am i the jerk or is my friend?

[stonegod]

This is fairly common knowledge on the CO boards.

YEah, but you have to start as an outsider. Not easy unless as aasimar/tiefling or with that wonky turns you into an outsider feat.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

YEah, but you have to start as an outsider. Not easy unless as aasimar/tiefling or with that wonky turns you into an outsider feat.

Or, what SHOULD be the harder move: have a DM that allows any of the later Monster Manuals, broken cheese-tastic pieces of crap that they are.

Also, for the OP: he's using Alter Self. His appearance is changing. Even if the DM wasn't entitled to know what the heck a player is doing, he still has to say what he now looks like, and even if he refuses to state what creature it is, anyone looking at him gets a knowledge check to ID, just as they would any monster. Assuming it's the dwarf ancestor, that's Knowledge (planes). Conveniently, since Alter Self is capped at 5 HD, the DC of the knowledge check will never go beyond 15 at most. Having just 1 rank gives any old NPC a chance to figure it out.

 

[Shin Okada]

Dwarf Ancestor is spirit of an ancient dwarf hero possessing a large stone statue.

If I were a DM, I say the greataxe is part of the statue and thus cannot be separated from its hands .... so dwarf ancestor does not have any free hand. That means, the said wizard cannot cast spells with material component as he cannot manipulate it, unless he has eschew material feat.

Also, IMHO, as Dwarf Ancestor is a stone statue, it is DM's call if it can use any equipment at all. If you say it can't, all the equipments will meld into body when a wizard changed into Dwarf Ancestor.

Those adjudications may prevent some low-level cheese.

 

[Jhaelen]

pretext - he claims he's discovered a supercool way to get something like +18 or better natural armour from a form of alter self. i obviously don't know what this is, and he won't tell me. annoying, but oh well.

Let me get this straight: A player refuses to tell his DM how his character arrived at his (ridiculously high) AC? This is priceless!

I recommend to make attack rolls against this player's character in the open and tell him that you hit AC 100, regardless of your roll. If the player asks how you arrived at such a high to-hit bonus, refuse to tell him

 

[akbearfoot]

I'm with Jhaelan!


The DM has every right to confiscate character sheets anytime he wants to...If you can't explain how you get to a bonus, then you dont have it.


I would definitely do rolls out in the open and hit him no matter what, just to get the point across. Does not sound like sibling rivalry to me...sounds like he's being a cheezewad.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

There are no secrets from the DM - if you want it in play then the DM gets to know EVERYTHING about it. THEN the DM gets to decide if he will or won't allow it to exist in any case. This business of, "Well you'll just use it against me," or, "You just want to sponge the benefits of all my hard work," is NONSENSE.

Use it against you? Dang tootin' right I will skippy. You can be certain that if I threw an NPC or monster against your PC with a ludicrous, unhittable AC that you'd have kittens. You'd be wailing so loud about how unfair it is and how YOU demand to know how the opponent could actually get what I've given him.

Sponge off your hard work? What the hell does that even MEAN? What kind of a goofball goes to the DM and says, "I gave myself this great new ability and I declare to you that you must prove I am NOT allowed to have it or else I do! HA!" The simple, effective response is to say, "Great! I haven't a clue what you're talking about. Since I AM THE DM and I clearly HAVEN'T given my approval for specific inclusion of whatever it is you're using that means I get to disallow it. I'm the DM. That's not just my privilege, it's not even just my right - it's my RESPONSIBILITY."

The FRUITION of your "hard work" as a player is when you PRESENT IT TO THE DM so that he will approve it for inclusion in the game. It's not a game of, "player gets to hide rules and DM must seek those rules to stop him."

 

[NewJeffCT]

Let me get this straight: A player refuses to tell his DM how his character arrived at his (ridiculously high) AC? This is priceless!

I recommend to make attack rolls against this player's character in the open and tell him that you hit AC 100, regardless of your roll. If the player asks how you arrived at such a high to-hit bonus, refuse to tell him

Or, just hit him with a few spells that don't require "to hit" rolls - like lightning bolt or fireball or magic missile. He is 5th level, so facing an opponent with 3rd level spells is no stretch... Heck, my bad guys were 7th level when the party was 4th, so it was 4th level spells against 2nd. Unholy Blight is a nice evil spell and leaves the PC sickened if they fail their Will save (in addition to the damage)

 

[Kask]

although we're not going to get in a fight over it, he is my brother, so it does perhaps border on sibling rivalry, but i digress - who is at fault?

There's no "fault" here. If a player wants to have a particular AC, hit bonus, or anything else, he has to show how his character has it. Otherwise any player can just rule that they have +1,000,000 to AC, to hit bonus, etc.

Either the PC has it or he doesn't.

 

[Deset Gled]

This is fairly common knowledge on the CO boards.

The trick involves you starting out as an outsider (typically planetouched, or using the otherworldly feat from PGTF), then using alter self to transform yourself into the dwarf ancestor from MM4.

The trick also involves with willing suspension of disbelief that an animated statue is, for some unknown reason, an outsider instead of a construct. I would never allow this creature in my games for that reason alone.

 

[pawsplay]

Also, it's not RAW, but as a GM, I've always ruled that altering self into a Dwarf Ancestor turns you into a being capable of possessing a statue, and of course, you don't get the power to actually possess the statue with alter self.

Actually, I just hate that writeup anyway; shouldn't a stone statue have at least some construct-like traits?