Stories of (un)successful Illusion magic?

[Schwann145]

In my personal experience, Illusory spells are sooo GM-dependent that they almost never actually give the value you'd hope for.
The flip side of the coin is that, when you actually read the spell text, the spells themselves almost never pack enough oomph to get done the effect you're going for.

For instance, I can't count the number of times I've seen such things as:
•DMs allow Prestidigitation to mirror the effects of more powerful Illusion spells; because the effect just isn't important/big enough to be worth a spell slot, and why double check, right?
•Minor Illusion treated as the Illusionist's variant despite the Wizard's actual subclass.
•Complete disregard for spell area rules. Need a 15ft wall illusion? Minor Illusion'll do the trick.
•Etc

So I'm curious to hear how successful (or not!) others have been as "Illusionists," meaning use of spells such as Minor Illusion, Major Image, Hallucinatory Terrain, etc.
Have DMs been too forgiving with spell rules? Have they been too punishing by ignoring your efforts in the narrative? Share your stories!

[Pex]

Playing White Plume Mountain. I cast Phantasmal Force on the Giant Crayfish guarding the chest. I have it see its immediate surroundings just as it always has been. No threat. No one there, just the normal empty of anything area it has been experiencing. Since that's the only thing it could perceive the rest of the party proceeded to loot the chest. Grabbed everything inside it. We would examine the loot safely outside the cavern lair back in the hallway.

[Telok]

Never had any illusions work other than mirror image, blur, and invisibility. Frankly, invisibility is a coin toss anyways with so many things effectively immune to it and the stealth rules being pretty kick-in-the-balls to anyone who isn't a rogue with expertise. Not just 5e either, its been crap for illusions since AD&D days.

One thing to note, all the GMs I know ****ing over illusions do it on the principal that they're overpowered because they hear "horror stories" about them.

[Sorinth]

Yes generally speaking they are very DM dependent. Although you can still be an illusion heavy wizard by sticking to things like Mirror Image, Invisibility, Hypnotic Pattern type of spells don't require any DM interpretation.

For the Minor Illusion/Silent Image/Major Image category I most often I see them used to create a distraction to allow sneaking somewhere or as a setup for an ambush. One notable other use, was at a party the players spiked an antagonistic noble's drink and when the noble went to get some air/rest they used Major Image to have the noble return for and drunkenly disparage the royal family in front of everyone and leave again. Pretty much ended that NPC's career and setup some auto successes for things that otherwise would have been Persuasion checks.

To an extent I agree it's often not worth the spell slot, it's no surprise that the most common illusion based shenanigans involve Mask of Many Faces where the cost is at build time rather then runtime. So it would be interesting to see if adding some sort of scaling to Minor Illusion so that it levels up at 5th, 11th, 17th like other cantrips adding additional size/range and illusionary senses at each level up. You'd probably see a lot more usage even when the limits are strictly enforced.

As a DM I'll follow the limits in terms of size/range/senses/etc... pretty closely but I do basically ignore the V/S components since being strict there can render it pointless once someone knows for sure magic is getting involved. If re-designing things I'd make that an Illusionist subclass specific things, similarly Enchanter subclass casting certain Charm spells should basically be Subtle spells. I also have an auto-contested Stealth vs Perception check when someone goes invisible which again could be something that should be Illusionist specific.

[solidork]

We were intercepting a handoff of some embezzled money and I was a Warlock with Misty Visions. The way the handoff was going to work was that they'd shut down this small section of the city, one group would come in and drop off the chest and then another would come and take it. Once the chest was dropped off, and as the second group was approaching, I put up an illusion of a Wall of Fire in front of the chest blocking their vision long enough for us to pull the chest into an alley. My next turn I cast Silent Image again, replacing the fire with an illusion of a Xanathar's Guild Wizard we had encountered earlier picking up the box and then flying up over the top of the surrounding buildings.

It had them fooled long enough for us to get away pretty clean, and even if they figured out it was an illusion they never found out it was us. The harpers who had set the whole thing up as a sting operation, however...

Invisibility and Disguise Self are quite effective in our games. A different Warlock I played made extensive uses of both. One time we needed to get the lay of the land in a potentially dangerous encampment and I made myself invisible, scouted out someone who seemed like they might talk and an empty hut somewhat close to them where I could hide. Then I had a whole conversation via Message, and once I was done cast invisibility again and went back to my friends.

A very funny example of when Disguise Self didn't work out quite so well (and probably shouldn't have) was when we got a meeting with some nobles we wanted to rob. The plan was for the Monk to sneak upstairs to where what we wanted was being kept (we sussed it out with Locate Object) while invisible and that we'd distract everyone downstairs. Unfortunately the item was in someone's pocket, and they failed the sleight of hand badly so it turned into a fight. Doubly unfortunately, the guy with the macguffin was an Assassin stat block which would have been an extremely dangerous opponent even if we were all there together. We managed to get upstairs with the Lord of the House and put him to sleep, then I impersonated him and shouted that the intruder had gone a different way long enough for us to take care of the Assassin. Unfortunately, we had approached the nobles under our real identities so as a last ditch attempt to muddy the waters, as we were jumping out the window to escape I Subtle Spell cast a Disguise Self to "reveal" that I was a member of the Xanathar's Guild all along and did my best attempt at some villanious gloating. That part didn't fool them, but makes for a great story.

I've remembered another example from that game - we had gone down into the sewer hideout of the Xanathar's guild and defeated a number of them including a lieutenant of sorts. I disguised myself as him and convinced the Mindflayer deeper in that the city watch had come in force and that he should withdraw so as to not be captured or killed.