Mordenkainen's Changeling - Rule Help

[Eradis]

Reading the Changeling Race newest iteration in Mordenkainen Presents Monsters of the Multiverse, I noticed the wording is quite different from the Changeling I used to know.


You stay in the new form until you use an action to revert to your true form or until you die.

From memory, you could, as a Changeling, switch to a form to another directly without returning to your original form. I guess with this wording, this iteration of the Race must revert to its original form before taking on a new form? Am I understanding it right?

[Millstone85]

It is the same wording as in Rising from the Last War.

I also think it means you have to revert to your true form before adopting a new one.

[AvvyR]

It doesn't prevent you from using the shapechanger action again. The line about "you stay in the new form until you use an action to revert to your true form or until you die" can't mean those are literally the only ways to change your form (making you immune/unable to polymorph, wild shape, lycanthropy, the Shapechange spell, etc). It's just there to define there is no time limit. When you shapechange, it ends if you choose to revert, or you die. If you shapechange again, that duration applies to the new form.

The older printing in Eberron: Rising from the Last War uses the exact same wording.

[Eradis]

It is the same wording as in Rising from the Last War.

I also think it means you have to revert to your true form before adopting a new one.


It doesn't prevent you from using the shapechanger action again. The line about "you stay in the new form until you use an action to revert to your true form or until you die" can't mean those are literally the only ways to change your form (making you immune/unable to polymorph, wild shape, lycanthropy, the Shapechange spell, etc). It's just there to define there is no time limit. When you shapechange, it ends if you choose to revert, or you die. If you shapechange again, that duration applies to the new form.

The older printing in Eberron: Rising from the Last War uses the exact same wording.

For the wording, I guess I read that one diagonaly when it came to print and simply assumed it was like the 4th's.

I do think AvvyR's reading is more in line with how the race was written previously (although, I know I have to re-read twice now), both in manuals and in novels.

Thank you both!

[Psyren]

To confirm, Changeling got changed twice - once from Wayfarer's Guide to Eberron to Rising from the Last War, and again from RTLW to Monsters of the Multiverse.

The language for the Shapechanger ability is identical for version #2 and #3, except for one key difference - MotM Changelings can actually change their size between Small and Medium. But the mechanics of reverting are identical between the two.