Illusionism - Smoke and Mirrors

[Messageboard Golem]

Continuing the Encyclopaedia Arcane series, Illusionism presents one of the core schools of arcane magic and develops it in detail for players and Games Masters alike. Alongside advice for the Games Master on how to use Illusionism in his campaign, this book we present the mechanics of dementia magic - the magic of madness - as well as spells, feats, prestige classes and more.

 

[GameWyrd]

Smoke and Mirrors is the sub-title for the Encyclopaedia Arcane: Illusionism. It’s an ambitious book with three spell lists and three different sets of feats tucked into just 64-pages. I didn’t even notice the prestige classes had been deferred until very late into the book until I turned the page and found the chapter.

At times Smoke and Mirrors reminded me of an academic paper but never so much as to put me to sleep in the way that real academic papers are likely to do. The choice of language is responsible for this association and it seems to be a deliberate strategy by the author, Joseph Miller, as he tries (and succeeds in part) in casting the book as an actual treatise on Illusionary magic. Here’s a pair of quotes from the Overview chapter at the start of the book to illustrate my point.

"Shadow energy is latent by its very nature. It requires an outside force – oft times an illusionist – to actualise its potential…"

"Although other lay-mage spells exist, these are the most commonly known and used. They were first developed using the Nystal-Leomand (N-L) method of spell formulation, which allows the maximum amount of flexibility in an illusion spell with the least amount of skill required to use it."

The lay-mage spells talked about above are one of a number of different paths of illusionary magic covered in the book. There are essentially three different paths, Orthodox Illusionists, Unorthodox Illusionists and in the middle the Unaligned Illusionists. The Orthodox Illusionists are those mages who see the art and creativity in their style at magic; they dislike the lay-magic as untalented rotes and concentrate instead on crafting "fluid and malleable" figments, glamours, patterns and phantasms. On the other end of the scale the Unorthodox Illusionists get all weirdly philosophical and bother themselves with why and how the illusion was created in the first place. It’s the Unorthodox Illusionists that learn to master Shadow. Sitting in the middle, dabbling with a bit of both but without mastering either are the Unaligned Illusionists.

Each of the different paths brings different bonuses and penalties. In order to access the shadow magic then you must be following the unorthodox illusionist path. Doing so will give you a +2 caster level for your shadow spells (and that’s quite a punch) but –1 for figments, glamours, patterns and phantasms. In addition you’ll benefit with a +1 saving throw against saves versus shadows but suffer –1 to saves versus the traditional figments, glamours, patterns and phantasms. This last quirk doesn’t sit quite well with me. You’re a specialist illusionist mage – you’re really on the ball when it comes to all things illusionary - further more, you’re so good that you’ve specialised even further into a particular brand of illusionary magic so why on earth are you more likely to fall sucker to an illusionary prank than some Bard? I see where the author wanted to go with this and I don’t object to it, I just think the plan falls short of success and needs tweaking to make it work.

For each of the Orthodox Illusionist Path, the Unorthodox Illusionist Path and the Unaligned Illusionist Path there are sections on interesting uses for skills, new feats and lots more new spells. Uses for skills, at this point, are often regurgitated regurgitation but tucked away in the three doses of it are a few semi-precious gems. Illusionary powers tie in nicely with many skills. What about wrapping an important lock in an illusion as a sure fire way of making it a lot harder for some cheeky bugger rogue to pick? There are between a half-dozen and a dozen new feats for each of the paths too. A small number of these new feats are from the dreaded "Improved" feat factory but there good enough feats in the three sections to balance the scale and call it a score draw.

There are a surprising number of new spells and if you just flick through the pages quickly you might not notice how they’re slyly stacked. Many of the new spells are available on levels 1 through to 9, in a more powerful form with each level advance. You might see a spell like "Crafted Image (Figment) I-IX" and that means there are nine levels of the crafted image spell. Typically the spell will explain what it does and then a summary table points out the benefits of knowing a higher level and better version of the spell. Crafted Image (Figment) I is only able to create a "fine" sized image whereas the level IX version of the spell is capable of working on the "colossal" scale. Occasionally you’ll find a I-IX style spell which is even more terse and it’ll say something along the lines of "as phantasmal conjuration only this spell mimics spells from the wizard school of Evocation". It is slightly off-putting to see spells condensed to this at first, it lacks the flavour and flare of some brand spanking new spell that knocks your socks off. Then, on the second thought, the benefit of being able to pack the spells in like this becomes more attractive. Again, I’d call this a score draw. It does this three times though and if I’m sticking with my sporting analogy then it’s worth pointing out that three draws is worth a win. (Er, in some sports!)

When you’re finally through reading through all the new spells you’ll find the prestige classes. What can I say? I either point out all of these prestige classes are detail through ten levels and how rare that is in a Mongoose book or I’ll slyly draw your attention to the fact that you seem to need to be a gorgeous and half naked woman in order to be a prestigious illusionist. Actually that’s not a requirement per say but its certainly something the artist has latched on to. As a liberal European I’m blasé about all such artwork so I’ll talk about the actual prestige classes instead. The Figmentist really need as much explaining as the Glamourer. Both of these prestige classes take their particular illusionary focus and come up with suitable class abilities for them. The Mind Reaver and Hypnotist prestige classes have rather scary powers, more so the Hypnotist than the Mind Reaver though. The Shadow Walker and Unaligned Master are there to play directly to the Unorthodox Illusionary Path and the Unaligned Illusionary Path in turn and are quite successful at it too.

The book finishes with a collection of quality magic items and weapons. Actually the final pages are for the designer’s notes (which I always find helpful) and the rule summary tables (which everyone should find helpful).

In a way Smoke and Mirrors is a good name for the book. At a glance there doesn’t seem to be much of interest in it but on a second and longer look at it you’ll find it’s packed with new stuff. If the goal of every Encyclopaedia Arcane is to make the spell school covered by it seem attractive and tempting to the players (and GMs) then EA: Illusionism succeeds easily.

* This GameWyrd review was first published here.

 

[Simon Collins]

This is not a playtest review.

Illusionism is the 10th in the Encyclopaedia Arcane series from Mongoose Publishing, looking in more detail at a particular arcane art. This one looks at illusions and illusionists.

Illusionism is a 64-page mono softcover book costing $14.95. Both inside covers are used, but the text itself can seem a little thin on the ground at times with several chunks of white space. Art ranges from poor to good - the front cover is the best of the art. Writing quality is fairly good, though the flavour text is average at best. Editing seems good.

The most important redefinition within the book is the split that the author has given illusionism - between what he terms orthodox illusionism and unorthodox. He defines orthodox illusionism as focusing on figments, glamours, patterns, and phantasms - the orthodox illusionist seeks to fool the senses or the mind and crafts his illusions with care. Unorthodox illusionism focuses on shadow magic, and the unorthodox illusionist seeks to create using shadow energy and is more concerned with the science of illusions rather than the art.

Splitting the two types more thoroughly, the book looks at new uses for old skills, new feats, and new spells for orthodox and unorthodox illusionism separately. Eah area concentrates on enhancing the power of illusions.

Highlights of the section on Orthodox Illusionism include detailed rules for Profession: Hypnotist, the Craft: Illusion skill, the Imbue Illusions feat (which gives the ability to the illusion to cast spells), and the Crafted Image spell, with 9 levels, each being able to create a larger permanent image; these images can be created as static, triggered (dynamic), or repetitive (recurring) illusions - separate spells are required for glamours, figments, patterns, and phantasms, and the caster must make varying Craft: Illusion skill checks as well. Very similar equivalents are given in the chapter on Unorthodox Illusionism, but these are related to Shadow. Of note is the return of the Wraithform spell, with some more detailed rules for wraithformed creatures.

A third type of Illusionism is also discussed - Unaligned Illusionism is in fact purely the Illusion spells available to non-Illusionist, who are termed lay-mages in the book, and is defined as a kind of mixture between the two types of Orthodox and Unorthodox Illusionism. New feats and spells are given for these lay-mages, including the Shadow Beast spell, with stats for the Shadow Beast (though I'd quite like to have seen a Template here rather than a creature).

Six new prestige classes are offered, each focusing on one of the types of illusions discussed in the previous sections - figments (the Figmentist), glamour (Glamourer), patterns (Hypnotist), phantasms (Mind Reaver), and shadow (Shadow Walker) - as well as the Unaligned Master, specialising in the benefits that come with Unaligned Illusionism. Each of the PrC's is 10 levels, and tend to gain a mixture of bonus feats, enhanced bonuses to their specialty illusions, and better saving throws against their specialties.

Eight magic items are also offered including the aptly named (cursed) rose-coloured glasses and an impressive staff of illusion.

The Designer's Notes give an insight into the creation of the concepts of Orthodox and Unorthodox Illusionism. The book ends with a rules summary, including new feats and spells, each split into Orthodox, Unorthodox, and Unaligned.

Conclusion:
I wasn't particularly taken by the concepts of orthodox, unorthodox, and unaligned illusionism. However, with only minor amendments, it is possible to use most of the feats, spells, new skill uses, and prestige classes without use of the Orthodoxy concept. For those looking to bring greater complexity and an aura of academia to the study of illusion, the concept as offered could be of great interest. The book is very rules-orientated - any adventure ideas, ideas for the role of illusions and illusionists in a campaign, roleplaying advice, NPCs, and such like, must be extrapolated by the reader directly from the rules in most cases, as there is little or no direct discussion of these themes. I found the book a little dry for my tastes, without the flare of some of the previous Encyclopaedia Arcane books, though its solid rules base will appeal to many, and there were some snippets here and there which are definitely worthy of inclusion in my campaign.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

This review will be short and to the point.

Smoke and Mirrors is a 64 page softcover guide to the school of Illusionism. The book splits the school up into two distinct entities: The Orthodox, containing elements of figments, glamours, patterns and phantasms (the traditionel illusions one might say) and the unorthodox, focusing on shadow magic.

The two largest chapters give details and rules for these two schools of illusions, new skill uses, feats and spells. It is also worth noting that there are rules for changing the core class "Illusionist" into one or the other. Personally, I dislike the idea of splitting the school up, since it already is a sub-school of magic, but if you like to have many options and be very specialized, I'm sure that the rules presented herein are just the thing for you.

For my sake, I tossed out the idea of orthodox and unorthodox as soon as I had read it, and decided just to use some of the rules, feats, skill uses and spells in the book. Many of the new skill uses are quite good and give flavour to the class, whereas most of the feats in my oppinion where a bit on the "bleh" side of things. Only three feats will make it into any of my games, and most inportant of these was the feats that allowed an illusionist to seize control over other casters illusions. It will make for some interesting mage-duels to say the least! A few of the feats are clearly overpowered, but I guess if you like powergaming and use many non-core books, they fit in nicely. Personally, I am a gamer who likes low-magic, non-munchkin games, so take it for what you will.

The spells are the best thing about this book, because with quite a few of them, they get better with levels, and you can create many permanent illusions and contraptions with the rules in the book. It's also nice to see the Wraithform spell back in the game, as well as new spells such as a paralysation cone, shadow gate magics and new landscape altering spells.

Other spells don't really appeal to me, because they are either way too powerful (like the Phantasmal Force spells, which acts a bit like Divine Power for the cleric, but the caster doesn't even have to be in direct combat when attacking his foes with his new and improved fighters BAB as well as great damage increases). Some of the spells are also missing some explanations, like what happens if a character makes a save with these Phantasmal Force spells, do you save each round and so forth...

Finally, some spells just seem utterly pointless, like Shadow Beasts an 8th level spell creating a 50% real 30hp steed that can deal 1d8+6 points of damage. It gains abilities as the caster gains levels, like the ability to walk on sandy dunes, water, and even air, but as an 8th level spell with a casting time of i hour and duration 1 hour/level, no wizards in their right minds would ever use it. As a conclusion about the spells, I'd say about half of them fit well into the rules presented by the core books, and the rest are either too mundane or too overpowered.

Then there's the prestige classes, and I hate every last one of the six presented in the book. My argumentation is this, and it's a personal viewpoint: Whenever a prestige class gives the same benefits as the core class and MUCH more, it is unbalanced because no caster would ever opt NOT to take it... All the prestige classes in Smoke and Mirrors gives the character normal spell progression, the bonus feats usually reserved for the Wizard core class, and then a whole bunch of extra abilities in the form of additional feats, spell uses and more. In my campaign, these would be outlawed :-(

One good thing I would like to adopt from the prestige classes is the "spontaneous casting" rules made available to some of them. It could be converted into feats, so there would be Spontaneous Glamour, Figment, Pattern, Phantasm or Shadow.. Five different feats, that enables the caster to "drop" a prepared spell in order to cast an illusion of the same level or lower that he/she knows. It would certainly make the subschools stand out a bit more, and with a little tweaking the same rules could be converted to the other specialised wizard classes.

The last pages of the book lists some magic items some designer notes and 3 pages of tables summarising the rules that I didn't really find helpful since no text accompanied the tables, and the only thing they contain are the spell and feat lists.

All in all, I had expected much more from this book, but I don't regret having it, since the feat ideas are great and many of the spells are good and innovative too.

Final notes: This review is based on my views, and I am a person who tends to distance myself from powergaming and munchkinism. Although I know there are products with far more power in them out there, I still rate this book as being pretty high up there in terms of overpowered classes, abilities and so forth. If you like Tome & Blood and what have you, this book won't let you down.

 

[John Cooper]

Encyclopaedia Arcane: Illusionism - Smoke and Mirrors
Mongoose Publishing product number MGP1012
Joseph Miller
64 pages, $14.95

The 12th book in the "Encyclopaedia Arcane/Divine" line, Illusionism - Smoke and Mirrors is a rather disappointing entry. Illusionism can be a fascinating field, and this book could have been much better than it is.

The cover, however, has no problems. A joint effort between Anne Stokes and Ralph Horsley, both of whom have done work for Mongoose before, the cover shows an illusionist conjuring forth an image of a serpentine creature to do battle with the trio of adventurers confronting him. The serpentine creature is very reminiscent of a cobra-hooded hisser from the old Gamma World game; I wonder if this was intentional? The color palette is well thought out, with the illusionist and his creation dominating the center of the work in brighter colors while the adventurers are muted and thus don't stand out as well. A very nice job, and the two artists' styles complement each other well.

The inside front cover is also a nice piece, this time of an illusionist calling forth the image of a dragon. I especially like the way the dragon's outer edges fade away into the mist surrounding the scene. I'd like to attribute the piece to the correct artist, but since it's signed "AD" and none of the interior artists listed bear those initials, I'm going to make a guess and assume it's done by Andrew Dobell, who has done work in several other Mongoose books.

The rest of the book's illustrations are black and white by a variety of artists, covering a wide range of talent, but most of the work is pretty good. Of course, quite a few of the illustrations are of the "cheesecake" variety, making me wonder whether Mongoose has artists that just crank out the cheesecake art and then throw it haphazardly into their books. After all, 5 of the 6 prestige classes in this book have scantily-clad women as the accompanying depiction, and I doubt that specializing in illusions makes a wizard or sorcerer specially prone to running around mostly unclad. (In a surprising turn from the standard "look at my nipples" artwork, one of the prestige class illustrations shows the vast majority of her butt crack.)

The proofreading once again could have been much stronger, as the book is filled with what seems to me to be an even higher than normal number of mistakes. These range from incorrect punctuation, words misspelled to become entire new words altogether ("puss" - as in "cat" - is used when "pus" - as in "bodily fluid" - is meant, "then" is used instead of "than," "effect" is used when "affect" is correct, etc.) or simply non-words ("ebenefits" obviously has one letter too many up front, "witht he" should be "with the," the word "0empty" doesn't need that zero up front, etc.). Most of these errors could have been caught with a simple spellchecker, although a knowledge of grammar certainly wouldn't hurt in a proofreader and/or editor, either.

There is a very annoying font used in this book, apparently crafted to look like it's been handwritten. However, this is a terrible font to try to read - there are what I can only term "splotches" in the place of part of the letters, making an "a" and a "u" virtually indistinguishable without careful study. Dashes end up looking like equal signs. An "m" looks more like a cursive "in." I hope the Mongoose folks learn their lesson in this book and drop this font from their toolkit immediately.

Lest it look like I'm simply nitpicking this book to pieces, I'll move on to the main text. I have a couple of problems with some of the basic assumptions about illusionism and how Joseph Miller decided to break up the book. He opted to break illusionists up into "orthodox" illusionists (masters of art) and "unorthodox" illusionists (masters of shadow energy). To those he adds "unaligned" illusionists, those willing to use both types of illusions. Okay, I can buy that so far, but then Miller makes orthodox illusionists and unorthodox illusionists unwilling for the most part to use spells from the other's school. Why? It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

Worse yet, he takes all of the sorcerer/wizard spells from the Player's Handbook and calls them "lay-mage" spells. These are looked down upon by orthodox and unorthodox illusionists alike, as they do not require any Skills to use. The way Miller has his illusionists working in this book, they can use various Skills to enhance the art of their own special (non-lay-mage, that is) illusion spells. Of course, this comes at a price, for the illusionist must make a Skill check (or several, depending upon the spell's desired effect) to cast the illusion spell, and this not only can take longer but runs the risk of a failed check, which makes the spell easier to save against.

Many of the new spells are of the "I-IX" variety, where there are nine versions of the same spell, one for each of the nine spell levels. (And then there's wraithform I-X apparently a series of ten spells, all of which are 3rd-level - obviously the "I-X" is a typo.) Each spell in the chain affects a different sized creature or object, or has a different area of effect, or so on. However, many of these are seriously flawed. As an example, a Medium-sized orthodox illusionist can do either of the following:

1. Cast the lay-mage change self (disguise self in 3.5) spell in 1
standard action, altering his appearance and using up a 1st-level spell slot.

2. Cast the orthodox illusion spell false visage V, possibly as a full-round
action, altering his appearance and using up a 5th-level spell slot.

Who in their right mind is going to use up a 5th-level spell slot to do the same thing you could do by casting a 1st-level spell? I just don't get it.

Splitting the field of illusionism in three (orthodox, unorthodox, and unaligned) has some other disadvantages as well. For one thing, many of the "Old Skills, Orthodox Uses" section is nearly word for word with the "Old Skills, Unorthodox Uses" section several pages later in the book. Seriously, replace the word "phantasm" with the word "shadow" in some cases and everything else is the same. The same is true of some of the spells and feats. Granted, in cases where there is absolutely no difference, the Unorthodox and Unaligned sections simply refer to the Orthodox section for details, but usually it's just a word or two different in two or three paragraphs. This all adds up to several wasted pages which could have been put to better use. In fact, in the "Designer's Notes" section, Joseph Miller even states that he wishes he had split this work into two separate books so he could concentrate on Orthodox Illusion and Unorthodox Illusion (hopefully he'd call it Shadow Magic or something) in separate books. He also admits to not being satisfied with the way the book turned out, and I give him credit for being up front about it.

Still, this isn't a terrible book. Sure, it's got its problems, but there is still some good stuff in here. Some of the spells and feats are clever (I especially like stream of unconsciousness as a spell name), although given that the 1E/2E spell phantasmal force was renamed silent image for 3E, it probably wasn't a good idea to use the name for a new illusion spell that has slightly different effects. The new magic item section is well done, and the six prestige classes seem okay if a little bland. (I did notice that all of them are 10-level prestige classes that each grant +1 to existing spellcasting level; I wonder if that was necessarily a smart thing to do, considering each prestige class grants a bunch of other abilities as well.)

Illusionism - Smoke And Mirrors seems to be the result of a talented writer (despite my panning this work, Joseph Miller has written some good material: I enjoyed his subsequent Familiars - Crouching Monkey, Hidden Toad and his Slayer's Guide to Derro) doing the best he can with a body of work that seems to have gotten away from him and veered off on a wrong path. I can't really recommend this book, but I'm sure we'll see plenty of good material from Joseph Miller in the future. He certainly has improved his craft since writing this book.

This is almost an afterthought at this point, but here's the breakdown of Illusionism - Smoke and Mirrors:

• Introduction: an overview of the "Encyclopaedia Arcane" line, followed by a page of fiction
• Illusionism - An Overview: the differences between orthodox, unorthodox, and unaligned illusionists
• Illusionist Paths: some details on the three paths, plus what happens if you leave a path
• Orthodox Illusionism: skills, feats, and spells
• Unorthodox Illusionism: skills, feats, and spells
• Unaligned Illusionism: feats and spells
• Lords of Illusion: 6 prestige classes
• Rose Coloured Glasses: 8 illusion-based magic items
• Designer's Notes: What the author was thinking when he wrote this
• Rules Summary: lists of feats and spells