Mirror image question

wujenta

First Post
Been a long time since last time my friends and I played an adventure, and im a little rusty, so I ask here a question that happened last sesion. On of my players a little halfling rogue/wizard was mounted in his warpony and cast mirror image... thats ok but i didnt know if the mirror image will duplicate the warpony or not... i allowed it but told him i will ask better and with more practice DM about it. So thats it, would you allow it?

thanks in advance
 

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The SDR says,

SRD said:
Enemies attempting to attack you or cast spells at you must select from among indistinguishable targets.

Since an image floating above a nonexistant horse would make it an obvious image and would thus not be an indistinguishable target I'd rule that mirror image would also duplicate the horse, the same way it would duplicate objects the caster were holding.

Of course, the other way to look at it would be to say that it looks like there are 1d4 people riding on the same horse, but I can't see that working out too well visually. It's easier just to duplicate the horse, and I don't think it would unbalance things too much. Mounts are generally weak enough that giving them a little extra protection in the form of a shared mirror image won't break anything.
 

I wouldn't allow it myself unless you had the Share Spell ability for your mount (druid animal companion, familiar et cetera).
 

I'd allow it. I'd also take a moment to point out that it is unclear but I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt.

There are 2 reasons for this. 1) I've decided to generally give the players the benefit of the doubt, as the game is supposed to be fun and not an endless court debate over the rules.

2) Then when there is a dispute over what monsters/npcs can do, I can remind the party that I also give them the benefit of the doubt and it should be a two-way street. :)
 

Destil said:
I wouldn't allow it myself unless you had the Share Spell ability for your mount (druid animal companion, familiar et cetera).

In such a case, the spell would become useless when mounted ebcause people could simply target "the guy on the house and not the floating images". This might not be all bad (as the spell is amazingly good) but has consequences if you are playing in an environment where epiple are mounted a lot.

In my experience, this spell is so useful for keeping a wizard alive that it is worth a lot of effort to have ready and is worth combat actions. It's also the only reason that I won;t dump illusion as a specialist wizard.

[It's trickier with a sorcerer for obvious reasons]
 

If you allow that, then you're allowing multiple creatures to gain the benefit of mirror image instead of just the caster. If a goliath PC is holding a halfling PC, will they both benefit from the mirror image as well?
 

I like the 8 guys on the back of the horse idea better. It doesn't invalidate the spell (opponents must choose from indistinguishable targets), it doesn't lay track to potential abuses (like casters riding piggyback on the fighter), and its a humorous image. Although so is the piggyback caster.
 

I'd go with the 8 guys on the back of the horse also. But then we use the FAQ suggested variant that all the images occupy the same square rule. So you know the occupied square and can't distiguish beteween them (by hitting the acutal caster).

If you use the RAW that they occupy other squares you would be better off having it affect the horse too. That version had the benefit that once the real target, you can continue to hit without miss chance until the caster has a move and can re-blend with the images.
 

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