Illusion Wizzard Aa2

[Christa Voth]

Whenyou choose this school at 2nd level, you learn the Minor Illusion cantrip. If you already know this cantrip, you learn a different wizard cantrip of your choice. The cantrip doesn't count against your number of cantrips known.

Starting at 6th level, when you cast an illusion spell that has a duration of 1 minute or longer, you can use your action to change the nature of that illusion (using the spell's normal parameters for the illusion), provided that you can see the illusion.

Beginning at 10th level, you can create an illusory duplicate of yourself as an instant, almost instinctual reaction to danger. When a creature makes an attack roll against you, you can use your reaction to interpose the illusory duplicate between the attacker and yourself. The attack automatically misses you, then the illusion dissipates.

By 14th level, you have learned the secret of weaving shadow magic into your illusions to give them a semi-reality. 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.

I am 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.

A wizard wearing armour that they are not proficient in is unable to cast spells. Would it be possible to force a wizard into armour using a combination of Illusion and Illusory Reality? For example, by casting an illusion of armour over an enemy wizards body and then make it real for one minute using Illusory Reality.

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.

If possible, this should prevent the wizard from then casting any spells. I understand that this may be up for DM discretion. However, my question is, as RAW is this possible? Or would this be classed as 'harming' the wizard from a RAW point of view?

Given that, as you say, the illusion of armour, then the armour being made real, do not 'harm' the enemy, then there's no reason why this would contradict the emboldened part of your quote: "The object can't deal damage or otherwise directly harm anyone".

Since this is your wizard's 14th level archetype feature, finding ways for it to be comparable to the other archetype's 14th level abilities doesn't make this an overpowered use of the ability either. Consider the other archetypes, such as a Conjuration wizard's "Durable Summons" (PHB, pg. 116):

Note that ultimately your DM has the final say as to whether this would work, and if your DM just so happened to make his NPC wizard proficient with whatever armour you put on them (since a DM can adjust the stats of any creature, or you could justify it by claiming that the wizard is multiclassed into something with armour proficiencies), then this wouldn't work either (but at that point, they're doing so to deliberately undo your plan, in which case they're better off simply ruling that it doesn't work).

Almost arbitrary control of restraint-like effects provided there is no direct physical damage. For instance, there is no requirement that an illusion of heavy armour has straps etc making it possible to take off. Or joints that move. How about a gag, or a difficult-to-remove helm with no eye holes . . .

For (1) I would suggest that you would need either a willing target for low-level spells, or a spell description that makes it clear that the created items are worn or may be in sync with the target. Depending on spells available in the campaign, this might make the situations in (2) more reasonable.

Seeming I think this would do exactly what you want. An unwilling target would get a Charisma saving throw, although you might be able to trick someone into thinking they were getting a disguise, than make it real in order to disable their spellcasting.

As an added bonus with Seeming, you can make allies look like enemies and enemies look like allies, or either look like innocent bystanders, giving your team an advantage due to confusion. Adding a rider due to the 14th-level school ability that almost completely disables one of your enemies is very nice.

Your class gives you proficiency with certain types of armor. If you wear armor that you lack proficiency with, you have disadvantage on any ability check, saving throw, an attack roll that involves Strength or Dexterity, and you can't cast spells.

For NPCs there is no such rule. In 5e, NPCs have no explicit armor proficiency described in their stat blocks, neither they have classes. Moreover, there are spellcasters in MM that wear armor (a Death Knight, for instance). Therefore, in terms of mechanics, NPC caster interactions with armor is entirely up to the DM.

Turn-based mechanics could make an impression that enemies stand still all the time, except of their respective turns. However, from the narrative perspective, there is no turns (or turns are simultaneous, so to say), so there is no "not my turn" moments at all. That means you have to latch the illusion to a moving target somehow. As far as I know, there is no spells capable of this. You can create an illusion of a standalone item, you can even move this illusion afterwards, but you can't create illusion of this item being worn by your enemy (which is, by the way, fighting with you right now).

I have to emphasize that there is no condition that prevents spellcasting in 5e. The only (kind of) exception is Incapacitated, which prevents all actions. The 5e way to shut down casters is to restrict them them from using spell components, not the very spellcasting feature.

So the object not only can't deal damage, but it also can't "harm". "Harm" is not a strict term in 5e, but I guess that means any bad conditions a character can face. That includes blinded, deafened, restrained, incapacitated, etc. Preventing spellcasters from using their magic in a forcible way is "harm".

Casting spells is central to a wizard, but as stealth is central to a Rogue, fighting is to a Fighter, or halving is to a Halfling. I would suggest that a spell or effect that removes any class's ability to "be that class" is in fact harm.

It's actually a collection of several parts. Chain mail is hundreds if not thousands of links. A breast plate is a metal plate plus fitted leather armor. Leather armor is itself at least two pieces (pants + shirt).

Unless the wizard is asleep/frozen/held in place, the armor is going to have to be animated to move along with the wizard otherwise it would be a pretty shoddy illusion, AND not actually be being worn at the time. Remember a turn is 6 seconds and technically everyone's turn in a round happens at same time, the other PCs and NPCs aren't frozen in place during your turn, that's just a conceit to make the game flow better.

Right now 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.

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