would remain:  the Eurmali would be in the new location, I think.
Just as riding an illusory horse really moves you, or using an illusory shovel lets you dig a genuine hole; etc etc etc.

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9 hours ago, jajagappa said:

Why Hallucinate "being" teleported when you can simply Hallucinate that you are in a room in a different city and the door leads out into it (and it does!). Or Hallucinate that you are on the side (or top) of Kero Fin. Etc.  The "transporting" is irrelevant, you simply ARE there.

The question is whether you stay there at the end of the spell, and whether you can take anything with you.

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7 hours ago, g33k said:

"Hallucinate" is a spell of Illusion, not "delusion."  In Glorantha, illusions are "temporary reality"

It seems to me that it'd be a few points of "Illusory Movement" to emulate a Teleport spell.

The real-world effect would remain:  the Eurmali would be in the new location, I think.
Just as riding an illusory horse really moves you, or using an illusory shovel lets you dig a genuine hole; etc etc etc.

Two thoughts on that:

1- the examples of illusory movement are that the thing created, moves.  Not that the spell caster moves, because he is not the thing created.  He has to do his own real movement.  Each created feature (sight, smell, etc.) Is a perception of the thing created.

2-But if you don't accept that reasoning,  the illusion(s) still would not apply to everyone else.  So if there are witnesses, they still see the Eurmali who believes he has moved.  They see him in his original place acting strangely.

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3 hours ago, Joerg said:

The question is whether you stay there at the end of the spell, and whether you can take anything with you.

Generally, I'd say 'yes' as you've effectively opened a gateway to elsewhere, and if you can carry it through, then 'yes' to the second too.

However, depending on what the caster says they are hallucinating, I'd likely through it twists if they don't know the place they are going to.

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4 hours ago, Squaredeal Sten said:

Two thoughts on that:

1- the examples of illusory movement are that the thing created, moves.  Not that the spell caster moves, because he is not the thing created.  He has to do his own real movement.  Each created feature (sight, smell, etc.) Is a perception of the thing created.

2-But if you don't accept that reasoning,  the illusion(s) still would not apply to everyone else.  So if there are witnesses, they still see the Eurmali who believes he has moved.  They see him in his original place acting strangely.

#1 is an interesting point.  I don't think the RAW speaks directly to this, but I think your reading is what the writers intended.  OTOH, the writers also intended each table to take the rules and use them in unexpected ways...  🤪  I doubt they expected (nor even considered) this sort of use, so they never addressed it to either explicitly-deny or explicitly-allow it.  Rather infamously, Greg Stafford suggested the best thing for a GM to do when someone brings a Eurmali PC to the table is to kill the character as quickly as possible...  In the end, I think your point goes to a GM-call, and "MGF" considerations.
 

For your case #2 -- Outside observers still get to see the effects of anything the Eurmali has Hallucinated; they just cannot experience the Hallucination first-hand.  But the Hallucination is real (if only for the Eurmali) -- it is not "just in their mind" the way our conventional understanding of "Hallucinations" are.  A Hallucinated knife can cut the Eurmali, and it's a genuine wound that anybody can see.  Anyone with healing-magic can heal it; without magic, the real wound lasts until it naturally heals.  Nobody else can see the knife, touch it, wield it, cut their food with it, or be wounded by it.

If the Eurmali creates an Illusory horse, they can ride it and everyone sees the Eurmali on a horse.  At the end of their ride, if they have ended up somewhere else, they remain at that "somewhere else".  Anyone else can ride the horse, too (but of course, the horse is under the Eurmali's control, and won't respond to the rider as a trained (or untrained) horse would).

If the Eurmali Hallucinates a horse, they can ride it (nobody else can see it, ride it, etc); but everyone can see the Eurmali floating through the air with a jouncy sort of movement, exactly as if they were riding an Invisible & Silence'd horse.  Again, the movement is real and the Eurmali has moved.

If the Eurmali Hallucinates a rock, and throws it, nobody will experience being hit or hurt (that would be direct experience of the Hallucination); but if the Eurmali throws that rock to knock an apple out of a tree, everyone sees the apple fall, and has a real apple they can pick up and eat.

If the Eurmali creates an Illusory fire, they can really get warm from it; so can other people.  Anyone can cook food on it -- and the food really cooks, they can serve genuinely-hot food.  And if they're careless with their fire, it can light other things on fire... and while the original Illusory cookfire extinguishes at the end of the Rune-spell duration, other fires lit from the Illusory one do not go out.

If the Eurmali Hallucinates a fire, they can really get warm from it (but nobody else can).  And if they're careless with their fire, it can light other things on fire; and everyone sees those fires, because they're real effects.  Cooking food is an odd case... It works for everyone!  Because the Hallucinated fire can light other things on fire, it can also heat a cookpan!  Everyone else perceives this as a pan magically heating up over a cold campfire-ring.

These are the easy cases... the physical-object cases, such as knives and rocks and horses and fires.


Hallucinated spells & spell-effects are something different!

Let's start with the Lightning spell.  If a Eurmali casts an Illusory Lightning spell, can it do damage?  Well... yes, with enough points.  Illusory Sight for the flashing bolt, Illusory Sound for the crack of thunder, and lots of Illusory Substance to do the damage.  Lightning is (or can be) an essentially-instantaneous effect, so I don't require Illusory Movement; some lightning does have perceptible movement, and one could add Illusory Movement to enact that (if desired, and if you have the RP for it).

Hallucinated Lightning?  If you can cast an Illusion of it, you can cast a Hallucination of it, so yes.  All the usual "only directly effect the Eurmali caster" caveats apply, of course.  If they hit themselves with their own Lightning, it would cause a real wound, needing real healing; it might even kill them!  It would leave a real blackened char-spot on their clothing/armor, for anyone to see... but very little other effect(s) could ever be seen by any bystanders.
 

Next up -- and very-directly applying to your case #1, above --  the Flight spell.

Again, we start with the simpler "Illusory" case -- can one cast an Illusion of Flight???  If the answer is yes -- and the MGF principle suggests that it is -- then (because in Glorantha, "Illusion" magic is Temporary-Reality magic) the target really does fly!  It seems awfully hard to deny it, when one allows the (clearly canonical) Horse example.

This is real movement, however... which, obviously, opens the doorway to "Illusory Movement" applying to real, non-Illusory things (including people (including the caster)).

Which, in turn, leads to Illusory Teleport, and thence to Hallucinated Teleport.

 

QED

(Quod Erat Damnitall)
 

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8 hours ago, Joerg said:

The question is whether you stay there at the end of the spell, and whether you can take anything with you.

Illusion magic is "temporary reality" magic.
If you ride an illusory horse, you really do move.
If you ride an illusory Hippogriff into the air, you really do fly.
If the illusory Hippogriff gets dispelled, or if the spell-duration expires, you really do fall.

*splat*

If you allow an Illusory teleport, then it's as real as any of the others Illusion magics.

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Hallucinate is a silly spell, so it should be treated as silly. It should allow Tricksters to do silly things. 

Putting too many rules around it, or trying to nerf it, misses the point of the spell.

It is silly, so be silly.

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On 3/13/2023 at 3:24 PM, g33k said:

No, they'd just be wandering around where they started, interacting with people & buildings &c that nobody else could see.  They'd be much like a demented mime.

Any answer that results in an Eurmali acting like demented mime, must be the correct answer.

Edited by Bren
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6 hours ago, soltakss said:

Hallucinate is a silly spell, so it should be treated as silly. It should allow Tricksters to do silly things. 

Putting too many rules around it, or trying to nerf it, misses the point of the spell.

It is silly, so be silly.

That's Eurmali for you...
Take a ridiculously overpowered spell, and use it for something silly.

And possibly more than a little bit self-destructive.

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On 3/14/2023 at 11:35 AM, Shiningbrow said:

Perhaps a slight rephrasing - could they Hallucinate that they'd been Teleported there, and then be there?

As I play: yes

the eurmali hallucinated (= found) a door, a hole, what you want as a gate, and "if she wanted to go through", well she succeeds, end of the hallucination she is really somewhere she named. Of course others did not see anything, except she was here, then she was not anymore.

however... it is eurmal magic right ?... so maybe it is not exactly what she expected, but somewhere with big or few difficulties. Maybe she arrived in the good location but exactly where there are ennemies or any difficulties. Maybe the door drived her to the local jail... Maybe it is not the good location..

One example of joke I have in mind to imagine it was a french TV show  (decades ago) where the price was a travel :

- "un voyage à l'île Maurice" (Mauritius Island) 

OR

- " un voyage à Lille, chez Maurice" (the city, north of France, reputation not so true but for the joke, cold and rainy, where Maurice is the firstname of some local Hotel / Hotel keeper)

 

In all cases, I consider eurmali as desperate / cursed people, they may succeed, but not like they plan. Any magic they use to win must put them in another challenge.

 

On 3/15/2023 at 10:01 AM, Joerg said:

The question is whether you stay there at the end of the spell, and whether you can take anything with you.

I would say (but it's me) anything unable to  "know", "feel", "believe" what happen is not possible.

So of course gear, other eurmali, unconscious people, mad people (depends on madness), and French, as impossible is not French 😉

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On 3/14/2023 at 11:31 PM, jajagappa said:

Why Hallucinate "being" teleported when you can simply Hallucinate that you are in a room in a different city and the door leads out into it (and it does!). Or Hallucinate that you are on the side (or top) of Kero Fin. Etc.  The "transporting" is irrelevant, you simply ARE there.

Sure, but you know who just happened to be on the other side of that door? A paranoid priest who panics and immediately dismisses the Hallucinate spell.

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16 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

Sure, but you know who just happened to be on the other side of that door?

The less the Trickster knows the place, the more likely they'll end up at someplace or in the midst of something unexpected. 

17 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

A paranoid priest who panics and immediately dismisses the Hallucinate spell.

Would it be recognizable as a spell to dismiss? They'd have to recognize that it was: 1) a spell; 2) an active spell vs. some sort of magic doorway; 3) that it was a spell cast by the Trickster walking through it (by which point it's probably too late).

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1 minute ago, jajagappa said:

Would it be recognizable as a spell to dismiss? They'd have to recognize that it was: 1) a spell; 2) an active spell vs. some sort of magic doorway; 3) that it was a spell cast by the Trickster walking through it (by which point it's probably too late).

A good opening move if you are jumped by someone would probably be to cast a chunk of Dismiss Magic on SR 1.

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On 3/14/2023 at 3:27 PM, PhilHibbs said:

Just think how many points of illusion you would need to truly hallucinate being in a different city. The entire city within your eyesight and earshot would have to be illusionary, that's millions of points of spell. Maybe if you did have Hallucinate 1,000,000 then that would be powerful enough to warp reality so far that the universe decides that it's just easier to pop the caster over there than to run all that simulation. If you want to try it, start saving up those Rune Points and tell me how it went!

I could see something like this happening when Trickster takes the lead during a HeroQuest or something but, not with the vanilla RuneSpell Hallucinate. I absolutely LOVE the idea and will use it in the future next time I run an HQ with a Trickster in it. They can just do crazy bonkers stuff on HeroQuests and I just love it!

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On 3/18/2023 at 2:16 PM, PhilHibbs said:

It's always dangerous to accuse a trickster of being a trickster.

We don't have to accuse him, though.
He claimed the title himself; he boasted about it.

Given the way the MD team brought Chaosium back from (near) death, this would seem to cast Jeff as the Orlanth who bonded Greg's Eurmal ... 

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