D&D 5E Illusionist - is it as weak as it seems?

[EvanNave55]

A thought just came to mind rereading this thread that, while it's easy enough to avoid taking falling damage anyways; one way the illusory reality not causing damage could be useful is if you used that and made illusionary floor just above the real one you could fall hundreds or more feet and not take any damage since the actual damage comes from hitting the floor but the illusionary floor can't hurt you.

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[Greenstone.Walker]

No one choose to play (or even multi-class into) a wizard.

I played an Illusionist in a brief Princes of the Apocalypse game. I found hiding behind a minor illusion of a wall and using a bow to be quite effective.

 

[Paul Smart]

I think an Eldritch Knight who focuses on Illusion would be a lot of fun. As an example, see the fight scene in Now You See Me 2. It would take a house rule to change the spell specialization but it could be interesting. Has anyone tried something like this? If so, how did it work.

 

[famousringo]

I think an Eldritch Knight who focuses on Illusion would be a lot of fun. As an example, see the fight scene in Now You See Me 2. It would take a house rule to change the spell specialization but it could be interesting. Has anyone tried something like this? If so, how did it work.

I haven't seen that movie, but the EK has enough play in it to grab a few key illusions. Blur is particularly great for them. Clever use of Silent Image could be useful to funnel enemies towards the EK and away from allies.

And with the SCAG melee cantrips, you only need 7 levels of EK to get War Magic and enjoy solid DPR for the rest of your adventuring career, freeing you up to multiclass heavily into Illusionist if you want.

Welcome to the board, have some free XP.

 

[gyor]

I think Feylock in someways can make for a better Illusionist then the Illusionist between stuff you get from your pact, invocations (at will disguise self, at will silent illusion), illusions spells. In fact in some ways it feels like the Beguiler Class from 3e.

Actually Cutting Words Bard perhaps makes better Beguiler, in fact aside from using Charisma instead of Intelligence as a casting stat, Bards basically are a merger between 3e Bards and Beguilers when you think about it.

 

[DillyDoobie]

Now, I'm not saying Illusion subclass is gimped or unplayable, or that you can't have fun playing Illusionist wizard. Just that it seems mechanically less useful than most other wizard traditions.

I disagree with this 100%. Illusionist is by far the most mechanically useful subclass for a wizard.

- First off, taking the Illusionist subclass still allows you to pick and choose from all the wizard spells.

- Getting a free cantrip isn't bad at at all. In 5E cantrips are amazing, especially minor illusion. In the hands of a creative player it is easily one of best cantrip in the game. Also the enhanced minor illusion ability is actually very handy, especially with malleable illusions skill. This cantrip synergizes amazingly with the other illusionist subclass skills.

- Malleable Illusions & Illusory Reality combined with the illusion spells in the wizard's arsenal (like Mirage Arcane) allow a PC to literally think of something and make it happen for real. Mechanically there isn't anything as useful as this in the game aside from the Wish spell (even that has limitation). The illusionist can also do all this pretty much at will with no resource cost aside from an action or bonus action.

The key thing with an Illusionist is that it requires some amount of buy-in/cooperation from your DM as well as a creative player to make it work and be fun. If you are the type player that likes to simply blast everything for high damage or use the same rotation of tricks/spells every encounter then this isn't the subclass for you.

 

[waxtransient]

The effectiveness of illusionist wizards came up last night in my game for the first time.

I am running a certain official D&D adventure which may contain a golem with greater invisibility cast on it. The party had no idea it was there, with the exception of the illusion wizard who had detect magic up.

The wizard initially had cast minor illusion on it to show everyone exactly where it was at (fudged a little bit, since the golem was bigger than the 5 foot cube limit on the spell). When the golem sprang into action, the wizard found himself right before it in initiative order. He readied an action on his turns to move the illusion in sync with the invisible golem's movement, allowing the party to "see" the creature, negating the advantage it would have had on attacks and allowing the party to target it without disadvantage.

Due to this experience, I echo what others have said: the illusionist does appear to be underpowered, but with a creative player and flexible DM, the school can be both fun and effective.

 

[Greenstone.Walker]

I am running a certain official D&D adventure which may contain a golem with greater invisibility cast on it. The party had no idea it was there, with the exception of the illusion wizard who had detect magic up.

I'l assuming you mean detect illusion. Detect magic cannot locate invisible creatures or items.

 

[jgsugden]

I find that a lot of players are carrying around a lot of assumptions about what Illusions do based upon what happened with them in prior additions. I suggest that you take a look at the actual language in the player's handbook relating to Illusions and the actual language of the illusion spells and reconsider what it takes to realize that there is an illusion there. For the most part, it is just pure role-playing. You don't get to roll a save to try and determine that it's an illusion. You just have to role play out what happens when a wall suddenly appears in front of the monster. Does the monster think it's a wall, do they know about Illusions and assume it is fake, or do they guess something else entirely is going on? What they believe, and what happens when they ty to interact with it, is different for the different types of illusion. And once you have a strong suspicion that it might be an illusion, you still can't see through most illusions. You have to investigate it in order to be able to see through the illusion. That allows the allusion to still provide concealment even though someone knows what they're dealing with this an illusion.

Some illusions follow a script you specify when you cast the spell. Phantasms tend to take place within the mind of a foe and adapts as the foe expects them to adapt. Other illusions can be manipulated by the wizard as they unfold so that the wizard can decide how the illusion evolves. A creative player can look at these rules for illusions, especially when enhanced by the illusion School benefits, and can be insanely effective if the DM is accommodating.

Finally, you have to consider what you can use allusions to do in D&D. Well they can be used in combat, they can also be used out of combat for a wide variety of things that might give you an advantage and a subsequent combat, or my help you avoid combat, or might just get you a reward of some type without ever even needing to worry about a combat. Illusion is just fine as it is.

 

[Kalshane]

I played in a short-lived campaign with someone else playing an Illusionist with the Keen Mind feat. While generally considered a "weak" feat, in his hands it was pretty nifty. He could instantly recall and then perfectly reproduce via Illusion magic anything he had seen or read within the last month (and used it for older RP stuff where there was no mechanical advantage for doing so, such as a "coffee table book" he'd read as a child, complete with the drink stain in one corner of the pages). He'd also send his familiar to scout and use minor illusion to show the rest of the party what his familiar was seeing. And that was before doing things in combat to confound and misdirect our enemies.

But, as others have said, it requires a creative player and accommodating DM to really shine.