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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6210272" data-attributes="member: 4937">No.  I'm telling you that your flesh altered and repositioned and otherwise rearranged so that you are NOT a physically functional member of the chosen species.  You just superficially look like a functional member of the chosen species, and have a few largely superficial traits of the chosen species.Yes.No, it doesn't.  That's the point.   If you read the text, you'll discover you don't really get any of the bug-man's traits and qualities.  So if Bug-Men are capable of seeing in the dark, have an acute sense of smell, and produce venom, your rearranged elf flesh can't do any of that.  Likewise, if bug-men are Vermin, your type remains humanoid.  The only actual type you can gain from alter self is the sub-type aquatic.Likewise, if you use alter self to change your gender from human male to human female, you have the external genitalia of a human female, but you don't gain the extraordinary quality of say producing milk or having ovaries or a womb, because Alter Self only produces superficial resemblance.  That's a ruling, but its a ruling consistent with the text of the spell.No, disguise self is basically a glamor.   Alter self produces an actual physical change, say you sprout wings, but it doesn't produce any real deep change in your essential nature.  Sure.  But your ruling is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of what alter self does.  The text is quite specific that you gain none of the qualities of the new form.   You just gain the physical appearance of the new form.   Your limbs for example can largely function, but in no way necessarily as well as the form you've adopted.  If Bug-Men have 4 arms, you'll be able to control the extra two, but because you haven't actually become a Bug-Man but are still an elf, you won't be able to control them as well as a Bug-Man.If you look at the text of higher level shape change spells, you'll see some or all of these restrictions are lifted - you really become the thing you change into.</blockquote>

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