A Pun-Pun build is starting to look plausible

[Valmark]

One example of treating statistics and actions separately is in the shapechanging text for dragons, which always says something like this: In a new form, the dragon retains its alignment, hit points, Hit Dice, ability to speak, proficiencies, Legendary Resistance, lair actions, and Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma scores, as well as this action. Its statistics and capabilities are otherwise replaced by those of the new form, except any class features or legendary actions of that form. Implication: capabilities (such as shapechanging) are not included in statistics.

Archdruid: While in a new form, the archdruid retains its game statistics and ability to speak, but its AC, movement modes, Strength, and Dexterity are replaced by those of the new form, and it gains any special senses, proficiencies, traits, actions, and reactions (except class features, legendary actions, and lair actions) that the new form has but that it lacks. In this context it's very unclear to me what "statistics" is even meant to refer to. Perhaps just abilities besides Str/Dex, plus HP?

Couatl: In a new form, the couatl retains its game statistics and ability to speak, but its AC, movement modes, Strength, Dexterity, and other actions are replaced by those of the new form, and it gains any statistics and capabilities (except class features, legendary actions, and lair actions) that the new form has but that it lacks. If the new form has a bite attack, the couatl can use its bite in that form. Implication: AC, movement modes, Strength, Dexterity, and other actions are not included in game statistics.

Barghest: The barghest can use its action to polymorph into a Small goblin or back into its true form. Other than its size and speed, its statistics are the same in each form. And yet, its bite attack says explicitly that it's usable in true form only. Apparently the bite attack is not part of its "statistics."

There's a bunch of other creatures with similar wording (death slaads, werebears, deep scions). I won't find them all.

Cloud Giant Smiling one: The giant magically polymorphs into a beast or humanoid it has seen, or back into its true form. Any equipment the giant is wearing or carrying is absorbed by the new form. Its statistics, other than its size, are the same in each form. It reverts to its true form if it dies. And yet it has a Rock attack listed in its action block, and has 40' movement. I defy anyone who claims that a tiny little Seahorse (Smiling One) can throw rocks up to 240' for 4d10+8(+4d6) damage when it doesn't have hands. Clearly that's not intended to be included in the "statistics" it retains. (Moving 40' on land without feet is also kind of dubious.)

There are some other creatures with similar wording (devas, vampires) but I won't hunt them all down.

Eidolon is the opposite of the above cases: When the eidolon moves into a space occupied by a sacred statue, the eidolon can disappear, causing the statue to become a creature under the eidolon's control. The eidolon uses the sacred statue's statistics in place of its own. In this case it's clearly intended that the Eidolon use everything in the Sacred Statue's stat block including attack options, otherwise there would be no point in even listing attacks for the Sacred Statue at all since it can't attack without an Eidolon in it.

Of course, we all know that the MM isn't carefully written anyway, or it wouldn't have stuff like this for vampires and yochlols: Mist Form. The yochlol transforms into toxic mist or reverts to its true form. Any equipment it is wearing or carrying is also transformed. It reverts to its true form if it dies. While in mist form, the yochlol is incapacitated and can’t speak. It has a flying speed of 30 feet, can hover, and can pass through any space that isn’t airtight. It has advantage on Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution saving throws, and it is immune to nonmagical damage. The RAW here is that the Yochlol turns into toxic mist and can't turn back, because doing so requires an action and incapacitated creatures can't take actions. Turning to toxic mist is a permanent self-gimping. That is why "RAW" is not a compliment--calling something RAW is often a way of calling attention to a defect.

TL;DR the MM is not using a single definition of "statistics", and also is not carefully written in the first place.

Nice (sarcastic). If it ever came up in a manner that requires me to take a position I'd probably say those are all exceptions to the general rule- but I see why it's not clear at all.
Yes, the Mist Form is especially stupid xD

On another note, I do want to see a seahorse throw a rock now.

[MrCharlie]

In order for this to be plausible, you have to basically interpret that the shapechange form keeps the benefit of every form you shapechange through throughout the duration of shapechange too.

I.E. the argument is that you can stack shapechange form abilities until you reach the end of the duration, then duplicate that body in some way-you could use the clone spell, a simulacrum by ending on a valid target for simulacrum, etc.

I view this as contradicting the rules text of shapechange. It says retain any features you have, not retain everything applying to your character. Put another way, you could interpret this to saying that you retain the effect of a haste spell for the duration of shapechange. I know that the rules lawyer will instantly say that this merely makes the ability better, but the key is that a spell isn't a feature your character has to begin with. It's a feature, but not one your character owns and can retain.

So that's the basic flaw that makes this not work. The grammar requires that the features retained by shapechange be "yours", and features from other forms...aren't.

But if we ignore this, we can have a lot of fun!

See, you're thinking too small. The game is more broken that this, if you break the barrier between features. See, the game explicitly says-page 252, DMG-that "Game features include spells, class features, feats, racial traits, monster abilities, and magic items." More than you retaining the features from shapechange, you retain the benefits from spells cast on you, magic items you can use, and other monster abilities. Note that it says benefits, not penalties. You can use this to selectively remove negative penalties-filter them-from abilities, spells, etc. that have both positive and negative results.

Because we're also playing fast and loose with durations here, we can make the case that you retain the "benefits" of spells and use magic items throughout shapechange per this text, even though their duration should have ended-hence, you can be permanently hasted, under death ward, etc. You can even argue that the benefits of a spell don't include it's failure condition, so death ward just...makes you immortal. It can't end. You can even apply this to something like Time Stop-and remember, we've decided that we only retain beneficial features from a spell. So you can just murder people during time stop. The benefit of time stop is that it freezes time, and we can ignore the penalty of ending the spell if we attack someone.

Hence, if you can retain the benefits of other features like you are claiming, we can basically completely break the game entirely. All beneficial durations last until the end of shapechange, every spell is governed by this text, all monster abilities as well, etc.

Of course, none of it works to begin with because the capabilities of an assumed form, the features imparted by a temporary spell, and the effects of a temporary magic item aren't yours to begin with and would end when the effect duplicating them ends regardless, but it's a fun game.

Oh, and the clone thing would fail for the same reason-shapechange's duration has ended, all the features of the spell end, including the amazing abilities. The clone would either revert to a clone of you or be a clone of the creature you assumed the form of. Even at best, this is an hour of omnipotence. Remember-the creature itself does not have these abilities, the spell is retaining them across forms for us even in a favorable interpretation. The creature is just...a creature.

(There is something more valid in the idea of shapechanging into a medium creature, cloning that creature, then dying-I could buy that, per the text of the spells, you would transfer your soul into that new creature and thus implicitly your character-but it's not pun-pun by itself).

Of course, Pun-Pun never worked to begin with because manipulate form made one unable to benefit from manipulate form (at least implicitly), although there were still ways to cheese the ability without the infinite feedback loop once it was on your familiar. But that's not the point, and this kind of lawyering without A. Context and B. Anyone arguing against you isn't about the exploit actually working anyway. In addition to not resembling actual lawyering at all, mind you.

[Narsham01]

Human.

True Polymorph is a magical reversible conditional alteration to your "normal form" that does not permanently change what your "normal" form is. When True Polymorph is dispelled you revert to your "normal form", ie your intrinsic physical form. True Polymorph would have to change what your "normal" irreducible form is for True Polymorph to duplicate via Clone.

Very few spells alter your base physical form. Reincarnate is one such spell.

If you Clone someone who is True Polymorphed you clone their "normal" form, not their magically polymorphed form. If you Clone someone who was Reincarnated you clone their form post-Reincarnation as Reincarnation does indeed change your "normal form".



Shapechange, Aid, Bless, Alter Self . . . None of these change your 'base normal' form. Rather they apply a layer of transformation on top of your "base normal". When the spell expires or is dispelled you revert to "base normal". If the magical transformations were a transformation of the underlying 'base normal' form there would be no reverting back to normal, the magically altered self would be the new base normal. However, that is not the case. Magic is almost always a transformation layer on top of the "base normal" and not a new "base normal".

Reincarnate changes "base normal". True Polymorph does not.

I tend to agree, and I think this post gets at the interesting part of this discussion, because the game rules are sloppy about "form" versus "creature" versus "game statistics." The confusion is understandable, especially given the "base normal" element, and that "game statistics" is a metagame term while the others are in-game terms.

Here's the range of possibilities as I see them:
1. A form change. Your shape is different, but you retain your memory and mentality, as well as traits and characteristics associated with your "base" form. Alter Self and Shapechange function this way, as does Wild Shape. You can revert to your "base" form from hp loss.

2. A change in creature type. Your shape is different, you lose your mentality, and you lose traits and characteristics associated with your "base" form. But your "base" form is potentially recoverable. Polymorph and True Polymorph have this effect. You can still revert to your "base" form from hp loss.

The problem here is that "monster type" as a part of statistics blocks does change in 1 as well as in 2, so "creature type" can't mean "Beast" or "Humanoid" or whatever because both cases change your "monster type."

3. An overwriting of your creature type. Your shape is different, you retain your mentality, but replace traits and characteristics associated with your race. Reincarnate does this.

The Clone spell is ambiguous because it replicates a living creature, but never directly uses the word "form" (or even "body"). If you took a flesh sample in case 3, post-Reincarnate, the clone clearly grows as a duplicate of the new race. What happens in cases 1 & 2 is less clear. What is being duplicated?

If the creature is being duplicated, which appears to be the literal meaning of the target (a "living creature"), then does that reflect a form change? Only a "base normal" change? If you clone a human who lost an eye at age 40, and make the clone body 25, does the clone body have its eye back? The rules clarify nothing in this case. It is impossible based on what is written to resolve the matter.

I would suggest this: the clone has the same personality, memories, and abilities of the original. In case 2 above (Polymorph/True Polymorph), the transformed creature retains its original alignment and personality but loses its mentality and abilities. If the clone spell duplicates "personality, memories, and abilities" and the clone spell "remembers" your changed form and not your "base normal" form, wouldn't it also "remember" your changed mentality? Either the clone conforms to the original at death (which would end any polymorph effect) in all respects, or it conforms to the "snap-shot" at the time of cloning, meaning you'd lose your original abilities and mental stats if you were cloned under a polymorph effect. Both intuition and past D&D editions would suggest that the flesh sample "saves" your physical condition while the soul brings the personality, mentality, and abilities, but nothing in the 5E rules actually states that. Going strictly by the language, nothing resolves this matter either way, but nothing offers grounds for a compromise solution taking the "best" of both options.

As for the OP's reading of the Shapechange spell: if you really want to argue about interpretations, you need to make arguments for your reading instead of asserting it. Unquestionably, the spell is poorly, even incoherently, written. That does not mean that you automatically win arguments about what it means; it may indicate that nobody can win an argument because the wording cannot be parsed.

"You retain the benefit of any features from your class, race, or other source..."
The first bit ("your class") is straightforward. Then things fall apart. Because it looks as if the possessive "your" is meant to apply to all three items in the series. "your class" parses nicely, but what in the world does "or your other source" mean? "You retain the benefit of any features from your other source" is grammatically faulty and may not mean anything at all.

RAI is clearly "features from your original class and race, or features from any other source which your original form possesses". RAW clearly doesn't say that. But I'm not convinced that what it does say is well-formed enough to be interpreted as meaning anything. Clearly the writer thought "retain" would do the lifting here, in conjunction with "your": after all, if you shapechange into a drow from a human, "drow" is not "your race" linguistically (not "base normal"). But because you took on the statistics and your monster type is now Humanoid (drow), a case could be made that that is now your race, although then, what about your human racial features? You might argue that you retain those as well, but the line reads "your class, race, or other sources," not "your class or classes, race or races, or other sources." Indeed, RAW, shapechange is incompatible with the multiclassing rules.

[KorvinStarmast]

Very few "bug fixes" implemented in 5e errata have been improvements.

Concur.

But the pine tree in my front yard never had a heartbeat at all, or even a heart. Does that mean it's dead, even though it's still growing?

First tell me if you cast the Awaken spell on it.

My RAW are all on DND Beyond.

Which from where I sit is an error; when D&D Beyond came out a lot of us noted the casual errors and carelessness that went on there. While I hope they have improved since then (it's not a bad resource) the core books does not equal DDB.

[qube]

Okay, so you're not a pine tree. But if you've cast Shapechange, you could be a fire elemental, a violet fungus, a gelatinous cube or a treant.

... I'm not sure if you're joking or not.

The point was the initial analogy was flawed: (paraphrasing) if you cut a limb off while true polymorphed, it wouldn't change back; because if you paint a cucumber and paint it blue, the piece you cut off doesn't stop being plainted blue.

But if you get killed while true polymorphed, you turn back to your original shape; while if you kill the painted cucumber ... it keeps being blue.

if paint doesn't react like polymoph in the cases we know ... why would we assume it does in the cases we don't?
That's why unlike a painted cumcumber, something like a pulse is a better analogy.

	Painted cucumber	Heartbeat	True polymoph
on death	unchanged	changed	chanced
on seperation of limb	unchanged	changed	?

One might say, that if you cut of a limb, that part acts as though it's reduced to zero hit points.

[Yucca]

TL;DR the MM is not using a single definition of "statistics", and also is not carefully written in the first place.

Monster Manual pg 6, under the heading "Statistics":
A monster's statistics, sometimes referred to as its stat block, provides the essential information you need to run the monster

(bolding in the original)

By RAW the "statistics" of the monster include everything in the "stat block". I was wrong in my post above.

[noob]

... I'm not sure if you're joking or not.

The point was the initial analogy was flawed: (paraphrasing) if you cut a limb off while true polymorphed, it wouldn't change back; because if you paint a cucumber and paint it blue, the piece you cut off doesn't stop being plainted blue.

But if you get killed while true polymorphed, you turn back to your original shape; while if you kill the painted cucumber ... it keeps being blue.

if paint doesn't react like polymoph in the cases we know ... why would we assume it does in the cases we don't?
That's why unlike a painted cumcumber, something like a pulse is a better analogy.

	Painted cucumber	Heartbeat	True polymoph
on death	unchanged	changed	chanced
on seperation of limb	unchanged	changed	?

One might say, that if you cut of a limb, that part acts as though it's reduced to zero hit points.

It is even more complicated imagine the limb was cut and 100 light years away and did not revert would the death of the creature transcend space and time and revert instantly the limb or would you need to wait for 100 years before the limb reverts?

[Valmark]

It is even more complicated imagine the limb was cut and 100 light years away and did not revert would the death of the creature transcend space and time and revert instantly the limb or would you need to wait for 100 years before the limb reverts?

Ignore me if I'm missing the point of a joke- but 100 light years only indicates the spatial distance, not time.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Ignore me if I'm missing the point of a joke- but 100 light years only indicates the spatial distance, not time.

They're assuming relativity works as on Earth, so 100 ly is both a distance and a minimum time for information to travel.

I highly doubt that the underlying physics of D&D-world is anything like ours, since little stuff like conservation laws aren't even valid. Consider enlarge/reduce. Even as applied to an object (to avoid any nasty biological issues like the square/cube law). Conservation of momentum, mass-energy, angular momentum, particle number, etc are all screaming in pain as soon as that happens, and then again once the spell ends.

[XmonkTad]

Also, a teleport effect that leaves your gear, including clothing, behind would be pretty funny.

If you think it's funny, there's a specific Gygax module running around you might want to try

To OP's point, I can't figure out how this combo works. I'm not really seeing the interaction. I'm very interested in TO, and I think you've definitely got an audience on this forum.

[ftafp]

If you think it's funny, there's a specific Gygax module running around you might want to try

To OP's point, I can't figure out how this combo works. I'm not really seeing the interaction. I'm very interested in TO, and I think you've definitely got an audience on this forum.

the build really hinges on taking two ambiguities in the rules and using the most outrageous but still technically legal interpretation.

the first is that shapechange claims you retain your features from your "race, class or other source", but because "other source" has an incredibly broad definition, and the PHB doesn't specify what's considered a feature and what isn't, when you use your action to switch to a new form, the rules could be interpreted so that you retain the features from your old monster form such as traits or actions

the second is an ambiguity in how clone works when you cast it on a creature that's temporarily shapeshifted. depending on your interpretation, the clone could be identical to the true form, the altered form, or the altered form but only temporarily.

if you choose the two most convenient interpretations, this trick will effectively let you gain the abilities of monsters you've seen permanently

[furby076]

Because 3.X tried very, very, very hard to pretend it's not the case and some still insist that it was true.

You think 3.5 said the DM s not the rules adjudicator? Who were you playing with?I had about 4 or 5 DMs from 3 to 3.5 (including pathfinder) and at no point was the DM not the person who decided what worked and didn't. AL didn't exist back then, so there was no "official" gaming, just a lot of people who banded together in small groups to have fun, and one of those people was in charge of intepreting the rules

Because theorycrafting is pointless without the context of the game and the game is pointless without the game engine. In an MMO (which actually allows theorycrafting to some degree because the rules and engine are fixed and so are the challenges), if you start talking about "well, if we just attack faster than the GCD...", you'll get laughed out of the room. The game engine does not allow that action. So trying to theorycraft about it is a nullity.

In D&D, the DM is the game engine. The rules are just pre-written scripts and models that the game engine executes to make its job easier. Without a DM, all you have are words. The rules have no meaning outside of a DM's rulings. "Theorycrafting" of this sort (that assumes only the most permissive rulings) is like playing a game with the physics and damage turned off. It's the most fundamental form of cheating possible in a TTRPG, and just like cheating in a video game, it strips any meaning from the exercise. This was true in 3e as well, people on the internet just ignored it.

Even more fundamentally, all text is capable of being interpreted in multiple ways, especially if there's nothing keeping you honest. So you can pick on any kind of contorted rationale in full confidence that the rules won't talk back. Because they can't. And if someone says no on the internet, well, you can always come up with a new argument. Nothing ever gets settled as long as one person wants to continue debating.

Without setting ground rules and agreeing on readings at the beginning (ie invoking a particular DM's rulings, even if that DM is only conceptual), discussions of theory are meaningless.

Theorycrafting extreme cases is only pointless as far as it's not playable (unless there is a table that enjoys that stuff). It is not pointless as an exercise of "What-if". I love reading these crazy builds. It's creative for people to pour through various rules and find ways to go crazy. That's it.....it's fun, for some folks, and as such is not pointless.

As for "all text is capable of being interpreted in multiple ways..." - That's not true. Some text is written really well and has solid ways of being interpreted. Clearly, there are people to keep the players honest, they are called DMs...or forum communities.

I do not agree, being an aberration should not make you unable to play. Especially if you keep your way of thinking and mental capabilities.
You are you, thinking like you and having the same personality like you just in a new body.

I've never been in any table where certain creatures or types of creatures were not viable for the campaign. Can a Gold Dragon theoretically be in a good group...sure...as an npc for a few sessions. Can a PC be a gold dragon - unless your playing that 3.x dragon splat book, and the DM is making a specific campaign around it, nope. I'm not including temporary changes (e.g., polymorph). But hey, your table may vary. I'd still go with a ruling "your blobbed out and died as the mutation could not sustain itself" or, say "last form wins".