Magic and Morality

While magic allows you to perform wondrous acts in the game, it can be used for terrible purposes. While some spells are obviously vile or have the evil trait and a direct connection to the profane, other spells can be used for good or ill. Using magic does not free you from the morality of the outcome.

Nowhere is this more true than when it comes to enchantment spells, especially those used to compel a character to do something. These spells can remove the power of choice from a character and can very easily be used in ways that are evil. Dominating an ogre and forcing him to abandon his guard post is not necessarily evil, but using that same spell to force a merchant to give you all of his wares certainly is. Using a spell for an evil purpose can cause a player character’s alignment to shift to evil, with the ultimate judgment of whether a player is using a spell for an evil purpose left up to the GM.

Regardless of in-game effects, all players should take care when using such spells. These effects can negatively affect people at the table, as they might create situations that echo truly awful experiences players might have had, creating uncomfortable or hostile environments. Players and GMs should work to prevent these situations so everyone can focus on having fun at the table.

Disbelieving Illusions

Sometimes illusions allow an affected creature a chance to disbelieve the spell, which lets the creature effectively ignore the spell if it succeeds at doing so. This usually happens when a creature Seeks or otherwise spends actions to engage with the illusion, comparing the result of its Perception check (or another check or saving throw, at the GM’s discretion) to the caster’s spell DC. Mental illusions typically provide rules in the spell’s description for disbelieving the effect (often allowing the affected creature to attempt a Will save).

If the illusion is visual, and a creature interacts with the illusion in a way that would prove it is not what it seems, the creature might know that an illusion is present, but it still can’t ignore the illusion without successfully disbelieving it. For instance, if a character is pushed through the illusion of a door, they will know that the door is an illusion, but they still can’t see through it. Disbelieving an illusion makes it and those things it blocks seem hazy and indistinct, so even in the case where a visual illusion is disbelieved, it may, at the GM’s discretion, block vision enough to make those on the other side concealed.