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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Joshua Randall" data-source="post: 9610832" data-attributes="member: 7737">In AD&D rules, the target of the spell gets “Saving Throw: Neg.” Which means that if the target makes its save, the spell has no effect.Magic-users in AD&D had save vs. Spell as one of their better saves, starting at 12+ on d20 being a success at levels 1-5 and improving to 10+ at levels 6-10. So if Arno is 9th level as we suspect, he has a 55% chance to shrug off our Polymorph Other.However, if he fails the save, Arno must then make a System Shock roll to see if the stress of the Polymorph straight up kills him. Let’s assume Arno has a perfectly average 10 Constitution. This gives him a 70% System Shock Survival chance.So our chance to snuff Arno instantly with Polymorph Other is .45 X .30 = 0.135 or 13.5% — not great, but not negligible.If Arno fails the save but succeeds at the System Shock roll, there’s still a chance his mind will become that of whatever we turn him into. The base chance is 100% but you subtract 5% for each point of intelligence. If we assume Arno matches our INT 19 then he’d subtract 95% and have only a 5% chance to believe he’s a caterpillar in this example.Although even a caterpillar that retains its Arno-level INT and knowledge is still… a caterpillar, which is not going to be much of a threat physically. (It would retain Arno’s hit points so we’d need to whack it several times, but what’s it going to do: inch away as fast as it can?)So if we fail to snuff Arno instantly with the combo of failed save + failed System Shock roll, we still effectively save-or-die him on the failed save. Meaning that 45% of the time against an assumed Arno as 6th-10th level magic-user, Polymorph Other is lethal!It really is a ridiculously powerful spell for 4th level.</blockquote>

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