Polymorph

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sun Mar 18, 2012 10:49 pm

??

Transformers is just a subset of Warriors, Guy who turns into a Giant Bear is one type of Warrior. Guy who fights a giant bear with his sword is another.

Guy who fights with his sword shouldn't be better when a Bear, and guy who is a Bear should be equal to guy with sword at the same level.

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Mon Mar 19, 2012 3:16 am

But guy who shoots Spells shouldn't be allowed to be guy who is a Bear because then if you want to have a warrior, you might as well just be a guy who shoots Spells.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Mon Mar 19, 2012 3:27 am

Do you support part-time summoners in the game or not, ...You Lost Me?

If you support part-time summoners in the game, then you by definition support guys who can shoot spells while supporting bear powers. Actually the summoner guy is better than the polymorph guy because oftentimes they have independent actions and/or separate hit point meters.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Mon Mar 19, 2012 3:27 am

...You Lost Me wrote:But guy who shoots Spells shouldn't be allowed to be guy who is a Bear because then if you want to have a warrior, you might as well just be a guy who shoots Spells.

Um... yes?

Guy who turns into Giant Bear is probably not going to be guy who shoots fire, or guy who summons small bears, or guy who makes people die.

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Mon Mar 19, 2012 5:52 pm

Kaelik wrote:Guy who turns into Giant Bear is probably not going to be ... guy who makes people die.

Isn't most of the point of turning into a giant bear to make people die?

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Mon Mar 19, 2012 7:36 pm

Well under that assumption, sure. But this is D&D, and "turning into a bear" archetype is decided when I wake up in the morning. If I can turn into a bear because I decided to today be as effective as the guy who trained his entire life to get here, then the problem we're trying to avoid has not been removed.

Summoners summon small bears, ta-da done. But polymorphers turn into big bears and yet also shoot spells because they have some left. That's the problem.

JonSetanta · Post by **JonSetanta** » Mon Mar 19, 2012 7:46 pm

It's not just Natural Spell that's the problem, but the fact that the bear has 27 STR and natural armor and 40 speed and Improved Grab and can dish out Bite/Claw/Claw routines whereas a Fighter of the same level has two attacks with, I dunno, a Greatsword, or desperately moves back and shoots fistfuls of arrows with a Longbow each round to avoid getting within snarling hairy rage distance.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Mon Mar 19, 2012 8:38 pm

...You Lost Me wrote:Well under that assumption, sure. But this is D&D, and "turning into a bear" archetype is decided when I wake up in the morning. If I can turn into a bear because I decided to today be as effective as the guy who trained his entire life to get here, then the problem we're trying to avoid has not been removed.

Summoners summon small bears, ta-da done. But polymorphers turn into big bears and yet also shoot spells because they have some left. That's the problem.

No, this is some unnamed unwritten edition of D&D or fantasy heartbreaker.

So instead, you get to turn into a Giant Bear when you choose a class that gets to turn into a Giant Bear, and those classes don't get to shoot spells, or at least, shoot spells significantly less effective than mauling people, and therefore aren't pissing the fighter off by shooting those spells at range targets when he's shooting his bow just as well.

I mean yeah, if you decide that when inventing a new game, you have to implement features in the exact same shitty way as a previous game, then they are shitty features, but if you think for eight whole seconds, you can implement them in a way such that Transformers are not also flying lazer eyes.

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Tue Mar 20, 2012 12:38 am

So you're saying that if we're doing a rewrite, we can make sure that Polymorph is a class feature and not a spell?

Is that your proposed solution to the OP? I mean, I understand it... but I want polymorph as a spell.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Tue Mar 20, 2012 1:49 am

...You Lost Me wrote:So you're saying that if we're doing a rewrite, we can make sure that Polymorph is a class feature and not a spell?

Is that your proposed solution to the OP? I mean, I understand it... but I want polymorph as a spell.

Spells are just class features.

If one of your assumptions is, "There must be a single class, with all the spells." Then yes, this doesn't work as well. But that's your fault for having a shitty assumption. I don't want that in my game. I want the transmuter who has some spells that attack, but generally not as good, but has ready access to lots of polymorphing for Great justice, and then some kind of polymorph that doesn't make the fighter much better at fighting, but does make the transmuter much better.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 3:08 am

hogarth wrote:
tussock wrote:Fighters running around as Stone Giants? Fuck that right in the ear.
...unless you survive your system shock roll, in which case it's okay?

'S a funny thing about having a small chance (several, actually) of losing your character to death or NPC status every time someone casts a certain spell on you, people stop doing that.

Evil NPC turns his minion into a stone giant, and it maybe goes mad and kills him? Everyone's happy. PC who chose "Dwarf" as his race walks around 99% of the time as a Dwarf? More happy.

3e, where everyone's a Troll, and then a Stone Giant, because polymorph stacks with all your class features and buffs, that's really fucking stupid. People hate that shit. It's not just that it's a pain in the ass to use in a mechanical sense, it's also a really powerful buff with flavour text that most people do not want.

Murtak wrote:Wait, are you actually in favor of Summon Helpful Dragon?

A 4 hp Dragon who can't cast spells and maybe attacks the party? Go nuts.

@Lago: Shapechange. If you want everyone to morph into trolls and shit, have them use the monster manual entry. No stacking, no class features, and it's mostly useful for gaining situational movement types or combat tricks rather than as a standard buff.

...You Lost Me · Post by **...You Lost Me** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 6:22 am

I see. I guess my rut is that I like generalist wizards, then...

Murtak · Post by **Murtak** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 2:33 pm

tussock wrote:
Murtak wrote:Wait, are you actually in favor of Summon Helpful Dragon?
A 4 hp Dragon who can't cast spells and maybe attacks the party? Go nuts.

Polymorphing your pet kitten into an ancient gold dragon is pretty much guaranteed to give you a formidable ally who will, at the very least, not attack you. It won't stand up to another ancient dragon of course, but it will probably do fine against, say, a bunch of orcs. Of course if you want something that lasts you will instead polymorph a troll so your makeshift dragon regenerates, but there is at least a nominal risk in doing so. Also keep in mind that Polymorph should be the spell Shapechange and Polymorph Any Object build on. And adding anything on top of 2E polymorph breaks the game rather quickly.

As horrible as 3E polymorph is, 2E polymorph is worse in every regard. It is more overpowered, more likely to break the game, more confusing and a worse platform to build higher level abilities on.

talozin · Post by **talozin** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 3:06 pm

Murtak wrote: Polymorphing your pet kitten into an ancient gold dragon is pretty much guaranteed to give you a formidable ally who will, at the very least, not attack you.

1) You clearly do not own a cat.

2) Actually, if you use the system shock rules, polymorphing your pet kitten into an ancient gold dragon is likely to give you a gold dragon corpse. Not that there aren't uses for that, but it's ... probably not exactly what you want.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 3:37 pm

talozin wrote:
Murtak wrote: Polymorphing your pet kitten into an ancient gold dragon is pretty much guaranteed to give you a formidable ally who will, at the very least, not attack you.
1) You clearly do not own a cat.

2) Actually, if you use the system shock rules, polymorphing your pet kitten into an ancient gold dragon is likely to give you a gold dragon corpse. Not that there aren't uses for that, but it's ... probably not exactly what you want.

But if you have a lot of cats, because who gives a fuck, they are cats, then you get some Gold Dragons.

Plus, 2e Gold Dragon corpses were valuable.

PoliteNewb · Post by **PoliteNewb** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 5:07 pm

Murtak wrote: As horrible as 3E polymorph is, 2E polymorph is worse in every regard. It is more overpowered, more likely to break the game, more confusing and a worse platform to build higher level abilities on.

Not really. 2E polymorph was only broken because nobody knew what the fuck it did, because it was an incredibly vague and poorly worded spell. So it varied between "horribly sucky" and "incredibly awesome" depending on your DM, how he interpreted it, and how vulnerable he was to player shenanigans.

Compared to 3E, which explicitly permits you to break the game right there in black and white...I honestly don't see how 2E is worse. At least 2E let the DM put his foot down on the bullshit without the players whining about how the DM has to follow the rules in the book.

This is one case where yes, MTP is better than what it written down. Because what it written down is insane.

erik · Post by **erik** » Wed Mar 21, 2012 6:29 pm

Limiting new polyform to no greater than HD or CR of target would be a sensible way to eliminate kitten abuse no?

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 1:03 am

polyform -> animate dead (zombie). Lather, rinse and repeat.

erik · Post by **erik** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 3:18 am

I thought dead polymorphed creatures returned to their original form?

Certainly they did in 3e. I thought that was the case for older editions too.

Murtak · Post by **Murtak** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 8:28 am

As far as I recall dead creatures return to their original form, yes. And yes, limiting polymorph by CR of both caster and target is probably a good move. And this does help to tone down on the frequency of things breaking. But it does not make polymorph work. As long as you can sift through tons of monster manuals you will find something that is broken. As long as you transform into something that is threatening at your level polymorph is already broken by handing you a second set of class features. As long as you can transform into a laundry list of somewhat challenging forms polymorph is too versatile for a single spell slot. It either needs to be confined to either a low number of somewhat useful forms or a single powerful form and even then it probably needs to be a main class feature to even approach being balanced. But this bullshit of sifting monster manuals for hidden nuggets (read:brokenness) has to go.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 11:18 am

Polymorph does revert, Baleful Polymorph does not appear to. The HD restriction is meaningless then because you can bypass it with zombification.

erik · Post by **erik** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 1:21 pm

Oh those 3.5 fucktards. Polymorph Other did have the clause for reverting back upon death in 3e. For reasons unknowable that was excised in 3.5.

Unless this clause "These abilities and statistics return to normal if the effect is later ended." which could be implied as the effect ending up death. That would be a very crappy way to rephrase it, but apparently changes had to be made for the sake of change in 3.5.

Anywho, if constructing a workable polyform, that reverting upon death and dismemberment should probably be included. I never liked that reverting body parts kind of messed up abilities like manticore spikes and the like, but honestly nobody used those anyway and it does prevent body part harvesting off poor bespelled peasants and kittens.

[edit] note that baleful polymorph still isn't hot for harvesting zombies since you are making small zombies at best. "You change the subject into a Small or smaller animal of no more than 1 HD"

[edit2]This discussion has stirred memories of one of my favorite NPC party members in DnD. The ogre or troll (it was a looong time ago) we polymorphed into a toad and coerced into scouting (trapfinding) for us... I think under the pretense that we would revert him back someday.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 1:40 pm

That's not entirely true. It doesnt actually change HD, you just use the 1 HD for derived statistics. For HD dependent effects (e.g. Sleep), you use the original HD.
Long story short: Polymorph is busted. When mixed with another busted spell, you can get a busted result. News at 11.

erik · Post by **erik** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 2:23 pm

fectin wrote:That's not entirely true. It doesnt actually change HD, you just use the 1 HD for derived statistics. For HD dependent effects (e.g. Sleep), you use the original HD.
Long story short: Polymorph is busted. When mixed with another busted spell, you can get a busted result. News at 11.

But either way, small animal zombie or the original HD... polymorph isn't a workaround to get you more useful zombies.

Polymorph is busted, but applying animate dead isn't the manner in which it is busted.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Thu Mar 22, 2012 2:40 pm

Right.
So the point was, you can't turn a kitten into a dragon. Originally, I thought you could by mixing in animate dead, but killing those returns it to its original form. Mixing Baleful Polymorph, Animate Dead, and a kitten gets you a live kitten with high HD, but terrible saves. You now have a kitten which can be polymorphed to a dragon.

I'm pretty sure it works, but it's really not anything profound.