D&D 5E Illusionist - is it as weak as it seems?

I've always felt illusion spells are very weak. I'll relook into them.

waxtransient said:

The effectiveness of illusionist wizards came up last night in my game for the first time.

I am running a certain official D&D adventure which may contain a golem with greater invisibility cast on it. The party had no idea it was there, with the exception of the illusion wizard who had detect magic up.

The wizard initially had cast minor illusion on it to show everyone exactly where it was at (fudged a little bit, since the golem was bigger than the 5 foot cube limit on the spell). When the golem sprang into action, the wizard found himself right before it in initiative order. He readied an action on his turns to move the illusion in sync with the invisible golem's movement, allowing the party to "see" the creature, negating the advantage it would have had on attacks and allowing the party to target it without disadvantage.

Due to this experience, I echo what others have said: the illusionist does appear to be underpowered, but with a creative player and flexible DM, the school can be both fun and effective.

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I applaud the creativity displayed by the player, and I assume the wizard had See Invisibility up, not Detect Magic. In addition to the completely understandable fudge for the 5' cube limitation, I think you overlooked the fact that Minor Illusion does not allow the the object created to move, in addition to the fact that it is debatable if the Golem counts as an object, being an active combatant and all. Now if the wizard in question had instead won initiative and cast Silent Image over the Golem, spending his action to have his Image move with the Golem, it would have solved all these problems neatly (other than the fact that by spending an action to cast the spell on the first round, he would not have an action to spend to cause the image to move with the Golem, but I would be inclined to hand wave that). Maybe this what the wizard did, but was accidentally omitted in the description.

Minor Illusion is a fine cantrip, but I think that many forget the limitations it has as... well, a cantrip.

Here's the problem I'm having with it in my game. I have two wizards in my party. One of them is a necromancer, and the other is an illusionist. The one who is playing an illusionist has been playing 3e for years and this is their first time playing 5e. They were adapting one of their 3e characters that I really liked the concept of - a wizard who dreams of being the classic fireball-chucking archmage, but absolutely sucks at evocation spells. They instead use illusions to make people think they can cast the classic awe-inspiring wizard spells. So the bottom line of the idea is that he's supposed to be really good at illusions, specifically. However, 5e doesn't really allow for that. Until 10th level (yes, you do get malleable illusion at 6th, but it takes a few more levels before you can really do anything reliably awe-inspiring with it that other wizards can't do well enough), the illusionist doesn't really get to do anything that any other wizard can't. Granted, it would take other wizards an extra casting, but that's a far cry from how a lot of the other specialization abilities feel. Pretty much every other specialization lets you do things that make you immediately distinct from other wizards. In our last session, the party's other wizard basically kept taunting the illusionist by casting his own minor illusion whenever the illusionist did, and even though he couldn't do both sound and sight at the same time... No other wizard school's abilities allow that sort of toe-stepping. I never played 3e myself, but I did used to play AD&D and back then, the illusionist was the only specialization. And while I love 5e, it really kind of pains me to see this reversal of fortune... I've been scrounging through the rules to try and find some sort of options to allow for the illusionist to actually be good at illusions, but I'm coming up completely dry. The only real option I seem to have available to me is to let him convert a bunch of rules from 3e, and that just seems so backwards to me. How could WotC have dropped the ball so hard on such a classic character type?

[MENTION=6888749]David L.[/MENTION] I don't thing it is as bad as you say. Illusion spells have always been rather...difficult in play. Malleable Illusion can be great if used properly. Many of the specialists only have minor or side benefits compared to other wizards. Here is a link to some tricks that Illusionists can do in 5e.

The 1e Illusionist sub-class only had 7 spells levels and a much smaller spell list than the Magic-User, subsequent versions remained sub-classes of one sort or another, and became more and more capable at casting non-illusions. The 5e Illusionist can learn/cast any wizard spell, so the concept your player has is barely-tennable, he has to just willfully not learn the spells he 'wants' to be able to cast and instead substitute illusions, just because of his concept - since he's gimping himself, of course he's going to be less effective than other wizards (and, really, /that's the concept/, a wizard who's not as good a wizard as he wants to be).

It might make sense to make him something other than a wizard, like a Sorcerer, say, with a custom bloodline that makes him good at illusions, but a spell list largely restricted to illusions. Or you could just let him accept the equivalent of opposed schools - evocation, obviously - in return for some illusion-casting benefits.

It isn't the self-restriction bit that I'm talking about, though. That's kind of self-evident. My problem is that until higher levels, there's nothing an illusionist can really do that any other wizard can't do well enough. At 2nd level, an abjurer gets an ablative shield. A conjurer can create almost any random tool the party might need in a given situation (especially if you read "3 feet on a side" to mean 3 cubic feet in volume, allowing for such adventurer standbys as a long coil of rope or a 10-foot pole - which is also the kind of DM flexibility necessary just to make illusions viable, so I'd say it's a fair equivalence). A diviner's portent is perhaps the most inimitable ability out of all the 2nd-level abilities, potentially allowing for a virtually guaranteed miss or success at any time. The enchanter's hypnotic gaze... I'll be generous and say that's on par. Evokers can freely use AoE spells without having to worry about accidentally hitting the fighter. Necromancers can siphon out the souls of their enemies and heal themselves, allowing them to be less cautious - and while that's similar to the abjurer's ability in effect, both of their 6th-level abilities immediately make up for it. The transmuter's ability's effectiveness I'd rank as halfway between the conjurer's and illusionist's, but it is also something that lets the transmuter feel like a specialist and do something that no other wizard can really attempt. At 2nd-level, illusionists get an ability that can be exactly copied by two castings of a cantrip available to anyone. At 6th-level, they get an ability that can be decidedly distinct from other wizards, but it isn't often that it is reliably so without contriving a scenario for it to be. At 10th-level they get an ability that finally is wholly unique to them, but it's decidedly reactive, and since wizards tend to stay out of the fray, I don't imagine actually sees much use. Especially compared to other schools' 10th-level abilities. It isn't until 14th-level that illusionists actually get to do something that inarguably marks them as better at illusions than anyone else.

Had he been the only wizard in the party, this probably would never have even occurred to me. But given that there are​ two wizards, and that one of them is able to mock the other by doing almost the same thing without spending any extra resources... I mean, yes, that behaviour is an issue of its own, and I did already talk to that player, but... It just shouldn't even be possible to do something like that.

Anyway, I may talk to him about the sorcerer solution, since his backstory has him being a circus performer and so he also has a really high Charisma. It wouldn't take much effort to basically retcon.

TL;DR: The problem isn't so much power as it is differentiation and class identity. Until higher levels, the illusionist - in comparison to the other wizard schools - feels like a sorcerer trained in Performance calling himself a bard.

Hmm. I feel like the improved minor image ability is a good gatekeeper for the subclass. If you don't see it as being useful, then you probably won't make a good illusionist anyway (either because of your own or your dm's play styles).

Is there something I'm missing about the ability to create an inanimate, immobile, intangible object produce sound that makes it significant?

Don't look at as a (near) useless ability, look at it as a free cantrip. If you are going to be an illusionist, don't pick Minor Illusion as one of your cantrips, you get it for free! I can't remember if you get to pick another cantrip if you already have it, but an extra cantrip is nothing to sneeze at.