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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Helldritch" data-source="post: 8725922" data-attributes="member: 6855114">The AD&D illusionnist was a beast of a class. It's only weakness was how willing was the DM to see his monsters being bullied around. You would not get a save against illusion unless you actively acted to disbelief. Many DMs would just say ok, roll a save while it was not so.An illusionnist could "summon" an Ogre. That Ogre strikes you and deals damage (illusory, but the player and character do not know). So it must be an illusion! Guess what? To be rid of the illusion, you had to actually spend a round and risk being hit once more. And if the save failed... that Ogres would stay for 3 rounds after concentration. (Yep the illusionist had to concentrate on the phantasmal force). But at higher level, that would not be an ogre, it could be a demon. And that demon might come from demi-shadow monster which were partially real and unlike summon monsters would be entirely chosen by the illusionist.The risk in using lower illusions to have monster to attack would simply be a bonus to disbelief as the character would start "seeing" that the "monster" was too good to be true. Not so with higher level spells such as Phantasmal killers and demi-shadow monsters (and shadow monsters) where the spells were fire and forget. Illusions would affect undead and even blind monsters as illusions had a sensory component to them. The only real problem of the illusionist was that the spells he could use would effectively shut down the precious BBEG and a lot of DM did not appreciated that. So they would gutter the power of illusions in the hands of the players (but not when it was in theirs). Also, Demi-shadow monsters would only inflict a % of real damage. That did not mean that they would inflict that % only. Only after the fight would the faked loss HP would come back. Many DM would simply have an ogre dealing normally 10 points of damage dealing only 4. Which was not what it was supposed to be. Illusions were hard to track on the DM side has he had to actually note how much damage was caused by illusion and to which player(s) in addition to his monsters. And remember, one round of doing nothing but disbelieving was required to even get a save... Something that many people would simply not do. It was dropped in 2nd edition for obvious reasons.</blockquote>

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