Spell Redesign: Illusory Dragon

Illusory Meat Lizard

Congratulations folks, you can summon a big scary lizard unaccompanied by most of the problems faced by summoning spells, because it’s an illusion! What’s more, you also get to ignore many of the problems faced by illusion spells, on account of this spell having a damage effect. Have your NPC ignore the illusion all you want Mr. GM, they’re still going to take damage.

I have a couple issues with this spell. First, dragons suck and are generally unimpressive in 5th edition. By extension, through no fault of this spell, the dragon produced by this spell is unimpressive as well. It spawns, terrifies you, and deals some okay damage each round. I want better from dragons, so how could I help wanting better from this spell? Additionally, it’s a concentration spell (for no goddamned reason at all) using your 8th level slot for the day. Come on, man!

My Version (Better)

Alright, we’ve expanded the dragon’s damage, range of actions (and effects) to better reflect the dragons we’re stuck with. Additionally, you can enjoy a few status effects, so this spell doubles as a control spell. What I want more than anything else is to use this spell in mass combat, what a joy it’d be.

I’m taking the various built-in workarounds common to most illusions out until I have the final version in front of me. Instead, the dragon starts with 100 hitpoints, and regains hitpoints based on its damage output.

I tried removing saves to make this spell less of a time sink in combat, but I don’t think it works properly. While I prefer passive defenses to active for the sake of combats with more participants, this isn’t the proper place to introduce them. Additionally, I’m considering whether to just give the dragon a small statblock detailing their features and cleaning up the actual spell text.

My Version (Even Better)

There we are, adding the dragon’s qualities to a statblock made sure I didn’t miss any important statistics, which would’ve been terribly embarrassing. It also cleaned up the spell’s core text substantially, making this easier to implement at the table.

The roll vs AC has been removed. While I prefer passive defenses for ease of resolution at large scale, this was not the time or place to introduce it to 5e without a significant amount of jank. We’re returned to the Intelligence save, but this time with a new time saving adjustment! Creatures who fail their Int save automatically fail further saves against the dragon until the beginning of its next turn. Now this could really tear an army apart!

One final note, I added a higher level casting of this spell. Go ahead and copy a dragon you can see (or know the true name of). Enjoy yourself!

Barring a few fixes to typos and maybe shifting some text blocks around, I think we’ve captured the terror both a dragon and a level 15+ wizard should be able to capture, all wrapped into one spell.