[3.5] Detect Magic and Supernatural Abilities

[dbauers]

Ok, so here's the scenario.

My group is attacking an evil cult at their base of operations. We rescue some "prisoners" in a manner that seems too easy. We assume at least one of them is not on the up-and-up. I detect magic on them and get no reading at all.

Shortly thereafter, one of them "panics", runs, and is "held hostage" by some enemies. We find out it was actually a ruse, and said prisoner is a doppelganger using change shape (su).

Barring the doppelganger using something like nondetection to protect himself, should i have been able to get a detect magic reading on his supernatural change shape ability?

[Yora]

I think while the doppelgangers ability to change his shape is magical, stying in that shape is not. After all, you can't use dispel magic to force him back into his natural form (do you? :smallconfused:).
And making doppelgangers visible with the most common level 0 spell would make their ability rather useless, exactly for situations like this. Not 100% sure about RAW, but I'm pretty sure that it's not intended that detect magic reveals doppelgangers.

[dbauers]

i agree that it certainly makes them worse. to the point where if i was dming, i might house rule their change shape as (ex) instead of (su).

you definately cant dispel him into his form, due to the definition of supernatural abilities.

the thing that is weird about it for me, is that the 3.5 srd says about supernatural abilities:

"supernatural abilities are magical and go away in an antimagic field but are not subect to spell resistance, counterspells, or to being dispelled by dispel magic."

so, if a doppleganger walked thru an antimagic field, would that turn him back to his original form, or would it just cause him to not be able to take another form?

if the "correct" answer is the former, i feel like it should be detectable....

[Chilingsworth]

Detect Magic only lists aura strengths for spells and magic items, so it seems reasonable to assume supernatural abilities (which are niether) don't register.

Also, there's a spell specifically for dealing with such critters: Disern Shapechanger (it's in the Spell Compendium, IIRC.)

EDIT: Also, how do you know he wasn't using nondetection to protect himself?

[Yora]

It would. But I don't think there is a correct way. I assume the designers simply didn't think of this.
And until now, neither did I. :smallamused:

[dbauers]

Detect Magic only lists aura strengths for spells and magic items, so it seems reasonable to assume supernatural abilities (which are niether) don't register.

Also, there's a spell specifically for dealing with such critters: Decern Shapechanger (it's in the Spell Compendium, IIRC.)

EDIT: Also, how do you know he wasn't using nondetection to protect himself?

i dont know that he wasnt using nondetection. due to the circumstances in which we found him, it seemed a little unlikely, but not completely impossible. metawise, i didnt get a CL check to fight thru nondetection, but my dm most likely would have pre-rolled, so yeah i dont have any way of knowing for sure.

im more curious than anything else, and when i see stuff like this, i usually just talk to the dm in private to let him know in the future. i was actually going to suggest to him that even if it wasnt originally the case, we could just assume he had nondetection and that i failed my roll. :smallwink: