Project Image: Monologue Safely
Spell Level: 7
School: Illusion
Casting Time: 1 action
Range: 500 miles
Duration: Concentration, up to 1 day
Components: V, S, M (a small replica of you made from materials worth at least 5 gp)
You create an illusory copy of yourself that lasts for the duration. The copy can appear at any location within range that you have seen before, regardless of intervening obstacles. The illusion looks and sounds like you but is intangible. If the illusion takes any damage, it disappears, and the spell ends.
You can use your action to move this illusion up to twice your speed, and make it gesture, speak, and behave in whatever way you choose. It mimics your mannerisms perfectly.
You can see through its eyes and hear through its ears as if you were in its space. On your turn as a bonus action, you can switch from using its senses to using your own, or back again. While you are using its senses, you are blinded and deafened in regard to your own surroundings.
Physical interaction with the image reveals it to be an illusion, because things can pass through it. A creature that uses its action to examine the image can determine that it is an illusion with a successful Intelligence (Investigation) check against your spell save DC. If a creature discerns the illusion for what it is, the creature can see through the image, and any noise it makes sounds hollow to the creature.
Review by Samuel West, Twitter: @CrierKobold
Picture this; you’re a super villain ruling over thousands of minions. You’re up on your balcony, looking down over the intrepid heroes who have invaded your keep. This is the final confrontation, you can feel it, your perfect moment to come clean and share the true master villainy you’re capable of through a beautifully crafted speech. Then the dickhead Sharpshooter ranger opens fire and hits you for 72 damage. Why put yourself in range, when you could instead just Project Image and monolog from the safety of your secret lair living room couch?
Project Image falls under the category of spells where I’m glad it exists, but unfortunately just is too niche to be good in the players’ hands. Sure, if you’re campaigning in the British Isles you can project your image literally anywhere within the country, but the practical uses of this project require so much micromanagement and awkward dealings it becomes kind of impossible to use functionally. In the real world, we basically already have this. Its called work from home. In D&D, there isn’t really any “benefit” to your character to do this, save if you need to do some long distance communication or scouting. In either case, Find Familiar will just be better than this, as you don’t need to constantly sink actions into your illusory clone to get it to act on your behalf, plus you can physically manipulate space. Sure, you can’t instantaneously teleport your familiar back and forth, but leaving it behind if you desperately need to can functionally mimic this 7th level spell without even needing to spend a 1st level slot.
From a villainous and world building perspective, Project Image is great. Having an archmage communicating with officials across the world through Project Image allows for some incredible options to detail the world. It's like living in the modern era of communication, but only the top 0.01% of computer scientists could use cell phones to talk to anyone. You can have instantaneous information, and the functionally ability to observe disasters and invasions from hundreds of miles away. Networks of people with Project Images could pass instantaneous messages for hefty fees, creating giant towers to communicate across the entire plane.
Having your villain Project Image to taunt and speak with the party gives you the perfect tool to negotiate with players without necessarily threatening either side. You can “safely” communicate threats, offers, or other critical information without needing to physically present the villain. They too can then use this tool to manipulate kingdoms hundreds of miles apart and act as a shadowy puppet master from the darkness capable of controlling huge territories without physically needing to be present in any given location.
From a player perspective, Project Image is probably one of the worst illusions. Mislead, Mirage Arcane, and even Silent Image all can create copies of yourself to work with, and can do the creative illusionist game breaking stuff for less. Project Image then requires you want the distance to matter, and while there can be some niche cases where it’ll be helpful for your party, its really best saved for NPCs and villains.
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