In our Shackled City group, we have a Gnome Illusionist going for Shadowcraft Mage. He was scary deadly in the intro adventures with Colour Spray at a ridiculous AC. Thanks to substitution levels, he was pumping out higher level illusion spells than usual with Chains of Disbelief. He doesn't always have to be nuking for high damage--often he controls the situation with clever illusions (major example with minor Flood Season spoilers--there's a door trap that causes you to be stuck in the spiked door while the Fighter/Cleric and her minions kill you since you are unable to move. Tired of the Rogue bungling his checks, the Gnome Illusionist was the one who opened that door, but he used an illusion to make it seem like our Rogue disabled the trap, the Gnome slipped out, and then we closed the door again. The baddies thus pressed the button to open the door, thus causing the Gnome to slip out of the now-open door). Or in the Kuo Toa temple, he and my Archivist got us all the way to the mess hall with an illusion that the monk scout guy on the boat was coming back with a sack of fish. Though we basically can't kill swarms of diminutive mindless creatures thanks to his lack of AoE damage, it's always a lot of fun to play with him in the party.
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
