Manan's page

Easy question: can I cast a Silent Image that's just black filling the 10-ft cubes spaces of the spell?

Of course, that's Darkness for that, and Silent Image has a ST while Darkness has not, but let's just say I want to cut the line of sight of many, scattered darkvision enemies under bright high noon light in the middle of the desert and Darkness cannot really cut it, so I have to go for a different option.

How would that interact with darkvision, or even the devilish See in Darkness? It's not darkness, after all. It's just black.

As you can't move the permanent images around beyond their rather small range and 6d6 damage for a standard action isn't all that impressive at level 11+ it shouldn't really cause any problems.

Is not the damage in itself, it's more the prep-time implication risking to get out of hand.

Ok, but what about Permanent Image, then?

For every day you don't use up your 6th level spells, you can just add as many tiny tiny illusion on yourself as you have prepared, to be discharged in a 6d6 kablammo when you feel like?

I dunno, I get the point of the feat, but it is kinda all over the place application-wise.

Not sure about the "gnome or yourself" target stuff of Minor Dream, but reading again, the spells affects someone who's not visible nor adjacent to the illusion, so it is not applicable.

As for Mirror Image, here's an already asked question whose thread fizzled into nothing:

Shadow Gambit allows you to deal damage with a figment, at the cost of that figment being dismissed.

Quote:

Using this feat immediately ends the figment’s duration.

Notice the wording says the "figment's duration" and not "the spell's" duration or even "the illusion's duration".

Then you have Mirror Image which specifies:

Quote:

If the attack is a hit, roll randomly to see whether the selected target is real or a figment. If it is a figment, the figment is destroyed. If the attack misses by 5 or less, one of your figments is destroyed by the near miss.

Which suggests to me that each image is it's own figment.

So what I am getting at is, if I have 5 images up, can I use Shadow Gambit to deal damage with each one individually, popping the figments one at a time?

Another question / clarification:

SG states:

Quote:

The illusion must be one you retain ongoing control of, such as minor image,

How do you define "ongoing control of"? One can ASSUME it means need to concentrate on or expend an action to control, but that isn't spelled out or worded that way. Am I not retaining control of Mirror Image (until the spell duration ends or they all get popped)? To me, this would be mostly for Instantaneous illusions, like color spray.

Thoughts?

I guess that's kind of a stretch, which I think may be debatable by RAW, but it's probably very against RAI.

Last but not least, I know it says "a foe" and "the target", but still there's a bunch of figment concentration illusions affecting multiple 10 feet cubes, and nothing exactly specifies that the damage would be directed only to one single target.
Is there any FAQ on wording such as "a foe/target" (generic) vs "one foe/target" (specific)?

So, I'm currently toying with ideas for the Shadow Gambit feat, that allows to dismiss ongoing figment illusions to actually damage an opponent.

I have a few questions about how is it supposed to work:

1- The feat says

The illusion must be one you retain ongoing control of, such as minor image

so I supposed it was limited to concentration spells, but right at the end of the feat descrition, it mentions Illusory Wall, which has a duration of Permanent

2- If the feat is not limited by a spell duration of concentration, what are the rules on its application? If it has an area of effect, does it affect everyone in it?
Can I 3d6 sleeping people with Minor Dream? Can I set a deadly match of 2d6 "Tag" when I'm at my last duplicate of Mirror Image? Better yet, can I 5d6-nuke a pretty large, and extendable, amount of terrain with Village Veil?
At the very least, can I 2d6 a 15 feet radius at close range, via the lethal stargazing of (concentration) Planetarium?

Dropping in the Mammoth Rider, that scales the AC to Huge at first level, and then bumps up STR and COS during the advancement.

I completely get the "Tell me what you want your character to be and I'll find a way to rule it", but If it were me, since rules going in the directions he wants already exist, I'd point the player to this prestige class and then, if he/she still wants a full sized Roc outside of the rules, either apply the Giant template to the Companion (slowing down its advancement accordintly to reflect the CR adjustment of the template), or make it scale to Gargantuan when the bonuses for the Mammoth Rider are high enough to hit the huge-to-gargantuan modifiers (so around 8th level).

But I'm a sucker for the actual rules, one time to build a lizardfolk dragon-like NPC I used the most roundabound way possible and reskinned an Aasimar with the evil-bite attack-trait, scion of humanity+racial heritage, wings feat-chain, etcetera, to have a valid build instead of just slapping a flight speed on him, so take the Mammoth Rider just as a suggestion of how paizo did things, I guess.