Most mind-affecting powers in Exalted don't have a resistance roll: they absolutely work, with an escape clause that they absolutely fail if the target's Essence is greater than the caster's.  Particularly powerful or intense effects have easier escape clauses, such as the target's Perception+Essence being greater than the cast's Essence, or harder escape clauses, comparing Stat+Skill to Willpower.

There are some spells in the Book of Three Circles which have resistance rolls — usually those without activation rolls — with a difficulty of the caster's Essence.

Calling the Stalwart Servitor (B3C 32) replaces "Create Servant" nicely.  I started to put together a list of the "few" spells usable for Illusion magic from B3C, and got through the Terrestrial spells: there are *plenty* of options here:

<blockquote>
Curse of Slavish Humility (B3C 34), Disguise of the New Face (B3C 34), Droning Suggestion, Empathic Wind, Flight of Separation, Fugue of Truth, Flying Guillotine, Malediction of the Distorted Compass, Manifestations of Vigorous Design, Mirror of Bending Light, Mists of Eventide, Paralyzing Contradiction, Sacred Tongue, Shadow Summons, Shadowy Simulacrums of Smoke, Shedding the Serpent's Skin, Silent Words of Dreams and Nightmares, Song of Vertigo, Sorcerer's Irresistible Puppetry, Spy Who Walks in Darkness, Theft of Memory, Violent Opening of Closed Portals, Virtuous Guardian, Written Upon the Water
</blockquote>

I'm inclined to say that there's plenty there for all four spellcasting disciplines, and that all we need is good flavor for each of them:

* Illusionist spells can be disbelieved by Adepts: Spend a point of Willpower, roll your willpower.  The difficulty is the caster's Essence.  This means the difficulty starts at 3 -- high enough to make it nontrivial, but it's still a very real threat.  (Presumably the False Sight talent lets Illusionists add their Occult to that target number for a Willpower point).  What's a good balance?  Cheaper spells?  Very broad, general purpose mirage spells?

* Elementalists should have an easier time with crafting artifacts, and can summon Elementals.  There are lots of Elemental-themes spells.

* Wizards get generic Metamagic; the others are all restricted.

* Nethermancers should probably get the demon-summoning spells, and there are plenty of OokyScary spells in there.

<hr>
Spirits have a few Valor charms (Will-o-Wisp and Ghostly Presence) that work as basic object illusions.  They also have "affinity element control"--giving five charms, on for each element, looks reasonable for elementalists of essence 2.

I proposed a bit back that some of these effects come from normal charms, not just magic--so elementalists are good artificers, they get Crafts as a favored skill.  Illusionists can disguise themselves, hide, and open doors, so they get the Larceny trees.  Nethermancers have tea with spirits, so they get Socialize.  Stuff like that.

Oh, and is OokyScary now a technical term?

--jesse cox

OokyScary is definitely a technical term.  I certainly agree that charms will cover a lot of this ground.  --bts.


<hr>
The fae glamours have an interesting "illusion" mechanic--if your essence+wits (why not essense+perception?  I don't know) exceeds the fae's relevant statistic, the unreality of the illusion is obvious.  Might we want to do something similar with real illusions (those from the 2nd level of the sphere or higher)--successes can be used to add to the "reality" of the illusion, and if your essence+wits (or perception, or something) exceeds that number, or you do something against the illusion that gets more net successes than that number, you pierce the illusion? --jesse cox.
.


Wits because it's about "outthinking" the Fae, I suppose.  That's retrocontinuous justification, though.  Why zing Illusion in particular?  I'd agree with that if it were particularly pumped, but at the moment it isn't... I do need to write better guidelines for Autonomy and that sort of thing, but the type of overpower Illusion is most tending towards is excessive generality.  Hm.  I think the HFFS stuff had disbelief embedded... --bts

Yup.  Just read the HighFantasyFengShui Illusion schtick again, and came up with several useful points:

* Damn, a Fantasy Feng Shui game could be cool.  I'm thinking of running Pool of Radiance with those mechanics instead of D3D.

* The "Power of Belief" bit of Illusion I would make a kick-ass implementation of False Sight... or at least, a charm useful to Illusionists.

* Mirage and Invisibility there both use the existing Deception and Sneaking mechanics, with some difficulty modifiers for complexity.