how do you use illusions?

[filibuster]

Title says it all really.
Ultimately, I'm looking to trick some cocky players upon entering a mage guild with an illusion that has some negative consequence attached to it but would love to hear how some of you guys use illusions to mess with player heads.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I like to use Dream/Nightmare to either send messages or emulate a prophetic experience. Any illusion can be used to suggest the intervention of a higher power or some other profound event, but if the party doesn't interact with it a low-level mage can pull that off no problem.

I'm also a fan of using the disguise self-type spells to pull of doppelganger tricks, replacing an NPC or even a PC with someone else.

In any case, it comes down to knowing your players well enough to know what they would believe.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

By listening to Guns 'n' Roses, of course!

I frequently use illusions to mimic RW magic tricks and spycraft tools.

In the RW, magic is all about misdirection and false appearances. In a fantasy world, I mimic this.

So, where a disappearing man trick in the RW involves a trapdoor or a false bottom or wall, I use illusion magic to create the appearance of a wall, behind which the caster hides. I'm not talking about "walling off" a whole alley- that would be too obvious. I'm talking about things like hiding in a doorway and making it look like there was no door. Or flattening out against the wall and creating an illusion of the wall juuuuuuuusssssst deep enough to hide in.

For misdirection, I'd create the illusion of myself running straight ahead when I really rounded a corner.

And then, of course, there is shadow magic, which is used to mimic other spells.

 

[TarionzCousin]

In my experience, illusions are best utilized when you can keep your opponents from interacting with them--then they don't get an automatic saving throw.


Example #1: as the PC's search around the dead-end room, they hear a loud "CLICK" and see sickly yellow smoke billowing out into the room in a far corner. It slowly fills up the entire room, giving smart players a moment to clear out.

If they don't get away quickly enough, or try to hold their breath, when they make a saving throw against "Poison" it is really a Save vs. Illusion.



Example #2: Loud and growing louder "footsteps" coming from down the corridor and around the corner. These footsteps stop (apparently immediately before coming around the corner) and the PC's hear loud, heavy breathing--a big monster, like an Ogre, trying unsuccessfully to keep quiet.

 

[GandalfMithrandir]

wow, you're all evil DMs, I like to screw with my players. In a humorous game I played once I had a wizard use an illusion spell to insult the PCs similar to the frenchmen in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, so they thought he was real (he put a suit of Armor on his illusion) they attacked him, but he would teleport, or make the motions of a teleport spell, about twenty feet away each time they hit him. so they were running in circles trying to hit him while the archers dumped half their ammo into him. I once threw a "Dragon" at them to get them out of the current area.

stuff like that only works and keeps your PCs happy (relatively) if they have the right attitude, it's really easy to tick them off if you do something like that to them.

 

[mgbeach]

How about having a mischievous wizard cast an illusion over one of the characters making them appear to flicker into the form of a doppelganger and then back to their actual appearance while talking to an important/powerful NPC. Just try to convince them you're not an assassin now!

 

[howandwhy99]

For me, different Illusion spells break down according to specific core rules: Sight, Sound, Taste, Touch, Scent, etc. Some of these are actually groupings of smaller, more defined core rules, but the groupings allow for easy adjudication of spell effects.

Illusions are real in the game world for creatures with Intelligence. Meaning, every effect the spell creates follows the rules above and are 100% real to every object with an Intelligence until a Spell Save is made. The rule effects are enforced for all those intelligent objects, PCs for instance. This lasts until a save is made, the object is no longer intelligent, or the spell's duration ends.