Demishadow > 100% Real - why, how do?

[Quertus]

I figure that the "how" is pretty trivially answered by a simple search, but I thought someone might enjoy adding it here for completeness.

My real question is, why? What is the big benefit of casting illusory copies of spells? Why not just cast real spells? Why go through hoops to make illusions that are more real, instead of using the real thing?

[MaxiDuRaritry]

I figure that the "how" is pretty trivially answered by a simple search, not thought someone might enjoy adding it here for completeness.

My real question is, why? What is the big benefit of casting illusory copies of spells? Why not just cast real spells? Why go through hoops to make illusions that are more real, instead of using the real thing?Because illusion spells are INCREDIBLY versatile. For instance, an optimized illusionist/shadowcraft mage gets a ridiculous number of options in his repertoire, and all for the cost of Heighten Spell and silent image. Every single sorcerer or wizard conjuration (summoning), conjuration (creation), and evocation spell running off a single 1st level spell (and done spontaneously, to boot) is amazing.

[tyckspoon]

Because Shadow spells are generally much more versatile. Shadow Conjurations can be any (Creation) or (Summoning) spell. Shadow Evocation can be any evocation. And if you're a Shadowcraft Mage (which you presumably are if you're doing the 100% or greater shadow reality trick) your Heightened Silent Images can be any (Creation), (Summoning), or Evocation spell. Considering the versatility of the Summoning and Creation subschools as well as the not-blasting aspects of Evocation (most Force spells are Evocations) you can get like 80% of the utility of a standard Wizard minus all the "which of these spells will I need today and how many will I need" guesswork or the "use Divinations to pester your DM into giving you the adventure notes" tactic. You will likely need to become intimately familiar with the various Summon X options lists as well as the more unique "Summon this specific creature" things, however.

(The advantage of getting at least 100% shadow effectiveness is that it no longer matters whether or not your victims realize it's a shadow spell. The attraction of getting over 100% is being able to argue that succeeding a save actually makes the spell *more effective*; it's a neat inversion of the game's usual logic.)

[Kayblis]

Usually, it's a case of versatility. You get a spell prepared as "shadow spell level X" and turn that into whatever you need at the moment. It's a more flexible version of Sorcerer spontaneity, you can cast any spell from a couple schools from there, not just the 2 or 3 spells you chose 10 levels ago. It also means you're never constrained to a playstyle.

The over 100% quasireality is a fun side effect - you hurt someone more if they see the true shade of your spell, while remaining ignorant is better for them. It's like an endritch horror-ish mechanic. Summons get a boost to HP regardless of saves, so it's actually better than summoning itself.

[Telonius]

I figure that the "how" is pretty trivially answered by a simple search, not thought someone might enjoy adding it here for completeness.

My real question is, why? What is the big benefit of casting illusory copies of spells? Why not just cast real spells? Why go through hoops to make illusions that are more real, instead of using the real thing?

It's a huge increase in versatility to fixed-list or limited-spells-known casters (Sorcerers in particular). If you learn just a single low-level spell, you effectively get two entire schools of magic. You never have to learn another Evocation or Conjuration spell ever again. You can then spend the rest of your Spells Known on other useful things.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

It's a huge increase in versatility to fixed-list or limited-spells-known casters (Sorcerers in particular). If you learn just a single low-level spell, you effectively get two entire schools of magic. You never have to learn another Evocation or Conjuration spell ever again. You can then spend the rest of your Spells Known on other useful things.You still need to learn actual conjuration (teleportation) spells. And you have to take shadowcraft mage.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

As others have said, versatility, but it's even better than that. A Shadowcraft Mage can use a Heightened Silent Image to emulate Evocation and Conjuration (Creation/Summoning) spells, instead of needing to prepare (Greater) Shadow Evocation/Conjuration. With Spell Mastery + Signature Spell, you can spontaneously cast your Heightened Silent Image by losing a prepared spell of the appropriate level. So not only can you pick whatever spell you emulate when you cast it, you can prepare completely different spells and convert them into your shadow illusion whenever you need to.

With Earth Spell (and sandals made from stone slabs) you get a free +1 Heighten level, which means the drawback of Shadow Illusion (needing to use an illusion spell one level higher than the one being emulated) is completely negated. On top of that, Earth Spell boosts your caster level equal to the number of levels you heightened it, which is a significant boost for overcoming SR if nothing else. Plus the Gnome Wizard 1 substitution level makes Silent Image a cantrip for you, and with Residual Magic, every other shadow illusion you cast gets heightened completely free and you only spend a cantrip slot to cast it.

In addition to all those things, your Greater Spell Focus feat and Master Specialist features apply to every offensive spell you cast, because they're all shadow illusions. If you dip Shadow Adept all of those feats apply to all your offensive spells. If you take Shadowcrafter those features also benefit all of your shadow illusions.

Here's a shadow illusion reality breakdown:
Spell Level - Shadowcraft Mage (RoS)
20% - Shadowcraft Mage 5
20% - Enhanced Shadow Reality feat (Dragon #325)
20% - Shadowcrafter 7 (Und)

So if you spend a 3rd level spell slot for a Heightened Silent Image, Earth Spell makes it 4th level and it's 100% real. If you spend a 5th level slot, it's 120% real. A 9th level slot makes a 160% real shadow illusion.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

In addition to all those things, your Greater Spell Focus feat and Master Specialist features apply to every offensive spell you cast, because they're all shadow illusions.If your spells are more than 100% real if your foes make their saves, you don't want (Greater) Spell Focus to apply.

See if you can use bestow curse and greater bestow curse to apply massive penalties to your silent image spells.

Any other debuffs to nega-fy your silent image DCs? A flaw, mayhap?

[redking]

Can 100% shadow reality be done effectively without earth spell? What would a no cheese build look like?

[sreservoir]

Can 100% shadow reality be done effectively without earth spell? What would a no cheese build look like?

The Shadowcraft Mage 5 feature make shades 100% and a 9th-heightened image 110% real out of the box.

[Kayblis]

Can 100% shadow reality be done effectively without earth spell? What would a no cheese build look like?

A no-cheese build would just be Wizard 7/Shadowcraft Mage 5/Whatever 8. That's the minimal 'usable' version, with a concluded PrC for the +20% reality. A better, not cheesy version would include Shadowcrafter 7, for an extra 20%. It still has no cheese. Add in the Dragon Mag feat for +20%, and it's still not cheesy. You're just picking the options that relate to your main trick, like picking Archery feats on an archer.

Least cheese: Use Heighten Spell to cast Heightened Silent Image instead of other Illusion spells. Saves on spell slots. This is the baseline utility people assume with Shadowcraft Mage.

Lesser cheese: Use Earth Spell(requires Earth Sense as pre-req) to get an extra +1 level from Heighten, so you can get a level X spell by spending a level X slot, instead of the usual X-1. Also, add the Gnome Illusionist variant, so Silent Image is a cantrip for you.

Medium cheese: Add in Arcane Thesis to Silent Image, so you can cast all your shadow spells with metamagic for cheap. This doesn't apply to Heighten, but does to everything else.

On the same cheese level, get Sanctum Spell and an Acorn of Far Travel linked to a tree inside your sanctum. You can now cast spells one level above the slot you spent, when combined with Earth Spell. You can now cast Fireball out of a 2nd level slot, for example.


Greater cheese: Get the Residual Magic feat. It lets you Heighten your Silent Image for free in a consecutive round, so you only have to use the Heightened slot once every two rounds. You can then Heighten a cantrip slot, or a slot with other MM alreadly applied, like Twin or Repeat. At this point you'll be casting tons of high-level spells with over 100% reality with your low-level slots. If you need to go farther than that, I'm sure you can find uses for Shadow Genesis and Shadow Node Genesis.

[Ramza00]

I figure that the "how" is pretty trivially answered by a simple search, but I thought someone might enjoy adding it here for completeness.

My real question is, why? What is the big benefit of casting illusory copies of spells? Why not just cast real spells? Why go through hoops to make illusions that are more real, instead of using the real thing?

Because unless you are playing pathfinder and have one of the 3 bonded objects that gives you spontaneous spells

Amulet of Magecraft: Universalist Wizard but each day spontaneously made an entire school spontaneous
Necromancers Athame. Similar item for Necromancy.
Spectacles, Annihilation. Similar item for Transmutation.

This is one of a great ways to be able to cast any spell of a school spontaneously with full effect.

(There are other ways with 3.5 such as Uncanny Forethought, yes that takes extra actions with full round instead of standard but the amount of versatility it gives is huge.)


You still need to learn actual conjuration (teleportation) spells. And you have to take shadowcraft mage.

Magic Items still exist to help ease this burden.

Dozens of cheap short range teleport items. Custom Runestaffs with UMD, or Belt of Wide Earth which does not even need UMD to teleport twice a day by sacrificing a 5th level spell slot.

[Vaern]

As a side note, using shadow evocation or shadow conjuration to create the illusion of a spell effectively eliminates the material component and focus costs for the effect. This lets you do things like spam shadowy sepia snake sigils absolutely everywhere at no cost except your spell slots or make sure your party has persistent light sources via shadow evocationed continual flames or glowing orbs.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

As a side note, using shadow evocation or shadow conjuration to create the illusion of a spell effectively eliminates the material component and focus costs for the effect. This lets you do things like spam shadowy sepia snake sigils absolutely everywhere at no cost except your spell slots or make sure your party has persistent light sources via shadow evocationed continual flames or glowing orbs.Shadow contingency!

[Darg]

Shadow contingency!

The best part is it isn't affected by the "You may only have one contingency spell" rider.

[Jervis]

Can someone please explain how this heighten spell silent image to make any spell 100% real thing even works? Im aware of shadow evocation and shadow conjuration but how does this fit together?

[Crake]

Can someone please explain how this heighten spell silent image to make any spell 100% real thing even works? Im aware of shadow evocation and shadow conjuration but how does this fit together?

its a class ability of the shadowcraft mage that allows any illusion spell to effectively act as a shadow spell of equivilent level. Thus, heightening a 1st level illusion works for any level of spells.

[Vaern]

Can someone please explain how this heighten spell silent image to make any spell 100% real thing even works? Im aware of shadow evocation and shadow conjuration but how does this fit together?

Shadowcraft Mage gets an ability at level 3 called shadow illusion that lets then use some Illusion (figment) spells as though they were shadow evocation or shadow conjuration, changing its descriptor from (figment) to (shadow). This ability is what they're using to turn silent image into a higher level version of shadow evocation/conjuration. An illusion spell used this way is 10% real per spell level, making a spell heightened to 9th level 90% real.
Shadowcraft Mage also gets an ability at level 5 that makes the effects of shadow evocation and shadow conjuration spells, as well as spells turned into shadow evocation and conjuration effects by their shadow illusionn ability, 20% more real. This makes your 9th-level heightened silent image spell 110% real.

[Khedrac]

Shadow Conjuration is actually a lot more useful than Shadow Evocation because there is a significant difference in the spell description that people tend to forget:

Nondamaging effects have normal effects except against those who disbelieve them. Against disbelievers, they have no effect.
Since one automatically disbelieves one's own illusions things like shadow evocation: contingency cannot work.

[Jack_Simth]

Shadow Conjuration is actually a lot more useful than Shadow Evocation because there is a significant difference in the spell description that people tend to forget:

Since one automatically disbelieves one's own illusions things like shadow evocation: contingency cannot work.

Sorta. You don't need to save against your own illusions (you cast it, so you have absolute proof it isn't real). However: You can also voluntarily give up a saving throw and get the spell's full effect.

[Kayblis]

Shadow Conjuration is actually a lot more useful than Shadow Evocation because there is a significant difference in the spell description that people tend to forget:

Since one automatically disbelieves one's own illusions things like shadow evocation: contingency cannot work.

You can choose to fail a save. Which side takes precedence depends on the DM, but usually it's left to player choice. This is also a double feature, because you can autosucceed on your save vs your own Shadow Resilient Sphere, so you can ignore the force barrier around you while it still blocks anyone that fails their saves. There are many effects like that with BFC.

[Jack_Simth]

If your spells are more than 100% real if your foes make their saves, you don't want (Greater) Spell Focus to apply.

See if you can use bestow curse and greater bestow curse to apply massive penalties to your silent image spells.

Any other debuffs to nega-fy your silent image DCs? A flaw, mayhap?

There are some gotchas with dragging your save DC into the negatives:
1) The same DC is used for the duplicated spell effect.
2) There's various things that turn Fort/Ref/Will Partial into Fort/Ref/Will negates (namely Mettle and Evasion).

So a Shadowcraft Mage who's tanked his save DC has issues when facing off against a Hexblade with a Ring of Evasion.

[Quertus]

A no-cheese build would just be Wizard 7/Shadowcraft Mage 5/Whatever 8. That's the minimal 'usable' version, with a concluded PrC for the +20% reality. A better, not cheesy version would include Shadowcrafter 7, for an extra 20%. It still has no cheese. Add in the Dragon Mag feat for +20%, and it's still not cheesy. You're just picking the options that relate to your main trick, like picking Archery feats on an archer.

Least cheese: Use Heighten Spell to cast Heightened Silent Image instead of other Illusion spells. Saves on spell slots. This is the baseline utility people assume with Shadowcraft Mage.

Lesser cheese: Use Earth Spell(requires Earth Sense as pre-req) to get an extra +1 level from Heighten, so you can get a level X spell by spending a level X slot, instead of the usual X-1. Also, add the Gnome Illusionist variant, so Silent Image is a cantrip for you.

Medium cheese: Add in Arcane Thesis to Silent Image, so you can cast all your shadow spells with metamagic for cheap. This doesn't apply to Heighten, but does to everything else.

On the same cheese level, get Sanctum Spell and an Acorn of Far Travel linked to a tree inside your sanctum. You can now cast spells one level above the slot you spent, when combined with Earth Spell. You can now cast Fireball out of a 2nd level slot, for example.


Greater cheese: Get the Residual Magic feat. It lets you Heighten your Silent Image for free in a consecutive round, so you only have to use the Heightened slot once every two rounds. You can then Heighten a cantrip slot, or a slot with other MM alreadly applied, like Twin or Repeat. At this point you'll be casting tons of high-level spells with over 100% reality with your low-level slots. If you need to go farther than that, I'm sure you can find uses for Shadow Genesis and Shadow Node Genesis.

So, "cheese" was defined to me as using something not for its intended purpose. In that regard, I can see calling that use of Acorn of Far Travel cheese… but what's your thought process on the rest of those classifications?

[Necroticplague]

I figure that the "how" is pretty trivially answered by a simple search, but I thought someone might enjoy adding it here for completeness.

My real question is, why? What is the big benefit of casting illusory copies of spells? Why not just cast real spells? Why go through hoops to make illusions that are more real, instead of using the real thing?

Because a shadow spell can act as a wildcard, either when you prepare it, or when you learn it.

Let's say I don't know whether I'll need a Black or a Summon Monster. Prepping Shades covers both.

[AvatarVecna]

So, "cheese" was defined to me as using something not for its intended purpose. In that regard, I can see calling that use of Acorn of Far Travel cheese… but what's your thought process on the rest of those classifications?

It's difficult to conclusively prove it was or wasn't intended to work any particular way, but the "this goes against designer intent" angle requires that the people who wrote Races Of Stone are incompetent and didn't communicate with each other. "Shadowcraft Mage" is a gnome-specific PrC gives spell-replication and quasireality based on actual spell level. "Earth Spell" takes Heighten (a metamagic not particularly useful to most casters, but becomes absurdly powerful on ScM) and gives it an extra effective level. "Gnome Illusionist ACF", among doing other cool things, lowers the actual spell level of several illusion spells - including specifically all five spells that the Shadowcraft Mage ability in question applies to. It only applies to five spells, and it has effects based on the actual spell level, and gnome illusionist lowers the level of all of them.

All three of these things are in the same book. What are the odds that this is an accident? That three or more people just happened to be making new mechanics based around the actual level of spells? Two of which were specifically about the actual level of illusion spells? These specific five illusion spells? It's possible. Maybe they didn't intend for these things to be combined. Certainly there's a lack of proof that they did intend for them to be combined - the example Shadowcraft Mage is a sorcerer who doesn't have Heighten Spell or Earth Spell (which, if they did, would be rock-solid proof it was designer intent).

[Crake]

Shadow Conjuration is actually a lot more useful than Shadow Evocation because there is a significant difference in the spell description that people tend to forget:

Since one automatically disbelieves one's own illusions things like shadow evocation: contingency cannot work.

This seems directly contradictory to the line earlier:

"If the disbelieved attack has a special effect other than damage, that effect is one-fifth as strong (if applicable) or only 20% likely to occur."

[Kayblis]

So, "cheese" was defined to me as using something not for its intended purpose. In that regard, I can see calling that use of Acorn of Far Travel cheese… but what's your thought process on the rest of those classifications?

It's really a muddy definition. I use it to mean 'using a feature for something it wasn't intended for', or mixing different systems in non-obvious ways. It's not actually tied to power, but it generally yields more power than the """intended use""". Also, to a lesser degree, how likely it is to be allowed in a real game.

As an example, picking Leap Attack and Shock Trooper to raise PA damage by a lot with no penalty to-hit isn't cheesy. It's the intended use for the feats. It's the basis of the Ubercharger, and a more powerful combo than most other melee choices by itself. But it's not cheese.

- In the cases I cited, No-cheese is just picking feats and abilities for their intended purpose. It's like the above example.
- Then Least Cheese is using a common feat for an arguably intended effect, because the ScM uses "spell level" as its wording. As Heighten Spell is not a very common MM to have unless you're specifically using spell level for stuff, you could say it's a reasonable assumption this is intended.
- Lesser Cheese is where you start bypassing the restrictions imposed by your class feature. It's not by a lot, but you're working above the efficiency level of Shadow Conj/Evoc spells, which I interpret as the intended power for the feature. I set the ACF here kinda haphazardly, because you don't have real use for it before now.
- Medium Cheese is where the building blocks start stacking. You're casting a single spell(cantrip Silent Illusion) instead of half a dozen Illusion spells, and now are applying a big boost to that singular spell, which translates into a spell-specific big boost applied to almost all your spells. This is not intended mechanics, and is a power boost that many builds can't actually get even when optimizing for it, not to mention you lose nothing. At the same level of cheese, there's another grade of restriction bypassing, but this time it lets you cast spells with a slot lower than itself, which is clearly not intended mechanics or balanced for normal play. This is the realm of mid-high PO, lots of power and versatility by jumping through a couple hoops.
- Greater Cheese is where you get the unintended mechanics use to completely ignore the rules that restrict your character in a meaningful way. It's the 'cast 9th-level spells for free as soon as I get this feature' camp. It's doable by level 8, and it's too strong for any common table. At this point, you can't really play with other people in a PO game, so it's reserved for TO discussion and the odd TO game based around breaking the world. Is it the most absurd build ever? Certainly not. But it's too far above the normal level of play, and it combines many features in ways no dev would allow for if they had the foresight.

You could say anything up to Lesser Cheese is what a dev would see online after release and go "Huh, neat. Didn't even think of that". Anything above it would cause a reaction like "This is bull, we need to patch it somehow".

[Necroticplague]

Can 100% shadow reality be done effectively without earth spell? What would a no cheese build look like?

Powerful Shadow Magic itself does it for high-level shadow magics straight with no cheese, so a straightforward sorceror/SCM has the ability. All cheese does is lower the spell slot you need to use.

[Darg]

It's difficult to conclusively prove it was or wasn't intended to work any particular way, but the "this goes against designer intent" angle requires that the people who wrote Races Of Stone are incompetent and didn't communicate with each other. "Shadowcraft Mage" is a gnome-specific PrC gives spell-replication and quasireality based on actual spell level. "Earth Spell" takes Heighten (a metamagic not particularly useful to most casters, but becomes absurdly powerful on ScM) and gives it an extra effective level. "Gnome Illusionist ACF", among doing other cool things, lowers the actual spell level of several illusion spells - including specifically all five spells that the Shadowcraft Mage ability in question applies to. It only applies to five spells, and it has effects based on the actual spell level, and gnome illusionist lowers the level of all of them.

All three of these things are in the same book. What are the odds that this is an accident? That three or more people just happened to be making new mechanics based around the actual level of spells? Two of which were specifically about the actual level of illusion spells? These specific five illusion spells? It's possible. Maybe they didn't intend for these things to be combined. Certainly there's a lack of proof that they did intend for them to be combined - the example Shadowcraft Mage is a sorcerer who doesn't have Heighten Spell or Earth Spell (which, if they did, would be rock-solid proof it was designer intent).

If only shadowcasters received as much coordination.

[MaxiDuRaritry]

If only shadowcasters received as much coordination."Shadow-what?"
-- 95% of the dev team. Probably.