What can I do with Silent Image?

[Baumi]

Can anyone give me examples what you can and cannot create with Silent Image? You can make really big Illusions, but only one creature or object which I find a bit strange...

What if you want to create an Object that includes other objects (Table with some mugs) and is it really impossible to create an Illusion of a Swarm of Rats?

THX and....

 

[Darklone]

Stand in a corner and create the illusion of a wall in front of you. Shoot crossbows.

 

[Bagpuss]

Stand in a corner and create the illusion of a wall in front of you. Shoot crossbows.

Except the wall would disappear as soon as you fired the crossbow. Since by doing an attack action you would no longer be concentrating on the illusion (unless you had haste for an additional partial action).

If you concentrated on the illusion while your companions fired through it then the enemy would

a) get total concealment, since the party couldn't see through the illusion either.
b) get a Will save since crossbow bolts interact with the wall. (crossbow bolts don't normally pass through walls.

 

[aliensex]

PORN!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Zad]

There are as many uses for silent image as the caster has creativity.

I have used it to:

1. Bait an ambush - the party came across a band of orcs in the wilderness. A quick silent image gave me a lame deer that the orcs of course tried to chase down, coming into our waiting arms.

2. Stealth - let's say you have a guard who looks out a small window to a passage that runs across his view. Create the illusion of the back wall, but a couple feet closer, and slip behind it. (I used this in the Heart of Nightfang Spire to slip past one of the scrying devices etched on the ceiling - an illusion of the floor, but higher, cloaked our passage. Unless someone was continuously and vigilantly watching, they'd never notice.)

3. Classic Diversion - cast an illusion of an enemy at the corner of a nearby building, and let the guards go to chase it. When they leave, slip through the door they were guarding.


And that only scratches the surface. It's something I wish I could be more creative about.

 

[Wippit Guud]

My best use for this was using a wall, but against opponents who shoot. Creating walls of stone or iron are common magic spells, so they just assume it's a real one.

Giant spiders coming down from the ceiling are fun, they don't make any noise in reality if they're on a web.

Make an open door into a room on a wall, hide, watch people run headlong into the wall.

Fake pits. If it's big enough, people won't try to interact with it.

Run into forest, hide in a hole, make a tree right above the hole that conceals it.

That's just off the top of my head.

 

[Bagpuss]

The discription is "This spell creates the visual illusion of an object, creature, or force, as visualized by the character. The illusion does not create sound, smell, texture, or temperature. The character can move the image within the limits of the size of the effect."

If your a really mean DM then you would allow

A man, but not wearing any clothes or carrying items (it says creature OR object).

A table but nothing on it. (It says AN object not several).

But I'm a little more liberal, it may be a 1st level spell but all the other illusions are limited by it and I think limiting Major Image to naked creatures an single objects would be a little unfair.

I allow it to mimic any self contained object, ie: everything is linked.

Things you could do with me as DM...

Guard standing at his post, or walking in a confined area (four 10-ft. cubes + one 10-ft. cube/level). Dressed in armour and carrying a weapon.

A table with a bowl of fruit on it, and a man head down asleep in a chair leaning on it, he couldn't get up from the table and walk away from it.

I'm not sure about a swarm of rats, probably too complex.

 

[Tobold Hornblower]

I would NOT allow a pit. That would require making the floor invisible, which silent image can't do. If there was an open pit, you could create an illusionary floor for someone to fall through.

I would allow the swarm of rats, as long as it stays within the area of effect.

The illusionary walls are a great use.

Imc, it mostly gets used to scare someone away or distract them.

 

[Wippit Guud]

Why would you need to make the floor invisible? Given realistic colors, I could paint something that looks like a pit, and I didn't make the floor invisible. Or better yet, take a movie like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, where he has to walk in mid-air. That looked a lot like a pit, but it wasn't.

 

[Voadam]

I've used it to create a big black sphere over a creatures head to try to blind him. Unfortunately, the lightning bolts coming out of his eyes kept coming.

Damn Banewarrens.