How Do You Create An Illusionist Enemy NPC?

[Scorponok]

Besides liberal uses of the image spells, what other techniques are in the bag of tricks for a magic caster who wants to be known as an Illusionist? Is sorcerer the best if you are going for quantity of spells vs. versatility?

Also, when you, as a PC hear that you are going up against "a BBEG with two powerful illusionists as his partners", what are some of the things you would expect in a fight with them?

I've been told casters that focus on illusions can be very powerful, but it depends on how well the player plays them.

[Divide by Zero]

Depending on how paranoid you want your players to be, try prefacing all your descriptions with things like "you think" or "it appears to be." Make them distrust their own senses.

[Scorponok]

One of the easy ways you can hurt the PCs is to dig a pit, cover it with spikes, then cast a Silent Image over it and wait for them to enter the area. Of course, the Barbarian or Fighter will charge in, and step right through the illusion. Now that I think about it, it's one of the more nasty traps you can make and the bottom of the pit can vary, from being filled with acid to being a 40 foot drop, depending on how much you really want them to hurt. Not even sure there is a reflex save to avoid something like that, by RAW.

[Rainshine]

Walls, floors, figures, statues. Use it for traps, as mentioned above. If your players are quick, they'll usually start testing all the floors. Tell them to do so they now are moving at half speed, then have illusory walls with ambushes, statues that aren't really there (person inside? Or boulder/spiked pole on a track that will smash the party?), doors in rooms to lure people into a locked room that fills with acid/gas, etc. Use the slow advance to allow the enemy to line up shots, etc. Maybe have one of the illusionists loudly laugh at the party as they stumble into another ambush, as he vacates the area -- a chortle that they will soon learn to loathe and long to destroy. Piles of treasure that doesn't exist, maybe a stationary monster underneath?
And, if you are OK with SoD spells, Phantasmal Killer is an illusion spell.

[Dravda]

What's really going to make or break this idea is the tactical execution. My habit is to always use real-world tactics and ideas in D&D to improve the verisimilitude. In this case, this old '60s US Army manual on booby traps (https://archive.org/details/FM_5_31_Booby_Traps_) contains some diabolical tips.

A few insights from the book...

1) Use an obvious trap to distract from a cunningly-hidden trap. If there's a pit in the floor, hide it with an illusion and then create an illusion of a poorly-concealed trap on the solid ground near it. The PCs will avoid the false "trap" and stumble into the real one.

2) Mix real threats with illusory ones. One real trap or monster, and the party will be forced to respond to the next dozen illusions as if they were real. Similarly, you can fill a room with enemies, half of which are illusory. If there's only a 50-50 chance that the party targets a real enemy in a round, you've just imposed a 50% miss chance across the board.

3) Complacency kills. Every enemy they face should be an illusion...for the first half of the dungeon. When they start getting complacent and ignoring the scary-looking monsters, one of them abruptly disembowels the mage.

4) The most effective illusions are those that force the enemy to change their behavior, rather than harming them directly. If the party comes under fire by archers on the opposite side of a large room, they can't simply close the distance and take them out in melee: after all, they've learned by now that they can't trust their own senses that the path is clear. You have used illusions to teach the party not to charge forward, and thus they are unwilling to do it even when it's their best option.

[Kelb_Panthera]

A fun one I came up with a while back is to use a shadowcraft mage to create an entire vila out of permanent images and programmed images that were all partially real and, to a certain extent, completely under the gnome's mental control.

Once you're inside, the whole thing can be changed at a whim and into basically anything you can imagine.

[Dravda]

Diabolical. Perfect time for a psychotic recreation of "Home Alone."

[Gildedragon]

One of the easy ways you can hurt the PCs is to dig a pit, cover it with spikes, then cast a Silent Image over it and wait for them to enter the area. Of course, the Barbarian or Fighter will charge in, and step right through the illusion. Now that I think about it, it's one of the more nasty traps you can make and the bottom of the pit can vary, from being filled with acid to being a 40 foot drop, depending on how much you really want them to hurt. Not even sure there is a reflex save to avoid something like that, by RAW.

Have a pit trap, cover it with an illusion of a pit trap, they think it is safe to walk on >:3 This is better if they have run into other illusory-pit pit traps

have the pit be double long. On one side it is covered with a normal to lowish pit trap, on the far end illusory floor covers the pit. They jump or fly over, land, and FALL

lots of easy to disbelieve illusions; then a very obviously shadow shadow-illusion with very high pseudoreality.

illusory fogs and walls atop revolving plataforms to spin people around without them wholly noticing

For illusionist: go wizard, illusions are best when paired with some real effects, and thus you might want a wide variety of spells. Plus having the spellbooks be all illusioned up would be great

---

as to what is expected: Mazes/puzzles, having to fight shadow images of the party, the baddy isn't the baddy...

[Darth Ultron]

Illusions are tricky, and it really depends on how you play the game, both by mechanics and fluff.

1. Mechanics: If your playing a light pop and chips type of soft-core game with ''character builds'', ''max hp per level'' and ''loss other then character death'' and other such things to make the game ''safe fun'' then illusions are really no different then any other mechanical game effect. It's just ''effect A'' does a ''-2 penalty'', just like ''effect b or c'' and it does not matter and the ''safe game rolls on''....

2.Mechanics. If your playing a dark and gritty hard core game with senseless character death, unfair rules and other such things that make the game ''hard fun'' then illusions can have a huge game effect of causing characters and players all sorts of ''hard fun''. When a character touches something dangerous hidden by an illusion and had their left hand distengerated by a semi-permanent effect that utterly ruins the characters super uber two handed awesome melee combat optimized build...then your into very hard core illusions that can upset the game...

3.Fluff. This all depends on how much fluff and role paying you have in a game as opposed to roll playing. This is where you disregard the utterly lame and useless illusion spells that do pointless mechanical things like ''make a character so scared they get a -2 to rolls''. The focus here is much more the real effect on the player, not the player sort of pretending the illusion had an effect on their character by having a mechanical thing. This is where illusions rule, in a real through the looking glass environment. Where the players don't know what is ''game real'' or not and are directly effected by things in the game.

[weckar]

If you're going the shadow route, make use of the fact that disbelieving is an all-or-nothing situation. For instance: create an illusion in a room of a floor with a dragon on it. Either they face the dragon as a regular creature, or they disbelieve and fall through the floor, into a much more dangerous situation. One of the few cases where you want your realness as low as possible, and you will condition your players not to roll to disbelieve even if offered (or purposely fail)...

[Gildedragon]

If you're going the shadow route, make use of the fact that disbelieving is an all-or-nothing situation. For instance: create an illusion in a room of a floor with a dragon on it. Either they face the dragon as a regular creature, or they disbelieve and fall through the floor, into a much more dangerous situation. One of the few cases where you want your realness as low as possible, and you will condition your players not to roll to disbelieve even if offered (or purposely fail)...

Or, if you can't figure out how to make a floor and dragon from the same Conjuration spell: Create Trap lets you create a scythe trap, if they disbelieve it: to the pit with them, if they believe it: trap!

Or Nightmare Terrain: fail and entangled, succeed and into the hole

Or Shadow Create Water: A deep lake full of murky shadow water. No boat will cross it (objects automatically succeed on the will save), so they have to swim. From beneath the lake you have a series of traps shooting up. The traps can attack freely... or have a few (shadow) skeletons attacking with reach weapons. Oooooh or shadow piranhas! separate save to disbelieve the piranhas. If they disbelieve the water they will see the piranhas just floating around in the air, will probably then disbelieve the piranhas; but while the water is v. low pseudoreality, the piranhas are high pseudoreality.

[daremetoidareyo]

Here's a half drow that does combat illusions with two flaws: http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=5111.msg73307#msg73307

You can always swap the 6th level of fighter out for swashbuckler, take the arcane stunt ACF to get blur, and instead of two weapon fighting, take trickery devotion. That should make you a pretty adept combat "illusionist"

[nedz]

The best illusions are the ones where the mark doesn't even consider that there could be an illusion, and doesn't ever interact with them until it is too late.

Going for the low hanging fruit is also good: being charged by horsemen - target the horses.

But really though - it's all about trolling the mark; and I can't teach you how to do that.

[weckar]

Going for the low hanging fruit is also good: being charged by horsemen - target the horses.Current party Ranger has FE:animal for just that purpose.

Another idea is to illusion EVERYTHING, including things that don't need it. Far too often illusions only hide/represent important things.

[Gildedragon]

Current party Ranger has FE:animal for just that purpose.

Another idea is to illusion EVERYTHING, including things that don't need it. Far too often illusions only hide/represent important things.

And, of course, don't forget to illusion the illusions.
Magic aura the place from head to toe, every pebble radiating some magic, every illusion made to read as nonmagical...

[Janthkin]

Is sorcerer the best if you are going for quantity of spells vs. versatility? Beguiler/Shadowcraft Mage ends up with a ton of versatility, and since Shadowcraft Mage really just relies on Heightened Silent Image, you're not missing out too much by not having some of the higher-level Illusions.

[OldTrees1]

If I heard the BBEG had 2 Illusionist lieutenants I would assume:
1) They would both specialize. One would focus on external illusions (illusions -> senses -> mind) and the other on internal illusions (senses -> illusions -> mind). One would make us unable to trust our senses and the other would make us unable to trust our minds.

2) But what if they knew we knew they knew? The illusions would be interspersed with reality. If we see a pit trap, is the pit an illusion hiding a nearby pit or are we expected to be betrayed by our very suspicion?

Essentially it is like playing Rock Paper Scissors vs 2 enemies and every loss is a triggered trap.


As a DM I would focus more on a prepared battlefield with preset illusion strategies. Then the PCs ability to navigate/overcome the illusions would influence their ability to deal with the BBEG.

So:
Number of Spells instead of versatility
Mental illusions in addition to sensed illusions (although landscaping spells are useful for preparation too)

[Gildedragon]

Is this antagonist city based or more of a open country type?

True seeing is probably bad for you: you want invisible spell and make a ton of fogs that way

[Scorponok]

Is this antagonist city based or more of a open country type?

True seeing is probably bad for you: you want invisible spell and make a ton of fogs that way

I haven't planned that far into the adventure. This is more of a theorycraft question anyways. But since you asked, most of the fights have been BBEG in a hideout (mostly caves and abandoned mines) and setting traps for the heroes, mixed with many low level minions to chip and whittle away at the spells and HP of the party and then fighting them at the end in their weakened state.

Also, for the spell Silent Image, since it is four 10-ft. cubes + one 10-ft. cube/level, can the illusionist decide to create a squadron of 16+ soldiers, each less than 10 ft tall? (They would all be silent) The d20SRD spell descriptor says "an object, creature, or force, as visualized by you." Is the "an" a hard singular thing (such as a single dinosaur) or is creating a lot of smaller creatures allowed? (Such as a swarm of bats.)

[Scorponok]

As a DM I would focus more on a prepared battlefield with preset illusion strategies. Then the PCs ability to navigate/overcome the illusions would influence their ability to deal with the BBEG.


An idea I had was to have the BBEG capture some peasants and just keep them in cages -the real peasants in one cage and the illusionists would disguise themselves as peasants in another cage (unlocked). But the twist would be during the encounter with the BBEG, the illusionists would make illusions of powerful mages fighting the PCs while they would be doing the controlling of the illusions and casting spells as peasants.

Another idea would be a cage full of peasants falling in the water after their rope is cut, and of course, the PCs would try and rescue them, but the "water" is actually a vat of acid and the peasants are just illusions of people drowning.

[Gildedragon]

I haven't planned that far into the adventure. This is more of a theorycraft question anyways. But since you asked, most of the fights have been BBEG in a hideout (mostly caves and abandoned mines) and setting traps for the heroes, mixed with many low level minions to chip and whittle away at the spells and HP of the party and then fighting them at the end in their weakened state.

Also, for the spell Silent Image, since it is four 10-ft. cubes + one 10-ft. cube/level, can the illusionist decide to create a squadron of 16+ soldiers, each less than 10 ft tall? (They would all be silent) The d20SRD spell descriptor says "an object, creature, or force, as visualized by you." Is the "an" a hard singular thing (such as a single dinosaur) or is creating a lot of smaller creatures allowed? (Such as a swarm of bats.)

Away from civilization it is. Consider investing in the Shadow Landscape spell... or a device that casts it 1/day

First: don't forget, the pseudoreal silent image is in imitation of specific spells. You can still make silent images of whatever you like, but they won't have the pseudoreality. But you can use Summon Undead to call forth a bunch of skellies or zombies that look like ordinary people (they ought get a save to notice they are in fact, zombies... and a separate save to realize they are shadow-zombies). That or Shadow Guardians & Phantom Guardians (RoDestiny 167-8)

Second: you can summon a squad. the squad never wanders beyond the limits of the spell...

[Scorponok]

Away from civilization it is. Consider investing in the Shadow Landscape spell... or a device that casts it 1/day

Second: you can summon a squad. the squad never wanders beyond the limits of the spell...

Druid 9 is high though. I usually play only up to level 10 and my NPCs have around a level 12 max cap.

Also, theorizing rules lawyering...

Player: You can't make an illusion of a squadron!

DM: Yes I can.

Player: No you can't. The rules says it has to be AN object, creature, or force!

DM: It is.

Player: No it isn't. A squadron isn't "A" creature, it's several!

DM: It isn't a creature, but a force...DELTA FORCE!

[Barbarian Horde]

Um make shadow illusionist at 120%. When your PC discover that they can make a will save prey that they do. For the tendrils of shadows shall prove to be 20% more real then the original as they have removed the veil and gained sight into the true monstrosity that it truly is.

[Gildedragon]

Druid 9 is high though. I usually play only up to level 10 and my NPCs have around a level 12 max cap.

Also, theorizing rules lawyering...

Player: You can't make an illusion of a squadron!

DM: Yes I can.

Player: No you can't. The rules says it has to be AN object, creature, or force!

DM: It is.

Player: No it isn't. A squadron isn't "A" creature, it's several!

DM: It isn't a creature, but a force...DELTA FORCE!

Hahahaha yesss.
Alternatively: A Human(oid) Mob is a swarm, a swarm is an individual "creature" so maybe one can't make a squad, but one can make a mob.