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ColonelFuster
2009-09-07, 09:55 PM
What's the best way to use illusions that are not easily disbelieved? I'm not talking about separate spells, like the always-loved color spray and the like; I mean the best uses for image spells. This is what i've got so far.

Disguise your party as a wall, like in labyrinth.
Create an attractive woman, as Elan does.
Make a big scary creature, as V suggested to Elan.
If I know there's a dragon in the dungeon, make a dragon of each color greet each group of minions I run into, and see how they react.
Make my Goliath fighter companion with a greatsword look like a halfling with a dagger to confuse people fighting him.

Other suggestions?

Chrono22
2009-09-07, 10:10 PM
Make figments appear in inaccessible locations. The enemy doesn't have a chance to disbelieve it.
Disguise existing traps or dangerous terrain (put an illusory floor over a pit trap).
Present false choices (take advantage of the emotions and ideals of your enemy). Example: Make them choose between saving one ally, or saving another... both are illusions.

Darrin
2009-09-07, 10:28 PM
Disguise your party as a wall, like in labyrinth.


Good idea. Illusions work best when used as battlefield control. When enemies interact with illusions, they get a chance to disbelieve. The best illusions are therefore terrain that they don't want to interact with: walls, pits, thornbushes, caltrops, burning lava, etc. Also, figments work well against mindless opponents (constructs, undead, vermin) rather than mind-affecting illusions that don't. At worst, interacting costs them an action, which is still a win for the illusionist.



Create an attractive woman, as Elan does.


Bad idea. An attractive woman is begging to be interacted with. Better to create something your enemies deliberately want to avoid.



Make a big scary creature, as V suggested to Elan.


Not exactly a bad idea, depending on how it's used. Creating a figment of a creature blocks off space that an enemy can't use without interacting with the figment. The enemies may also assume the creature has reach and is threatening spaces they might want to move through. It might work better if you create a creature that the enemy will deliberately try to avoid, such as a cockatrice or a wraith (although this assumes your enemy is smart enough to recognize the creature and know what its presumed special abilities can do). You can also use creatures to cause your opponents to waste their attacks. Move the figment past them to trigger AoOs, or create an ice beast to cause them to waste their fire-based attacks.



If I know there's a dragon in the dungeon, make a dragon of each color greet each group of minions I run into, and see how they react.


Eh... you have to be careful with dragons because a figment doesn't have the same special abilities as the real thing, which may give enemies cause to be suspicious. For example, they may notice that they aren't making Will saves for Frightful Presence.



Make my Goliath fighter companion with a greatsword look like a halfling with a dagger to confuse people fighting him.


This is would be a glamer effect, which is different from a figment. Silent/minor/major image can't do this, although you didn't really mention which spells you were using. It's not a good tactic because enemies wouldn't really respond to the halfling all that differently from the goliath... they can solve both problems by attacking. It doesn't cause them to waste any actions because they are still doing what they were going to do anyway. Turning an ogre's greatsword into a bouquet of flowers might be a better strategy, because then he's got to spend an action to disbelieve the flowers, and if he fails, find/draw a new weapon.

Stompy
2009-09-07, 10:36 PM
Hide the true dragon's color, so that the completely wrong element of magic gets thrown at it.
Kidnap a party member or important NPC, leave illusion of said unconscious person, set that up for a trap.
Kidnap a party member or important NPC, do a prisoner exchange but exchange one of your people disguised and illusioned instead of important person. That person can wreck havoc later, then teleport back to HQ.
Make an illusion of an obvious trap (i.e. huge spinning sawblades) to scare the PCs into not engaging your ranged combatants.
Illusionary Dragon Horde! (This should get dice thrown at you though.) Set this up for a trap if needed, and bury the actual (good) treasure.

(We'll see how these fare.)

ColonelFuster
2009-09-07, 10:51 PM
This is would be a glamer effect, which is different from a figment. Silent/minor/major image can't do this, although you didn't really mention which spells you were using. It's not a good tactic because enemies wouldn't really respond to the halfling all that differently from the goliath... they can solve both problems by attacking. It doesn't cause them to waste any actions because they are still doing what they were going to do anyway. Turning an ogre's greatsword into a bouquet of flowers might be a better strategy, because then he's got to spend an action to disbelieve the flowers, and if he fails, find/draw a new weapon.

Ah, yes. Well, this one was really for the lulz. I most also comment that i'm playing, not DMing.

Stompy
2009-09-07, 11:14 PM
Ah, yes. Well, this one was really for the lulz. I most also comment that i'm playing, not DMing.

Whoops, my bad. :smallredface:

Player-related illusion strategies.

Use illusion to role-reverse your party. Make the fighter look like a wizard, and vice versa. This is a good tactic if you fear ambushers that "go for the weak one".

Use ghost sound as signals. The owl chirping in the woods may trigger a multi-flank ambush, if you're the stealthy type of party, for example.

Sorta like role-reverse, but this time, make everyone a heavy iron-clad fighter. They won't see the fireball coming.

Distract a melee-oriented guard by having an illusion fail to sneak up on him, then running.

Primitive scouting around a corner. (See if there is something that reacts to the illusion.)

Godskook
2009-09-07, 11:20 PM
Last time I played an Illusionist, I would've used illusions/transmutations to an interesting combination except the game ended after only 2 pages of play. I did, however, get to enjoy a good first impression though. When the group showed up for their first meeting and introduction to each other, I showed up as a pair, one spanish-looking swordsman and a half-dragon(My race was human). It was an amusing twist that I was the half-dragon. So I guess:

-Make ordinarily weak-looking characters into menacing and dangerous looking ones.

Yukitsu
2009-09-07, 11:22 PM
When you fight an enemy that you suspect is going to be recurring, but don't know what he's up to, gnab him by the hair with a glove covered in sovereign glue. The DM will somehow make him escape. You then use his hair to make a simulacrum, and interrogate the simulacrum.

If in Faerun, take shadow casting, insidious spell and invisible spell. Make a combination of mundane iron walls, mundane invisible iron walls, fake iron walls, invisible fake iron walls, shadow fake iron walls, invisible shadow fake iron walls, and invisible dimensional lock all of this mess. Directly around another PCs tent. Make it a 3 dimensional maze.

To effectively divide an enemy group, get a 60% real shadow conjured wall of stone that is invisible. A large number of an enemy group will pass through, and an even larger group will be thwarted outside, letting you divide and conquer.

Use invisible spell and lesser shadow conjuration to make water, which you will freeze to make into an invisible, not real shadow ice sculpture. Use this to make a simulacrum. Make sure you cast simulacrum with invisible spell as well. Have it pull the pants off the guy with true seeing. Why? Because he can either see through the illusion (which means he can't see it.) or see as normal, which means he can't see it because it's invisible. Only people with see invis can see it, and even then only with a caster level check.

Lysander
2009-09-07, 11:48 PM
Have illusory adventurers walk alongside your party. Enemies will fear a larger force, plus they might attack the wrong ones in an ambush.

warrl
2009-09-08, 04:10 AM
Disguise existing traps or dangerous terrain (put an illusory floor over a pit trap).
Finesse this, if you can make an illusion large enough.

Have your illusion of floor over the pit trap, include a few feet of actual floor.

But basically any time you have a chance to prepare for combat in an area the enemy is not familiar with, consider what you might like to have them see when they arrive. Use illusions of good terrain to lead them into traps, or illusions of bad terrain to funnel them into a convenient-for-you arrangement. Illusions of open space and people (the latter visual auditory or both) to create threats where there are none, and illusions of walls and other such things to hide real threats.

AslanCross
2009-09-08, 05:10 AM
While I was the DM running a beguiler the PCs had captured, I don't see why this wouldn't be a technique you can't use yourself:

1. The beguiler was captured. The PCs did not know he was a beguiler, automatically thinking he was a wizard since he was pulling illusions out in the previous battle. He also had one level of Mindbender, giving him telepathy.

2. The players wisely stripped him of his component pouch and gear, and then bound and gagged him. He had one spell left to cast in his arsenal: blur.

3. Knowing the reputation of the ruins they fought in (alien force of madness once lived there), he used his extensive knowledge of languages (he knew the language the alien lords, the Daelkyr, spoke in), he used his telepathy to broadcast repeating messages in Daelkyr into the PCs' heads. Amusingly enough, none of the PCs knew the language, so it was utterly creepy to him. All the beguiler had to do was act all scared, in that he was hearing too.

4. Players panic and pull off his gag to ask him what the hell was going on. (Bad move number 1) He tells them about the lore of the place (which the players know as well), calling them fools for staying in the place so long. Until...

5. Using Silent Spell, he casts blur. His distorted, eerie outline, when mixed with some feigned possession, utterly freaks out the PCs. You should've seen the looks on my players' faces. Since no spell components were visible, the cleric couldn't use Spellcraft to identify it. Everyone tried using Heal to try to identify the "disease." In the end they decided to pick up the beguiler and run--straight into a waiting ambush during which the beguiler uses his telepathy to send the urgent message the bad guys needed to hear.

The PCs recaptured the beguiler and drove off the bad guys, but the enemy leaders were notified of the fall of their secret base, as well as informed of the PCs' power level. This also stopped the PCs from using their brutal torture techniques (they wanted to strap him to the side of the boat and row back to the elven settlement they were staying in with the beguiler partially underwater the whole time). They never wanted a bad guy alive more than they did here.

Keshay
2009-09-08, 07:30 AM
#1 best tactic for a PC Illusionist: make sure your DM is half decent about adjudicating Illusions before ever rolling up the character.

I played a Gnome Illusionist (specialist) for a campaign. I'd banned conjuration and necromancy for flavor reasons. Unfortunately our DM was of the sort that he took "interact with" included "looking at" so everything got a free disbelief save as soon as the illusions were cast.

I ended up playing a gimped wizard for that series of adventures. I quit trying to use the Image series of spells by the third adventure.

LibraryOgre
2009-09-08, 09:31 AM
My rule of thumb with illusions is that they can mimic pretty much any spell of their level... but you might get multiple saving throws because of the nature of the illusion. Those fighting illusionary monsters are out of the fight, but they get a save against it every round... but it's still a round where they're busy with other things. I also tend to give people just the appropriate "blocks" of illusion, which they can expend.

So, for example, a 1st level Silent Image spell creates 5 10' cubes for the duration of Concentration. The illusionist might spend the first one in maintaining an illusionary wall in front of the party. The second one might go in creating illusionary doubles of the party... not true "Multiple Images", but enough to fool people. The third might simply black out the room. The fourth might create an illusion of fire. The fifth one might simply create an illusion of where the illusionist is, but without the illusionist in it.

Now, you may be thinking this is very powerful. However, it has a few restrictions.

1) Concentration. The illusionist loses concentration, and the spell is over. This keeps them pretty close to rooted in place, and damage can really mess them up.
2) Sense limitations. A silent image is harder to come up with tricks for.
3) Only fools people once. Once it becomes clear that an illusionist is operation, people become more skeptical. In the same encounter, you're not going to be able to pull the same trick twice.
4) Saving throws. A lot of tricks that you might pull (especially active ones like the Multiple Images or fire) are going to give people a saving throw, or sometimes a simple perception check to notice "Hey, that fire isn't hot."

The players of illusionists must be endlessly creative... a stale illusionist is going to be found out, simply because people stop believing tricks when they happen all the time.