Im playing a 3.5 Beguiler and using Silent Image to "shield" severely wounded allies with illusionary magical rock, hide the party behind illusionary double walls when we expect an ambush or would like to be more than the party face to a meeting, and making illusionary walls to block off passages when we chase someone or are trying to flee.
Now someone in the group, I dont know who, has complained that I am power gaming casters and solving everything with this single spell.
Am I a terrible player for using Silent Image in creative ways, or is the player a dick? Does anyone else experience shit like this? I deliberatly chose Beguiler so I would not seem too powerful to the rest of the team (they are all old players, but not excatly what you would call optimizers to put it politely) and I am not whoring around with save-or-suck spells either.
Pic related, it was my face when I discovered this. My DM is also in the same boat as the other players, so I might actually face a houseruled nerf to Silent Image......
>>43644304
All of that sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Why is this a contest? Why are players complaining about something that is an obvious benefit to them?
>>43644304
He's a dick, you're using the spell in a creative manner and there is nothing wrong with that.
>>43644348
I have no idea. I am using my shit to buff the team and make other players shine excatly because I know my group has a pretty "damage is best"-view of DnD and they know that I am able to optimize characters quite a bit if I wanted to (which is also why I explicitly made a promise that I would only make shit which suits the caracter 100% and not optimize anything". I have no words for this and I really need to know I am not alone in this.
I mean, who the fuck complains that another player saves lives in the group, by making opponents think a wounded character just got encased in magical rock or that pursuers think a sewer got blocked off, so the group can escape certain death?
>>43644348
>>43644376
I have even heard complaints after a scenario where we were fleeing in the midddle of the night and I used Ghost Sounds and Dancing Lights to lure our pursuers off track (by making "torches" run the wrong way, accompanied with the sounds of exhausted grunting"
>>43644304
>>43644395
>>43644447
That shit is bananas. The person is a dick and has no place playing rpg.
>>43644304
This is exactly the purpose of that spell.
It is performing as expected, no better than it should and no worse.
>tfw playing 5e warlock and have unlimited uses of Silent Image per day
Anyway, to echo the thread it sounds like you're playing with idiots.
>>43644594
>>43644571
That was what I was thinking as well. I deliberatly did not pick things they would say "OP!" to, but when I realised that they were complaining about Silent Image, Dancing Lights and Ghost Sounds, I was just baffled.
And Warlock 5e infinite casts? What? That is just retarded and insane. You can make walls every where and make every single enemy ever, feel like they are in a maze and not be able to do shit. Just make mazes all over the place, and ignore the enemies.
The only problem is undead, outworlders and people with True Seeing, but I guess they have other counters.
>>43644304
That's the big problem with D&D-style illusions. If you are a bit creative you can get a lot of bang for your buck, but a lot depends on how the DM interprets things.
I've been in the same boat, I played an illusion-based sorcerer and the DM never let my plans fly, everyone was always seeing through my carefully crafted illusions. I don't think what you did was unreasonable, but this is one of those topics that have to be agreed with the DM before chargen.
>>43644667
Undead aren't exempt from getting fucked by illusions.
>>43644667
I mean, Silent Image in 5e is nowhere near as powerful as it was in 3.5e, but it's still pretty potent. Having it at will is extremely fun for my deception-themed warlock.
>>43644304
I could see a reasonable case made that silent image requires some belief that the illusion is real. Take the opposite example, say you're fighting some orcs and one of the tougher yet badly wounded orcs is suddenly hidden behind a rock. There's nothing to stop you from trying to fire arrows into the rock under suspicion that it's an illusion. It's an illusion, not any sort of charm.
3.5 says that the illusion allows a save if interacted with, but I don't really understand why this would be the case. If things are clearly passing through "solid objects" then something is clearly amiss, and again, nothing is stopping you from poking around and coming to logical conclusions. I could see the save reasonably applying to logical deductions ('I feel a draft but there's only solid wall here - hrm').
>>43644304
>>43644667
Both.
It's using a good ability to it's fullest potential. That's not 'powergaming' necessarily, especially in context.
However, the problem with, say, 3.5 is that even simple, relatively easy to deal with spells like you're working with are leaps and bounds better than a lot of things other classes get to work with. Your one spell is better than the entirety of the Fighter's class abilities than it'll get in 20 levels in a *lot* of situations.
If he doesn't like it, tell him to play a wizard or stop playing 3.5. It's a systematic problem, not your problem.
>>43644737
Yeah, one of my players a few years ago complained about a unicorn stomping him to death under his illusion. He casted it in front of the damn hornyhorse "Sudden case of shrubbery" usually is suspicious.
>>43644737
It's also not unreasonable to suppose that there's a low-level spell that just puts a rock somewhere. You see the robed guy wave his hands, a rock pops out of nowhere, it's pretty clearly magic, but how do you know it's an illusion?
Protip: "There's no such spell in the manual" is metagaming and not a valid response.
>>43644737
True, from that point of view. I guess I need to put a little more info on the table. The game world is a homebrew world where magic is pretty scarce in general, casters are often regarded as witches, dragons are 99% extinct (only 1-2 exist as far as we know, and the last one which was killed was officially the gateway between magic and the physical world), there are less than 1000 elves left in the world, almost no fantastical races and the very existance of mystical races is what makes magic possible at all. To yeah, a fireball is a pretty big deal while teleportation is almost impossible - which makes illusions almost impossible to expect and when someone suddenly gets covered in stone, you back the fuck off and glare in confusion and terror/wonder.
Wizards are known btw, but they are heavily controlled in guilds and pretty rare. Usually, only nobles have the money to emply casters
>>43644825
Also, regarding edition and system, we have tried making our DM switch system because 3.5 is not excatly suited for non-magical socially heavy games, but he doesnt want to learn a new system so we just play around that for the most part. But still, holy shit I did not expect this...
>>43644447
Dude that is pretty much EXACTLY what the entire goddamn class is about! That's like complaining about a druid invoking his right to bear arms.
>>43644795
That does, however, assume ignorance of things that are a known quality within the setting.
>>43644947
So you say the town guard or random orc is aware of
- you caster level
- what spells exist for that caster level?
Even admitting this is true, in 3.5 at least there are precise rules for identifying a spell as it's being cast. Are all orcs trained in spellcraft?
>>43644795
You don't need metagaming knowledge to assume that a caster is attempting foolery.
>>43644825
I think, if anything, this would make people even more suspicious of illusions. A rock or wall appearing out of nowhere is a very dramatic application of magical power. Forget spell levels, just the idea of conjuring a large rock out of thin air feels like a big deal to those unfamiliar with magic. On the other hand, an illusion is more like a trick, something a lot more grounded and plausible.
>>43645036
see
>>43645036
It is generally known in most settings what magic CAN do, and that the average being can be justifiably cautious/suspicious of things that are clearly odd when someone they realize is a wizard of some stripe is nearby.
>>43645078
Then again, if magic is something witches do and you never actually saw a witch but your uncles friends, friends son once saw a dog whose owner totally saw a dude turn a mushroom into a how sexy toad, then you may have somewhat different views on magic.
>>43644304
Magic is utterly overpowered game-breaking horseshit in 3.5e. BUT. All of that is completely within the purview of Silent Image and everything you've been doing is pretty much standard operating procedure. You're not stringing together some kind of combo to bring out achievements in bullshit, you're not playing semantical games to get your way, you're just casting a spell and doing literally what it exactly does.
So, you're terrible for playing a spellcaster, terrible for playing 3.5e, and pretend I'm posting a huge list of why you're a shitter, but absolutely nowhere in there are you a bad person for casting and using Silent Image exactly the way it was meant to be. You're not even doing stupid "more real than reality" illusion stuff. The other guy is a dick and an idiot.
Anyway, OP. You might get a lot of insight if you read up on Erfworld. It's a pretty neat comic where casters are key pieces. The protagonists have a foolamancer on hand (basically an illusionist) and a lot of their strategy relies on tricking opponents.
The balance in that comic, and I think one Illusion in general should share, is that illusions can net you very powerful results with little application of power. For example, you don't NEED a spell like stoneshape (4th) to plug a hole in a wall, if a silent image (1st) has your opponents believe that the wall is plugged anyway. The tradeoff is that you have to fool them. It's not automatic. They are suspicious. The more creative you can be with distractions, bluffs, double bluffs, plausible explanations, and so on, the better your results.
It's a huge opportunity for very creative RP and should be encouraged, but should not be automatic or infinitely powerful. It will sometimes fail, and your gamble was for nothing.
>>43645224
Er.. I guess. Sure.
>>43645305
Well thanks.
Also, I compeletely agree that 3.5 is massively unbalanced, which is why I am giving myself these massive constraints. I am getting outclassed by an Assassin and a Babarian, as a beguiler - which says a lot. I tried getting our DM to use Pathfinder instead at least but he doesnt want to have to know an entire new system (his words) even though I told him it was pretty minor once you know 3.5. Insted we are using a metric ton of house rules, only using Core feats, PH+PH2 feats/classes and all spells are subject to DM apprival, without question. Not that I mind, but if he at least understood how power works in 3.5, I would be a little happier.
I am deliberatly not using the really powerful shit like save or suck, because I dont want to ruin the game for the other people. I am playing a part related to the plot so it was imoportant that I was a spontaneous caster (because plot)
>>43645224
To be fair, that dog is incapable of lying.
I would know, my sister's boyfriend's nephew's cat told me.
>>43645567
OPs DM here: Excatly! I know because I had this goldfish, and it would always look at my friend when he was visiting so I know he was right, and then he said that the next person I spoked to would be 100% right (he laughed it off as a joke, but my goldfish exposed the truth!) and then I heard that someones friend knew this day labourer who had a nephew who totally was hired by Bill Gates who once said that some people were poor at some point, and that is the definate proof that magic is real and that witches should be burned
