D&D 5E Permanent True Polymorph

[seebs]

So, when I ask people about this, I get two answers.

Say you polymorph a person into another creature; say, an Adult Red Dragon. You concentrate to maintain the spell. They get knocked to 0 hit points. They resume their original form at whatever hit points they had left, less any excess damage from being knocked to zero.

Now say that you concentrate for the full hour, and the spell "becomes permanent". Does this still happen? If so, it seems like it's really hard to beat, as a strategy, "polymorph your entire party into adult red dragons, then go fight stuff, and as you get knocked to 0hp, you resume your normal forms." So from a pure game balance standpoint, it seems broken.

My inference: If you concentrate for the full hour, that *becomes* their natural form. Like, if they get dropped to zero, they start making death saves, and if you rez them, that's the body that comes back.

 

[designbot]

The transformation lasts for the duration, or until the target drops to 0 hit points or dies. If you concentrate on this spell for the full duration, the transformation becomes permanent.

I'd say that "the transformation becomes permanent" overrides both clauses of the previous sentence. Dropping to 0 hit points or dying would not end a "permanent" transformation.

 

[kerbarian]

I'd agree that "becomes permanent" overrides the other end conditions of the spell. If you've made the spell permanent and drop to 0 hp, you're now an Adult Red Dragon making death saves.

Further, if you've True Polymorphed the party fighter into an Adult Red Dragon and then later True Polymorph him back into a human, I believe he'll just be an average human commoner. He loses all his class abilities when polymorphed ("The target's game statistics ... are replaced by the statistics of the new form.", with no exception for class abilities and such like with Wild Shape). Aside from personality, he's a red dragon in every way. His mental ability scores -- along with all of his reflexes -- have been replaced by those of a red dragon, and casting True Polymorph on a red dragon wouldn't let you turn it into a 17th-level fighter. Red dragons also have no rules for gaining XP or leveling, so the fighter has just reached the peak of his career.

You could probably use a Wish to restore the fighter to his original self.

True Polymorph is still pretty broken, but making it permanent at least has serious consequences.

 

[TwoSix]

Red dragons also have no rules for gaining XP or leveling, so the fighter has just reached the peak of his career.

Oh well, I'll just have to make do being a DRAGON.

Doesn't a 9th level Dispel Magic get rid of the transformation, also? I thought it worked on permanent effects, but I'm away from books at the moment.

 

[kerbarian]

Doesn't a 9th level Dispel Magic get rid of the transformation, also? I thought it worked on permanent effects, but I'm away from books at the moment.

Dispel Magic can end spells on the target, but I believe the True Polymorph spell is still over at the end of its 1 hour duration -- it doesn't say that the spell duration becomes permanent, it says that the transformation becomes permanent. Kinda like a spell with casting time "1 hour" and duration "Instantaneous".

 

[seebs]

Huh. I wonder whether you can dispel a permanent teleportation circle, then.

Dispel magic: "Choose one creature, object, or magical effect within range. Any spell of 3rd level or lower on the target ends. For each spell of 4th level or higher on the target, make an ability check using your spellcasting ability. The DC equals 10 + the spell's level. On a successful check, the spell ends. AT HIGHER LEVELS: When you cast this spell using a spell slot of 4th level or higher, you automatically end the effects of a spell on the target if the spell's level is equal to or less than the level of the spell slot you used."

Okay, pedantic RAW, this dispells spells affecting the magical effect, not the magical effect itself.

But consider things like permanent magical items. Can you dispel them? I think probably not. So I am inclined to think that things like a permanent teleportation circle are probably immune too. Disjunction isn't in the book.

So I am guessing the intent is that this can only dispel non-permanent effects.

 

[TwoSix]

I don't think RAW is going to be clear enough to get an answer here. We're pretty much in the "rulings, not rules" territory.

Of the top of my head, I'm not sure whether having it be dispellable is more or less broken than it not being dispellable.

 

[TheSleepyKing]

My first thought when reading the True Polymorph description was that it's essentially a gateway to infinite money. If you can turn anything and anyone into any other thing permanently, then I'm going around turning everything I see into blocks of gold 20' high and diamonds as large as your head.

Edit: Just rereading, and while it appearing object->object transformations are not supported, I could still turn a rat into a giant platinum statue of myself.

 

[Riley37]

So, when I ask people about this, I get two answers.

Say you polymorph a person into another creature; say, an Adult Red Dragon. You concentrate to maintain the spell. They get knocked to 0 hit points. They resume their original form at whatever hit points they had left, less any excess damage from being knocked to zero.

Now say that you concentrate for the full hour, and the spell "becomes permanent". Does this still happen? If so, it seems like it's really hard to beat, as a strategy, "polymorph your entire party into adult red dragons, then go fight stuff, and as you get knocked to 0hp, you resume your normal forms." So from a pure game balance standpoint, it seems broken.

My inference: If you concentrate for the full hour, that *becomes* their natural form. Like, if they get dropped to zero, they start making death saves, and if you rez them, that's the body that comes back.

In general, anything with starts with you casting *as many 9th level spells as you have allies* should be rather powerful. Since you're choosing it over, say, that many Wish spells. Plus, of course, spending an hour each, but if your TP form doesn't get killed, then that's an hour of casting for days or years of effect. Also assuming that you don't mind days or weeks of life as a dragon; it's a power trip, but how does it affect your marital relations and social life? Are you eating as much as a dragon does?

I would endorse a house-rule disallowing a True Poly into anything unique or Legendary. In general, when you're playing with multiple 9th level spells as buffs, I expect house-rules. The standard rules are hitting a transition phase, in the same way that the temperature/pressure equations for gasses stop working accurately when you reach the transition into liquid phase.

However, if your campaign allows perma-true-poly with reversion, that is, if the spell is ended by 0 HP even when duration is otherwise permanent, here's my suggestion: TP your rogue ally or henchman into a doppelganger. He didn't have spellcasting anyways (assuming no caster multiclassing), so that's no loss. He DOES have speech and use of hands in the new form - and he can immediately shapeshift to look exactly as he did before the spell. Meanwhile, he also has impersonation abilities along the lines of at-will Alter Self, and Advantage on *every social roll* due to telepathy. He might happily stay in that form for years. His friends might not even know!
Before you TP him, he takes off his regular clothes and puts on an outfit which he thinks would be useful in a just-got-assasinated scenario. Then you TP him, then he puts his regular gear back on. The outfit he was wearing during the spellcasting merges into him, and is more or less gone from reality until the spell ends... emergency storage, arguably even better than Drawmij's and Mordenkainen's methods.
If someone does kill him - an assassin, a guard stopping whatever he was up to, etc. - he laughs, as he instantly reverts to full HP, *fully armed in the backup outfit*. Also, he's back to life, just after being bisected or whatever, without a visible form change... or maybe a split second of horrible transition to dead/dying doppelganger, then back to base form?

 

[seebs]

I think there was a twitter remark that, no, once true polymorph has become permanent, it doesn't end at 0hp, that's just your form until someone does something really impressive to undo the magic.