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Originally Posted by tbeard1999
I always ruled that it did. The rationale (such as it is) is that an Illusion spell acts as a sorta magical lens. It focuses the inate natural magic energy of those who perceive the illusion to warp reality as necessary to conform with the illusion. It's power is limited though. An illusory wall can stop an arrow, but probably not an arbalest bolt. A rock might bounce off an illusory floor, but something as heavy as a human body would likely fall through. Unless the Wile E. Coyote Rule intersects with the Rule of Funny...
Yeah, it's the fantasy equivalent of Star Trek TNG technobabble, but what are you gonna do?
I also told my players - at the beginning of the campaigns - that the effects of illusions were often inconsistent in unusual cases. Wizards pretty much know how an illusory swordsman will fight. They may not be able to predict how large or fast an object an illusory wall will block. There's sufficient variation that the scientific method won't help either. In other words, just go with the ruling and understand that attempts to abuse illusion rules have a good chance of blowing back on you.
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I'm sort of with Ty on this -- I believe the only way to render an illusory wall useless was to disbelieve it. (It's also simpler to just have a hard and fast rule.) The argument becomes "but the bullet, like a slime, can't even perceive the illusion and should go right through it," but my contention is that as stupid as it is, a slime has agency, and a bullet doesn't; inanimate objects will act as we perceive that they should -- otherwise you could just toss a rock and immediately "disprove" an illusion. That works against an Image, but Illusions have a whole lot more mystical energy tied into making them work than an image does, and thus has more "reality" than the Image does.
Images and illusions were very different for a reason, and it worked extremely well. It's also one of the most elegant treatments I've ever seen on the topic in any game. All in all, I don't personally find that there is much to quibble with in illusions per se.