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View Full Version : Illusion ideas [Freeform] (Players keep out!)



Shadowcaller
2010-01-23, 01:33 PM
I'm currently planning a illusion-themed dungeon for the PC's and I was looking for ideas.

What I was thinking was trying to confuse the PC's as much as possible by having illusions cast upon them as well, AKA everyone suddenly changes appearances, looking like monsters or each other.

The dungeon itself is a powerful demons sanctum that only the PC's themselves can enter, the PC's goal in it is of course to kill the demon.

So as a bonus, is there any way to make a fun free form boss?

Grifthin
2010-01-23, 01:37 PM
Start killing off party members. IE let one drown but hand a sheet of paper to player explaining he is not really dead. Then start killing them off one by one untill the last one dies. Then let them make a will save. If they pass it let them realize they are still standing in the entrance to the sanctum.

Turn the players into monsters, let them attack each other. Give them a companion that they can rescue that is actually the demon just screwing with them.

Johel
2010-01-23, 02:41 PM
There are several types of Illusion:
The illusions that looks harmless but hide something harmful
The aim is here first to give a false feeling of safety to the players, then to shatter this feeling and root paranoia into them. When they realize that the seemingly harmless wood floor is in fact a paper-thin layer of human skin above a pool of boiling blood where fiendish leeches are swimming, they'll be very careful at their steps. They'll even probe the ground with a stick.
This can be more elaborate, like picturing a fake legless fluffy white bunny at the center of a room...while some real 20 feet-wide horror is lurking high above, on the real ceiling, hidden by a fake ceiling.

The illusions that looks harmful but hide something more harmful
The aim is here to make the players alert because of a danger but to caught them off-guard because the danger wasn't the one they prepared for...or because the danger is a bit more dangerous than they thought. A 1 foot wide stone bridge going above an acid pool can look like a tricky part for the more clumsy player. But it's still a bridge : they just have to be careful. Now, have them been attacked while crossing. They'll stumble toward the end thinking the danger is the flying acid mephits or something. Wrong !! The danger is that 5 feet long gap at the very center of the bridge, invisible because the illusion of a stony bridge section covers it. Alternatively, a monster masquerading as a weaker monster...or as a monster highly vulnerable to something they are immune to. A red dragon posing as a white dragon, for example.

The illusions that looks harmful but hide something harmless
The aim is here to first make the players alert...then slowly erode their vigilance by confronting them to threats they realize to be fake. This make them ripe for the next horror you got in your sleeve. A hall which walls are covered with mumbling faces and latching hands...and is in fact your average dusty dungeon hall. Then another of such hall, now with very dim light. Then another one in complete darkness. Then another one in magic darkness. The players expect you to unleashe the fury now. You don't. You place a normal looking corridor and watch as they scream "-It's a trap !!". And it is. Only they won't expect you to be that obvious. If they do, then the next weird corridor will also be a trap...

The illusions that looks harmless but hide something more harmless
Fake walls masking rooms, entrances, exits, treasures, prisoners...
Very basic, yet very annoying because, unless you know what you're looking after, you better check every square foot of the dungeon to find it.

The real thing that poses as an illusion.
After having gone through overconfidence, paranoia, safety, fear, then starting the circle again and then mixing everything at once with a lot of weird confusing pictures (demons are good at making you feel not at ease...), your players are now bordering insanity. Menacing threats ? It's an illusion !! Plastic duck laying harmlessly ? Look above !! Check the walls !! Probe the floor !! Detect Magic on the duck !! Goblins ? Balors in disguise !! Real Balors ? Ah !! Another trick...or not ?
At this point, you don't even have to be subtle : they'll imagine twisted dangers for you. Just run a normal dungeon and gloat as they probe everything with suspicion.

Dvandemon
2010-01-23, 05:14 PM
@^: That last one could be a great character trait for a DM NPC

Beelzebub1111
2010-01-23, 06:26 PM
Shadow Conjuration (Wall of Stone) to make a bridge over a deep chasm.

1) Rogue looks for traps, fails his will save and finds nothing.
2) Fighter walks over, fails his save, makes it across safely.
3) Rogue already failed his save so he can make it across fine.
4) Wizard walks across, makes his save, realizes that the bridge is not real, and falls to his death.

Rasman
2010-01-23, 06:59 PM
if you've watched the resident evil movies or played the F.E.A.R. games, then mental traps are the best

Have stones in the wall that, when the PCs get near them, they hear things behind a door, there's nothing really in the room, but it seems like there should be...or it could be something unrelated to the sound because the portal has been silenced

You could do something similar with Silent Images that pass though or by doorways or down halls, when they go chasing who or whatever it was, they can trigger a trap or it can lead them into a room with a monster in it.

Mimics are good pets for creatures that like Illusions and Mimics can be just about anything, typically they're something like a chest, but you can be really creative with a Mimic.

Doors that open, close and lock themselves are good hooks for "did you hear that? Should we go check that out?"

Invisable Servents are handy too since they're kinda hard to make out, but they can make it seem like something just out of sight is moving or they can try and take things from the PCs.

A neat trap our DM used on us last session was a Rug that looked out of place considering the part of the world we were in. The party fighter poked the rug with his Warhammer and it kinda stuck in it. The party wizard decided to use Dispell magic on it, turns out it was a slime, fairly weak, but enough to scare off anyone that wasn't an adventurerer. This was covering up a trap door that led further into an underground cavern/dungon.

Are they looking for anything in particular, other than the demon?

EDIT: Oh, if you want to try seperating them, Displacer Beasts or something similar would be good, although I'm sure there are better ways of doing it.

Randel
2010-01-23, 07:13 PM
The players enter a dungeon and find that its been magically shouded to make it look like all the inhabitants are villagers or dwarves or something.


The gang of goblins? They all look like members of the town watch and they speak perfect english.

The vicious insectoid horrors that burrow into your flesh and take over your brain? They look like little puppies and yap cutely at you.

The evil orc cleric who's summoning zombies to have them kill you? He's a kindly looking priest who's calling the members of his congregation to invite you inside.


Basically everything looks more or less the same so its hard to identify what your opponent is when its trying to kill you.

For extra goodness, maybe its not an 'illusion' per say but instead actually transforms things superficially so that the monsters retain all their normal attacks but still like members of a different species. Their corpses even look the same until either it decays enough for the flesh to fall off or the corpse is removed from the area.

Maybe the various rooms or sections of the dungeon are modeled after different areas or environments. A human town, an elven village, an orc town... whenever anyone moves from one area to the next they take on the appearance of the members of that area and their animals do as well.

The purpose? Its a testing ground for infiltration techniques. Create a realistic facimily of the enemy society, learn to mimic their actions, and occasionally kidnap some people and put them in that place as well. It turns out that there are some innocents in the places, humans or elves or whatever who don't know its an illusion and the other people there are just testing how convincing their world is before they kill the 'subject'.

Later on, the guys inside will move out and start taking over a village somewhere by camouflaging a bunch of people, slowly taking over the town and putting traps everywhere... turning a town into a giant dungeon to kill off the human inhabitants.

Or maybe the demon in charge found a cheap way to disguise monsters by injecting them with a serum derived from Doppleganger blood. The monsters inside all change to mimic the environment but they players don't. Thus, 90% of the simulated environments are mundane construction made underground, 8% of it is minor magic to make it look like there is a sky and stuff, the remaining 2% is a little spell that helps the Doppleganger blood transform the monsters to suit the chosen environment (there might be a magic bauble somewhere on each area that if 'turned off' results in all the monsters returning to their normal form, this way some doppleganger spies could set the bauble up in a city, and then groups of disguised orc and goblins would enter while looking like normal humans.).

Unless the players inject themselves with some of the serum, they will stand out like a sore thumb in each area and the 'inhabitants' will start attacking them. If they do, they may have problems telling eachother apart from the other monsters but they monsters will have trouble telling if they are adventurers or just 'one of them' (they all try to stay in-character as much as they can) it becomes a challange to stay in-character and bluff their way past the monsters or risk exposure.

If they are exposed as adventurers then they find themselves up against a whole town trying to kill them... except this town is actually composed entirly of orc soldiers, goblin spies, and monsters of all sorts who are just pretending to be peasants and school children (there are innocent people there as well who have no idea that this is all a ruse and may join in when they see someone trying to massacre all their 'fellow townsfolk').

Keep in mind that while dungeons tend to be broken into rooms and have narrow corridors and doorways... a village has big open spaces which makes combat really bad if you're up against a whole community out for your blood.


Thus, your task is to make it thorugh a whole bunch of training grounds full of soldiers ready to infiltrate the societies on the matierial plane, take them over and have the demon rule the world. Kill the demon and stop it from happening.