Illusion Wizard Pathfinder

[Gaetan Boren]

Rightnow I have a player here running roughshod over the other GMs in the group by using it to pull off some highly destructive and, IMHO, questionable tactics. Things like making part of a castle floor seem to disappear, then making it real, dropping half a dozen soldiers to the next floor down; cue falling damage. He's even gone so far as to have objects crush high-level victims upon the object's return from the illusory state.

He generally has some impressive logic to back him up, but I get the feeling, watching him work that he's generally violating both rules-as-written (RAW) and rules-as-intended (RAI) on a regular basis.

By 14th level, you have learned the secret of weaving shadow magic into your illusions to give them a semireality. When you cast an illusion spell of 1st level or higher, you can choose one inanimate, nonmagical object that is part of the illusion and make that object real. You can do this on your turn as a bonus action while the spell is ongoing. The object remains real for 1 minute. For example, you can create an illusion of a bridge over a chasm and then make it real long enough for your allies to cross.

Anything that prevents the Wizard from casting spells, also shuts down Illusory Reality because the Wizard needs to cast an Illusion spell to create an object. Some relatively common examples which fall in this category and which specifically hinder casters are silence and counterspell.

Dispel magic can also dispel an illusion and prevent the use of Illusory Reality, but do note that dispelling the illusion after the Wizard has manifested an object will not cause the object to disappear.

The DM should not try to undermine the player, but when an outcome is uncertain, the DM can (and often should) call for a roll, be it an ability check or a save. Referencing traps and spells can help to understand when a roll is adequate.

For example, the Wizard can create an adamantine dome using Illusory Reality, but whether that dome will capture a creature as it manifests is uncertain. The DM could rule that the creature is just captured like force cage or call for a save like wall of stone. Both are equally valid, though I would urge for a consistent choice on the DM's part.

When characters need to saw through ropes, shatter a window, or smash a vampire's coffin, the only hard and fast rule is this: given enough time and the right tools, characters can destroy any destructible object. Use common sense when determining a character's success at damaging an object. Can a fighter cut through a section of a stone wall with a sword? No, the sword is likely to break before the wall does.

The same section of the DMG includes tables to determine the AC and HP of objects. For example, an adamantine cart is a large object with 23 AC and 27 HP. Enemies suitable for a party of level 14 characters can easily destroy something like that in one round.

When you cast an illusion spell of 1st level or higher, you can choose one inanimate, nonmagical object that is part of the illusion and make that object real. You can do this on your turn as a bonus action while the spell is ongoing. The object remains real for 1 minute...The object can't deal damage or otherwise directly harm anyone.

From the definition of Illusory Reality, I read this as saying it can create new objects -- not take away existing ones, like a floor, nor create weights to fall on people (as that would deal damage and harm people). This use of Illusory Reality seems against RAW.

By 14th level, you have learned the secret of weaving shadow magic into your illusions to give them a semireality. When you cast an illusion spell of 1st level or higher, you can choose one inanimate, nonmagical object that is part of the illusion and make that object real. You can do this on your turn as a bonus action while the spell is ongoing. The object remains real for 1 minute. For example, you can create an illusion of a bridge over a chasm and then make it real long enough for your allies to cross.

Illusory Reality allows a wizard to create an illusion, and then make an object in that illusion real; it doesn't permit them to take an object that already exists and make it "fake" for the duration. So the following kinds of tactics would not be permissible:

Illusory Reality is a 14th level Wizard feature. Any character who gains access to this feature already has access to extremely powerful spells, being a spellcaster with 6th and 7th level spell slots. There's probably a lot of ways they could cause similar havoc without needing to specifically abuse this feature. So while I understand your trepidation, the reality is that these kinds of uses of Illusory Reality is probably not their most powerful feature, their flouting of the rules notwithstanding.

Up front, this is a questionable use of Illusory Reality. It's not obviously permitted from the feature's description as written, and interpreting it in a way that allows these uses starts stepping on other spells and abilities as well as risking imbalance in the game. Those reasons alone are enough justification for the DM to prohibit these effects.

However, the character in question is level 14. That indicates some pretty spectacular abilities, and while the effects described in the question are striking they aren't necessarily too far off other things a level 14 Wizard could do.

For example, casting fireball at it's lowest level (3) allows the Wizard to (potentially) do up to 8d6 damage, equivalent to 80 feet's worth of falling damage, to as many targets as fit in its 20 foot sphere of effect (easily 6 humanoid enemies). The spell's area of effect is similar to that of Major Image, which affects a 20 foot cube, and requires no setup or convenient layouts to create the 80 foot fall hazard. Upcasting it adds additional d6 to the damage. So even if the player is abusing Illusory Reality in particular, it's not necessarily granting their character outsize power.

At level 14, the game world should contain a huge number of cannon fodder opponents who can't meaningfully challenge the party and that the party can defeat with ease. For those enemies who need to provide a greater challenge, counters and resistances can make most of the difference.

Enemies which don't have abilities allowing them to deal with the illusions directly can still develop strategies to deal with an Illusionist. At level 14 the PC is probably at least moderately famous, and even if not famous in general a persistent enemy (or faction of enemies) will encounter the PC many times and observe how they do things.

The DM can also impose some more arbitrary hard counters on these tactics, though if the player is creative this will always be a lagging solution. If the combat area is on the top of a 60 foot mound of solid stone, you've put a ceiling on how much falling damage can be inflicted with the vanishing floor trick. If the DM decides that dropping a heavy weight on someone is effectively an Attack, the player may have to roll a d20 to determine a hit, or the enemy might have a chance for a DEX to avoid the hazard.

A high-level character is expected to have lots of options in battle, and to be able to deal a lot of damage to multiple enemies per combat turn. This is not abuse. Powerful characters are powerful. Abuse is more a matter of rendering challenges irrelevant rather than beatable or easier.

Mesmerist is really more intended to be for enchanters: however, most illusion effects target Will saves which are helped by hypnotic stare. Keep in mind that the mesmerist is Charisma based, and a wizard (I infer by illusionist you mean illusion-specialized wizard) is Intelligence based, so you may have issue there.

Brawler, Ranger and Gunslinger are full bab, d10 and have good fort and ref saves, which would give you all good saves. Their particular class abilities won't add a whole lot, but should provide some flexibility. I'd probably lean to Brawler of these, since being unarmed and illusion magic seems like at times it could work out well, and if we are looking for flexibility anyway, nothing is more flexible than brawler. If the point buy is low (or bad rolls if that is what you are doing) gunslinger might edge it out, since guns are going to be guns anyway and you don't really need much in stats to have them be effective backup options. Ranger's big attraction would probably be the animal companion, even a level-3 AC makes a good mount if you aren't planning on engaging in direct combat and the extra mobility is always nice.

Of the psychic classes (which I don't know all that well) occultist seems like the best fit. Uses your primary casting stat, gives you a good fort save (leaving only ref as weak, the least important in my opinion) and gives you 3/4 bab and d8 hd. You can work with illusion implements to continue the theme, or branch out to other schools.

I never really played an illusionist and you will probably lose quite some of the benefits of gestalt characters if you want to fully focus on illusion but possible class combinations I could think of would be Puppetmaster magus+ School savant Arcanist or wizard, with high charisma and high intelligence.

This gives you 2 class features that boost your spell Dcs, some swift action spells, access to the bard, wizard and magus spell lists, a huge number of spells per day and 2 ways to maintain your illusion spells without concentrating.

The Psychic class with the Pageantry discipline has an ability that allows you to concentrate on ongoing spells as a swift action, which is exceedingly useful with illusion spells. However, the catch is that the Psychic doesn't actually receive the best illusion spells in the game, the Shadow Conjuration spell line. However, since you're a gestalt character you can fix this easily by mixing your Psychic with either Wizard (probably illusionist) or Sorcerer (probably sage). While it does leave you a very defensively vulnerable (d6 hit dice and only one good save is atrociously bad by gestalt standard), it will give you the ultimate selection of illusion options.

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