Wizard Illusion Spells 5e

[Heberto Calderon]

Iam starting a new campaign and decided to play a wizard this time around. I was looking through the different schools available and reading guides (Treantmonk's among others) and saw illusion as one of the most liked ones. However, my DM and one of the other players have tried to dissuade me from this choice as a lot of higher level creatures (our last campaign went from 1 - 20) have true sight thereby making the illusions worthless.

True enough, your character's favored brand of magic would be less effective against creatures with truesight. However, by the time a wizard reaches that level, there should be plenty of other spells in the character's arsenal. As long as you don't neglect other schools, your character should be fine.

Illusion magic is not only comprised of illusions. There are many mind affecting spells in the illusion school which are not affected by True Sight. To answer your question: you would be less effective against creatures with true sight compared to other types of wizards; however, you would not be useless.

So my GM and I got into a little bit of a dispute about this and I figured I would pick yall's brains. When using detect magic or arcane sight and focusing on an illusion such as major image do you get the fact that it is illusion magic or does the magic hide that aura? Also if you do get illusion magic from the illusion do you also sense illusion magic when focusing on something invisible? Just kinda curious about that, if I need to be more specific just let me know... thanks!

You'd have to wait the 3 rounds to get that much detail, but I've never seen anything in the rules stating exceptions for those two situations. A spell is a spell, and detect magic will find magical auras from spells.

The illusion is still there, you don't get to ignore it unless you make the save throw. Even if it is an illusion magic aura that doesn't tell you exactly what is going on (for example the illusion might be simply hiding the original magic, or it could be an illusion of something less dangerous than what is there).

Now you might get the GM to rule that observing the illusion with detect magic or arcane eyes counts as interacting with it, which would allow you to make the save, but the save still has to be made.

Alright, so just to make sure I'm getting this right, I can figure out that it's and illusion with Arcane Sight but I won't know what illusion spell it is, and I won't be able to make a save against it unless i interact with it... unless my GM says otherwise?

If you use detect magic or a similiar ability you know there is magic within your cone and eventually the location of the auras in question. If you succeed on a Knowledge (arcana) check you identify the school of magic the aura belongs to, if any (DC 15 + spell level). Thus, if you check the effects of a major image spell, then you will see that it is magic and know that the figment is of the illusion school with a DC 18 Knowledge (arcana) check, but not the specific spell; it could be any illusion. With a DC 20 + spell level Knowledge (arcana) check you could identify a spell effect that is in place (23 to identify the spell as major image); the final check does not even require a detect magic ability, it is merely a use of the Knowledge (arcana) skill.

I think it is important that detect magic expose illusions. It keeps illusionist honest. People don't walk around detecting magic constantly, usually. As long as the illusion is believable, people won't cast detect magic on it.

Right, so when making the Spellcraft check to determine the aura, do I have to use an action to do that? So for example I've got Arcane Sight on and we are ambushed by a group of Ogres. My Arcane sight picks up an aura from each of them and I focus on one to determine what the aura is... do I have to use an action to do that or do i get it for free as long as i can make the check?

Detect Magic tells you the school of magic, but not the exact spell. It also detects auras of spells which can linger after a spell is gone. As an example invisibility is an illusion spell so the aura could mean something is invisible or that what you see is not really there. If an illusion spell was cast there recently it may also pick that up.

Someone Knocking, there isn't any reason to pick one way or another. Identifying a spell with spell craft is a free action. Penetrating the function of a magic item is 3 actions. I guess it depends on how close to which you think it is.

Personally, I for it being a free action. It wastes a third level spell slot which could have been used for haste or something. It only lasts a few minutes. In addition, the illusionist will know you have it sense your eyes glow blue. I'm sure he could work around it.

Alright, ya the reason I was wanting to know is because I plan on putting Arcane Sight permanently on my wizard and I wanted to know if I would be able to tell auras quickly or not... mainly cause the spell says it doesn't take the normal 3 rounds detect magic does to determine strength and location...

I agree about the role definition. For example: Blast of frost, freezing rake, and freezing pillar are all from different schools, but they're basically all offensive ice spells. Maybe they did that on purpose so that each school can stand on its own. But wouldn't it make more sense to say, bring back abjuration for all the defensive spells, put all the offensive spells in evocation, keep conjuring as is, keep enchanting strictly for self-buffs, and... I dunno, do something with transmuting, it's all over the place. That way specialist wizards could actually be specialists in what they do.

The biggest problem, to my mind, is Enchanting: it has virtually all of the self-buffs, but very little else, so it's the school you can't afford to lose and will never want to specialize in. I'm tempted to say it should go entirely, with some other spell-shuffling besides, and the number of banned schools reduced to one. Hell, maybe drop Evocation too, and have a triumvirate of Spells What Summon Stuff, Spells What Change Stuff, and Spells What Deal In Intangibles.

I do not have a solution but in my opinion Wizard sub-classes and perhaps even spells would deserve a thorough review. The current two cast per PL together with grimoire mechanics, sub-class design and spell per PL distribution do not provide very cool Wizard experience.

I like the idea of a spell triumvirate (although I'd maybe make it: elemental, summoning creatures, weapons/buffs, as boring as that is). Or maybe base subclasses on something else entirely. Maybe make it a cultural thing. Like the Huana mages specialize in water spells (Tekehu's class), maybe you could have Aedyeran mages and Vailian mages with their own specialties.

From an optimization perspective, you're getting virtually nothing out of your subclass choice, though. Enchanting spells derive virtually no benefit from increased power levels (tiny duration increase, but that's it), and losing illusion puts a gaping hole in your defensive arsenal compared to a non-specialist wizard. More power to you if you enjoy it, but you're effectively trading something for nothing.

That's an interesting perspective. I personally never played any DnD and have been thinking along the lines of Elder Scrolls and other games where you enchant equipment. Which, to be fair, is also called that in PoE (when you enhance, customize your weapons and armor).

However, the freeform nature of illusions also means that your spells place a great deal of burden on your DM to interpret their effects and how other creatures will respond to them. If your DM is the sort of person who will play along with your shenanigans, School of Illusion can be a ton of fun. But if your DM is a mechanical stickler or in any way adversarial or contrarian, you may find that illusions are difficult to use to great effect.

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