D&D General Reification versus ludification in 5E/6E

[doctorbadwolf]

You’re saying that most tables see regular use of illusions? That illusionists are a popular wizard subclass?

Seriously?

You might wha to stick to replying to what a person says, not some wild made up extrapolation. I very very clearly did not say that. Your entire reply is moot because of the dishonesty of this premise.

You cannot possibly fail to understand the difference between the nonsense you’ve attributed to me, and me challenging the notion that most groups agree with your assessment of illusion magic as too broad and causing too many problems.

Okie doke. You want some actual sources? Howzabout Critical Role?

One group is a meaningless source.

There's the list of all spells cast by Critical Role. Note the very little use of 1st through 5th level illusions. Now, by illusions, I specifically mean spells that create some sort of image or hologram or something of the sort. Yes, some of the spells they cast come from the illusion school - blur, invisibility - but that's not what we're talking about is it? Spells like blur, invisibility or Hypnotic Pattern aren't what I'm talking about. Those spells have very specific rules and there's very little wiggle room for what you can or cannot do with those spells. Granted, Major Image got used a whopping THREE times over the course of the campaign. Hallucinatory Terrain a whole 4 times. Compared to the THIRTY FIVE times Polymorph got cast. Out of the nearly 100 sixth level spells cast, Programmed Illusion got used ... once.

So, yeah, I'm fairly confident in saying that most groups are not using illusion spells very often. Considering that illusions cast in the group account for what, about 1% of the spells cast? Maybe 5%? I didn't do the math, so, I'm sure the overly pedantic amongst us will do the counting.

Being confident of anything based only on your own experience and one group of actors playing publicly is absurd.
And having actually watched the show, this doesn’t even lend itself to your argument because they had no problems when casting those illusions! No breakdown of gameplay, no big arguments, nada. They had a blast with them, every time.

So clearly they don’t see illusion magic the way you claim most people do.

I'm surprised Hallucinatory Terrain was cast at all, given how limited the spell is in 5e.

It’s a fun spell, but IME spells with long descriptions and mostly utility benefits don’t get used as much. Not because they cause problems, but because they are simply more mental overhead for a spell that is situational only and quite specific in what it can do. Broadly useful spells and spells that players can be creative with and spells that deal damage are the most popular. Illusion in 5e is too restricted and complex to meet those requirements, but I’ve never seen a 5e group break down over illusions being adjudicated, having observed hundreds of groups over ten years.

I did see a ton of frustration over them in 4e, because they were designed more to the design goal of “make each power limited and highly specific and it can only do what it explicitly says”, which is less fun in a quite frustrating way.

Heh. It is funny that @doctorbadwolf called me out to provide citations, when earlier in the thread @Lanefan was saying that his table almost never saw illusionists.

Not really. You’re now taking two people out of context and pretending their statements either support you when they don’t or just pretending they said a completely different thing from what they said.

 

[Hussar]

Dude. All I can say is howzabout dealing back the heat just a touch? We’re just having a conversation here. And a fairly productive one. You obviously disagree with me and that’s fine but this is nowhere near a serious enough issue for this level of animosity.

 

[Mannahnin]

^ Pretty much this. And, to be honest, I'm probably guilty here too. Maybe not recently, but, yeah, I've probably done something like that too. In any case though, I have enough experience with players coming to my table who wouldn't touch illusion magic with a ten foot pole most of the time.

It was actually quite refreshing in a recent session with a fairly D&D newbie to see him use Minor Illusion to defuse a potential combat. We were trying to find a missing little girl who had been missing for years. Turned out she was taken in by some goblins who were actually treating her fairly well. ((Think Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) We wanted to communicate that we had come from her mother, so, the party Sorcerer tried using Minor Illusion to mimic her voice. But, the DM immediately ruled that it couldn't reproduce intelligible speach. ((And, right there, we see the DM automatically defaulting to limiting the spell)) So, the player simply reproduced an image of the mother instead. Thus the encounter was resolved without violence.

But, again, right there, you have the DM deliberately interpreting the spell in as limiting fashion as possible. You can make it sound like someone's voice, but, you couldn't actually make it talk.

It's pretty much par for the course IME.

Yeah, that's a terrible ruling.

Actually, what we see there is the DM following very old and long-standing precedent (it's right there in the 1e spell write-ups) regarding illusions that include sound: they can't reproduce intelligible speech. (I suspect this is to prevent shenanigans such as illusions casting spells or uttering command words for devices, but I'm not sure on that)

The only ways I can think of to make an illusion talk coherently are either a) to have a second caster use Ventriloquism in tandem or b) cast Projected Image, a much higher-level spell that talks as if it was the person being projected.

Audible Glamer (MU2, I1) says nothing about not being able to reproduce intelligible speech. To the contrary, it explicitly says the sounds can include talking, singing, or shouting. Which spell are you talking about? Can you cite a page number?

Overall I tend to agree that the historical problem with Illusion spells is DMs being overly cautious and paranoid about them being broken. They're a lot more fun if the DM rules on the side of letting them be cool.

 

[James Gasik]

The last time I got into a discussion about Illusion spells, someone (could even have been me, memory is for shite these days) made this observation:

*If the DM is strict about Illusions, they are underpowered.

*If the DM is not strict about Illusions, they are overpowered.

Asking a DM to (often in real time) make a value judgment about how strict/lax they should be about interpretating and balancing a spell just isn't fair- especially for less experienced DM's. Why is it then left up to them? Why can't Illusion effects come pre-balanced?

You run into similar problems with Enchantment spells that charm or influence or heck, even Bluff checks, really. Any effect that involves tricking or conning another character (PC or NPC) is likely to run into resistance because, while humans are provably quite gullible, nobody wants to admit that, nor does anyone like finding out they have been conned.

In a Pathfinder 1e game, an NPC had a magic item that, if they were hit by a fire spell, they could use it to create an illusion of them being horribly charred to a crisp, while they became invisible for a short time. I watched with dismay as a group of players, rather than cheering that they had killed their foe, expressed disbelief that they could have died so easily and began systematically searching for the NPC to prevent them from escaping!

You could chalk that up to the players being a bunch of metagaming a-hats, but I took it as a lesson in human psychology. D&D, especially, teaches players to be wary of deceptions- every beautiful female NPC is probably an evil monster of some kind, every chest is a Mimic, even floors, ceilings, stalactites, your loved ones, and cute little bunny rabbits perched on tree stumps can be lethal encounters. Hit them with a Suggestion or a Geas? They try to find a loophole in the NPC's wording. Try to trick them with an illusion, they poke/prod/actively disbelieve it's existence. Because doing these things are survival skills in a magical fantasy world!

Which means Illusionists have the odds majorly stacked against them, especially given that magic with "real" effects is literally like, right there!

 

[jgsugden]

...And that's the problem. Spells with vague descriptions get shut down by DM's in the name of "challenge". Any creative use of the spell gets denied because the DM has been burned year after year by poorly written spells. So, the automatic reaction is "no". Can I do this? "Nope. It doesn't say you can do it in the spell, so, too bad. You can't."

Which returns us right back to the original point. Vaguely worded spells rarely get chosen by the players because they are taught very quickly that DM's won't actually allow creativity. And there's no point in having a spell you can't use.

This is not a consistent experience with the wide variety of DMs that have shared a table with me. I do see it at times, but not consistently - and generally not at tables I make an effort to revisit. While a masterful storyteller can sometimes still run a fun game while often telling players they can't do things they ask to do, I have never seen a situation in which the DM made the game better through that shutdown.

The first page of the new DMG has advice for DMs to remember. Including:

It’s Not a Competition. The DM isn’t competing against the other players. It’s your job to provide fun challenges and keep the story moving.

Be Fair and Flexible. Treat your players in a fair, impartial manner. The rules help you do this, but when you need to act as referee, try to make decisions that ensure everyone is having fun.

You note that a DM may "shut down" spells in the name of "challenge" - which to me seems to mean they don't let spells reach their full potential because they fear it makes challenges too easy for PCs. Under the 'It's Not a Competition' section the DM is advised to challenge the PCs afterall ... but the adjective that modifies challenges is really important there. The challenges have to be fun ... and nothing crushes players more than being told "No".

In my experience, the players have more fun when they feel their PCs are more like super heroes than survivors. When they're told "you can't do that" it takes away from the feeling of them being the protagonists of a story and moves them more towards them being the characters in a documentary of a tragedy.

 

[Micah Sweet]

This is not a consistent experience with the wide variety of DMs that have shared a table with me. I do see it at times, but not consistently - and generally not at tables I make an effort to revisit. While a masterful storyteller can sometimes still run a fun game while often telling players they can't do things they ask to do, I have never seen a situation in which the DM made the game better through that shutdown.

The first page of the new DMG has advice for DMs to remember. Including: You note that a DM may "shut down" spells in the name of "challenge" - which to me seems to mean they don't let spells reach their full potential because they fear it makes challenges too easy for PCs. Under the 'It's Not a Competition' section the DM is advised to challenge the PCs afterall ... but the adjective that modifies challenges is really important there. The challenges have to be fun ... and nothing crushes players more than being told "No".

In my experience, the players have more fun when they feel their PCs are more like super heroes than survivors. When they're told "you can't do that" it takes away from the feeling of them being the protagonists of a story and moves them more towards them being the characters in a documentary of a tragedy.

Maybe so, but being the protagonists in a story isn't always the goal of play, no matter what the 5.5 books say.

 

[Hussar]

Oh I totally agree.

My point was that having vague spell descriptions leading to DMs shutting down creativity is really common.

And @James Gasik ‘s point about the players doing exactly the same thing is well made too. I had a player who, while fighting in a temple, got hit by a suggestion spell to “sit down” at his ne of the many pews in the temple. “I’m flying. So I sit in mid air. “ was the reply.

Which, because the monk’s flight ends at the end of the round, caused him to fall, take damage as a result of the caster, and break the suggestion.

I just can’t be asked to constantly have to write legal contracts to do stuff in the middle of the session and grind the game to a halt. It’s exhausting so, normally, I would just never use those effects.

All because it’s too vague.

 

[Lanefan]

Oh I totally agree.

My point was that having vague spell descriptions leading to DMs shutting down creativity is really common.

And @James Gasik ‘s point about the players doing exactly the same thing is well made too. I had a player who, while fighting in a temple, got hit by a suggestion spell to “sit down” at his ne of the many pews in the temple. “I’m flying. So I sit in mid air. “ was the reply.

Caster of the Suggestion blew it by not specifying where to sit*. "Sit in that pew for five minutes" while pointing to the pew in question: problem solved.

* - or, for that matter, specifying for how long; unless Suggestion now has a hard-coded duration.

Which, because the monk’s flight ends at the end of the round, caused him to fall, take damage as a result of the caster, and break the suggestion.

Good move on the Monk's part, taking advantage of the caster's mistake. I like it.

I just can’t be asked to constantly have to write legal contracts to do stuff in the middle of the session and grind the game to a halt. It’s exhausting so, normally, I would just never use those effects.

All because it’s too vague.

The "legal contract" should be in the spell write-up. In this case, a clause in the Suggestion write-up saying the target is freely able to fill in any missing elements of the suggested action(s) should provide a strong incentive to the casters to get it right.

 

[NN]

In a Pathfinder 1e game, an NPC had a magic item that, if they were hit by a fire spell, they could use it to create an illusion of them being horribly charred to a crisp, while they became invisible for a short time. I watched with dismay as a group of players, rather than cheering that they had killed their foe, expressed disbelief that they could have died so easily and began systematically searching for the NPC to prevent them from escaping!

dismay?

Why?

You gave the players a challenge (spot the trick) and they aced it !

 

[James Gasik]

dismay?

Why?

You gave the players a challenge (spot the trick) and they aced it !

I should clarify, I wasn't the GM. As for why I felt dismay, it was simply the fact that no one took the illusion at face value, and instantly went into "oh that can't be real, let's poke/prod/search to prove that it wasn't" routine that makes Illusions so pointless in games.

(the item in question, for reference)

There shouldn't be a reason to assume that an Illusion is an illusion, in a game world where fantastical magic exists. And yet, all to often, characters in game instantly react to illusions attempting to disprove their existence, when that level of scrutiny is rarely applied to "real" effects.

In the case of the Cloak of Fiery Vanishing incident, the players' only clue that the NPC wasn't, in fact, reduced to ash, was their knowledge of game mechanics- they knew how much damage the fire spell did, and it didn't line up with their belief about the target's hit point total. One could argue that their reaction smacks of metagaming...though that's not an argument I'd make personally- the boundary between what your character knows and what you, the player, know has never been clear cut in D&D, and everyone defines it differently anyways.

The point is, either players nor DM's tend to take Illusions at face value, and both PC and NPC alike can be quickly seen to test the boundaries of such spells. I've hear people argue that because those spells do have boundaries, there's nothing wrong with this and it should be expected.

Which makes using most Illusions rather problematic- if no one is going to fall for them, then why bother? Just stick to the vast majority of spells that do have tangible effects.

Another anecdote to illustrate my point. Not long ago, my Wizard cast Wall of Force to trap a monster inside it. The creature didn't take time to test it's boundaries. Instead, it instantly realized "oh this is a Wall of Force" and used it's ability to Dimension Door beyond it's boundaries (that I didn't know it possessed when I cast the spell).

Now that's a fairly typical event in a game, no doubt.

But if that had been an ILLUSION of a Wall of Force, I'd instantly expect the creature to try and move through it, poke or prod it, or anything else required to prove it's fake. Because that's what I tend to see happen.