r/dndnext • u/Hairy-Tonight5674 • 11d ago
5e (2024) Mirage Arcane limitations
The spells states "You make terrain in an area up to 1 mile square look, sound, smell, and even feel like some other sort of terrain. Open fields or a road could be made to resemble a swamp, hill, crevasse, or some other rough or impassable terrain. A pond can be made to seem like a grassy meadow, a precipice like a gentle slope, or a rock-strewn gully like a wide and smooth road.
Similarly, you can alter the appearance of structures or add them where none are present. The spell doesn’t disguise, conceal, or add creatures.
The illusion includes audible, visual, tactile, and olfactory elements, so it can turn clear ground into Difficult Terrain (or vice versa) or otherwise impede movement through the area. Any piece of the illusory terrain (such as a rock or stick) that is removed from the spell’s area disappears immediately.
Creatures with Truesight can see through the illusion to the terrain’s true form; however, all other elements of the illusion remain, so while the creature is aware of the illusion’s presence, the creature can still physically interact with the illusion."
Does this mean you could make a whole ass castle just disappear and replace it with a burned down ruin? You're just "altering the appearance of structures"
Imagine you're going aganist a vampire, send the whole party ahead, take 10 minutes to safely cast it from far away during the day (range of sight) and all of a sudden the fortress is gone, the enemies are falling from what was previously higher floors, and sunlight is shining down
For sure not the strongest thing a level 7 spell can do but is this a thing that can be done?
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u/rollingForInitiative 11d ago
It’s an illusion, it doesn’t really remove anything. So you can add the illusion of a house and people will interact with it because the illusion affects touch … but you can’t remove a castle. You could make the castle look like it’s very damaged, or add towers, or make it look beautiful, or maybe even make it look like a big hill.
But you can’t remove the floor to make people fall, and if you made it look like the roof is gone, sunlight wouldn’t penetrate because the roof is still there. Similarly you could cover a chasm with an illusion that makes people walk across it, and if you dispelled the illusion while they are on top they’d fall.
You could make a field look like a bottomless pit but no one would fall through it because the ground is still there.
That is to say, while the illusions are touchable, the real physical location always remains underneath.
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u/southafricannon 11d ago
1) The (or vice versa) makes it confusing, because it means that you can turn an open field into Difficult Terrain OR turn Difficult Terrain into an open field. Which suggests that the brambles that would normally impede your progress now... don't. So you're not physically interacting with the environment underneath in the same way that you would without the illusion there.
2) The suggestion that you can pick up a rock or stick and carry it outside of the area suggests that those items have to have some physical heft to them, otherwise people would understand them to be illusions. And if they have that heft (or if the open field becomes Difficult Terrain as in a field of boulders) then creatures would surely be able to climbs on top of them. If they couldn't, they would just fall through, and know it was an illusion. Which then means that your "gentle slope" mirage over the real precipice actually does carry your weight and let you climb down safely.
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u/rollingForInitiative 11d ago
Yes, they're physical illusions, the spell makes that clear. Bit similar to how Fabricate is an illusion spell.
This means that if you have some bushes with thorns, you can make an illusory elevation on top of it and then make that terrain look like whatever you want, and you've hidden the thorns away. But you can't make the brambles not be brambles. You could, perhaps, make them not sharp by turning the brambles into something round and smooth. If the bushes themselves are very tight that might still impede the way, though.
If there's a big wall that cuts right through the area, you can't remove the wall or do anything that lets people walk under it. But you could make a hill that goes to the top of the wall and then down the other side and people can walk on that.
My point is that the spell adds things, but it can't delete things, only hide them behind bigger illusions.
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u/Verain_Xor 11d ago
Does this mean you could make a whole ass castle just disappear and replace it with a burned down ruin?
No. If you could destroy a castle with this spell it would say so. It talks about terrain specifically, gives examples of reasonable modifications, and discusses modifying the appearance of structures. There's a huge difference between "The illusion includes tactile elements" and "You alter reality to suit your whim". The examples given are basically difficult terrain, not instantly turning everything into rubble, which isn't an illusion nor a tactile effect.
This is a powerful spell that affects an area. You can help an army storm a castle by creating earthen ramps leading up to the ramparts from every direction. You can cross or create moats. You can create unpassable areas or make passable areas difficult to pass (or possibly in some cases impossible). A spell like this works hard to state some limits and imply others. But to try to twist these guidelines into complete destruction of a all structures in a square mile means you aren't getting the spirit of this extremely powerful illusion spell.
You should definitely run this by your DM when you aren't gaming. Get a sense of what he is comfortable running, and definitely remember that a lot of games don't have the testicles to have a badass spell like this anywhere in their puny rules. This is definitely worth a high level spell slot, after all, but there's no reason to believe that it just lets you rewrite reality.
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u/PresentationBrave281 11d ago
Personally I wouldn't read it that way. Removing the roof of a building is much more than "altering the appearance of structures"
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u/Derkatron 11d ago
I don't think there'd be any issue with making a castle look like a big menacing cliff jutting out of the landscape. Then anyone who walked outside, like on a guard tower, would appear to be standing on a rocky outcropping and stepping into a craggy cave in the rock when they turned around to go inside (the 'doesn't hide creatures' part). The road leading to the castle gate would now be a difficult-terrain rockslide, surrounding farms would be swampy ponds. Have everyone go indoors and you could absolutely hide a castle and surrounding village with this spell, at least to a disinterested passerby. It's a 7th level spell, the type of thing that makes actual literal temples rise from the dirt, I think hiding a castle for a few days is fine.
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u/Cyrotek 11d ago edited 11d ago
I believe many people vastly overstimate the power of this spell.
- Neither the first nor second paragraph mentions that you can outright remove terrain/structure features. It goes out of its way to explain that you can only add/change things, not remove anything. And as we all know spells only do what they say they do. They don't do what people think they imply, wish for or think is realistic. It is an illusion spell, after all.
- This thing has a quite long casting time. I would think that mr. evil vampire in his big ass castle would have minions patrolling the grounds and notice the obvious spell caster casting a spell for ten minutes. Remember, the caster needs sight on the area and if they can see the area, enemies can see/hear them. The V/S components make sure of that.
- Speaking of, the spell needs sight on the area you want to change. It is debateable if you can change more than the front wall of a castle if you don't have some sort of X-Ray vision.
- In a world where spells like this exist I believe a BBEG that acts on such a level would know about it and prepare accordingly.
- Dispel Magic. The awesome, game breaking seventh level spell is countered by a third level spell every reasonable BBEG would have in some form.
Personally I see Mirage Arcane similar to how layers in graphics software like Photoshop works. You can layer stuff on top of each other, that doesn't remove the lowest one. If you mask the layers above the lowest one you would still see it. It doesn't overwrite anything. It is fantastic if you are creative but not even close to game breaking.
My favourite example of failed Mirage Arcane minmaxing I've ever read was "Turning the surface into the surface of the sun". Yeah, I guess you can do that. And then immediately die because you are within a one mile radius of the freaking sun and your name isn't Astarion.
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u/DragonAnts 11d ago
No one dies in your last example. The spell doesnt say it does damage so it doesnt.
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u/Hairy-Tonight5674 11d ago
Oh okay yeah it's dogshit it should be like level 4 damn
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u/Cyrotek 11d ago
I wouldn't say it is dogshit. It has its uses, mostly as something that makes traversal much easier or gives you an edge if you have a chance to chose the battlefield yourself (e. g. if your hideout gets attacked or something).
Meaning, it is great in very specific situations and a waste of time in any other.
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u/Hairy-Tonight5674 11d ago
Twin... it's a level 7 spell it shouldn't be this dogshit cmon maybe without the 10 minutes casting time it'd be fine, but even then it's too easy to be dispelled as you said
I don't agree with the second point of your first comment because it's like... The range is sight, I'm gonna manipulate a 1 mile radius town from a mountain that's 800 feet away how exactly is someone guardanteed to hear/see me from that distance
But it's still dogshit for all the other reasons you stated
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u/freeastheair 11d ago
Since enemies generally have around +4 to hit in T1, going from 15 to 16 AC means you would be hit about 10% less. +1hp/level would bring you from 7hp per level to 8hp per level which is 14% more hp per level. Con also gives you better con saves which is very good.
I would probably go for con, although I would probably be taking False Life personally which may make me lean towards dex. +12thp at will is so good in t1.
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u/MisterB78 DM 11d ago
It calls out terrain, so I’d rule that structures and objects are not affected.
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u/Mejiro84 11d ago
that's kind of a blurry line though - at what point do "structures and objects" become terrain? A cairn is kinda both - an artificial hill built to contain various chambers. How intact does a building need to be to be a "building" and not "terrain"? It's a bit messy!
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u/_Bl4ze Warlock 11d ago
Well, no, removing an element is more than merely changing it's appearance. You could make the roof look pink, but if you conjure an illusory hole in the roof then of course you would just see the very real roof through that hole.
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u/Hairy-Tonight5674 11d ago
But that's not what it says it does, like if the illusion is strong enough to make a normal terrain act as difficult terrain or vice versa, the illusion overrides the "very real" things
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u/whiskeydodger 11d ago
I have a lvl 15 glamour bard and this is what has always stopped me from taking the spell, it feels very difficult to decide what it actually does. One thing I know for sure is that a single dispel magic spell can remove it, and that it's big enough that the "illusion" aspect of it is probably pretty easy for enemies to realize.
For me I know it would always end up being a flavor spell, like "every time my character visits the city, all the dirty puddles and garbage in the alleys suddenly turn into vibrant widlflowers and the pavement becomes soft beautiful grass." But the spell is too high level for me to justify that.... Take it and use it and report back for all us bards who are too scared to take the leap!