The Complete OD&D Illusionist

The Illusionist in Dungeons & Dragons was created by Peter Aronson, an early Boston-area fan. In 1975, Aronson submitted an initial description of Illusionists to TSR , who ran it in the fourth issue of the Strategic Review. Then the following year, Aronson's additions with system for higher-level Illusionists appeared in the debut issue of The Dragon. But Aronson didn't stop there - he made a number of further expansions and corrections which he circulated informally in 1977, of which the first page is shown above. Today, we're looking at the complete Illusionist subclass for OD&D as Aronson envisioned it, and the implications it created for "schools" of magic in role-playing games.

The basic concept of illusions in fantasy games had existed prior to Dungeons & Dragons: the 1971 first edition of Chainmail introduced the spell "Phantasmal Forces," which "creates the apparition of a unit or creature." The version of that spell in the 1974 edition of Dungeons & Dragons allows "the creation of vivid illusions of nearly anything the user envisions," with the ominous possibility that "damage caused to viewers of a Phantasmal Force will be real if the illusion is believed to be real." The power to create such illusions carried over to the "Wand of Illusion" and the "Illusion Generation" ability of magic swords at the very start of D&D.

Aronson saw in this the possibility for a sort of Magic-user who specialized in illusions, who could cast new spells like "Hypnotism", "Blindness," "Change Self", and "Nondetection." He sent his original write-up for the Illusionist subclass to TSR before he had seen Greyhawk, the first supplement to OD&D, which expanded the number of experience levels specified and with it the spell list for Magic-users. Necessarily, Illusionists would need higher level spells as well, which led to Aronson's additions to the class in the first issue of The Dragon.

The Illusionist subclass of Magic-users opened the door to the idea that wizards could specialize in some particular sort of magic - and in no small part, that spells should be formally classified into schools. Even before the Illusionist saw print in the Strategic Review, Len Lakofka had taken the idea of Magic-user specializations to the next logical step, in a series in his fanzine Liaisons Dangereuses describing a set of fantasy miniatures rules intended to be compatible with D&D. In the July 1975 issue, Lakofka broke spell casters down into four areas of specialty: "illusion, elements (fire and air or water and earth), change properties (healing, polymorph), command (fly, protection, charm, hold)." We can see these categories as precursors to the "types" of magic that organized spells in AD&D: Illusion, Evocation, Alteration, Enchantment/Charm, and so on. As he continued to serialize his system, Lakofka refined these into class roles for the Illusionist, Charmer & Enchanter, and Elementalist.

Some Elementalist spells are furthermore restricted just to "Fire Users," an idea Lakofka would evolve into the "Pyrologist" subclass of Magic-user that appeared the following September in Liaisons Dangereuses #74. By that point, his fantasy miniatures rules had run in the center of the first issue of The Dragon -- right alongside Aronson's expanded Illusionist rules.

The following year, Aronson felt he needed to revisit the Illusionist. An article he submitted to Wild Hunt #19 gives the rationale for most of the changes in this 1977 version of the Illusionist class. Aronson notes that because he had originally designed the class before Greyhawk, it was burdened with number of inconsistencies with the evolving D&D system that needed to be addressed.

In addition to fixing the system of previous spells, Aronson could not resist adding a few new ones. The Color Bomb, Dreams, and Phantoms spells are unique to this 1977 version. He compiled these revisions into a six-page description, of which the first page is given above. If you want to take his final Illusionist system for a test drive, here's the other five:

The Illusionist has cast a long shadow over the magic system of D&D: fifth-edition spells like "Color Spray", "Illusory Script", "Alter Self", "Phantasmal Killer", and "True Seeing" all have their roots in Aronson's design. And of course Wizards can specialize in the School of Illusion. This vividly reminds us how the system of D&D was a truly collaborative effort, where ideas that players devised became integral components of the game. But beyond their historical value, these rules give OD&D fans the opportunity to play the Illusionist as its creator intended -- so give them a spin!