Hero into Dragon into Archmage rinse repeat

[jaelis]

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?

What kind of perspective are you thinking about?

Most narrowly, I would let you turn into an ancient dragon because I would let you turn into an ancient human. The polymorph spell doesn't address age, but that's how I would play it.

A little more broadly, I think that polymorph in general is not supposed to give you class abilities. There are plenty of good reasons for that in terms of game balance and playability. I interpret that broadly, in the sense that I think most of the special NPC abilities represent class abilities, even if they aren't called out specifically. But I wouldn't interpret general monster features that way.

From a game logic perspective, I would explain disallowing class features because they are products of experience, not biology. I think polymorph changes your body and gives you the basic skills needed to use that body, but it doesn't provide the lifetime of study and practice that a human needs to become an archmage. In contrast, I assume that an ancient dragon's abilities are more a product of biology, in that any dragon who lives long enough will gain them. If you felt that some of those abilities were instead learned, then you might not want to grant them. At the same time then, I would expect to find dragons in your world with varying ability sets.

 

[Zmajdusa]

So, change into a celestial or fiend, and a few of them who have the spellcasting feature. Some of them have access to an 8th or 9th level spell. There are a few undead who have the spellcasting trait as well. So if your dm doesn't want to let you play a specific monster entry due dragon age categories being considered all the same creature, pick something else.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

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?

I'd let you pick anything from the NPC statblocks that fits the CR. I would prohibit the use of class abilities (as described). As far as I know the only thing that counts is Spellcasting.

If you wanted to go the route of only allowing the weakest version of the monster entry (which I still think is problematic), I'd suggest allowing standard races to use the Guard NPC statblock for a little bit better parity.

 

[Zmajdusa]

My earlier comment was referring to using true polymorph

 

[Balfore]

It was a pretty stressful game last Saturday.
I was super frustrated, the fight went on very late. I was making mistakes as we're the players.
A BBEG Has so many extra powers, legendary actions, lair actions, minions, effects etc...that ot became a terrible
bog-fest. The players felt it as I struggled with what to do next.
The Bard had made a Simulacrum of himself and then they both turned into an Ancient Brass Dragon. In the middle of combat, they Changed Shape into the Archmages.
I broght out the Beholders, and pointed the eyes in opposite directions to where the BBEG was casting (mainly at the Paladin and the Archmages), while the BBEG casts spells at the 2 Barbarians.
The BBEG had tethered to the Cleric in case the Paladin started whopping on him so that the Cleric would take damage.
Later, nearly every spell and damage was resisted by the Paladins Scarab of Protection (12) and each dragons Legendary Resists (3 each), that's 15 legendary resists, and nothing that drove it home.
These are players we've played with for nearly 20 years, and it was a mess.
All I wanted was an epic encounter with a memorable ending.
With all the griping and complaining, I slammed the book shut, and said,"Fine, you all win, what's the point? That's all the game is...roll math, roll, math, roll, math. If you aren't going to have the faith that the DM is in control of the story, then why play?"
I have a 4 page epilogue written to sum up the story... (pretty good I believe), but I don't even feel the fun anymore.

Sent from my SM-N910V using Tapatalk

 

[Ovinomancer]

It was a pretty stressful game last Saturday.
I was super frustrated, the fight went on very late. I was making mistakes as we're the players.
A BBEG Has so many extra powers, legendary actions, lair actions, minions, effects etc...that ot became a terrible
bog-fest. The players felt it as I struggled with what to do next.
The Bard had made a Simulacrum of himself and then they both turned into an Ancient Brass Dragon. In the middle of combat, they Changed Shape into the Archmages.
I broght out the Beholders, and pointed the eyes in opposite directions to where the BBEG was casting (mainly at the Paladin and the Archmages), while the BBEG casts spells at the 2 Barbarians.
The BBEG had tethered to the Cleric in case the Paladin started whopping on him so that the Cleric would take damage.
Later, nearly every spell and damage was resisted by the Paladins Scarab of Protection (12) and each dragons Legendary Resists (3 each), that's 15 legendary resists, and nothing that drove it home.
These are players we've played with for nearly 20 years, and it was a mess.
All I wanted was an epic encounter with a memorable ending.
With all the griping and complaining, I slammed the book shut, and said,"Fine, you all win, what's the point? That's all the game is...roll math, roll, math, roll, math. If you aren't going to have the faith that the DM is in control of the story, then why play?"
I have a 4 page epilogue written to sum up the story... (pretty good I believe), but I don't even feel the fun anymore.

Sent from my SM-N910V using Tapatalk

Well, as noted, you don't get the spellcasting trait from a form and you also don't get any legendary or lair abilities. The latter is in the general description of legendary and lair abilities at the front of the MM, which is, sadly, somewhat counter-intuitive.

Finally, there's some wiggle room on the Scarab -- assuming your villain was a lich of some kind and therefore triggered the undead clause, there's room for judgement if a spell cast by an undead counts as an effect caused by an undead or an effect caused by a spell. I'd give a pass for the autosuccess to save against the lich's touch, or a vampire's dominate, but not from a spell cast from those sources. I can see how someone would rule the other way, though.