Spell Redesign: Phantasmal Force(s)

Foreword on Illusions

I always spend a good hour scratching my head whenever an illusion spell is in queue for redesign. The problem with illusions is how broad they are. It may be regarded as the whole point of illusions that they’re so broad, malleable, and thus presumably able to produce a wide variety of effects. Consider instead the fact rewriting an illusion spell to produce particular effects to begin with takes so much time; is the player going to do that at the table? Well, likely not. The most common class of illusory spells produces a variety of sterile, harmless images (followed by sterile, harmless noises).

I’ve talked before about player improvisation regressing to the system’s baseline (sadly that post is currently inaccessible, but the point is as follows): your players will look to established abilities and features to determine what is acceptable and feasible for them to improvise and the DM to adjudicate at the table. If we have access to a greater number of effects, the more inspiration players will have when crafting these illusions. Yes, it’s a terrible shame they won’t improvise the more exotic illusion effects we develop across the course of these redesigns, but who cares? Exotic effects weren’t being improvised anyways, because the spell’s available gave no indication such a thing was even possible.

Hell, most of the “generalist” illusion spells produce two specific classes of illusions called glamours and figments (a change in how a particular object or phenomena is perceived, and a purely illusory object or phenomena not anchored to an existing one). There’s no generalist spell for phanstasms (illusions which root themselves in a creature’s mind, but are largely imperceptible to others) or shadows (illusions one step below reality, able to interact and fight as real creatures but to diminished effect).

We’re already not taking advantage of the full depth and breadth of illusions available from the fantasy milieu, which has cut off players from both a wider variety of established, cool spells and their own library of invented/improvised effects (no doubt made better by access to better source material).

Historical Spell

Back in the good old days of skirmish wargaming, phantasmal force was in fact phantasmal forces. Here’s its description in Chainmail (thanks to both Delta and the BrOSR crew for info regarding this):

So, you’re create some english longbowmen (with stakes planted for cav charge, I presume), some dwarves (no doubt laying a mine in their occupied space), or a hero of some variety ready to turn the tide of morale and battle. OD&D has another version, as do several other editions (none of which I’ll be covering).

Note: I did intend on covering 4th edition’s version as well, but imagine my surprise when I found it absent from the game!

Offers some clarifying language, conditions for the illusions to do damage, etc. Now I see why folks prefer more broad and vague descriptions to rulings like these. Does the illusion need to touch the creature to cause damage? Not all clarifications are created equal, and those which (potentially) ruin the spell’s effects or intention belong in the gutter. Damage being conditional on belief is actually fine if you’re using tools provided by the system. Reaction rolls are an acceptable substitute for determining whether a creature believes or disbelieves something.

Your Player’s Handbook is an acceptable substitute for a rolled up newspaper, should your DM declare monsters disbelieve whenever you cast an illusion spell (and determining just how committed they are to such poor behavior).

Moving on, the phantasm more or less cement themselves as damaging distractions (I don’t mean this in a critical sense, I meant they literally damage + distract a given enemy or unit of such) to a single target (creature or unit). The phantasm is so potent as to be used in mass combat, making for a genuinely terrifying power. How did 5e update this spell?

Miserable trash again, I see. The spell owes its extra word count to now covering hazardous phenomena, extra clarifications and mechanics which belong in a general section on illusions, and a needlessly long justification for dealing 1d6 psychic damage. Now to be clear, I like the idea of producing phantasms which act as natural hazards. They belong in a different spell. When shortswords deal 1d6 damage, it’s reasonable for a phantasmal goblin or somesuch to deal 1d6 damage. A phantasm of falling in lava should probably be more severe, don’t you think?

What’s more, the spell is concentration (of course it is), and on top of this offers several means by which the creature can end the spell early (on top of damaging you). Using up its action to disbelieve the phantasm is real (and potentially failing in the process) is a point in the spell’s favor, until your DM (and thus the monster) remembers it’s a concentration spell. What’s easier than spending your whole action to stare really hard at the phantasm, hopefully breaking it? Using said action to break the wizard concentrating on it. All for 1d6 psychic damage folks!

My Version (Better)

Ah, back to the land of sanity. We removed concentration (for being a horrific bandaid mechanic with no place in such a wimpy spell), removed the hazardous phenomena text, etc. Look at how much shorter this spell is! Look at how much more it does, by not trying to pack too many niches into the same thing.

For our spell-unique mechanic, the creature does make an attack roll, but it has a static result. If you cast it on a wizard (who somehow fails the save), it may provoke the fellow into casting a spell like shield to avoid the creature’s damage. Now the wizard has a higher armor class, but no reaction with which to counter your spells. If you wait to cast it on a wizard with an active shield spell, you instead ensure the phantasms will nearly always hit their target, having set the static result to the wizard’s normal AC + the effects of shield. Lovely little tactics.

Proud as I am, we could do even better. After all, while 5e has no support for mass combat, many 3rd party supplements for it have come out, nearly all of which involve terminology like “units”. The find the path redesign once again has me considering which modes of play I can support with these spells, given clever enough wording.

My Version (Even Better)

Alright, you can throw out all that bragging I did about the reduced word count, but this was worth it. I’ve added one additional effect to the spell, which gives it serious horror vibes: knocking someone unconscious with it allows you to target new creatures, who see an additional phantasm of previously damaged creatures. It doesn’t extend the spell’s duration, but does make it progressively nastier as time goes on.

Additionally, I added the mass combat note. In a different game, I might just add a mass combat tag and detail the differences for that mode of play, but it didn’t add too many words to this. Go make the illusory dragon, I believe in you.

Uh oh, that’s an actual spell. Maybe it’s next for a redesign.