Polymorph & Pregnancy

[Sejs]

UMM guys how can you tell the difference between male and female dragons, spiders etc.

By looking at its driver's lisence.

Look at the wording here from the SRD: The subject retains its own type, extraordinary abilities, spells, and spell-like abilities, but not its supernatural abilities.

Whoa.. so if say I polymorph other an awakened medium-size monsterous spider into a female drow the resultant creature will retain it's poisonous bite and ability to spin webs?

Interesting.. uh, but where would the poison or webs come from? Drow don't have poison glands or spinnerettes..

 

[PowerWordDumb]

Good one

Nice post Sigil, for me your line of reasoning makes all the difference.

A crucial distinction is that when your human (or dwarf, goblin, etc) is polymorphed into a dragon (or whatever), you are *NOT* a dragon - you're a human shaped like a dragon.

The fact you can use all the existing "natural" abilities simply means that your arms, legs, tail, etc all move the right way for the current form you take, and that your claws are appropriately sharp, and your wings are capable of physically sustaining flight. Not that you have the internal workings to breathe fire, or whatever.

So... physically you could make the attempt to impregnate (or be impregnated), but the "stuff" of your makeup would still only impregnate (or get impregnated) based upon your proper creature type... in this case human.

At least, makes sense to me. Other interpretations are fine, but for now this one is what I like the best.

 

[The Sigil]

Whoa.. so if say I polymorph other an awakened medium-size monsterous spider into a female drow the resultant creature will retain it's poisonous bite and ability to spin webs?

Interesting.. uh, but where would the poison or webs come from? Drow don't have poison glands or spinnerettes..

No, they don't... but spiders do.

Perhaps if you think of polymorph as a spell that can stretch/pull/shrink/rearrange skin, musculature, and bones (including "adding new appendages") but that does not add (nor subtract) internal organs you can see this better.

The spider's poison gland isn't gone when the polymorph occurs, it just shrinks so as to sit right above her palate - or maybe right below her jaw. The silk glands are shrunk and possibly moved around, but are still there.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more that seems a simpler way to think of polymorph than even in my earlier post... polymorph simply shrinks/rearranges skin, musculature, bones, et al but neither adds nor subtracts internal organs (and their related abilities). Now, of course, when your mouth is warped/reshaped into a froggy mouth (when I turn you into a toad), you can't cast spells because you can't properly vocalize the words.

Does that make any sense to anyone else?

Polymorph doesn't turn a halfling into a dragon... it turns a halfling into a dragon-shaped halfling.

As for changing gender, well, I think we all know that the appropriate "parts" can be recreated by rearranging tissue without actually haveing to add or subtract organs themselves. But any further down that path and I'm likely to get the thread closed.

--The Sigil

 

[PowerWordDumb]

Makes perfect sense to me, Sigil, but then I was already sold.



Would be nice if WoTC revisited some of the descriptive text for 3.5e... clarifications such as this and the recent AoO discussions would greatly reduce some of the popular misinterpretations going around today.

 

[Sejs]

*nod* Good way of putting it, Sigil. It would actually clear up a good ammount of confusion if that were just stated in the spell's information to begin with.

 

[Hypersmurf]

Perhaps if you think of polymorph as a spell that can stretch/pull/shrink/rearrange skin, musculature, and bones (including "adding new appendages") but that does not add (nor subtract) internal organs you can see this better.

So what happens when a wizard polymorphs into a gelatinous cube, or a druid wildshapes into an air elemental?

-Hyp.

 

[Centaur]

Perhaps if you think of polymorph as a spell that can stretch/pull/shrink/rearrange skin, musculature, and bones (including "adding new appendages") but that does not add (nor subtract) internal organs you can see this better.

But polymorph does add organs. If you turn into a fish, you get gills to extract oxygen from the water. While related to our lungs, gills are not the same.

I personaly prefer a description that changes the body completely from one form to another rather than some sort of "Warp effect" as implied by The Sigil (nothing wrong with his view either).

 

[LGodamus]

ok then...we just need to slap an (ex) before the procreate special ability.......

 

[Hypersmurf]

ok then...we just need to slap an (ex) before the procreate special ability.......

"Mummy, where do half-dragons come from?"

-Hyp.

 

[John Crichton]

To Centaur: Out of the explainations/suggestions you have seen so far, what makes the most sense or works the most for you. I was going to throw my 2 cents in but I'm wondering where the thread-starter stands based on 40+ posts.

I do think this is an interesting topic and I'm thinking of using aspects of it as a plot-hook...