So I just want to confirm that basically trid phantasm is strictly a more powerful version of invisibility. Pros: affects all senses and can be applied to more than an infiltration scenario. Cons: More drain. Is that it?

Additionally I wanted to propose something that I haven't seen anyone comment on, but likely it has already been stated in some form or another somewhere else. Wouldn't it be possible for the mage in a combat scenario to trid phantasm something for the purposes of distraction, then all party members with guns or grenades or knives get combat tests where the enemies are not rolling reaction? Obviously an enemy affected by trid phantasm will not be sensing the party members, so they could only roll armor/body.

To increase survivability it is commonly recommended to increase reaction because it would improve initiative and increase dodge pools, but this seems like a very easily implementable tactic that negates any reaction dice pools. Does anyone utilize tactics like this? It seems really cheesy, but I guess it reiterates the point: "Geek the Mage".

It would also be amusing, although surely there is a centralized list somewhere of all the other broken tactics a mage employs (possession, stunbolt, etc.)

It's the drain that limits it. By, like, a lot. It's the same reason you don't see people shooting lightning bolts or fireballs every fight. The drain just isn't worth the benefits most of the time. And unless you have a lot more dice to use on your Spellcasting Test than your enemies have for their Perception Tests (which is a test that's really easy to get to ridiculous levels, second only to Social Skill Tests), all that drain will be for naught. And if it's an enemy that you can easily thwart with an illusion, then they're not worth taking the drain. Sort of a catch-22.

But yes, it's probably the most powerful spell in the game in the right hands. I know I love it, but I enjoy illusionists in general. I don't know if it owuld "negate any reaction dice pools," but it could serve as a distraction and possibly force Surprise Tests from time to time. It's not something you can rely on, however, as it completely requires GM fiat to see that happen. And, honestly, you can do the same thing with Summoning.

And something else to remember about Trid Phantasm is that it is an Area Spell... and the Illusion must fit within that area completely... and the area is not moveable from what I could determine...

So yes, within those parameters (Static Area, Everything must fit into the area), it is a great spell indeed...

Keep the Faith

all area spells are moveable. it will require constant actions though, and you won't be able to move very fast (basically, if you need to cover a 4 meter diameter area and you have a 6 meter trid phantasm, you can only move 2 meters for every action you spend moving the trid phantasm. that's enough to cover a walking pace perhaps, albeit not a very fast one, but if you want to run or drive anywhere, trid phantasm is not your friend)

Really? Awesome... Got a reference for me?

Keep the Faith

Actually it is not a percepetion test, it is a intuition + counterspelling resistence test (will for the phantasm spell). You either succeed or don't type of thing. Yeah the drain is a drek kicker. But I'd say it is one of the most utilitarian spells created.

One favorite: in a firefight, move all friendlies within the radius 5 feet in any direction. Also, being multisense it means all kinds of fun when meeting with that ever so trust worthy Johnson who is about to shoot you.

Pg 174, step 7 "on going effects"

edit: of the BBB

or page 184 if you're looking at SR4A.



so i suppose a slight change, not *all* area effects; only sustained ones. (interestingly, this means that permanent area spells, like mana static, are immobile once cast, since they have a duration of permanent)

so you *could* use trid phantasm as a mobile spell. but it's going to be moving really really slowly unless have a really high area, are covering a really small object, or somehow have a lot of actions.

Incorrect. A spell with a Permanent duration becomes permanent once you sustain it for a period of time (twice it's Drain in Combat Turns, if memory serves).

I am also fairly certain that that section was not, in fact, changed in the Anniversary printing.

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More accurately, I understood the rules as meaning that as long as you sustain the spell, you can move it about, and that once you stop sustaining the spell, either you don't have sustained it long enough and it poofs, or you have and it becomes permanent and you can no longer move it.

To me it says so long as the caster is expending the actions needed to move it, it can move as fast as the caster's LOS will permit, which means it could be a shell around a vehicle he's in, or look like an armored escort in a convoy.

How are people coming to this "move slowly" conclusion? To me it seems like the mage could zip the area all over the place on a whim as long as it remains within his LOS. Am I missing something that applies a certain speed to moving an area spell?

Sorry for interrupting the ongoing discussion about "moving area-of-effects" but i cannot find an information about the spell "trip phantasm" that allows to subtract objects from a scene like invisibility. It just says that the mage can "create" (which means "add") objects he has seen or can imagine. So you could definitely make a group of super-realistic hologram-runners appear behind your enemies, but you cannot use it as some sort of "group invisibility". Or did i get something wrong here?

You're limiting your imagination, you make yourself invisible (or you can use it like a mask spell as well) by super-imposing the image over yourself.

No, i´m not limiting my imagination. Ask my GM, i am quite innovative at expanding the rules at my will, but i simply don´t see that this spell could do this kind of stuff. Even masking seems not approbriate because you create illusions that need to be controlled. If some of your cummers is moving he would pass out of the him surrounding illusion. And besides that, we all know that SR has no "i win" button, which means e.g. spells that cover every possible purpose. Invisibility and Phantasm are both illusion spells, but they don´t do the same thing.

You're right, invisibility is actively bending light around a person while trid phantasm can do it to an area. I'm creating the illusion of me no longer being there. It is a will check, you're imposing the image into the viewers mind that you are simply not there.

I think we need a solution here. Who thinks i am right, and who thinks X-calibur is wrong?^^

If trid phantasm can bend light the same way improved invisibility can, then x-calibur is right.

edit: but in all fairness I don't think physical illusions should need to overcome OR either, so my opinion doesn't exactly follow RAW a lot of the time.

I don't mind being proven wrong, mind you, I just love playing Devil's Advocate. I should rephrase and not bother editting the original, I meant to say that invisibility bends light and that phantasm simply convinces something is or is not there.

Other ways of looking at Trid Phantasm, which, as such, is invisibility equivalent.

- I'm in a room, with a table behind me. I make the illusion of a room with a table. Find me.
- I'm standing in front of a bank with 3 other troll sammies. My panzer assault is out and ready to rock. You see me holding a ladder, my friends holding rollers and big paintbrushes.
- The citymaster we're using to run the drones from is now looking like a smallish limo, mostly because if someone runs into it we don't want them surprised, well, unless they try to jump the hood...

There's a number of ways to 'illusion' yourself out of existance, especially if you overlap yourself.

There's also the whole put a "wall" up in the mouth or an alley, doorway, part of the room.

A fun use of Trid Phantasm is to create an incoming truck from a side road, crossing the path of the cars that are tailing you...

I agree with you that Trid Phantasm shouldn't be used as Invisibility, in my games that's how I play it. The whole "illusion of an empty street (room, etc)" seems like a cop out to me, and doesn't fall into any category I consider creative or imaginative, just 'convenient'.

I disagree with all of these uses. There are other, specific spells that do those jobs. A phantasm is an image created out of nothing, nowhere in the spell does it say you can alter the appearance of anything, just that you can create three dimensional moving images.

1) you need to use Invisibility for that
2) you need to use Mask for that
3) you need to use Mask for that, too

Yep, Improved Invisibility works for that, at F/2 + 1, same drain as physical mask.

Trid Phantasm is F/2 + 3, for either effect you wanted.

So, really, it's going to come down to drain tests. If you've got Magus MiniMaxiumus, it's not going to matter either way, but the penalty for the versatility is built in. Now, if you don't agree with the penalty, that might be a different area we'd agree on. Versatility should imply less useful specific usage or higher cost in my mind for balance reasons, and +2 is rather weak, but them's the breaks.

Another piece of this to think of is that while yes, for me and my three sammy buddies, we're looking at 4 physical masks, they're independent (and painful for that casting mage...). Breaking only one item of the image (ie: running into my non-existant ladder) though isn't going to bring the entire illusion crashing down for everyone who sees it. Mask (and physical mask) affects the mind, Trid Phantasm affects the senses.

The spell is plenty versatile without allowing it to duplicate other spells as well.

And FYI, Physical Mask works on the same senses/sensors that Trid Phantasm does.

To get rule-lawyeristic....


Again, I'm being a bit lawyer-ie here but my interpretation of the difference in the wording, in a section theoretically written by the same hand, would imply a difference. I'll spell out what I see as the differences.

1) (Physical) Mask affects the mind, the better form also affects sensors. How you could do that without affecting senses as well is a different confusion, but hey, it's magic. Mask is just more invasive, I guess. In my previous example, you'd think you *hit* my ladder with the mask, unless you beat the test. Trid P doesn't specifically say it affects the mind, just multi-sense. Assumptions could be made either way.
2) Trid Phantasm can create illusion of something *seen before*. Physical Mask can do anything it damn well wants, the mage is sculpting. A mage with eidetic memory I guess could watch a crowd and remember whatever specific random metahuman he wants, but not as easy. Physical Mask you could make someone look like an orange banana (in theory, though I'd give bonii for seeing through it) if you wanted.
3) Invisibility duplication: Yes, but you're not going to sustain it over a wall and across the park. You can't see the real place, you can't mimic it with the trid phantasm. To create a visible image you're bending light anyway, it's not going to really matter. You're planting what looks 'real' over whatever is there. However, unless the mage is traveling under the umbrella of his own trid phantasm and is constantly trying to change it (or for a crueler GM, re-casting it every footstep or significant change of background ), it's not really going to go anywhere as a cover up. It's good for a stationary illusion.

So, it depends specifically on what you're trying to do by mimicing the other spells, to me anyway. If you really wanted to throw a limiter on it if, for example, my above painters tried to move towards the building, and my area was 6m, which caught the end of the truck we drove, the end of the truck we drove would move along with us, and the ground would seem to 'slide' along.

I create the illusion of a 4" x 6" photograph* of the room we're in (only without us) in front of that camera.

Voila.

*Technically it would be a tridiagram in front of several cameras, but whatever.

Thanks Jaid and Mordinvan

Keep the Faith

trid phantasm invisibility

except with trid phantasm, you could erase the shadow. and probably match the pavement a little bit better, since really... you can clearly see the pavement.

Yeah. Trid Phantasm is basically a more flavorable name for "universal-illusion-spell-with-massive-drain." It's ability to function on every sense, in an area, without restriction means it should be able to duplicate nearly every other Illusion spell in the game. Invisibility doesn't actually make you invisible, it makes people and cameras think you're invisible. Phantasm doesn't actually create effects, it makes people and cameras think they're seeing effects.

If you want to skimp on spells and have no problem with your spell effect being inferior (since you won't be able to cast it at as high a Force level for the equivalent drain), then have it, I say.

Perhaps allowing Mask or phantasm to function more like a Camo suit or Chameleon suit rather than Invisibility?