What is fun about illusions? Fooling the players or the PCs?

[Noumenon]

Are illusions ever fun for a DM to use? This question was prompted by Goodman Games' DCC #40, Devil in the Mists, where a bone devil opens with an illusion of a pit fiend. I was gleefully planning to get a pit fiend mini and look up the abilities of pit fiends so my illusion would be realistic and scary. Would that be fun for my players, or just me?

But then I thought, the odds are one of my PCs will make a Will save. Now there's no way any of my players will be deceived. Will it still be any fun for them to pretend their PCs are deceived? It might be fun to see what your character would do when facing a pit fiend.

Or is the point of an illusion to be just another spell like obscuring mist that makes it harder to hit the real enemy -- no one is fooled, but it still has a function anyway.

Or are illusions fun for players only, so they can feel like they're making the monsters look stupid, and DMs shouldn't use them?

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

IMO, the Will disbelief interaction sucks the fun out of illusions.

IMO, seeing through an illusion should be hard, but once someone has proved the illusion is false, the others should be able to "see through" them. (You might still not be able to see through the Hallucinatory Wall, so it's still giving concealment, but you now know the wall isn't actually real. IMO.)

They break suspension of disbelief, just like many cursed items.

 

[IronWolf]

I'm not a big fan of illusions - not sure if it because I haven't seen them played well, lack of understanding of how to effectively resolve them or if they just aren't a fun.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

You don't create a major image of a pit fiend for a group to fight with. You create it so they'll run away.

There's only a save involved if the players interact with the illusion. Smart illusionists create illusions that no one will bother interacting with -- that guy hiding around the corner watching them looks like a pile of rotting garbage -- or that they'll run like hell from -- hello, dracolich!

Illusions are awesome, but you have to remember that illusionists know the spells' weaknesses and work around them. They either create completely plausible things that the victims will never question -- well, yeah, of course that body is crawling with rot grubs, leave it alone, idiots! -- or can't take the risk of being wrong about.

 

[Vegepygmy]

Or is the point of an illusion to be just another spell like obscuring mist that makes it harder to hit the real enemy -- no one is fooled, but it still has a function anyway.

The point of illusion magic is that it's a well established thing in fantasy. Thus, it has a place in fantasy RPGs.

As to how one can best use illusions in one's game...I personally think they work best as traps and as diversions, such as when the BBEG has both real and illusionary minions, so the PCs can't completely ignore the minions, but the BBEG doesn't have to waste as many of his resources. Illusions that do nothing but slow (or stop) the game session down aren't a lot of fun.

 

[howandwhy99]

The pit fiend idea would be fun and scary for your players. It's not really fun fighting a monster you know is an illusion, but your PC supposedly doesn't. This gets into metagaming undercutting the fun in games. I don't think there is a particular point to using illusions. It's up to the caster really.

I'd say NPCs and PCs should use illusions, but as a player I enjoy duping the NPCs best.

 

[Noumenon]

You don't create a major image of a pit fiend for a group to fight with. You create it so they'll run away.

There's only a save involved if the players interact with the illusion. Smart illusionists create illusions that no one will bother interacting with -- that guy hiding around the corner watching them looks like a pile of rotting garbage -- or that they'll run like hell from -- hello, dracolich!

Illusions are awesome, but you have to remember that illusionists know the spells' weaknesses and work around them. They either create completely plausible things that the victims will never question -- well, yeah, of course that body is crawling with rot grubs, leave it alone, idiots! -- or can't take the risk of being wrong about.

The XP feature isn't working for me in IE or Firefox right now. So, you think it's important to have illusions that fool the players and fool all of them, so there's no save. But the question is, what's fun about that? I guess it's the fact that the players might figure it out, if they send an animal companion to root through the garbage or decide to brave the rot grubs. It's a good challenge. Or the combat might be more fun because of the surprise and scouting factor.

The point of illusion magic is that it's a well established thing in fantasy. Thus, it has a place in fantasy RPGs.

So how are illusions fun in fantasy? I'm thinking it's so the villain can reveal his omniscience and lead the heroes into a trap, which is exciting, or just to set a scary mood.

 

[Zelda Themelin]

I don't like illusions and disbelieve mechanic so much. It's either little bit too easy or hard depending how you choose to read it in rulewise. (ever since D&D, but not 4th edition as I haven't used that system).

Using illusion as part of tactical option combined with view blocking element, teleporting monster, monster making illusion of itself, while doing something else works nice. I recently made players have hard time with bone devil.

That's when it's fun. I don't like duping players with some dumb illusion wall, it just slows gaming. It's fun when players use some illusion trick against ncp too.

Otherwise I really like illusion for creating interesting looking areas. They also make great pieces of art, and record of events past. Can be used for learning too. Think some reapeating illusion about few rounds of monster battle, or event of spellcasting or pulling some hard manouver.

Hat of disguise is great item. That item is great, because it doesn't so easily give change to disbelieve. Generally illusions can be used to pull all kinda of sometimes even very useful tricks. Like illusion noice can lead followers to someplace wrong.

You can also pull some scenes about haunted houses. Sometimes some might keep hold on some property by using minor illusions to give scares.

My problem systemwise with illusions is that they were actually quite powerful back to older editons, I mean when they got higher level. But now they are nerfed almost to dead. Higher level illusions are mostly not worth learning. You can pull most of the tricks you need with major image and improved invisibility. I remember when alter reality used to be cool. And there used to be fun spells like there/not there.

I had this really once adventure with crazy gnome illusionist/inventor with nasty artifact, which would be quite undoable with say, Pathfinder system.

 

[Quickleaf]

Are illusions ever fun for a DM to use? This question was prompted by Goodman Games' DCC #40, Devil in the Mists, where a bone devil opens with an illusion of a pit fiend. I was gleefully planning to get a pit fiend mini and look up the abilities of pit fiends so my illusion would be realistic and scary. Would that be fun for my players, or just me?

Not being familiar with that adventure, is that the entirety of the setup? I mean is the bone devil vastly outgunned by the PCs and it's trying to frighten them away?

An illusion came up in our Friday night game. We're playing through the B series adventures adapted to 4th edition, and are all low level. Our DM has made it clear he's not too concerned about giving us consistently balanced challenges, and it's been a lot of fun (in a please don't let us TPK) kind of way.

It was deep in Elwyn's Shrine where we came across a pack of black dragon wyrmlings, and in the middle of the fight our barbarian activates a magic ring...which we don't know what it does besides it's a "Ring of Dragons." Suddenly a gargantuan black dragon appears in the room! And the barbarian claims he's controlling it! Much hilarity ensued as he cowed the wyrmlings with this dragon at his command. Only two characters realized it was an illusion; the barbarian was convinced he was controlling an *actual* dragon.

Next round the gargantuan black dragon vanishes, as our barbarian forgot to sustain the power of the ring. Fortunately we had managed to intimidate the wyrmlings by that point so they were no longer hostile.

I guess from a RP perspective we had tons of fun with the illusion. But we're also content to make subpar choices for roleplaying sake. Our DM often rewards us with style points in those situations.

But then I thought, the odds are one of my PCs will make a Will save. Now there's no way any of my players will be deceived. Will it still be any fun for them to pretend their PCs are deceived? It might be fun to see what your character would do when facing a pit fiend.

The best illusions I've ever run as DM were sufficiently complex that even if one player said "it's an illusion, disbelieve it", that wouldn't destroy the illusion overall. I've accomplished that in multiple ways - "separating" the PCs, illusions of the PCs with conflicting advice, multiplicity of illusions with changing conditions, etc.

Or is the point of an illusion to be just another spell like obscuring mist that makes it harder to hit the real enemy -- no one is fooled, but it still has a function anyway.

Obscuring mist and a Displacer beast's displacement power both are meant to function irrespective of the players knowin what's going on. But if a player comes up with a great idea that could plausible disable the illusion, albeit temporarily, I'd be inclined to let them do it.

Or are illusions fun for players only, so they can feel like they're making the monsters look stupid, and DMs shouldn't use them?

Nothing wrong with using an illusion as a DM. You just need to know how gamist the players are and design the illusion encounter accordingly.

 

[Noumenon]

Not being familiar with that adventure, is that the entirety of the setup? I mean is the bone devil vastly outgunned by the PCs and it's trying to frighten them away?

As far as I can tell, it's just "hey a bone devil has major image on its spell list, let's see what happens." With a little work you could get the PCs expecting a pit fiend (this is a dimensional prison for creatures that crossed the pit fiend Bazgorca, and they might spy him through observing spheres in one of the torture rooms). But the adventure doesn't do that, it's a CR 9 encounter for levels 7-9. It's set in a bit of an illusion-friendly room, lined with magic mirrors that mock the bone devil by reflecting his image as a lemure, and give him a regenerating mirror image effect. But if the author knows the interaction rules, he probably intended it to be more of a tiny speed bump and less of a major deception. Goodman Games usually playtests and knows the rules, so they probably knew it wasn't going to be an effective tactic.