Best use of the "Image" Spells?

[inertia709]

In the right hands, the "Image" spells (silent, minor and major image) can be some of the most powerful and versatile spells in the game. So I was wondering: what are some of the best (or most hilarious) uses of the image spells? How have they saved your ass or stopped the enemy in their tracks?

[Quietus]

Drawing bad mustaches on all the enemies.

[navar100]

Illusionary walls, mostly. However, the most effective was when the party needed to sneak up on a tower at night guarded by skeletons. I used Silent Image on the path near the tower to show the pathway as empty while the party was walking on the path towards the tower. Because of the distance involved, I needed to cast another Silent Image (I'm playing a Sorcerer) off to the side to show the landscape as nobody there while the party walked right past the skeletons. I used Ghost Sound to enhance a bit the sounds of the babbling brook nearby to camouflage the noise we'd have to make while walking by them.

Because the distance was short enough within the second casting, when we were past the skeletons I used the Silent Image to mimic the landbridge we were walking on as empty. The party stopped when we spotted two living guards walking onto the bridge from the tower and stopping in the middle. Keeping the illusion up of an otherwise unoccuppied bridge, we overheard the guards talking and waited them out until they went back into the tower. We then continued on our way.

[Zaq]

One time, in a nautical campaign, I used Silent Image to look like I created a huge-ass whirlpool between us and the hostile ship approaching us. (OK, it's dicey whether a figment can do that, but eh, the GM let it fly, and nobody thought of it at the time.) Sure, they just steered around it, but it bought us a buff round. (Which wasn't enough to stop the thrashing we got, of course, but that's another story . . .)

[Kantolin]

One of my favorite sequences was the 'wolves party'. The druid summoned wolves and had a wolf companion, so I 'summoned wolves' to join with the wolves, and utilized illusions to turn other people into wolves.

Then I started turning actual party members invisible, which then was a fun game in and of itself. That became an exceptionally fun encounter. ^_^ Even when the enemy barbarian made a lucky guess (via open die roll and everything) and whapped the actually-a-gnome-but-looks-like-a-wolf me with his greataxe.

I'm then a fan of taking natural terrain (Say, a lake) and putting an illusion over them (say, of normal grass), causing people to walk into them. Best use of this was when a wide array of the enemy necromancer's undead army started merrily walking off a cliff to their (re)death. Got better when the bard dashed in and silence'd the necromancer proper when he showed up to figure out what the heck. ^_^

[Qwertystop]

Ever read the Xanth books?

Anything Iris does for a combat-related or tactical purpose.

[Drachasor]

In one campaign we found out a goblin army was coming to invade. So my wizard (who was aiming for gishiness) made a knowledge religion check to figure out a good god-like entity that gives goblines the heebee jeebees and was an ill omen from their own myths. It ended up it was some sort of Black (Hell) Dog sort of thing.

So we killed a few scouting parties. I had to disfigure the bodies* so it looked more or less like some giant dog tore into them. Then I did a few sightings with Silent Image from afar. Naturally the leadership of the goblins wasn't fooled, but it seemed to be good enough for the rank and file. It didn't stop the attack, but when I used it again during the big battle it really scared the crap out of them.

They are also good for making big trees and such to hide inside off. An illusionary duck blind, if you will. Since anyone inside can easily disbelief via interaction, everyone can see out.

*No one else wanted to do it.

[Tvtyrant]

Shadowcraft mage is I believe strictly the best use of image spells.

[CockroachTeaParty]

I once heard a story about a group that did something fun with Silent Image. The party snuck up on a camp of orcs playing cards. The illusionist cast a Silent Image of cards falling out of one of the orc's sleeves. The orcs then proceeded to get into a big fight, and wound up killing each other. :smallbiggrin:

Some of the higher level ones that can mimic heat are excellent for making things seem on fire, or making fake 'lava.' Very few things are willing to enter such an area without good reason, and even if they cast defensive spells to protect themselves from fire, all they've wound up doing is wasting resources.

Faking summons is another excellent use of illusions. One time, a Bone Devil used his illusion powers to make it look like he had summoned a swarm of lemures. We wound up wasting several rounds trying to take care of the mooks, before we realized they did not in fact exist.

[Niceman]

In one instance we were making a foray into Underdark. Climbing down the walls of a chasm we discovered a cave and deeper inside a drow guardpost. I created a major image of our party at the mouth of the cave issuing challenge to the guards... but about twenty feet farther out past the actual ledge. Most of the guard charged into battle... and right off the ledge into the bottomless chasm below!

Most recently in a game at Gen Con our party was hiding in an inn as part of a group of rebels in a conquered town. We'd been sold out and our hideout was being raided. Everyone stood very still and I did a major image of the room we were in exactly the same, but empty. Gave us a chance to hit them with an ambush of our own.

A couple of nasty uses: Use a permanent image over a chasm or pit... but the image is exactly of the chasm or pit. For those who are used to detecting magic and such for traps and being that kind of cautious, they'll see the illusion of a chasm and recognize it's an illusion, but if they're overconfident at all they won't realize a real chasm is there and fall into it anyway.

Another is with a wall of fire or flaming pit trap or some such. Since the higher image do thermal effects, then you just give the illusion that the flames aren't giving off any heat. They assume they aren't real and go striding right in. :D

[Daftendirekt]

my 10 year old gnome illusionist used Silent Image to convince a bunch of would-be bandits that he was in fact a large black dragon.

They ran away. :smallbiggrin:

[Karoht]

Polymorph a party member into something nasty. For all intents and purposes, we will say a dragon.

Image on the person to make the now dragon'd person look just like they did before.
Think of True Seeing, the almighty counter to illusions.
They see a person before, and they see through the illusion and through the polymorph to see... a person (or at least this is how my DM ruled on it at the table when a party member pulled this trick). And they have no idea why they're taking so much damage from claw and bite attacks.

Beyond that I'm still a huge fan of invisible fire. It just has so many applications.

Toss down some illusions of green smoke, just meant to be a smoke screen really, completely harmless.
Then toss a cloudkill into the mix. Less chance that cloudkill gets dispelled because they have to sort the green stuff from the identical green stuff.

[Phloxine]

I just posted this in another thread, but I'll post it here in greater detail. It's basically a story on how I used Major Image and knowledge (Religion) to turn what was supposed to be a challenging encounter into good times. Spoilered due to its length.

In one of our concurrent campaigns, the DM suggested I should take ranks in Knowledge (religion) because it would be relevant to his particular campaign. So I did. He had also down up his own take on the Gods, and gave me some sheets with their basic information.

A year in real time down the road, we were given the task of assassinating important individuals in order to liberate a city from a totalitarian regime. One such individual was a priest of Hextor. I hadn't expected the fight to be challenging, because while there had been issues with a previous target, it was almost entirely because there was some small miscommunication as to where we actually were when we attempted our ambush.

So I didn't have a plan, but I did have Major Image prepared. When we finally got into the church, we had been heard, and the priest, who was a high level cleric, and his acolyte, were waiting for us. He had apparently even had time to place some heavy buffs on himself. Being one to enjoy making every fight entirely one sided with as few spells as possible, I turned to Major Image, and then at my sheets.

When my turn came, I started by saying that in the shadows of the room I created the illusion of a dwarf... and then continued to read off the description of Moradin. My DM went from not understanding, to noticing I was reading from a sheet, to shock at what I had just done.

The acolyte **** himself, and rather than fight a sliver of a God, he bolted to the door, where we were all standing. Because he didn't have the cleric's help he was defeated quickly. The cleric was determined to bring down Moradin. If I had the illusion actually attack, it would be obvious it was an illusion, so instead I had it ignore the cleric and made it look like the opposing God was destroying Hextor's alter.

Hextor's priest, failing all of his will saves to recognize the illusion for what it was, discharged all of his powerful spells into the illusion. Many of those spells would have been very detrimental if they had actually been used on members of the party.

Then we all rushed in and beat the crap out of a guy who was fighting nothing in a corner. He never realized he wasn't fighting a God before he was killed.

[Lapak]

They are also good for making big trees and such to hide inside off. An illusionary duck blind, if you will. Since anyone inside can easily disbelief via interaction, everyone can see out.Because everyone in the know can see out, I find that the Image spells work double duty if you use them to replicate spells like Obscuring Mist. If your friends are clued in (either an agreed-upon code word for illusions or you only USE illusions) then they can see through it just fine, but it still prevents your enemies from seeing you - and the existence of actual mist-creating spells means that they're a good chance they won't twig to the illusion, where a tree that starts shooting arrows at them will definitely give them a clue that not everything is as it appears.