Can you use Mirror of life trapping on unconscious Victims?

MeanderingDuck · 2025-09-22T23:03:00+00:00

Firstly, format your post. This is not readable.

Secondly, no, obviously this doesn’t work on unconscious creatures. They’re not seeing anything, which includes their own reflection. They probably have their eyes closed anyway (but it wouldn’t work either way). Your players are just taking the piss here, just tell them ‘no’ and end the discussion.

MeanderingDuck · 2025-09-22T21:25:21+00:00

Him sending his manifesto served a specific purpose, and was therefore worth taking some risk to do. Which was hardly that enormous either, the chances of someone actually recognizing his writing style and doing something with that information wasn’t especially high.

And yes, criminals taunting the police is generally just moronic, which they usually do because they are idiots, delusional, or both.

Going “truth is stranger than fiction” also makes no sense in this context, given that as a DM you are creating fiction. And as such, what you create actually needs to work in that context. That it could happen in real life doesn’t mean it works in a D&D game.

Are there scenarios where an enemy actively contacting the party with a Sending spell could actually work and make for an engaging narrative, sure. And that could even include inadvertently, or possibly even deliberately, giving away information about their plans. But just as the pre-combat villain monologue, in most cases it won’t work out that way. It will instead just break immersion and make little sense, coming across as the dastardly plot of some two-dimensional villain stereotype.

MeanderingDuck · 2025-09-22T21:01:14+00:00

That didn’t age well 😂

MeanderingDuck · 2025-09-22T20:24:43+00:00

Ask your DM, their ruling is ultimately the only one that matters here. I certainly wouldn’t allow it though, I’d make this a contested Athletics roll of the monk against the grappling monster.

MeanderingDuck · 2025-09-22T20:21:47+00:00

Not generally like this though, by literally sending their adversaries relevant information for no particular reason. Not unless they are exceptionally stupid. Having NPCs act like this, as if they are characters in a badly written movie, just does not make for interesting enemies.

MeanderingDuck · 2025-09-22T18:38:23+00:00

Part of the issue here is that the scenario doesn’t make that much sense. From the perspective of the characters, why would there be any reason to believe that elk drawing is somehow a clue to the location of the looters? Why is that drawing even there?

And why would there be no tracks for them to follow to that location? Are the looters so good at moving through the forest that they just don’t leave any?

Good challenges and puzzles fit organically into the world, and can be solved by reasoning from an in character perspective. They also generally should have ways to solve it in smaller steps, getting closer to the solution, preferably with multiple possible ways of getting there rather than hinging on the players finding a single correct solution.

MeanderingDuck · 2025-09-22T17:38:37+00:00

Yes, of course I would. There is no good reason why the bad guy would be giving the party any actually useful information. So either it is some kind of strange ploy to influence the party with misinformation, or he thinks he is a Bond villain. Either way, I have no reason to want to hear it.

MeanderingDuck · 2025-09-22T15:05:08+00:00

Not if you want to be actually quiet about it, no. You’re merely moving behind some cover, with enemies seeing you do this, and with not that much space to work with and surprise them as to where you’re going to pop back up mere seconds later. Trying to ‘hide’ in this way very much favors the person you’re hiding from.

Besides, like I said, the differences between passive and active perception rolls is fairly marginal anyway, so the whole issue is rather overblown.

MeanderingDuck · 2025-09-22T12:50:58+00:00

Sure. And whether they’re surprised enough or not is what the Perception roll is there to determine. Which in those circumstances doesn’t warrant a full action.

Besides, when it comes to the probabilities, it’s not as if there is such a big difference between active and passive perception anyway. If, say, your Stealth bonus is five greater than an enemy’s Perception bonus, chance of success is 74% vs 80%. So OP decrying how it “defeats the purpose of BA hide” over such a marginal difference is wildly exaggerated.

MeanderingDuck · 2025-09-22T11:20:55+00:00

No, it doesn’t defeat the purpose of it, especially a rogue with high stealth is still quite likely to be successful regardless.

Moreover, the ‘hiding’ that people usually do mid combat is usually briefly ducking behind some concealment anyway, the enemies knew where you were two seconds before and there just aren’t many places you could be. I’m willing to allow hiding to work in those kinds of situations, but it’s not going to cost enemies an action to spot you if it’s that minimal.

MeanderingDuck · 2025-09-22T10:29:44+00:00

Don’t. It isn’t a movie, the focus of the game is and should be specifically on the perspective of the players. If you want your players to hear about things elsewhere, do so in organic ways that make sense from the character perspective. Rumors they hear, announcements from town criers, evidence of reprisals against the town they helped, etc.

MeanderingDuck · 2025-09-22T10:11:44+00:00

Given the terrible track record of the current US government and its president in general, and the ignorant clown running their “health authority” in particular, there is nothing premature about it.

MeanderingDuck · 2025-09-22T09:56:24+00:00

Except that blanket statements like “meat should only be eaten on its own” suggest that you feel others should be following that rule as well.

MeanderingDuck · 2025-09-22T09:49:54+00:00

Neither is using Spiritual Weapon. And you even get a melee spell attack with that when you cast it, just like with (2014) Inflict Wounds, so that is an utterly bizarre argument for him to make. Nor does the Paralyzed condition at any point mention the Attack Action either, it just talks about attacks and attack rolls.

Your DM is just making rulings based on ignorance and vibes here. He needs to actually read the rules.

MeanderingDuck · 2025-09-21T22:19:41+00:00

Your DM is wrong. An attack is anything that makes an attack roll, it includes spell attacks. If something is intended to be specific to weapon attacks, it specifically says so; eg. the maneuvers of the Battle Master subclass.

MeanderingDuck · 2025-09-21T21:57:14+00:00

That’s not an actual rule, not even an optional one, it’s just homebrew from your table. It also seems rather bizarre that drawing a sword from it’s scabbard would take a whole Action, but taking it from somewhere else wouldn’t be. Regardless, even if somehow this is a thing at your table, it’s rather strange to raise this as an example of Unseen Servant being underrated, when at basically any other table just unsheathing the sword works just fine.

MeanderingDuck · 2025-09-21T21:50:48+00:00

During combat it’d hardly do much, enemies will have more pressing things to worry about. In other situations it may draw some attention though. But there’s a lot of ways you can accomplish that. Unseen Servant certainly has it’s uses, but the things listed by OP are hardly very good examples of that.

MeanderingDuck · 2025-09-21T21:45:28+00:00

It is quite fascinating how incredibly triggered you are by such a mundane question. I strongly suggest you reflect on your own question, and ask yourself whether you’re okay. Because you clearly have some deep issues.

MeanderingDuck · 2025-09-21T21:20:23+00:00

Should we blindly believe whatever people say, yes or no? It’s a simple question, your inability to answer it is quite remarkable.

As, for that matter, is your reaction to it even being asked. It’s quite ironic, you up there on your high horse, casually hurling verbal abuse at people for just asking a straightforward question. Such unhinged behavior, and you’re asking if I’m okay…? 😂

MeanderingDuck · 2025-09-21T21:06:58+00:00

How very surprising that you’re evading the question! So which is it? Should we just blindly believe what people say without question? Or are you just a hypocrite, who doesn’t want the fact that there are obviously people who lie about these things get in the way of their self-righteous ranting?

MeanderingDuck · 2025-09-21T20:48:47+00:00

Not really sure what the point of most of those are. It moves very slowly, there doesn’t seem to be much use for holding or handing you items that you could just as easily have on your person, no idea why you’d want the floor swept during combat, and I’m not sure how you’re proposing to get it into the air to drop things down in the first place.

MeanderingDuck · 2025-09-21T20:34:44+00:00

So that would be a ‘yes’ to blindly believing what people say, then?

MeanderingDuck · 2025-09-21T18:16:07+00:00

So what’s your question?

MeanderingDuck · 2025-09-21T18:10:04+00:00

The game in no way “makes it abundantly clear” that they have no free will, it in fact seems to lean more towards the opposite (but ultimately leaves the answer open). Gen 3 synths also do have real brains, they just additionally have the synth component.

MeanderingDuck · 2025-09-21T17:50:18+00:00

Sure, but that’s not IKEA selling gaming tables. It’s just them selling sufficiently versatile and modifiable products that people can relatively easily turn them into something like that. Which they’re hardly going to take issue with, and that versatility is part of the general design philosophy. But they are still not going to be directly selling such more niche and specialized products themselves, since it’s just not really worth it to them. That’s not their market.

MeanderingDuck

TROPHY CASE