Schwarzkopf wrote:Choosing the best creature to turn into and figuring out which stats do and do not change and how takes FOR GOD DAMN EVER at the table. It brings the game to a grinding halt if the caster doesn't have "his" stats at every creature he could possibly polymorph into statted out ahead of time.
I'm generally against inconsistently applied metagame intrusions on normal gameplay mechanics, but seriously, if D&D or any game that used the 'stat replacement' mechanic of polymorph but also had a huge disclaimer that said:
WHEN USED IN A RL TIME-CRITICAL SITUATION SUCH A COMBAT, UNLESS THE PLAYER HAD THE STAT BLOCKS WORKED OUT WITH RELEVANT BUFFS AT LEAST FIVE MINUTES BEFORE DECLARING THE USE OF THE SPELL, THE SPELL AUTOMATICALLY FAILS
I would not really shed a tear for this break in willing suspension of disbelief.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
hogarth wrote:
(1) there are still people who don't like that Wimpy J. Wizard turns into a wimpy elephant instead of an average elephant.
(2) even though the list of monster abilities you can grab is limited (a good thing, IMO), you still end up dumpster-diving for monsters that have a bunch of attacks and abilities.
1. I see this as a good thing since the mass-energy conversion ratio of magical shapeshifting probably wouldn't ass mass much, or whatever. The end result is there's no better warrior than the martial classes, you can't just become a troll and out-fight them.
2. DM fiat to limit the player's selected to 1 form each time they prepared the spell helps, but not every group would do this...
Per the Choker:
Ive got my MM 3.5 here in front of me. 2003, first printing. No 'quickness' on the Choker. Went to WOTC errata 2006. No changes to the Choker. I still love Jans Carton for the SRD..
Per the Hydra:
Im getting about 90 damage to each other with the 12th level hydra and the 12th level fighter at AC 28. The hydra does this as a standard action, which is nice. If Im using Haste, Combat Expertise or the Wizards BAB or HP the fighter takes him. The spell doesnt provide the Fast Healing ability. Purely offensively the Hydra deals more damage to low ACs and the Fighter to high AC.
A Pyrohydra deals tons of damage with the breath weapon. It is untyped. If it did have a type listed it would likely be Su, like the dragon, and thus out of play. If the Hydra is better than your beatstick its not by very much. Dont think its a problem.
I anticipate that turning into a Firblog or a War Troll may be a problem but I dont have MMs 2 and 3 on me to run the math.
Out of space apparently
Last edited by RobG on Fri Mar 16, 2012 5:58 am, edited 1 time in total.
Schwarzkopf wrote:
Why can't it JUST turn you into the creature for a little while. You lose ALL of your spellcasting powers and magic items. You get ALL of its abilities (or if that's too broken, all of its extraordinary abilities) and all of its stats and its hit dice and so on for the duration.
Two reasons:
1. The Zodar has the ability to "Alter Reality" - as a zero cost wish that can be invoked once every ten fucking years. Needless to say, this ability is not particularly balanced for acquiring for a few rounds or minutes.
2. Telling people they lose all their magic items in no way helps when people can drop all their magic items into a pile, then change, then pick them back up again.
RobG wrote:Per the Choker:
Ive got my MM 3.5 here in front of me. 2003, first printing. No 'quickness' on the Choker. Went to WOTC errata 2006. No changes to the Choker. I still love Jans Carton for the SRD..
It's in my MM I, v3.5. first printing.
Page 34 has it in the stat blocks under Special Qualities, page 35 has the description next to the picture.
PoliteNewb mentioned turning the fighter into a Troll. I'd think this would be a problem IF the result was significantly better than using another really good buff spell. Say.. Greater Heroism. Does polymorph give you more than +4 attack, damage, saves, checks and a few HP? Another one to run the math on.
As for unprepared wizards slowing the game down. Im tempted to say tell them to go fuck themselves but if its a legit problem I have to recognize it. Is there more backup for this as a problem?
As for 'dumpster diving'. Can anyone give more specific examples? Frank gave Zodar as an example but that wish thing has gotta be at least a Su ability if not Spell-like.
Come to think of it the 'quickness' ability is Su. I think.
paused to reread
Last edited by RobG on Fri Mar 16, 2012 7:22 am, edited 1 time in total.
As for PAO, PF, suggestions and all the rest. Im just trying to establish what the actual, honest-to-god problems with the polymorph spell are and I only got one brain and 50 brains is better than one so im askin you guys. My plan is this:
1) Establish problems with the Polymorph spell. Ask the Den.
2) Throw out stuff that isn't a real problem. Prioritize remaining problems.
3) Go to Its My Own Invention and propose solutions. Get torn to pieces.
4) Take good advice. Make better solutions.
5) Make a good, working Polymorph spell.
So I'm just on stage one here. Im very workmanlike about this kind of stuff and I like to be thorough. Hopefully this will work well.
Regarding the dumpster-diving issue behind polymorph, it might be nice to have some sort of mechanism to determine what sorts of creatures your specific wizard is able to turn people into. Maybe the limit is INT bonus, and by folding Baleful back in to the basic spell effect, every slot dedicated to bunnies and ferrets is a slot not dedicated to trolls and hydras.
There's this idea with the spell that any monster in any manual is fair game for transformation. Like, the fact that a creature appears in print is more imortant than whether or not it appears in the campaign, and that seems backward.
Pretty sure it's already in the thread so far, but here's a summary.
• Takes too long to find a form to use.
• Takes too long to execute the changes.
• When you do wind up using it you have buffs that are markedly better than any other contemporary spell. Yes, a solid polymorph form gives you much, much, much better than +4 Atk/Save/Dmg and some temp HP. You're lookin at something like +10 Str, +10 AC, along with large size, and that's just using a biped form.
• The buffs are so significant that a caster totally walks all over the non-casters at their own specialty.
Polymorph is broken in multiple ways:
1. It lets you replace stats. Now your caster can happily assign a 5 to dex and 3 to str, then turn into whatever, even into his own race, and end up with better stats, for the cost of one spell slot. That is bullshit.
2. It lets you get inflated stats meant to compensate for the lack of magic, brains, items and feats on some monsters, then layer said magic, brains, items and feats on top of it.
3. It gives unrivaled versatility. Flight, burrowing and other movement powers, defensive shapes, elemental immunity, grappling shapes - all in one spell.
4. It lets you pick up feats without paying for them. In some cases even specialized feat packages that fighters basically spent their entire list of class features on.
5. Polymorph is poorly defined, leading to headaches when trying to figure out whether you can grab dwarven weapon familiarity or some creature's blindsight. Or how layering several polymorphs works. Or what happens to your hit points.
6. Its very versatility leads to dumpster diving through multiple creature books in the middle of gamign sessions to find a creature that helps in the current encounter.
Any of the above is unacceptable. But it gets worse. If you happen to be an outsider or magical beast or whatever - or if you happen to have one of the enhancement feats - you can pick up some ludicrous stuff. Take a look at outsider powers, dragon armor and immunities, abilities of magical beasts and so on and ask yourself whether you want someone to get the ability to blink at will, cast all of their spells as free actions, get two full rounds worth of actions, generate +10 weapons at will, resurrect when killed or even just stack free trips after attacks on top of free attacks after trips.
Polymorph as written is fractal bullshit. The entire thing is broken as hell and each piece of it is also broken in separate and unique ways. To fix it you need, at the very least, to get rid of stat replacement and dumpster diving. That probably means you get to pick from a list of powers and stats instead of reusing monster stats. And even then it is hard to make it useful without making it just too damn versatile. The current version though is just too damn broken to be fixed.
Right. Those are the two basic approaches used to solve the dilemma I mentioned above (disguise + generic buff vs. total monster duplication). And, as noted, they each have their own drawback.
[*]If you go with total monster duplication ("Version 1" in the link), it doesn't stop cherry-picking the most broken monsters. K's response would be "stop making broken monsters", but even if the makers of D&D somehow managed to meet that lofty goal, you still can have disorganized players leafing through hundreds of pages of monsters in the middle of the game.
[*]If you go with disguise + generic buff ("Version 2" in the link), it doesn't satisfy people who whine "But I want to be a real elephant, not a wimpy guy in an elephant suit!!" And you would also get people just treating it as Random Buff Spell #372 (e.g. "I polymorph into a creature that looks identical to my usual form, but with better stats and a bunch of natural armor and the ability to fly and blah blah blah") -- there's nothing wrong with that, per se, but I'd rather see people turn into dragons and unicorns and shit. (As a side note, the disclaimer "The character no longer has the ability to use equipment" is an extremely lame cop-out, IMO. So if I try to put horse barding on a guy polymorphed into a horse, it explodes or something? WTF?)
Monster stats would be less of a big deal if monsters didn't get ginormous Strength scores based on size. Ok, it makes sense that bigger = stronger but every case where that should be true is also directly modified by creature size or by weapons. Like say you want to stat a tyrannosaur. Its strength score modifies:
Attack bonus. You probably don't want a t-rex to have a fucked-off high Strength here because there should be a reasonable chance for a rogue to dodge its bite attack.
Damage. Presumably everything with jaws the size of a car needs to do really high damage, so just make that natural weapon hit really hard.
Carry/Lift/Push Weight. Takes size as an input. We don't need a high Strength to make tyrannosaurs good at carrying things, they can get that from Size: Gargantuan.
Bull Rush/Trip/Grapple/Trample. Takes size as an input. Again no high Strength needed.
Athletics checks. 6-ton dinosaurs don't climb shit and don't need good Climb bonuses, and Jump takes speed and size (sort of) as inputs.
Everything we need a tyrannosaur to be good at that takes Strength as an input, we can also make it good at through size or natural weapons. Everything it gets from Strength that it can't get any other way it probably shouldn't have. As long as a t-rex is Size: Gargantuan and has a crazy high damage bite attack there's no reason it couldn't have an average or even low Strength. A Strength 8 druid could turn into Strength 8 t-rex and still be credible as peasant-trampling 40 foot dinosaur. He just wouldn't be a match for a 15th level barbarian or a Strength 16 t-rexed druid.
Note: 3e tyrannosaurs are Huge, not Gargantuan. This is necessary for 3e druids to wildshape into them but still makes no sense. Also they only have 40 foot movement, what the fuck. WotC needs to hire a 6-year-old boy as a dinosaur consultant.
Why does polymorph have to let you dumpster-dive at all? Why not just print self-contained polymorph spells -- or if space is at a premium, tag certain monster blocks in the Monster Manual as 'Polymorph Okay' to indicate that someone has researched the appropriate spell to let you turn into that thang.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
Lago PARANOIA wrote:Why does polymorph have to let you dumpster-dive at all? Why not just print self-contained polymorph spells...
Well, if you have a lot of spells, it's still dumpster diving, whether it's in the PHB or MM.
On a related note, that's basically what Paizo is doing with monster summoning spells in Pathfinder. Instead of extending the Summon Monster or Summon Nature's Ally lists, they're now creating single purpose summoning spells (e.g. Summon Froghemoth). That's not much help for sorcerers and oracles and other spontaneous casters, though.
Lago wrote: ...or if space is at a premium, tag certain monster blocks in the Monster Manual as 'Polymorph Okay' to indicate that someone has researched the appropriate spell to let you turn into that thang.
This sounds like an inferior version of what Pathfinder does (where they mark certain abilities as "Polymorph Okay" instead of particular creatures, so you can at least turn into the creature without the offending ability).
violence in the media wrote:
There's this idea with the spell that any monster in any manual is fair game for transformation. Like, the fact that a creature appears in print is more imortant than whether or not it appears in the campaign, and that seems backward.
That's a kind of CharOp assumption that the DM is a passive lump of sweaty flesh behind the DM's screen, waiting for a player to cheese out their latest spell combo, unallowed to stop and say "I'm not allowing this" at any point.
In contrast to reality, this is infuriating to assume since every DM I've had (including myself) does not hesitate to simply say "No" to bringing out of campaign material into the campaign.
This includes monsters to become or summon, classes, PrCs, races, items...
Making Polymorph like Summon Monster # where you get a list of monster form options would be a handy and hopefully workable start. Maybe you ought need to collect a spell focus for each form that you want to know for polymorph as well. Would make monster hunting kinda interesting.
Summon Monster should also have shorter summon lists as well, but that's another bag of critters.
Ideally for both Polymorph and Summon you could have a deck of cards much like the D&D Miniatures game cards that you can select from to quickly access the simplified stats of the critter on the field.
Polymorph Other should probably convert mental stats and self-identity. So you want to make the fighter into a dire tiger? Then he thinks as a dire tiger. There ought be some disincentive towards using it as a perma-buff rather than as an attack spell.
erik wrote:Making Polymorph like Summon Monster # where you get a list of monster form options would be a handy and hopefully workable start. Maybe you ought need to collect a spell focus for each form that you want to know for polymorph as well. Would make monster hunting kinda interesting.
Summon Monster should also have shorter summon lists as well, but that's another bag of critters.
This works, I've done this with friends, but rather than a something that needs to be held when casting the spell, it only needs to be present when the spell is researched and added to the caster's repetoire during 'down time'.
If they can't find the monster in the campaign world, they can't become one.
Also, I made a Summon Monster variant where each time the spell is prepared or readied you get one type of monster. In order to have a variety of monsters you need a variety of spells.
Just use the AD&D versions. They're massively better. Because EGG was kind of a dick and didn't care so much about the poor widdle pwayers feewings.
So poly-self gets you a few HP, and alternate movement rates. End of story. Fly like an Eagle, run like a Wolf, change as needed for the duration until you change back to your base form and get more HP again.
Poly-other gives you the whole non-magic set like 3e, but it's instant, you can't cast any more, save-or-die if you do transform, and save regularly or lose your mind and become an NPC, and save-or-die again if you get it reversed. So, more what you do to a charmed Orc for short-term fun and profit.
Fighters running around as Stone Giants? Fuck that right in the ear. That's about as smart as Haste giving you extra spells, or Teleport having neither risk nor cost.
PC, SJW, anti-fascist, not being a dick, or working on it, he/him.
tussock wrote:Poly-other gives you the whole non-magic set like 3e, but it's instant, you can't cast any more, save-or-die if you do transform, and save regularly or lose your mind and become an NPC, and save-or-die again if you get it reversed. So, more what you do to a charmed Orc for short-term fun and profit.
Wait, are you actually in favor of Summon Helpful Dragon?
tussock wrote:Fighters running around as Stone Giants? Fuck that right in the ear.
No, you can go fuck yourself. People turning into a giant demonic monstrosity or a huge reptile of some sort and then fighting in that form is more strongly established in fiction than fireballs. To me, unless there's a specific thematic reason otherwise (such as in Exalted, where they explicitly want to replicate Dynasty Warriors) any kind of magic-using heroic fantasy game that doesn't support this option is barely worth discussing. It's a clear sign of them having given the fuck up and forcing shovelware on the audience.
Last edited by Lago PARANOIA on Sun Mar 18, 2012 9:41 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
The problem with becoming big stomping monsters is, as usual, the fact that warrior classed characters can't compare to them.
The abilities of warriors shouldn't stack with those of the monster, which means either the monster is too good of a race to overlay something like a human, or the warrior classes outright suck.
I'm talking about warrior classes should have stat bonuses, effective size increases, resistances, and unusual qualities, making becoming a monster look like merely an alternative rather than a perk.
