DM Entry: Shadowcraft Mage DM Rulings

The following DM rulings will appear in the Aryathan Jiil Campaign Setting.pdf soon. But these rulings take effect immediately. All of these deal with the Shadowcraft Mage and more specifically the Shadow Illusion class ability.

Apocryphal Shadow Miracles: You can indeed select the Dweomer, Fortune, Hope, Luck, or Zeal domain for your Arcane Disciple feat, adding miracle to your class list. This only adds it to your class list. Arcane Disciple, however, does not actually make miracle a sorcerer or wizard spell, thus not qualifying for the shadow illusion class feature of the shadowcraft mage. So no shadow illusion miracles.

Shadow Summoning: Any creature you conjure with a shadow illusion obeys the normal rules for the Summoning subschool. Thus the shadow-summoned creature obeys this rule: “A summoned creature cannot use any innate summoning abilities it may have, and it refuses to cast any spells that would cost it XP, or to use any spell-like abilities that would cost XP if they were spells.” Spells cast by your shadow-illusion-summoned creature follows the Iterated Illusions entry, below.

The Quasireality Magnitude Apogee: The shadow illusion class ability has an absolute maximum of 90% reality, regardless of any modifiers. If you whine because you cannot have an illusion that is 125% real, your character just died….just now. No…seriously…it really did. Start rolling up a new character. And please don’t cry, it’s embarrassing. Do you need a baby aspirin?

Iterated Illusions: As an extension of the Summoning subschool rules, no summoned or shadow-illusion-summoned creature can use any summoning effect. 

Disbelieving Shadow Buffs: If you create a shadow illusion of mage armor or any other buffing spell, the recipient benefactor is not the one who makes a save to disbelieve the effect. The enemy the effect is used against, or who interacts with the effect, is the one who makes the save to disbelieve. Thus if you cast a shadow illusion mage armor on yourself, your belief is irrelevant. It is only when successfully attacked by an enemy that the enemy has a chance to disbelieve the spell. Likewise, a shadow illusion that enhances an ability score of an ally works as described by the spell, and is not checked for belief by the recipient benefactor. But if an enemy is affected by the enhanced ability score in any fashion, the enemy has a chance to disbelieve. The same is true for all other self-buffing and ally-buffing shadow illusions.

Fractional Reality: If you have an effect that is partially real, always round down. Observe this paragraph from the Player’s Handbook page 304 under the heading: Rounding Fractions. “In general, if you wind up with a fraction, round down, even if the fraction is one-half or larger.” The only exception to this rule is if the effect specifically says to round up.