School of Illusion
Review by Sam West, Twitter:@CrierKobold
Illusions are polarizing. Some tables and players can take them and rule the world early on, with grand plans coming to fruition around false images placed in the right place at the right time. Other tables will find they’re mediocre holograms that are easily disproven and promptly ignored. The School of Illusion arcane tradition gives a lot of these spells a push towards being more powerful in more environments, and in some cases, wildly empowers them to reshape how the game is played. How they reshape the game varies widely from person to person, though, making this entire archetype challenging to talk about.
Generally, if you’re a creative player working with a group with an affinity for ludicrous plans, you’ll probably get a lot out of this school. If you’re instead looking for a straightforward option that presents clearly powerful abilities that shine in a clear set of circumstances, this option will not provide you much of anything.
This school cares about Illusion spells; for reference, here’s a full list of Cantrip through 9th-level Wizard spells of this school.
Wizard Illusion Spells
| Spell Level | Spells |
|---|---|
| Cantrip | Minor Illusion |
| 1st | Color Spray, Disguise Self, Distort Value, Illusory Script, Silent Image |
| 2nd | Arcanist’s Magic Aura, Blur, Invisibility, Magic Mouth, Mirror Image, Nathair’s Mischief, Phantasmal Force, Shadow Blade |
| 3rd | Fear, Hypnotic Pattern, Major Image, Phantom Steed |
| 4th | Greater Invisibility, Hallucinatory Terrain, Phantasmal Killer |
| 5th | Creation, Dream, Mislead, Seeming |
| 6th | Mental Prison, Programmed Illusion |
| 7th | Mirage Arcane, Project Image, Simulacrum |
| 8th | Illusory Dragon |
| 9th | Weird |
See Also: Best Feats for Illusion Wizard
2nd Level: Illusion Savant, Improved Minor Illusions
Illusion Savant provides the same passive benefit many tables opt to ignore entirely in its discount to adding spells to your spell book if they’re Illusions. If you’re tight on gold, this gives you the incentive to invest in Illusion spells you can find and copy, but realistically it's a ribbon most groups will immediately forget about. Most players tend to just use the spells they get for free on level-up, and those are more than enough.
Improved Minor Illusion seems underwhelming at first glance, but there are a lot of little things about this feature that make it quite strong. First, a bonus cantrip at 2nd level is great. With Minor Illusion, Mage Hand, and Fire Bolt, you’ve got most of your bases covered. Now, you can branch out into the cosmetic cantrips if you’d like, or pick up Create Bonfire to play around with damage over time effects early on.
The real juice, though, is getting both the sound and visual elements together. These two events aren’t necessarily tied together, either; you can produce the image of something that makes a sound, such as a crate containing a potentially dangerous animal growling. Alternatively, you can make a barricade to hide behind while creating a sound on the opposite end of the reach to pull attention elsewhere.
Two simultaneous casts of anything tends to be pretty powerful. Two Minor Illusions at once puts it fairly close to the power of a Silent Image, with different opportunities available to you at a given moment. How you use them is entirely up to player creativity and DM willingness to role with the player’s ideas.
6th Level: Malleable Illusions
Malleable Illusions has always performed way better than it reads. Basically, long duration illusion spells become somewhat reusable for their duration. A Silent Image normally is restricted to being created as an entity, then limited in alterations to make its movement appear natural. Now, you can change the entire shape and form of the illusion to something completely different. This turns any long-duration illusion into multiple you can use within the window.
What majorly limits this is the number of spells it affects; Illusionists tend to also play with frightening effects, as they’re one of the more common and useful in combat illusion effects, and those don’t really benefit from this. You need to be heavily using Disguise Self, Silent Image, and Major Image for this to feel great early on. I recommend committing to something like Major Image when you know you’re going to be presented with opportunities to use multiple illusions in succession over its duration. It feels really good in that situation.
You start to get into wacky territory when your illusions start to take physical form; Mirage Arcane with Malleable Illusions becomes a world you shape and create as you wish, which looks and feels incredible.
10th Level: Illusory Self
Illusory Self is a cute little defensive feature that doesn’t add a ton to your sheet. Once per short rest block an attack is fine enough, though. It isn’t contributing much beyond that to embolden the Illusionist fantasy, but it really doesn’t need to, as Malleable Illusions can do progressively wackier stuff as you get the higher level illusions.
14th Level: Illusory Reality
Illusory Reality sounds promising, and it can do some interesting stuff, but by 14th level the restrictions on the image make this effect feel pretty close to Fabricate. The reality of the mundane objects Fabricate creators is that they aren’t that impressive when 7th-level slots are doing a ton of magical nonsense. Stapling it to magical nonsense does up the excitement factor a bit, and while I haven’t seen anything insane happen because of this feature, I can imagine scenarios where it sells an illusion as real in a critical moment.
All Together
An Illusion spell like Major Image can be a waste of a spell slot or the best possible tool to solve any problem all depending on who wields it and how the world around them responds to it. Some tables will struggle to make them do anything meaningful while others will feel godlike. Illusionists, as an Arcane Tradition, push the option a lot closer to the busted end of the spectrum, but some tables still won’t find there’s much value in fake guards or pretend explosive barrels.
If creating your own reality within a pretend reality appeals to you, and you want as much power as possible in making it real, the School of Illusion will serve you well.
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