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Tuesday, August 6, 2019

Hallucination Spell

The [Confusion][] spell makes me think of Hallucination, even though there is no such spell in the original books. So of course I have to make one.
Hallucination (5th Level Mind Spell)
Similar to Confusion, but randomizes the appearance of any creature or object as well.
The way I would randomize appearances: replace any noun with another noun that starts with a random letter. At the beginning of the spell, roll 1d6 three times, once for each category: people, monsters, objects. Find the indicated letter in the nouns being replaced.

1d6 Roll Letter to Use
1 first letter of word
2 or 4 second letter of word
3 or 5 2nd letter from end
6 last letter of word

Example: You roll 1, 2, and 1. For any PC or NPC, such as “Bob the Warrior”, take the first letter of their name (B) and think of a noun that starts with that letter (say, “bear”.) For any monster, such as “goblin”, take the second letter of the word (O) and think of a noun that starts with that letter (say, “owl”.) For any object, such as “sword”, take the first letter of the word (S) and think of another noun that starts with that letter (say, “salami”.)

So, if an adventurer is hallucinating and their comrade Bob is swinging a sword at a goblin, the adventurer sees a bear attacking an owl with a salami. You only roll the dice once, to basically “pick a secret code to use”, then convert nouns on the fly using that code. You use three dice just to make it less obvious which letter you are using, making it harder for the players to “crack the code”… but you could just roll the dice once and always use that letter.

For simplicity’s sake, all hallucinating PCs see the same thing: they all see Bob as a bear wielding a salami.

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