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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sebby" data-source="post: 4839796" data-attributes="member: 17064">Play experience with Visions of AvariceIn our game (now 11th level), it's been used 3 times.There is no doubt, it is a very effective power. Simply put, it allows an encounter to be dealt with in smaller chunks. It's a divide and conquer power. You don't have to catch everyone for it to be effective. In fact, it hardly matters at all, as long as you catch about 50% in the initial attack, you're golden.One use was in a 14th level encounter while we were 9th level. This was an encounter with a large number of n and n+1 level creatures, not with few but super-strong monsters. It made the encounter as easy as a same-level fight, but I must say that it is mostly because the spell caught almost every melee enemy in a nice cluster after they tried to overwhelm the ranger, who had made himself a very tempting target by going in first, ahead of the defender screen.Edit: Another time we got lucky: we (unknowingly) cast it over an iced river that the enemies were just crossing to reach the wizard and ranger, and had no intention of staying on for good reason: everytime a creature took damage while on the ice, an undead corpse of some kind would break the ice, emerge and attack it. It was a slaughter.We have a party that's also very good at taking advantage of it (although, this is unintended): many forced movement/teleport effects allow us to herd the enemies near the illusion so they can be attacked by it. Our striker is an archer ranger, making dealing with immobilized melee monsters a breeze.Everytime, it was cast in a wide open space, giving the enemies plenty of room to avoid it or escape it if they saved. I think it would be absolutely brutal if it was cast in a restricted space or a strategic chokepoint.Everytime, it also was very effective at "keeping in" the monsters initially affected. Very few escaped once caught. I can thus say that, at least in our small sample, KD's theoretical numbers do work out. Once, two rather large trolls escaped and immediately went for the wizard. He took a severe beating, true, but he answered by Thunder Waving both of them... back within 4sq of the zone where they promptly re-forgot about the wizard and went all "oh shiny!", again (to DM Mike's complete dismay, I might add).In practice, countering the spell is possible, but hard for the DM, even with the proper "tools". When this effect is on the board, we know it's important. We'll have at least one of the defenders blocking for the wizard and we have ways to grant him out-of-sequence saves in case he gets stunned/dazed. We can even teleport him out of trouble if need be (both our defenders are swordmages). Plus, he's not so bad himself at evading trouble.It is strong. Game breaking though? I don't think so. Up till now, we haven't used it on a group of monsters that was good at dealing with it, so it's hard to say. And our DM, admitedly, could be a better tactician.</blockquote>

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