Topic: Illusions -- can they break your game?

[EltonJ]

I know about illusions, they were talked about a lot in Gamemaster Law.  However. personally in your games, did anyone use illusions to their full potential? I.e. played an illusionist to the hilt?

[jdale]

I had an illusionist in one of the campaigns I ran. It was super useful for battlefield control, e.g. even a wall that can trivially be broken through in one hit will dissuade foes from coming from a certain angle if they are not familiar with illusions. And blocking lines of site for ranged attacks was pretty useful since the party didn't have any themselves. Also used for stairs to access different areas of the battlefield. Not to mention as a weak ranged attack.

[Ecthelion]

Twice we had an Illusionist in our game groups and in both cases they were quite useful with their illusions. It requires a bit of creativity on the player's side and flexibility on the GM's side, though.

[Druss_the_Legend]

im using magic items with face-shifting. rings and amulets. usable 2-3x daily.
they are quite powerful, lots of impersonating, shifting identities, aliases and shapeshifter spies about. One of the pcs has a shafeshifting magic ring also.
as a player its caused high levels of suspicion and miss-trust as they literally cant trust their eyes when interacting with NPCs. Maximum intrigue with high levels of frustration. Im thinking it might be time to introduce a magic detection item via an ally who can see through such illusions.

[jdale]

You could give them clues, and more reason to be paranoid, by giving them an item that detects there is active magic present but not identifying what kind of magic.

Letting them detect an illusion should be easier than seeing through the illusion. So you can tell the person has a magical mask, but you can't necessarily tell who it really is.

[Druss_the_Legend]

You could give them clues, and more reason to be paranoid, by giving them an item that detects there is active magic present but not identifying what kind of magic.

Letting them detect an illusion should be easier than seeing through the illusion. So you can tell the person has a magical mask, but you can't necessarily tell who it really is.

yeah i like that. one player has a lie detection item but he needs to interact with the spy for it to work. magic detection would be useful. there is an archmage burglar in the party that could be ideal for such an item or perhaps the cleric (although his detection might be. more geared towards evil magic) but hed still be able to use a magic item that could detect magic well enough.

[jdale]

Making the spells short range would also make them interact with the target. Maybe it's a trap, but they still have to be close enough to trigger it to find out.

I went looking to see what detection spells we have in RMU. Detect Illusion is 1st level for Illusionists, 100' range, scans one single 5'R or 1 object (checking one object/area per round is 12th level), but only tells you yes/no. At 11th level, they can negate one illusion for themself only, so they can see through it (also 100' range, for 1 rnd/lvl). Both spells also show up on the closed Mentalism list Sense Mastery, at 4th and 12th level respectively. Monks get those spells at 10th and 12th level, but also Illusionsight at 18th (illusions become invisible to the caster).

That's interesting that those spells are actually pretty limited in terms of who can access them. Of course an item gets around that. It's also interesting that the low level spell only checks one single thing. Give your PCs an item that casts that a limited number of times per day and they have to think carefully when to use it. You can't generally scan a room, or everyone in a group.

[Druss_the_Legend]

Making the spells short range would also make them interact with the target. Maybe it's a trap, but they still have to be close enough to trigger it to find out.

I went looking to see what detection spells we have in RMU. Detect Illusion is 1st level for Illusionists, 100' range, scans one single 5'R or 1 object (checking one object/area per round is 12th level), but only tells you yes/no. At 11th level, they can negate one illusion for themself only, so they can see through it (also 100' range, for 1 rnd/lvl). Both spells also show up on the closed Mentalism list Sense Mastery, at 4th and 12th level respectively. Monks get those spells at 10th and 12th level, but also Illusionsight at 18th (illusions become invisible to the caster).

That's interesting that those spells are actually pretty limited in terms of who can access them. Of course an item gets around that. It's also interesting that the low level spell only checks one single thing. Give your PCs an item that casts that a limited number of times per day and they have to think carefully when to use it. You can't generally scan a room, or everyone in a group.

nice! will use your suggestions. adds to the danger when they use it and as you say makes them think carefully about when to use it. thanks!