Hero into Dragon into Archmage rinse repeat

Oofta · Jan 18, 2018

Balfore said:
Is there a ruling (a clear ruling, Crawford speaks in terms that are very cryptic, instead of a yes or no answer). That I can present to my players?

One thing I thought is worth mentioning (or perhaps repeating). The only "clear ruling" your players need is yours. DMs make judgement calls all the time, most are so minor that you don't even realize it.

But in this case? A simple "I've thought about it, did some double checking and here's my ruling" is all you need to do. At a certain point you simply have to make a decision and stick with it. If someone wants to discuss the ruling outside of the game, that's fine, and you always have to balance player fun with what makes sense to you.

This can be tricky. You don't want an adversarial relationship with your players, and it can upset some people but you are the final judge. I don't play the "DM card" very often but when I do it looks something like this:

Sword of Spirit · Jan 18, 2018

Ovinomancer said:
Well, I find it's pretty easy to find a midpoint between not allowing polymorph to select goblins bosses and having to figure out the entire demographic make-up of the goblin race to determine a statistical average: its called "goblin" and it's in the Monster Manual.

Okay. How about "human"? Or "dwarf"? Can I not change into them since there is no default version?

jaelis · Jan 18, 2018

Sword of Spirit said:
Okay. How about "human"? Or "dwarf"? Can I not change into them since there is no default version?

At my table, if you polymorph into a PC race, then you are a commoner of that race.

Ovinomancer · Jan 18, 2018

Sword of Spirit said:
Okay. How about "human"? Or "dwarf"? Can I not change into them since there is no default version?

That's a different tack and doesn't really tie into your previous point, but, you answer anyway, of course there are. You use the race description on top of 10s or 11s.

Inglorin · Jan 19, 2018

jaelis said:
At my table, if you polymorph into a PC race, then you are a commoner of that race.

So, what about a Gold Dragon? What kind of Gold Dragon do I True Polymorph into? What is the commoner equivalent here? (Seriously asking. I am with you. No TP into an archmage, but my wizard player will get there in some levels and I need some powder for my arguments ;-)

Sword of Spirit · Jan 19, 2018

Ovinomancer said:
That's a different tack and doesn't really tie into your previous point, but, you answer anyway, of course there are. You use the race description on top of 10s or 11s.

Are you saying you would use the standard armed and battle-trained goblin statblock, but a dwarf would just have average stats? Also, how many hit points do they get? What proficiencies? Goblins wear armor and wield weapons, and dwarves are proficient in some of that at least, but humans aren’t—are they just out of luck?

Ovinomancer · Jan 19, 2018

Sword of Spirit said:
Are you saying you would use the standard armed and battle-trained goblin statblock, but a dwarf would just have average stats? Also, how many hit points do they get? What proficiencies? Goblins wear armor and wield weapons, and dwarves are proficient in some of that at least, but humans aren’t—are they just out of luck?

Yup. Being a nasty monster that's a threat to civilization has advantages when you want to, you know, be a threat. Mean goblinses are recognizable to other mean goblinses as mean goblinses. Normal human is recognizable to other humans as normal human.

What's your suggestion? Surely you have a countersuggestion?

jaelis · Jan 19, 2018

Inglorin said:
So, what about a Gold Dragon? What kind of Gold Dragon do I True Polymorph into? What is the commoner equivalent here? (Seriously asking. I am with you. No TP into an archmage, but my wizard player will get there in some levels and I need some powder for my arguments ;-)

I'm not totally sure what you are getting at. If you polymorph into an ancient gold dragon, then there is only one ancient gold dragon form available (that I know of), and you will turn into that. Presumably, that is the "common" form of an ancient gold dragon.

I could imagine a DM ruling that you can't pick the age, that an adult dragon is your only option. Presumably you would have the same restriction when polymorphing into a human. I wouldn't go that way myself.

Another restriction you could run into is a DM saying that when you take a new form, all of the form's special abilities are uncharged. So if the form can cast a a spell 1/day, that would be unavailable unless you manage to stay in the form for a day. For a dragon, its breath weapon would be unavailable until you roll a 5-6 to recharge it. If I felt like a player's polymorphs were hurting the game, I might go this route to limit them.

JacktheRabbit · Jan 19, 2018

jaelis said:
At my table, if you polymorph into a PC race, then you are a commoner of that race.

To me that is silly, if you use a polymorph or higher level spell to turn from a human into a dwarf then all you have really done is cast a really really powerful disguise person and you gain basic racial features of that race like darkvision, at the same time if you are a dwarf that polys into an elf you would lose your dwarven racials while gaining the elven racials because your physical body is different. You are not going to lose your levels and skills.

Inglorin · Jan 19, 2018

jaelis said:
I'm not totally sure what you are getting at. If you polymorph into an ancient gold dragon, then there is only one ancient gold dragon form available (that I know of), and you will turn into that. Presumably, that is the "common" form of an ancient gold dragon.

Is the Ancient GD really a different kind of creature than the young one? Is the Archmage the same kind of creature as the Human Commoner? The thing is you seem to allow the TP into a quite specific type of Gold Dragon but not a specific type of human. How?