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Message: <blockquote data-quote="James Gasik" data-source="post: 9622608" data-attributes="member: 6877472">The last time I got into a discussion about Illusion spells, someone (could even have been me, memory is for shite these days) made this observation:*If the DM is strict about Illusions, they are underpowered.*If the DM is not strict about Illusions, they are overpowered.Asking a DM to (often in real time) make a value judgment about how strict/lax they should be about interpretating and balancing a spell just isn't fair- especially for less experienced DM's.  Why is it then left up to them?  Why can't Illusion effects come pre-balanced?You run into similar problems with Enchantment spells that charm or influence or heck, even Bluff checks, really. Any effect that involves tricking or conning another character (PC or NPC) is likely to run into resistance because, while humans are provably quite gullible, nobody wants to admit that, nor does anyone like finding out they have been conned.In a Pathfinder 1e game, an NPC had a magic item that, if they were hit by a fire spell, they could use it to create an illusion of them being horribly charred to a crisp, while they became invisible for a short time.  I watched with dismay as a group of players, rather than cheering that they had killed their foe, expressed disbelief that they could have died so easily and began systematically searching for the NPC to prevent them from escaping!You could chalk that up to the players being a bunch of metagaming a-hats, but I took it as a lesson in human psychology.  D&D, especially, teaches players to be wary of deceptions- every beautiful female NPC is probably an evil monster of some kind, every chest is a Mimic, even floors, ceilings, stalactites, your loved ones, and cute little bunny rabbits perched on tree stumps can be lethal encounters.  Hit them with a Suggestion or a Geas?  They try to find a loophole in the NPC's wording.  Try to trick them with an illusion, they poke/prod/actively disbelieve it's existence.  Because doing these things are survival skills in a magical fantasy world!Which means Illusionists have the odds majorly stacked against them, especially given that magic with "real" effects is literally like, right there!</blockquote>

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