The strength of that spell might just be in its range. People navigate by landmarks: "left at the third river bend", "two days ride towards the left mountain top", that sort of thing. You can - from a very safe distance - send whole armies in the wrong direction. And there's no chance of them making their save: they'll never get to interact with the illusion.
It's still very situational though.
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...not if you MAKE the situation.
If you are the Wizard-Tower, make-the-trouble-come-to-me sort of person, you can spend the day meditating in volcanoes. Or you fly past a cliff and turn it into a flat plain. Or if you need to retreat, fill the tunnels with rubble.
But yes, if you're the standard run-around-looking-for-adventure type, it's not as useful.
I've always liked the spell for chase situations. If any of you have read the wheel of time series you know what I mean. Chases in forests and other wild landscapes are not usually short-termed. They can take place in the lapse of days. Remember also the hobbits making it for Rivendel... So if you are being chased you might as well be able to calculate y it's inevotable that you're caught, and when. So it's very useful to prepare such a spell in order to turn a butchery in a last minute escape. In game terms it depends on how the GM runs this situations so it can be more or less situational (always a little bit though).
I think the uses are for chases and misleading armies (provided they don't have high level spell casters). It's one of those spells that has a very specific use and you don't see much of it, but when it comes up it's pretty damn impressive.
Older Path Spoilers:
It seems that if you have the home turf advantage in a fight, you can use this to funnel unaware enemies or make instant traps out of fissures. In this way, it's sort of like possessing the battlefield controlling tech of a druid in illusory form (by duplicating stone shape, wall of stone, spike growth, etc). Illusions always have the advantage of user-defined creativity and functionality, so while not exactly real, the fact that it can sort of duplicate all the aforementioned spells makes it pretty good, especially considering its duration and range. Against creatures with no chance of making their Will save (like giants, animals, and other low-Will save critters), it can literally stop opponents in their tracks.
Also, I would think it would foil all but the most Willful trackers (though I'm not sure there's actually a rule on whether illusions hide tracks like that, but I think that they would)
It's useful when you need to conceal large numbers of creatures for an extended period of time. Create an area of dense forest and hide in the undergrowth. Good for ambushes and camping.
It's useful when you need to conceal large numbers of creatures for an extended period of time. Create an area of dense forest and hide in the undergrowth. Good for ambushes and camping.
Guardsman on Fort Wall: Tell me, does the tree line of the Goblinwood look closer to you than it did yesterday?
Other Guardsman: What? Trees don't move! It's just your imagination! Or perhaps a trick of the sunlight. Never you worry.
It's useful when you need to conceal large numbers of creatures for an extended period of time. Create an area of dense forest and hide in the undergrowth. Good for ambushes and camping.
This always confuses me about illusions- your idea seems just fine to me thematically. You should be able to create a forest illusion to hide things in. Yet the spell says "Structures, equipment, and creatures within the area are not hidden or changed in appearance." which seems to imply that you cannot use the terrain to hide people. The way it reads, you'd have an illusory forest with a bunch of completely visible goblins walking through it as though someone had pointed a projector at them.
I think it's supposed to mean that you can't change those things with the spell, but that a creature could hide behind an illusory tree or rock. The higher level version, mirage arcana, appears to be clearly on the subject, and since I can't imagine that a spell like this should be ruined so easily by a passing squirrel, I let creatures hide behind the illusory elements. But the creature itself can't be changed.
It's useful when you need to conceal large numbers of creatures for an extended period of time. Create an area of dense forest and hide in the undergrowth. Good for ambushes and camping.This always confuses me about illusions- your idea seems just fine to me thematically. You should be able to create a forest illusion to hide things in. Yet the spell says "Structures, equipment, and creatures within the area are not hidden or changed in appearance." which seems to imply that you cannot use the terrain to hide people. The way it reads, you'd have an illusory forest with a bunch of completely visible goblins walking through it as though someone had pointed a projector at them.
I understood it to mean that you couldn't make soldiers look like trees or a tent to look like a large hill. I figured you could hide in the altered terrain. I may have been overextending the spell. Well, you should still be able to use the spell to create difficult terrain at long range.
I understood it to mean that you couldn't make soldiers look like trees or a tent to look like a large hill. I figured you could hide in the altered terrain. I may have been overextending the spell. Well, you should still be able to use the spell to create difficult terrain at long range.It's useful when you need to conceal large numbers of creatures for an extended period of time. Create an area of dense forest and hide in the undergrowth. Good for ambushes and camping.This always confuses me about illusions- your idea seems just fine to me thematically. You should be able to create a forest illusion to hide things in. Yet the spell says "Structures, equipment, and creatures within the area are not hidden or changed in appearance." which seems to imply that you cannot use the terrain to hide people. The way it reads, you'd have an illusory forest with a bunch of completely visible goblins walking through it as though someone had pointed a projector at them.
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Illusions are not very powerful, but there is no reason to make them complete crap. A DM once tried to tell me that a minor image could not replicate four sleeping people because "This spell creates the visual illusion of an object, creature, or force, as visualized by you," despite the fact that the image takes up 4 10ft cubes +1 10 ft cube per level. Meaning I could make one orc, or one dragon and it was equivalent. I convinced him fairly quickly that this made absolutely no sense.