Spell Redesign: Silent Image — Ash of Creativity

Note: this one also needed more time to bake. If I ever go more than a day without posting a spell, assume from here on it’s on account of a new sub-system related to spellcasting in some way.

Illusions suck. Humans have 5 senses, some other creatures have more/different senses, and what do the illusionists of D&D do with this knowledge? Visual illusions, occasionally sound, until said illusions can be interacted with physically. No explorations of other senses, they rarely if ever enforce outcomes, and are “DM-dependent” to have any effect at all.

Illusion of Decent Spells

Ah, but James! By not enforcing outcomes in illusion spells, you can actually make the spell better! No. Fireball would not be “better” if your DM decided on a whim whether it was contextually appropriate for the creatures targeted to take damage. When your DM is even involved in such a decision, there are several bounding boxes limiting the circumstances of said decision. Is someone able to stop you from casting the spell? No? Continue on. Fireball has a 20 ft radius. Is the character in the radius? If yes, continue on. The Dex save the spell provides you halves the damage. Is there some feature allowing them to ignore the damage on a success? If no, continue on. The spell deals 8d6 damage. Is the creature able to reduce the total damage or dice rolled to 0? If no, continue on. The damage dealt is fire damage. Aha! Even if there’s nothing specific about the creature (like an immunity to fire damage) preventing them from taking damage normally, you can consider matters of circumstance influencing the outcome, like whether the affected creatures are underwater. A DM could reasonably rule such a creature is unaffected by a fireball, completely within the bounding box offered by the rules.

And only in that bounding box.

We go through a bunch of other steps before we even get to consider whether the DM has any justification for deciding they don’t like the idea of random guards dying to a fireball. As God intended, of course. Other games may operate on this principle, and they have their own bounding boxes and compensatory mechanisms for players to continue enjoying the game (some good, some terrible). So why, pray tell, do illusions alone get beaten with design equivalent of an ugly stick? It’s sensory-altering magic, you are literally taking control of a creature’s senses to project something which isn’t there. In what world does that not have a set of dedicated, guaranteed effects for the player to take advantage of?

Perhaps one in which the designers have no minds or senses of importance with which to consider what might happen if magic took hold of them. They probably burned themselves on a stove once or twice though, so fireball stays safe.

So, here’s silent image, the first of the illusions we’ll tackle.

My System (Better)

I’m not going to spend a huge time explaining this, because you already know why I made it. Reaction rolls are, in this context and for the purpose of this discussion, smarter than your DM. A simple reaction roll allows us to ignore silly DM and player “thoughts” on whether an illusion should work, which are really just ways of expressing how intensely you wished the illusion did or did not work. We believe in the oracular power of the dice, and so the dice are trusted to fairly determine what human minds obviously can’t.

You roll on the table, it tells you how the enemy reacts/how effective the illusion is.

My Version (Better)

Alright, the first effect of note; creatures of a low enough CR automatically regard the illusion as accurate. “Accurate” is a useful word, because while a wolf might not be as easily cowed by an image of a bear if there’s no accompanying scent to back it up, your average guard is very much going to react to an image of a giant constrictor slithering towards him. This is how we set up the bounding box for adjudication; the DM has no reason to be involved in the decision of whether the creature “believes” the image is actually there, we’ve taken care of that for them. Additional bounding boxes like how different creatures react to time, scents, etc can be set up in the base game. We’ll imagine an alternate reality in which the designers were serious about making illusions effective, and did this simple work beforehand.

Higher CR critters can opt in to a reaction roll, giving us a very clear distinction between who reasonable can or can’t suspect the illusion. On top of that, we get a real measure of illusions becoming more powerful with higher level spell slots.

My Version (Even Better)

So if we understand illusions require a reaction roll to correctly adjudicate them, I can add an extra effect contingent on said table (and adjust the spell accordingly). That’s the special effect you see here.