D&D 5E Permanent True Polymorph

[NightmareCuddler]

Yo! My druid is thinking about true polymorphing into a dragon. Permanently. He brought up the question of if hed be allowed to keep his druid abilities. I'm pretty sure RAW he wouldn't be able to. However, in was thinking about using the dragon casting rules for him to keep some of his spells. And I'm curious about his feats. Thoughts?

 

[Seramus]

You lose all the things. But you can start taking class levels from scratch again. Imagine a Young Adult / Druid 2 with wildshape. You can be a dragoncrow.

 

[NightmareCuddler]

You lose all the things. But you can start taking class levels from scratch again. Imagine a Young Adult / Druid 2 with wildshape. You can be a dragoncrow.

Haha. I like that. They're lvl 20 already. It's going back to an old campaign. Would you consider it to much to give the feats as well as using the dragon caster rules? As a houserule.

 

[jgsugden]

There is a difference between Shapechange and True Polymorph. What you're descibing is more in line with Shapechange. True Polymorph intentionally does not allow for the retention of class abilities.

 

[NightmareCuddler]

There is a difference between Shapechange and True Polymorph. What you're descibing is more in line with Shapechange. True Polymorph intentionally does not allow for the retention of class abilities.

Yes. Hence why he is loosing all class abilities and a VAST majority of his spells. I just wonder is allowing feats and utilizing his dragon spell rules would be too much

 

[jgsugden]

Dragon spell rules are certainly up to you as variant monster features, but a feat is either racial (for variant human) or class feature. It is all up to you, of course, but the RAW say no feats - and they considered what should be retained in true polymorph.

 

[Fanaelialae]

You lose all the things. But you can start taking class levels from scratch again. Imagine a Young Adult / Druid 2 with wildshape. You can be a dragoncrow.

That's not strictly RAW and would be up to the DM. It would be within the DM's authority to say that if you gain any experience points, they only apply to your (currently inaccessible) true form, rather than the transmuted (dragon) form.

If you allowed the form to gain levels, you need to decide how would that even work. The form can be dispelled. What happens to those levels if the form is dispelled? Are the lost? Suppressed until you resume the form again? (And what if you take a different form next time, do they still apply? What if the form is slightly different - a blue dragon instead of a red? What if it is very different - a Purple Worm instead of a dragon?) Does it simply get added into the original character's pool of XP? That's something that the DM should decide on before they decide to allow the transmuted form to gain levels on its own.

Any dragon spellcasting would also be up to the DM, since dragon spellcasting is an optional rule, although I would say the default is no. Playing a high CR dragon is plenty good enough in terms of capability. Giving up your regular abilities is the sacrifice you make in exchange. This isn't some curse the DM is inflicting on the player, but rather something the player is opting into with full knowledge. In my opinion, there's no need or reason to sugar coat it.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

Technically it depends on if you are really really going by raw and not just generally accepted raw.

Technically by raw (bleeding raw) if the new form has spell casting abilities you keep a lot of abilities including (but not even close to being limited to) spell casting class levels due to what is almost certainly an oversite in the wording.

Probably not useful to this conversation but i find it interesting.

This is only true if you read the description to a ridiculously literal degree without so much as a single grain of interpretive intuition. Even grammatically.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

There was a special magic ritual in Savage Species.

 

[Son of the Serpent]

Actually im talking about the regular old true polymorph spellin 5e @LuisCarlos17f . i assume you were saying that comment in response. If not, sorry. Anyway, yeah, just the normal readng of that spell with no extra steps.