I was looking for good uses of a Pixie's 1/day Permanent Image spell, thinking toward hostage takers using it to prevent a rescue mission to rescue their hostage.
A thread at GitP ended with this comment:
[Image spells] are also good for making big trees and such to hide inside off. An illusionary duck blind, if you will. Since anyone inside can easily disbelief via interaction, everyone can see out.
Because everyone in the know can see out, I find that the Image spells work double duty if you use them to replicate spells like Obscuring Mist. If your friends are clued in (either an agreed-upon code word for illusions or you only USE illusions) then they can see through it just fine, but it still prevents your enemies from seeing you - and the existence of actual mist-creating spells means that they're a good chance they won't twig to the illusion, where a tree that starts shooting arrows at them will definitely give them a clue that not everything is as it appears.
How well would this actually work? The pixie clues everyone in that a Permanent Image of dense fog is actually an illusion, and thus they get to make saves to disbelieve while inside it. If they make their save, they can freely see through the fog.
But would someone from the opposition even be able to make such a save if they were merely inside the fog? Fog isn't really all that tactile. There's nothing that would cue that it is anything other than a Fog Cloud spell. It would even detect as magical to a detect magic spell. So far as I can tell, nothing there would trigger the ability to make a Will save to disbelieve the illusion.
Now, something that actually WOULD allow a Will save to disbelieve it would be a spellcaster looking at the illusion of fog with a detect magic spell or arcane sight, etc, and then succeeding at a Spellcraft check to note that it is actually and illusion spell, not conjuration. At that point the spellcaster (and anyone he tells) has enough information to trigger the Will save to disbelieve.
Thoughts on my interpretation?
Also, what other great uses are there for a Pixie's Permanent Image (keep in mind, a Pixie's permanent image SLA is visual and auditory only, no thermal, etc)?
Creating images of more defenders is good, and would dilute the attacks of any aggressors.
Hiding the bound and gagged hostage inside an image of a boulder would be good. Harder for the PC's to locate him (though my PC beguiler's ability to cast Locate Creature will help a lot, once they get close.)
Any other ideas? Either for hostage defenders, or just in general.
