Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="StreamOfTheSky" data-source="post: 5961373" data-attributes="member: 35909">Yeah, Alter Self can give you flight at 10x duration at a lower spell level, among other tricks.  And is especially exploitable if you can get outsider or dragon as your racial type.  I consider Alter Self broken mostly due to its duration and spell level.  It doesn't give you the combat capabilities of polymorph, but...being a big stupid fighter isn't something a caster should aspire to anyways.  It gives you movement modes and natural armor, which are the biggies as far as a caster is concerned.PAO isn't that bad except when used for the low duration factors to get insanely different changes, where it goes nuts.Shapechange is just lolz broken.Sekhmet: Those are definitely the powerhouse forms at level 7.  But they still aren't that bad.  Treant is just some big numbers and reach, if it makes melee obsolete it's because of melee not getting enough things besides big combat numbers.  And besides, you're better off putting treant ON the melee guy than yourself, since it can still hold weapons and the melee guy has better BAB and hp than you and probably trip and combat reflexes feats.  So that doesn't bother me at all.Remorhaz is just...a stupidly broken monster.  I never got how it was CR 7 and 7 HD.  Even so, its most devastating ability, heat, is listed as a quality, not an attack.  So polymorph doesn't grant it.  Still a very good form. Hydra's power level depends on two rulings, which are totally variant upon DM.  For one...my group considers its ability to coordinate head movements in order to move and attack a quality, so polymorph doesn't get that.  Secondly, in the "great Hydra AoO debate," my friends all consider hydra's racial bonus Combat Reflexes and text to mean that, instead of getting +0 AoOs per turn (as is RAW for its dex), it gets a number equal to its heads, so the feat's actually useful.  Others claim it gets every head as an AoO PER PROVOCATION, which...is insanely stupidly overpowered broken.  As a monster OR PC option.  If you rule as I do, its damage per each head is pretty marginal, so it's not that bad.  Using the "crazy ruling," it's...crazy.So, Hydra is highly campaign dependent on how broken polymorphing into it is.  Even ruling as I do, it's certainly a great form, but not horrifically broken, IMO.And you looked only at level 7.  The core forms don't get much better than that at higher levels, other than 12-headed hydra.  I'm playing a level 17 transmuter now in a core game, and it's a struggle to find useful forms to buff the melees with via polymorph.  And I have 17d4 HD, poor BAB from 3 multiclasses w/ odd levels in all, and a damn high will to live, so no way in hell am I using it on myself and wading into melee! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />EDIT: Missed Cloaker and Wyvern.  Wyvern looks very strong when you first get polymorph, but I think it becomes more reasonable after a few levels.  A bit problematic, mostly for something like an E8 game.  Cloakers are very problematic, I admit.  That moan should probably be Su.  Never noticed them before...  Honestly.</blockquote>

Verification