D&D 5E Polymorph Scenario

[Kenn Durrence]

Hi everyone,

How would you run these situations as a DM?

First situation:
A wizard casts Polymorph on a Purple Worm, it fails its saving throw and is polymorphed into a small ineffectual beast of some type, say a frog or fish.

Then a second Purple Worm shows up. The wizard picks up the polymorphed purple worm and then throws it down the gullet of the second purple worm (rolling a 20 btw) and then stops concentrating on the spell, causing the polymorphed purple worm to revert to its original form.


Second situation:
Purple Worm is polymorphed. Then a Resilient Sphere is cast around the polymorphed "beast" and then the spell is ended.

Thanks in advance! Let me know if you have any questions if the above scenarios don't make sense.

 

[Blue]

Stopping shrinking magic inside a too-small container is one of those things left for the DM to adjudicate depending on the circumstances - there are no hard-and-fast rules that I am aware of.

Often I've seen growth (or stopping of shrinking) stop at the point that they can't grow any more. So a giant in a small cave would be squeezing but not smushed. But stopping a polymorph is a more interesting point - shrinking/growth is often portrayed as an action, on shrinks to the new size and then grows back, but is a polymorph a blink to a new shape (and back to your old at the end), or is it a melding into your new form? I bring up that simply because how the table envisions it and the in-game narrative around it will probably flavor the answer to your question for that table.

If this came up suddenly and I had to make a ruling /for my tyable/, in the first situation I'd have PW1 begin to shift back until they can't, but still be within PW2 and getting dissolved. PW2 would be unharmed by this. And the second would be similar, where the PW grows to the size to fill the Resilient Sphere to overflowing (using the squeezing rules) but unharmed, and then finishes the transformation back when there is enough room.

But that's not the only way to rule it. If I was a player and the first situation came up, I wouldn't bat an eye in the first situation if PW2 popped with PW1 bursting out of it. Or a number of other variations. About the only one that would bother me is if player ingenuity and resource use were thwarted and nothing bad happened to either.

 

[gyor]

What most spells do is shift you to an unoccupied square.

 

[Oofta]

Scenario 1: Purple worm #2 regurgitates Purple Worm #1 as a reaction.

Scenario 2: The spell fails, it cannot contain a gargantuan worm.

At least that's how I would rule. As long as you're consistent it's all good.

 

[Ganymede81]

Hi everyone,

How would you run these situations as a DM?

In both situations, I would have the purple worm appear in the nearest available space.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Honestly, I'd probably have both worms take some damage before the first was regurgitated in the first situation. In the second, I'd probably let them just kill the worm that way. Rule of cool, and since there are saves involved, it's not an automatic "I win" button for all combats.

In fact, the PCs in my last campaign killed an ogre mage in about the same way. They turned it into a duck, used stone shape to open a hole in a cave wall, stuck it in, and used a second stone shape to seal it in, before dropping the spell.

That's enough creativity, and enough resources spent, that I had no problem letting them finish the fight that way.

 

[77IM]

Yeah, I favor rewarding creativity.

In the first scenario, I'd just let the swallowed worm attack the outer worm; the outer worm would be restrained (see Appendix A) until it died in an explosion of gore (6d6 acid damage, 30 foot radius, Dexterity save DC 21 for half damage). In the second scenario, I'd improvise damage for a respectable 4th-level damage-over-time spell (8d6 bludgeoning damage, no save).

Thus the results are somewhere in between "insta-kill" (which may be overpowered) and "no effect" (which is boring and unfun).

 

[Blue]

In both situations, I would have the purple worm appear in the nearest available space.

[MENTION=6670153]gyor[/MENTION] suggested this as well. Can you explain how this works in terms of in-game narrative? No teleportation magic is being used, and the Otiluke's Resilient Sphere wouldn't even allow that. To quote from that spell: Nothing - not physical objects, energy, or other spell effects - can pass through the barrier, in or out, though a creature in the sphere can breathe there.

Especially for the second scenario seems like a cop-out that ignores both the mechanical and in-game effects of the spell, and stomps over player agency and creativity.

 

[ro]

In both situations, I would have the purple worm appear in the nearest available space.

[MENTION=6670153]gyor[/MENTION] [MENTION=6801845]Oofta[/MENTION], [MENTION=6812267]Ganymede81[/MENTION]

If my DM did this, I would be very disappointed about wasting my spells. I'd feel like the DM was just a fun-killer.

 

[snickersnax]

In fact, the PCs in my last campaign killed an ogre mage in about the same way. They turned it into a duck, used stone shape to open a hole in a cave wall, stuck it in, and used a second stone shape to seal it in, before dropping the spell.

Don't shapechangers automatically make their save vs polymorph?