I play make believe

ILLUSION MAGIC I have struggled with how illusionist magic operates. I had an illusionist is a previous campaign, but they didn't test the boundaries of the magic system. I have another illusionist in my current campaign and decided that I needed to put pen to paper, especially as they may be acquiring a nearly fully charged wand of illusions! Incidentally, both of these illusionists were NPCs who were taken over by players after their characters died. The first was Grastic Hammerclay. The second was a gnome from my Absorbing Eye adventure. This explanation will probably make it into my ADVANCER Rules. Illusion vs. phantasm All forms of illusion magic includes a sensory aspect, called an illusion , and a mental element, called a phantasm . The phantasm affects every intelligent creature who senses the illusion. At a minimum, the phantasm makes the illusion seem real, fleshing it out and filling in gaps. More powerful phantasms can cause damage, physical effects such as blindness, d...

AD&D initiative is not well-explained. It tries to add realism by dividing the 1-minute round into 6-second segments.  One purported intent was to penalize spellcasters, especially priests (clerics and druids) and high-level magicians (mages and illusionist), whose spells take a half-round or more to cast and thus may be interupted even if the spellcaster wins initiative. Theoretically, it also allows the GM to adjudicate the relative timing of different actions that require time to complete. I say "theoretically" because the rules in AD&D are not clear about how to actually accomplish this.  The draft ADVANCE rules are set out below. Here is a quick summary: - High roll wins initiative.  - "Immediate attacks" of the winning side occur on segment 1. - The higher initiative die indicates when "immediate attacks" of the losing side occur (following DMG, p. 65). - The lower initiative die acts as a penalty for certain actions, specifically:      - for...