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Necromancers and several undead creatures have the Life Sight ability. It's described as BlindSight" except for "life".

So how does this interact with an illusion spell like Mirror Image?

Clearly with BlindSight, the Mirror Image is useless. But LifeSight only detects living vs. undead vs. construct and I'm not sure how illusions interact on that level.

So I guess the key is whether these images would be perceived as "living", "undead" or "construct"?

Does the answer change for something stronger like Major Image?

Update: to clarify, it's clear that something like "blindsight" would bypass mirror image because mirror image is a visual illusion.

What's not clear to me is whether the illusions from mirror image emanates a "lifeness" or not. It's not detailed in the spell, but I'm hoping it would be detailed somewhere else in text about illusions.

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Actually, Life Sight does not allow the user to see constructs:

Constructs and other creatures that are neither living nor undead cannot be seen with this ability.

Seeing as illusions are neither living nor undead, I would put them into the 'Constructs' category and say that they could not be seen at all. The strength of the spell is inconsequential, because it cannot actually grant the image positive or negative energy ( which is what I suspect Life Sight uses as a 'base' for comparison as it cannot detect objects, corpses, constructs, etc. ).

This is, as always, subject to the will of whichever DM is running your game.

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    \$\begingroup\$ Note that I didn't say "see", I only said "detect". For the most part Lifesight is an ability that can be turned on and off, so if you "see" something, but don't "detect" it, it's a construct. But if you walked around with only "lifesight" active, you wouldn't see walls, so I assume it's mixed for most creatures. \$\endgroup\$
    – Gates VP
    Commented Jul 26, 2012 at 21:53
  • \$\begingroup\$ @GatesVP - True, however, when using Blindsight, you cannot be using vision. I assume that with Life Sight you similarly could not 'overlay' it upon your vision. Therefore, while it could not allow you to see illusions, the character may be able to switch between the two in order to identify if something was 'detected', match that to what he 'sees', and use logical reasoning from there to identify it as something in the list of categories that he cannot 'detect' using Life Sight. \$\endgroup\$
    – Phill.Zitt
    Commented Jul 26, 2012 at 22:16

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