Trompe L'oiel — house rules for balancing it

[Segev]

I intend to expand on this with a few ideas, but one thing that strikes me as I review the rules for crafting these is that they have costs clearly influenced by the material cost of a simulacrum. Now, that spell is also widely nsidered overpowered, but if we start by restraining the troublesome trompe l'oeil using three things the spell does differently, maybe it will help.

• First off, require the subject to be present to serve as a model for the entire painting process. The spell requires the subject's presence for the full casting time, after all.
• Second, use the same "half HD/level" rule as the spell. The Trompe L'oeil isn't as powerful as the original.
• Third, have the maximum HD of the subject be restricted to either the craftsman's ranks in Craft: Painting, or twice those ranks (the latter being in line with simulacrum, but obviously more powerful than the former).

These won't completely solve all problems with the costs for powerful minions, but should place harder level-based limits and also make it so that arbitrary things seen once aren't mass producible.

Other thoughts I have had as alternatives include a lesser version that can't leave the painting, or making the construct not a template, but rather a unified stat block that can mimic only strictly physical things the original can do (maybe with having all the original's powers while inside a painting's but only able to use them for dramatic effect, thusly, unless someone enters the painting by some external magical means). I will try to elaborate on these later, when I have more time.