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View Full Version : [3.5] Polymorph Spell-Stacking



jiriku
2009-09-21, 03:40 PM
In a recent adventure, I constructed an NPC druid villain who, rather than wildshaping, cast aspect of the earth hunter and bite of the werebear on himself, turning into a werebear landshark. I stacked the bonuses, as the aspect sets ability scores to new values and the bite provides bonuses to the base stats.

My players were...nonplussed. Also, the werebear-landshark-druid ate the wizard. The combo was quite brutal, really. Was this a valid interpretation of how the two spells interact?

Sinfire Titan
2009-09-21, 03:42 PM
Polymorph alters the stats as though they were your base stats. Bite of the Were-X is a typed bonus, IIRC. They stack.

ericgrau
2009-09-21, 03:45 PM
And thus "No, it's okay, unshapeshifted druids are weak and these bonuses are merely on par with wildshape" is quickly broken.

Starbuck_II
2009-09-21, 03:50 PM
Yep Bite spells are like Bull's Str stat boosting type. They are not Polymorph spells (they have no descriptor).

Flavor wise they feel like it: they aren't by the rules.

jiriku
2009-09-21, 04:03 PM
Ah, that's true. The bite isn't really a polmorph effect - it's just a collection of enhancement bonuses and a bite attack. Groovy. I wonder now about a tenser's-werebear-warforged titan-wizard using bite of the werebear, body of war, and a contingent tenser's transformation.

PinkysBrain
2009-09-21, 04:23 PM
Jiriku, the wizard would be a very large target with no spell casting ... I doubt he'd do 100 damage either, like this landshark with full spellcasting does on a pounce.

Grumman
2009-09-21, 04:33 PM
Yes, that is how they work.


This means that a Polymorph-based Gish, for example, can take some perfectly reasonable monster and some pefectly reasonable self-buffs, and stack them together to take two rather underwhelming melee combat setups and combine to form Devastator, the most powerful and evil of the Decepticons.