The spell major image is in the figment subschool. Magic on Illusion on Figment explains
A figment spell creates a false sensation. Those who perceive the figment perceive the same thing, not their own slightly different versions of the figment. It is not a personalized mental impression. Figments cannot make something seem to be something else. A figment that includes audible effects cannot duplicate intelligible speech unless the spell description specifically says it can.… Likewise, you cannot make a visual copy of something unless you know what it looks like (or copy another sense exactly unless you have experienced it).
Because figments and glamers are unreal, they cannot produce real effects the way that other types of illusions can. Figments and glamers cannot cause damage to objects or creatures, support weight, provide nutrition, or provide protection from the elements. Consequently, these spells are useful for confounding foes, but useless for attacking them directly.
(Emphases mine.) Using major image to render a foe functionally blind or deaf means creating a figment of an "object, creature, or force" that somehow impedes a creature's sight or hearing, therefore mandating that the creature interact with it and granting the creature a saving throw. Further, trying to render a foe functionally paralyzed or pinned typically also grants the creature a saving throw because interaction with the major image effect is almost guaranteed. On the other hand, using a major image effect to create a figment that viewers will react to in a specific way is arguably exactly what the major image spell is for, but that reaction isn't usually mechanical—it usually doesn't impose conditions on the viewer—, and, instead, the figment influences the creature's behavior by way of role-playing.
Before I dive into each of those points, let me make a couple of things clear: First, when a typical Pathfinder spellcaster casts the major image spell, onlookers make a Spellcraft skill check to identify the spell as it's cast (DC 18). Success means that the onlooker knows the caster is casting major image, and this knowledge may influence how the creature deals with the major image effect. Still, because the Spellcraft skill isn't usable untrained, many foes won't even be able to make this check.
Second, to repeat, the rules for Figments say that "you cannot make a visual copy of something unless you know what it looks like (or copy another sense exactly unless you have experienced it)," but that doesn't mean you can automatically create a figment of an object, creature, or force that you have not seen or experienced. That's for the GM to decide. The game doesn't say either way, but silence isn't permission, and the GM ruling that figment subschool spells normally can only make copies is a really easy way to make such spells easier to adjudicate. Ask the GM if mostly or wholly imaginary objects, creatures, or forces are within a figment's purview, or if an illusionist is limited to making copies of creatures, objects, and forces that the illusionist has seen or experienced.
Finally, Ultimate Intrigue adds more illusion rules for Pathfinder, but, outside their core books, the only other guidance a GM has for illusions are the Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 Rules of the Game Web columns "All About Illusions" (link is to part 1 of 4). In other words, the more complicated the illusion, the more the GM must be on board. By the way, Ultimate Intrigue would have creatures necessarily take at least a move action to interact with an illusion (e.g. study it from a distance, open it, or whatever), but the core rules say, "Creatures encountering an illusion usually do not receive saving throws to recognize it as illusory until they study it carefully or interact with it in some fashion," leaving some fashion up to the GM. This GM, for instance, counts attempting to obstruct senses as automatic interaction: you plop a figment wall between you and a foe, the foe gets a saving throw, and other foes will get saving throws if they want to kill you but can't see you because the figment wall's in the way. However, your GM may like the Ultimate Intrigue rules more than I do.
Blinded and deafened
If the GM says that wholly imaginary figments are acceptable then filling a major image area with absolute blackness or whiteness may still be impossible because an area of absolute blackness or whiteness is not a creature, object, or force. On the other hand, weather like the light, medium, and heavy fogs, are clearly forces—and they have rules so they're easier to adjudicate. Still, employing a major image effect to block a creature's hearing or sight means that those affected must interact with the effect immediately to hear or see, therefore allowing them saving throws. (Ultimate Intrigue would have them take a move action to examine the effect.)
This assumes, of course, that folks are trying to hear or see through the effect's area. A more subtle use of major image blocks vision or hearing without the affected creatures realizing it. A creature who merely passes by a major image of a wall where there was none before doesn't immediately get a saving throw just because of the wall's opacity; instead, it must investigate the wall, taking at least a move action to do. (Wait. PCs in your campaigns don't make a final sweep of seemingly cleared dungeons by bumping against the walls to confirm none of the walls are illusory? Man, you need eviler dungeons.)
Needless to say, this is more complicated with figments that don't involve sight, especially since Pathfinder merged the Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 Listen and Spot skills into its Perception skill. For instance, weather typically imposes a penalty on Perception skill checks rather than differentiating between hearing and sight Perception skill checks. However, in the same way that a sight-based figment becomes translucent (and therefore of no mechanical consequence) upon a successful saving throw to perceive it as illusory ("A successful saving throw against an illusion reveals it to be false, but a figment or phantasm remains as a translucent outline"), this GM has ruled that figments affecting other senses become perceptible but easy to ignore when detected as figments. When you take a move action to listen carefully to the dragon's deafening roar from down the hallway and make a successful saving throw against that figment, that roar's still on the edge of your perception—you know it's there and can turn your attention to it if you want—, but the roaring doesn't interfere with your perception. Ask your GM if he intends to rule similarly. (If not then nonvisual figments become more interesting playwise than visual figments, a reasonable if unusual campaign feature that I can't speak to.)
If the GM says that the illusionist need not have seen or experienced a creature, object, or force to create a figment of it—that an illusionist is limited only by imagination—, then making a figment of a light so bright or sound so loud that it renders anyone who can see or hear the effect forevermore blind or deaf, respectively, may technically be possible, and, by extension, knowing that such an effect is an illusion should be inconsequential. ("So what if you succeed on the saving throw to know it's not real? It's still an image of a light that blinds forever.") However, if this is the power of illusions in the campaign, why stop there? Imagine light that renders creatures dominated, stunned, unconscious, or dying. Imagine light that, due to its nature, sheds happiness, gold, or XP (but I repeat myself). And why must it be light? Imagine a warm breeze, couch, or turkey doing the same thing.
If you pitch this to the GM, I suspect that the GM will lean on the fact that "[f]igments… cannot cause damage to objects or creatures, support weight, provide nutrition, or provide protection from the elements," and rule that the preceding list is noninclusive. The GM's probably going to say, "While the game doesn't say that you can't create a figment of a turkey that makes people rich when they gaze upon it, the game doesn't have to—and literally can't—negate every absurdity." Seriously, even in theoretical optimization circles I've never heard the argument that figments are (or should be) this powerful.
That said, I can imagine an illusionist creating a figment that's a copy of art that makes viewers make saving throws—maybe the art is so awesome it stuns viewers or so aligned that it has an adverse effect on misaligned viewers—if such art exists in the campaign. This GM would rule that the illusory copy would have the same effect as the original, but another GM may not, saying that, for whatever reason, an illusory copy can't duplicate the original's impact. Either way, art like that is a campaign feature not part of the game's normal rules.
Paralyzed and pinned
A major image that depicts a wave of sand crashing over a creature and burying it looks like, sounds like, smells like, and radiates heat like an actual sand wave, but when the sand wave would bury a creature, rare will be the victim that decides not to try to move, and the moment that creature moves—and passes through the sand as if it weren't there—, it'll know that the sand's illusory. (The creature also breathes normally and isn't particularly uncomfortable save the heat, facts that may tip off smarter creatures.) Also, the GM ruled that the sand wave was one object—or force maybe?—, so fine-tuning the figment on a per-particle scale so as to improve the verisimilitude of its burying power may be impossible.
Similarly, surrounding a creature with a major image effect of (connected) whirling blades (so that they're one object) may make the creature hesitant to step through those whirling blades, but if the creature does anyway ("I'm a fighter; it's my job"), then the creature'll pass through them as if they weren't there, totally unharmed.
On Complex Illusions
The spells based on the silent image spell create a figment that's of one creature, object, or force. Just one. A generous GM may allow an illusionist to create, for example, a furnished room with a silent image spell, but all the items in the room will be fused, part of the larger and complete whole. Similarly, a silent image-based figment of a wall of whirling blades surrounding a creature may be possible, assuming the illusionist has seen or is imaginative enough to account for the mechanism. However, I don't think even the most generous GM would allow the illusionist to modify an illusion or dictate what happens to the illusion upon interaction with the illusion. A creature that sets a cup on an illusory table will see the cup fall into the table rather than see an illusory cup on the table yet the illusion masking the cup crashing to the floor. Likewise, an illusionist can't dictate that a creature that moves through the illusory whirling blades brings forth a figment of the creature being horrifically cut to ribbons, even though that would be pretty cool. The more complex the illusion, the more likely the GM is to lean on that one.
Keep in mind that typically belief in a figment doesn't make the figment real. In earlier editions, some illusions could be interacted with if believed. PCs would sometimes hope to fail saving throws against illusions so that they'd benefit from believing they were real (e.g. when walking across an illusory bridge or when devouring illusory food). Dungeons & Dragons, Third Edition (inclusive) changed that—figments are normally just images, albeit of increasing complexity. Believing in a figment doesn't change reality for the believer or guarantee that the believer changes its behavior.
For example, a creature that believes that the sand wave buried him because the sand wave looked, sounded, smelt, and radiated heat like a sand wave does not therefore suffocate because the creature believes it should be suffocating. While a GM could rule that way, again, I've never heard of a GM who has, and I've only ever heard the argument that creatures should so suffer made by those who were more familiar with the game's earlier editions. (The illusion subschool phantasm does have spells that include mental components such as these as part of their natures, though.)
Afraid, angry, and lustful
A typical figment has no intrinsic ability to make the viewer respond to it in a specific way. Instead, the illusionist creates the figment and hopes that the figment elicits the desired response from onlookers. This is usually through role-playing. The GM may impose conditions on a creature due to what the GM believes should be the creature's reactions to a figment, but this GM wouldn't, and were I a player I'd ask that that the GM keep such mechanical responses to a minimum. It's a short hop from unilaterally imposing mechanical conditions to lost agency:
GM: The wizard casts a spell. Make a Spellcraft skill check.
PLAYER: Xrr the fighter unhave Spellcraft skill!
GM: A roast turkey of surpassing quality appears on the floor.
PLAYER: Xrr ignore turkey and kill wizard!
GM: Xrr tries to take his eyes off the turkey, but it is of surpassing quality, therefore Xrr can't pass it up. Xrr takes a move action to sit next to the turkey. Then Xrr takes a move action to extract from his pouch his knife and fork.
PLAYER: Xrr unhungry! Xrr kill wizard!
GM: Nope. I know better than you how Xrr would actually respond to the sudden and inexplicable appearance of such a turkey in the midst of battle, and Xrr's gotta have it.
That said, unless the GM is going for lowbrow comedic effect or demonstrating his setting's egregious fantasy stereotypes—or both—, beating every encounter with dwarves by creating an illusion of beer or beating every encounter with halflings by creating an illusion of cake probably won't be a thing. However, if you know that King Tididi usurped the throne by secretly killing the previous monarch, an illusion of Queen Wondeirub accusing King Tididi of murder is likely to unnerve King Tididi. Depending on the GM's impression of King Tididi, he may retreat from the figment Queen, engage in conversation with the figment Queen, attempt to strike down the figment Queen—y'know, again—, or ignore the figment Queen altogether because King Tididi carries her soul in the amulet he wears. But whether King Tididi actually gains the condition shaken or worse due to the figment Queen is up to the GM and not within the illusionist's control.
Note: Don't be a Xrr. Always put at least 1 rank in the Spellcraft skill.
The answer here literally states enemies are blinded. Sadly they don't discuss other status effects. And yes, I know it's 5E but after quick check there doesn't seem to be any rules differences in that regard. Sorry but I cannot accept your low effort answer with no sources.
– Nec Xelos Jan 01 '24 at 22:35