A situation came up in our game which had me wondering about this interpretation of the spell...
Our Master Summoner had menaced a dangerous enemy with a mass of celestial eagles (we're all 3rd level in this game, and she had used 4 uses of her Summoning ability to Summon 13 of them)... it was a bit of a stand off but the eagles did enough damage to give our foe pause. In response our Sorcerer cast Silent Image, making it appear that she had also summoned a flock of eagles and had them circling us as if waiting for the command to attack. Our foe promptly cast Obscuring Mist and fled.
We tend to try and resolve disputes between sessions rather than during and the question was brought up - shouldn't Silent Image have only created the illusion of a single eagle? No, was the reply, the flock all fit into the spell's area so they were fine. We agreed that there might be some grey area there and debated whether the illusion of many things was in fact many illusions and therefor couldn't be the product of a single spell.
Thoughts?
My rule of thumb for that spell: if you can say it in four words and it fits inside the area, it's good. so "Flock of Eagles" would work. But they'd always seem a flock, and wouldn't act individually afterwards.
