Our party is entering HotDQ at level 5 from LMOP. I decided to switch from playing a rogue to an illusionist. I specifically wanted to not take fireball, flaming sphere or other iconic evoker / mass damage spells. Concept is stealth / illusion / deception.
I'm a min/maxer by nature. Every few years I try for a non-optimized character and get annihilated and go back to crunching the numbers.
Our entry point to the module was the Roadhouse. We went into the swamp and found the keep. We tried to set the different sides against each other with no success and then approached the keep. We found a bunch of bullywugs and initiated combat after we couldnt speak with them. The fight was with scores of bullywugs, frogs, lizardmen and our party was knocked unconscious / taken captive after we killed about 50-60 enemies.
So I think if I was playing a typical evoker I could have turned the tide with a few fireballs, a flaming sphere etc.
Is my character concept just a dumb idea for this module? Or did we do a dumb thing in missing some non-combat approach to the encounter? Or did I miss some cool illusionist trick to have a better outcome than just dropping fireballs on frogs?
thanks!
I'm no expert with the spellcasters, but I do know illusionists take a little more finese and creativity to play.
It sounds like the situation you were in was not something an illusionist is really equiped to deal with(or really any class as that sounds like overwhelming numbers). So I don't think you were playing it wrong or are underpowered. You were just put in a bad situation.
Also, with that many numbers, your DM may have wanted you guys to run or planned to capture you all along. I don't want to spoil the story your DM has going, but sometimes defeat happens in D&D(whether DM planned or just the luck of the dice or players' unwillingness to run).
I wouldn't give up on illusionist because of one fight(especially one that few parties could have truly stood a chance with). Just remember that you aren't going to be blasting foes left and right so try to think of ways to distract enemies in and out of combat, and use your spells in ways that give your party an advantage instead of you trying to just straight up beat an enemy.
As bonethug said there, illusionists tend to require more finesse. His advice is all quite sound. Illusionists are particularly good at changing the playfield, not removing pieces. Distract (reduce the number at once), avoid (remove the need for a fight), and otherwise construct advantageous situations. Good advice also comes from Sun Tzu on this -
“All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near.”
That is not to say that they can't dish it out too. At your level, evokers are only getting Sculpt Spell over you - you can hit just as hard with the fireball. Don't forget that - specialists are more like light specialists than previous editions. You get an augmented minor illusion - those last a minute without your concentration. Think Obi Wan dropping the tractor beam.
That having been said, sounds like that doesn't matter, you'd like to not deal in exploder wizard. So, lets drop looking at Conjuration and Evocation, which removes quite a few good spells, maybe even some that you might want - like web. Still, at level 5 you can cast Hypnotic Pattern. That is a pretty strong spell, certainly on par with fireball. 1 minute of Charm + Incapacitation + Speed 0, all on a Wisdom save. Lizard folk, and particularly bullywugs and frogs, do not have a particularly strong wisdom save. On top of that, it's Somatic/material only, so easy to stealth cast
You also have access to sleep. Even at level 5, sleep is a strong spell against things like bullywugs (11 hp) and giant frogs (18), particularly if you give it a 2nd level slot (7d8 of sleeping - about 3 bullywugs). Don't underestimate the potential of using something like Enlarge on your damage guy - particularly one with multiple attacks.
also, 50-60 is a lot. my gut from playing for a lot of years is that that was a "designed to be captured" scenario. Now is the point where you illusionist really starts to shine - enhanced minor illusion can help with escape, for example. Think about what would get folks to move - it's a great lure. It's also a great bit of cover, just make sure it looks in place 
It just requires a different way of thinking is all, and this one incident probably is not a good measure
When playing an illusionist you need to play to your strengths, be creative, and have a very cooperative DM. Without knowing anything about the terrain it is difficult to provide advice for your battle. It might have been possible to cast a gelatinous cube illusion at a chokepoint and fire at enemies unwilling to approach it. You could cast a darkness bubble to grant you and your allies advantage on all your attack rolls and enemies disadvantage on theirs as long as they couldnt reach the illusion.
However, illusions are often used for evasion rather than battle. Display a fake wall and lead your enemies into a dangerous area. Hide in an illusory rock and avoid combat altogether. Use illusions and skills to manipulate the situation pre-battle, and you may find yourself facing fewer forces, having more forces of your own, or not having a battle at all. Illusions work particularly well, when you are using them to show something someone else already wants to see. So use your persuasion and deception skills to build expectiations in advance, and illusions to validate your lies.
As a magic type, the rules are subjective to a point where your mileage may vary. Depending on what your DM will let you get away illusions are the most versatile form of magic. You can use illusions as a form of light, scrying, invisibility, lockpicking, crowd control, security, travel, mind control, etc. Or your DM might just make it the weakest form of magic there is with a single arrow attack invalidating the illusion for the entire battle, monsters willfully disregarding their eyes and charging through the gelatinous cube, knowing every dungeon so well that they know thats a fake wall, making 15 guards each roll an investigate roll against your disguise self until they get a 20, etc. If you're going to play an illusionist well, your DM needs to be on board in wanting to make it awesome.
This is a totally valid character concept. Nothing is wrong with making strong characters, but if you forgo taking the best combat options in favor of something else, and you get totally wipped in the group, it sounds like you have a very competetive dm. Which is fine, but makes for a very different game to play. Do the other players around the table min max their characters out? If that is the case, then you need at least a little bit of min/max to keep up. One thing about illusionist is that you need to be a fairly strong roleplayer to really get strong use out of your spells. Get creative. Meta-Roleplay!
Illusionist are HUGELY dependent on your DM. For example:
I cast a minor illusion of 5feet wall in front of me. the enemies are at distance so unable to interect witht it nor investigate it, so technically I shoul dhave advantage on all my attacks since I'm unseen for all my attacks (so IMPROVE true strike as a cantrip IF you don't move and the ennemy is only in 1 direction. The enemy still know where you are, they just don't see you)
I cast a minor illusion of a realistic painting (google: realistic picture street for some example) of the scenary being me so any ennemy looking my way, see the empty scenary instead of seeing me and I getmy surprise attack, even if I make some noise, if they don't see anything, they might simply suspecct a wild animal roaming around.
I cast 5ft blackest black sphere over your head, since you touch it, you disbelief it making it go translucid, but translucid 5ft blackest black sphere should still grant at least lightly obscurity to everything around if not heavy obscured?
as an illusionist it is true you will not be a damage dealer, but you can skip the fight, make your party invisible and sneak-in and cause disruption, create the illusion of a lizardmen fighting a bullywug, create the illusion of Rezmir giving the order to go report in a different room etc...
Then being an illusionist do not mean taking ONLY illusionist spell, you can still take other spell from other schools, So if you believe your team could really use a fireball then take fireball for when you fail your illusion trick and need to fight.
The illusion school is great to avoid fighting, to make the enemy unsure of what they are doing, to trick them, Illusion require a lot of ROLE PLAY and imagination to make good use of it. Evocation just require some math skils: goblin got on average 7 HP, so if I can do at least 14 damage even if they fail there save they still die, 8d6 = on average 28, so my fireball should fairly easily kill all the goblin, simple and everyone with a calculator can do it. The Illusionist, you need to think, of I believe the lizardfolk and the bullywug are allied, but they are forced to be, the don't like it, so it might be easy to convince them to fihgt each other, they simply need a little push, so seeing the illusion of a lizardfolk attacking a bullywug, might spark a fight between the 2 groups? a lot more thinking want here, and you need the DM assistance to make it work. If your DM decide that illusion are not that good, then he'll simply dismiss it, since nothign in the rule (not in the adventure book nor in the PHB and I can safely assume not in the DMG) will give the rule on how the bullywug will react when seeing an illusion of a lizardfolk attacking a bullywug, compare to the very clear rule of what happen when the lizardfolk suffer 8d6 damage from a fireball.
TLDR: Illusion power depend on your DM. Fireball power depend on the rule in the PHB/monster manual
Napolean_Warlord wrote:
Sorxores wrote:
Awesome class. One of my favorites. Very DM dependent - if you have a DM that understands that you're not optimizing for damage in order to have fun and play a different type of game and they're for it you should have a blast.
With low intelligence, evil enemies, it should be relatively easy for an illusionist to sow confusion and dissention. Attacks seemingly originating from a rival group, for instance, noises of predators originating behind them, sickly smoke springing up in front of their attacking lines, etc. delay and confuse, or get others to do your attacking for you. I'd imagine lizard men and bullywugs have a shaky alliance - exploit the cracks or make some cracks of your own.
Also, I'd take a look at 1st edition illusionists to see the broad range of spells they had available to them and see if you can create a thematic illusionist - they weren't 'illusion only' casters until 2nd edition. Chromatic orb, for instance? That was a 1st edition illusionist spell. Magic users didn't have it. Create the theme of the illusionist but don't feel the need to slavishly adhere to illusion-only magics.
Took the liberty of showing you spells in the Unearthered Arcana Illusionist spell list from 1st edition that are also currently in this edition in some similar form or another, first through third level, so you can get an idea of what I mean about sticking thematically to an illusionist without only casting illusions:
Unearthed Arcana Illusionist Spells Currently in 5th Edition
First Level: Audible Glamer (Now Minor Illusion (Sound) cantrip), Change Self, Chromatic Orb, Color Spray, Dancing Lights (now a cantrip), Darkness (now 2nd level), Detect Invisibility (now 2nd level as See Invisibility), Light (now a cantrip), Phantasmal Force (what the 1st edition spell did is now Silent Image), Phantom Armor (can be substituted as Mage Armor now), Wall of Fog (now Fog Cloud).
Second Level: Alter Self, Blindness/Deafness, Blur, Detect Magic, Fascinate (now pretty much the Friends cantrip or could substitute Charm Person/Monster), Hypnotic Pattern (now 3rd level), Improved Phantasmal Force (murky in-between spell from Silent Image to Major Image - I'd just substitute the 5e Phantasmal Force for it), Invisibility, Magic Mouth, Mirror Image, Ultravision (use Darkvision as substitute), Whispering Wind (could be substituted by the Message cantrip).
Third Level: Fear, Hallucinatory Terrain (now 4th level), Illusory Script (now 1st level), Nondetection, Paralyzation (could substitute Hold Person/Monster now), Phantom Steed, Rope Trick (now second level), Spectral Force (now Major Image), Suggestion, Warithform (could substitute Gaseous Form).
You can also substitute other spells - for instance, 1st edition illusionists had a spell called 'Dispel Exhaustion' that pretended to heal people for a time and gave them temporary hit points. In 5th edition I might take the spell 'False Life' and reflavor it. They both do essentially the same thing - it's all in how you describe the effect.
Cheers.
Thanks everyone, very helpful thoughts, comments and suggestions!
I confess to some regrets that I wasn't running a human variant hordebreaker ranger polearm master with GWM to be able to do (at 5th) four attacks per round + opportunity attacks whenever someone closes, with -5 to hit and +10 damage. Way off topic, but those bullywugs would have been toast.
@Bonethug and WizardV - great points. As you note - non-damage effects are much more subject to... subjective interpretation. As such it would have been nice to get a bit more of a power bump in some fashion. Hypnotic Pattern - great against one BBEG - sux against >1 guy, where the effect is nerfed when one minion wakes up the BBEG...
@Moruvai - thank you for the actionable ideas and the flavor thoughts from UA. You've given me some good ideas for when my character (hopefully) escapes the dungeon, after the BBEQ gives his monologue explaining his evil plan.
@Sorxores/Raleel - I think I'll send my DM this dialog. Good ideas (for me) and some good thoughts on how to judge the game mechanics. Raleel great point that being captured puts me in my element, where deception is a necessity! ;)
@Iserith - We had a few encounters with lizardmen and tried to use persuasion to convince them to attack the bullywugs. The lizardmen seemed to feel the odds were so out of whack that they weren't interested in considering it, but they didn't take any hostile action against us. I used change self to take the form of a bullywug and tried to gather information - and quickly realized they speak no language known to any of the PCs. We may have initiated the combat against the castle - we tried speaking to a dozen or so bullwugs, couldn't communicate, combat happened.
@cowleymen: I definitely want to avoid reverting to the wizard standbys (e.g. fireball and equivalent). I would rather die and damn Faerun to the unholy domination of Tiamat then break my character concept ;) I'm thinking of taking "out of character" spells maybe when I'm a few levels above the minimum required to cast (e.g. maybe I'll do fireball at character level 9). Getting wiped out notwithstanding, my DM said he'd tweak things to accomodate this. Of course maybe he rolled a crit on his persuasion check...
Net net:
I think I was just doing it wrong. I should have encouraged the party to avoid mass battles, and worked more on stealth/avoidance.
But it will depend on whether my DM likes this style. We chatted about it before play. I'll ask him again before the next session. I'm aware that "clever ideas" can become tedious when spammed every encounter.
BUT:
I also wonder if I'm going in a direction that will be a hassle for my DM. Much of LMOP was open ended, and an illusionist could have done well. Wave Echo Cave - that would have sucked to be an illusionist there. HotDQ seems to have a lot of stealth and non-combat options, but it seems likely that the road ends with a lot of fights against dragons and their minions, and that being an illusionist may be a bad idea vs. a damage dealer (e.g. both dragons and clerics being traditionally resistant to illusions, charms and such).
AND:
It seems like most of the illusionist tactics are just spamming Minor Illusion. I'll post separately, but I think most of the other illusionist spells are over rated.
Napolean_Warlord wrote:
Well I think that the comparison your giving us, evoker aoe damage dealer type build vs illusionist control, in a combat encounter where you had 50-60 opponents coming at you is a bit skewered. It sounds like your DM just wanted to capture the party so whatever you guys were going to do would result in the same outcome. As a DM you don't throw 50-60 opponents at a group until it gets captured if that's not your goal imho.
Perhaps you should keep playing the current build and get a few normal encounters in order to get a better comparison under your belt?
raleel wrote:
Sorxores wrote:
OP,
After reading the discussion above, I think my Perception(the max) Monk wants your Illusionist in his Party. The hardest part about gathering information is getting out with it and delivering it to competent hands. You will provide the enemy with other stuff to think about so they forget about me !
Well, I've played this character at a home game for about nine hours and in the FLGS a few times.
I've come to the conclusion that trying to avoid the big blast spells doesnt work for published modules. Its a pain for the DM to tweak stuff too much, and I think at least half of playtime has been combat.
Hypnotic pattern looks cool on paper. There hasn't been a time when I was glad I cast it instead of fireball. Death is the best status condition. If we were fighting groups of 1-4 mobs in a dungeon, it would rock. Lately all the fights have been in an open plain with 6-50 baddies. I guess this is probably a bad setup for any type of caster.
I'll keep at it for a bit, but the results so far have been disappointing. I have had some cool uses of minor illusion, but nothing that utilizes the benefit of the specialty wizard. I'll see if there is an old thread on illusion use in combat, or maybe create one to share ideas.
Yes, at the end of the day you're best just accepting that every specialist wizard is a closet evoker. The non-damaging spells got nerfed.