Disguise: Does polymorph stack with alterself?

[Tom McCafferty]

Hi there

I have a player who's character wants to diguise themselves as someone who is an associate of a dragon. The party have polymorphed him look like the dragon's agent and then the character casts alterself on theirself.

Now the dragon gets +6 on its spot since it knows its own agent, but the party argue that they should have +10 from polymorph on their disguise and +10 from the alterself giving a total of +20. Do these two spells really stack?

As the dragon has keen senses and spell resistance should these not play a part too? I can imagine if something doesn't smell right then the dragon would be alerted enough to make a spot check. There is no mention however of their smell capability. Should it be part of their spot? If so is it subject to polymorph's disguise bonus?

Does the dragon's spell resistance cause it to feel the effect of alterself, as this is an illusion spell?

Tom

 

[Stalker0]

The spell gives a flat +10 to disguise, so I would say they both stack. And no you don't get SR for this type of illusion, the disbelieving part is with the disguise.

From polymorph at least I'd say you smell like a dragon enough to fool one. The dragon might get a bonus to the check but you still get the chance and wth a +20 a good one.

 

[UltimaGabe]

No, they wouldn't stack. One of them makes you look like something else to hide your identity- and, look at that, so does the other. Polymorph does all that Alter Self does, and then some, so why would a human get an extra bonus for making their dragon form look like a slightly different dragon form, when they could just make their dragon form look like something different to begin with?

It's dumb logic. They wouldn't stack. Next you'll see people trying to cast Invisibility and Greater Invisibility so they both give them a bonus to Hide.

 

[JimAde]

Regardless of what the spell descriptions say, I'd call these both circumstance bonuses arising from the same circumstance, so they wouldn't stack.

The Giant in the Playground site has a big discussion on this. Rich Burlew was so disgusted by the whole concept he re-wrote the polymorphing spells to add a "polymorphed" template, which replaces any other polymorphed template you might have had previously (so the bonuses can't stack, among other things). Here's a link to the article:

http://www.giantitp.com/Func0012.html

 

[Stalker0]

Regardless of what the spell descriptions say, I'd call these both circumstance bonuses arising from the same circumstance, so they wouldn't stack.

http://www.giantitp.com/Func0012.html

Not that I don't understand your opinion, but this is the rules forum... we can't just forget the spell description.

It says its a flat bonus... flat bonuses stack.

As far as from a reasonable point of view...there are so many examples I could give, but I don't any of them would pass the grandma test.

 

[Ovinomancer]

According to the rules and the spell descriptions, the bonuses stack. Both spells provide an unnamed +10 bonus to disguise. Since unnamed bonuses stack, voila, +20 to disguise.

I would not allow this IMC, however. Both spells use the exact wording (and I mean EXACT). This seems to inply that they both do the same thing in regards to disguise. I would rule that the higher level spell takes precedence and only give a +10 bonus.

I realize that this post is 3.0 rules, but 3.5 clarifies this issue by changing polymorph by including the words 'this spell functions like alter self, ...' and goes on the describe the differences. It does not list a seperate +10 bonus, only the bonus derived from alter self. Since you can't recieve the bonus from alter self twice, problem solved. IMO

 

[jaerdaph]

From Does It Stack? (Part Four) from The Rules of the Game series at WotC:

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/rg/20040210a

Unnamed Bonuses

A bonus that doesn't have a name stacks with anything except itself. This is always true, but it's sometimes hard to remember. For example, many feats provide unnamed bonuses, so don't panic when you read a feat description and it provides a bonus without a name. An unnamed bonus from a feat stacks with any other bonus; however you can't stack that unnamed bonus if you take the feat twice.

 

[JimAde]

Not that I don't understand your opinion, but this is the rules forum... we can't just forget the spell description.

It says its a flat bonus... flat bonuses stack.

As far as from a reasonable point of view...there are so many examples I could give, but I don't any of them would pass the grandma test.

Fair enough. I think Jaerdaph has the right approach. If you just treat all the "polymorph-y" unnamed bonuses as the same source, then they don't stack even though they're unnamed. This is equivalent to saying they all supply a circumstance bonus from the same source. The problem is that you could reasonably say it's NOT the same source because they're different spells. To use his example, unnamed bonuses from the same feat twice don't stack, but unnamed bonuses from two different feats presumably would. So should two different spells that basically do the same thing stack? I would say no, but I can't quote a rule to back it up.

 

[UltimaGabe]

Actually, in 3.5, they don't stack at all. The spell description of Polymorph actually doesn't even list the +10 to Disguise checks- unless I missed it somewhere. And at the beginning of the description, it says, "This spell acts as Alter Self, but with the following changes." Therefore, it's coming from the same effect. So they wouldn't stack. Even if it said otherwise, common sense tells us that putting one disguise over another isn't going to make you any more difficult to see than just putting on the second one to begin with.