A Pun-Pun build is starting to look plausible

[PhoenixPhyre]

Why does every thread in this forum revert to "but the dm has final say the rules are all really optional/dms discretion"? This is nothing new. This has been D&D since day 1 way back before I was born. A DM can rule whatever they want. 5e didn't magically create this rule. The OP posted theorycraft. I doubt many DMs will allow this to work (especially once they realize what is happening).

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.

[Frogreaver]

To sum up the thread: OP is looking at vague spell interactions and trying to use the most beneficial interpretation for his creation.

The most realistic rules interpretations don’t allow what he want. It’s totally in no-raw territory for which form or forms a clone keeps when cycling through shape changes. Which in 5e leaves that question totally up to the DM.

Now there is an interesting question left open about whether you could change your form permanently with shape change and clone and gain some new powers. If you can this process would be repeatable by simply redoing the process over and over again. Possibly not quick but may still could gain lots of powers this way.

[ftafp]

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 is a game in and of itself. Not a TTRPG but a puzzle. There's a fundamental misunderstanding that something has to be "useful" to be valid, but dnd itself isn't really all that useful either. It's just a way to pass time and enjoy yourself, and some people find loopholes fu...

Do you ever catch yourself saying something halfway through saying it and wonder at what point you turned into such a pedantic pencil-pusher?

[Frogreaver]

Theorycrafting is a game in and of itself. Not a TTRPG but a puzzle. There's a fundamental misunderstanding that something has to be "useful" to be valid, but dnd itself isn't really all that useful either. It's just a way to pass time and enjoy yourself, and some people find loopholes fu...

Do you ever catch yourself saying something halfway through saying it and wonder at what point you turned into such a pedantic pencil-pusher?

Phoenix is right.

But even worse, what you are peddling as raw at best isn’t anything other than most permissive interpretation of raw imaginable for text that can have many different interpretations. And at worst it’s actually provably incorrect.

[Unoriginal]

Theorycrafting is a game in and of itself.

Well this is the 5e subforum, for the 5e game.

So it's not a surprise you are not finding your audience here.

[Aimeryan]

Unlike almost every other poster here, I agree with everything you posted, if not necessarily the conclusion. This is why:

The abilities you retain by Shapechange (via 'other sources' recursively including itself due to not adding such an exception) are via the spell. Clone does not duplicate spells. As mentioned by another poster, it would otherwise be the case that you could Clone (or Sequester - Clone, or Wish - Clone) while having just basic buff spells cast on you and keep adding such effects in the Clone cycle.

It does ramp up the power of Shapechange itself, though.

[MaxWilson]

One interesting and serious point raised by the OP:

Can Clone be used in conjunction with True Polymorph, Magic Jar, or both to eliminate the usual vulnerability to Dispel Magic/Antimagic?

It seems plausible that it could, but it depends.

[ftafp]

One interesting and serious point raised by the OP:

Can Clone be used in conjunction with True Polymorph, Magic Jar, or both to eliminate the usual vulnerability to Dispel Magic/Antimagic?

It seems plausible that it could, but it depends.

At the risk of making myself look like more of an idiot than I already have: True Polymorph yes, Magic Jar no.

Or at least, assuming the underlying principle is valid true polymorph should work, but Mearls asserted on twitter that the clone is connected to the soul of the host, not the caster. Granted, one is pure speculation and the other is an unofficial ruling but at this point I'm just throwing spaghetti at the wall.

I am curious though: suppose you cast magic jar then your simulacrum casts true polymorph on your original body. When you return to your original body would you be able to maintain your mental stats and class levels? Alternatively, what if your simulacrum killed your original body before true polymorphing it into a living creature. Would you be able to return to that body? Probably no to both but it's an interesting thing to think about

[Greywander]

Theorycrafting is a game in and of itself. Not a TTRPG but a puzzle.

I don't really know why a lot of people seem to be having trouble understanding this. Playing with the rules to see what kind of neat interactions you can find, and then pushing things to the extremes to see how much you can break the game while staying within the rules, can be a lot of fun. It's like the rules equivalent of playing with Legos. It's also a good way to find potentially problematic rules interactions that might need to be "patched" (either officially, if they care, or with homebrew). It just baffles me that people would come into this thread, see what it was about, and then dump on it because they don't like doing this kind of thing. Why even click on the thread in the first place?

As for the OP, I don't have the text of Shapechange in front of me, but I don't think any spell effects would carry over to the clone anyway. Otherwise, you could cast any kind of buff on yourself and then clone yourself to make the buff permanent. And the effects can stack. Aid for infinite HP, for example. No, I'm pretty sure spell effects, including Shapechange, would not carry over to the new form.

That said, if you can find a way to steal abilities from monsters, that would open the floodgates to OP builds. Monsters can have very strong traits that aren't designed for players. Another angle you might try is Shapechanging/True Polymorphing into something like an intellect devourer, and then eating the brains of creatures with abilities you wanted. I don't know if this would actually work, but even if it did, the best you could probably do is steal learned abilities, like class levels, non-innate spellcasting, etc. Again, I don't know that this would work, but you might be able to find something similar that would yield more definite results.

[ftafp]

I don't really know why a lot of people seem to be having trouble understanding this. Playing with the rules to see what kind of neat interactions you can find, and then pushing things to the extremes to see how much you can break the game while staying within the rules, can be a lot of fun. It's like the rules equivalent of playing with Legos. It's also a good way to find potentially problematic rules interactions that might need to be "patched" (either officially, if they care, or with homebrew). It just baffles me that people would come into this thread, see what it was about, and then dump on it because they don't like doing this kind of thing. Why even click on the thread in the first place?

As for the OP, I don't have the text of Shapechange in front of me, but I don't think any spell effects would carry over to the clone anyway. Otherwise, you could cast any kind of buff on yourself and then clone yourself to make the buff permanent. And the effects can stack. Aid for infinite HP, for example. No, I'm pretty sure spell effects, including Shapechange, would not carry over to the new form.

That said, if you can find a way to steal abilities from monsters, that would open the floodgates to OP builds. Monsters can have very strong traits that aren't designed for players. Another angle you might try is Shapechanging/True Polymorphing into something like an intellect devourer, and then eating the brains of creatures with abilities you wanted. I don't know if this would actually work, but even if it did, the best you could probably do is steal learned abilities, like class levels, non-innate spellcasting, etc. Again, I don't know that this would work, but you might be able to find something similar that would yield more definite results.

I have to wonder if there's a special place in DSM for people like me who just like finding loopholes for the sake of finding loopholes and not any personal gain. I believe the term tumblr's dnd community uses is Lawful Chaotic.

Interesting idea about the intellect devourer. i might have to find a way to incorporate that into something else. It won't work with this shapechange trick though (assuming the trick even DOES work) since the intellect devourer's ability to occupy skulls hinges on being tiny which means it can't be cloned. however, it does say that you use your hosts stats while you're in their skull, so that includes innate abilities

[Chaos Jackal]

Theorycrafting is a form of enjoying the game in and of itself. Whether or not you like it, it exists for its own purposes. Making a build that has no application in an actual game isn't wrong, invalid, or pointless; it can be anything from a fan pastime to a thought experiment.

A build like Pun-Pun, which the OP mentions, isn't made to be played, and nobody sane (including its creators) ever claimed it's playable. It was always a test, an attempt to bring the system to its limits, to see the full scope of craziness, issues and flaws a system has. It's not "attacking/casting faster than the GCD", as someone wrongly compared it to; it's not meant to do things the game engine can't do, it's to see what the game can do when pushed to extremes.

Nobody is threatening you or your way or gaming. Theorycrafting is, as the word itself states, theory, and in this case the OP literally stated it's a white-room scenario. Bringing DMs and tables and validation into this is quite literally off-topic. We're not talking tables and games in the first place.

So props. The only clear way to infinity I was aware of in 5e was the simulacrum+wish chain, so having another method brought up is certainly interesting. I wouldn't call it an actual infinite loop, since it has its limits, but still, quite an interesting idea.

But I'll have to echo the sentiments of the few who stuck to the task at hand.

It's certainly not the best reading, but try as I might, I can't find something actually preventing you from stacking the effects of every form that shapechange gives you. So that, in theory, checks out.

Even under the most liberal reading, though, I can't see clone working like that. The spell creates a copy of the original body, and I'd argue that an ongoing spell effect isn't part of the original body. It's not a memory or an ability, but an additional effect, so clone shouldn't be able to copy it. And even if it did, why wouldn't the effect be copied fully, duration and all, on the cloned body? Why would it become a passive effect?

That being said, if you do read it like that, more loops lie ahead of you. You can use clone to literally stack every buff in the game on you, and if you go even more liberal and say that it's now part of the new body, rather than an ongoing effect, you can stack buffs to infinity via cloning by claiming that it's not the same ability/effect any longer if you bless a clone with permanent bless on it.

So ultimately, the true gateway to infinity could be the clone spell...

But as I said, I can't justify reading clone like that. So I'll take the shapechange as an interesting and plausible catch, but the full extent of it, I can't agree with.

[Sindeloke]

Even under the most liberal reading, though, I can't see clone working like that. The spell creates a copy of the original body, and I'd argue that an ongoing spell effect isn't part of the original body. It's not a memory or an ability, but an additional effect, so clone shouldn't be able to copy it. And even if it did, why wouldn't the effect be copied fully, duration and all, on the cloned body? Why would it become a passive effect?

I think you get the very last shape's abilities. Any other abilities from previous forms are given to *that* form by the spell, but the form itself has those abilities as an intrinsic property of its own shape, which is the thing that you're cloning. A girallon doesn't have four arms because it's the subject of a spell, it has four arms because it's a girallon, so if you clone a girallon and bring zero magic with it, you're getting four arms. Which is what you're doing, because clone creates a copy of the source body, and currently your body is a four-armed mandrill. Or whatever.

So we can make exactly one shapechange permanent with one clone spell. Can we chain that? My gut feeling is no, because any abilities your base form has are being given to your end-of-spell shapechange form by the spell, so they get lost in the transition. I'm not sure your girallon even keeps your orcish wizard's darkvision, by that reading of the rules (although girallons may have darkvision? this was not a well-chosen example). This may just be a more roundabout form of magic jar.

[KorvinStarmast]

put some genies on the jury and we can keep arguing until hell comes home and the cows freeze over

We can, and hopefully it's not 50 pages of damage bonuses with thrown weapons.

Theorycrafting is a game in and of itself. Not a TTRPG but a puzzle.

Yes.

But even worse, what you are peddling as raw at best isn’t anything other than most permissive interpretation of raw imaginable for text that can have many different interpretations. And at worst it’s actually provably incorrect.

This also; as I read through the OP I noted the kludge as regards other powers and other shapes. What I do appreciate, though, is the tinkering process that goes on as one tries to set up the synergy between high level spells and powers.

One interesting and serious point raised by the OP:

Can Clone be used in conjunction with True Polymorph, Magic Jar, or both to eliminate the usual vulnerability to Dispel Magic / Antimagic? It seems plausible that it could, but it depends.

That's worth a thread on its own.

Theorycrafting is a form of enjoying the game in and of itself. Whether or not you like it, it exists for its own purposes.

Yes, it's part of the fun of the game. (It is also a way to find loopholes, which now and again the dev/author needs to fix in due course)

Speaking of finding loopholes: I was involved in a public beta for Diablo II's patch 1.10 (or was it 1.09?) and we spent a whole bunch of game sessions messing about with synergies betwewen various barbarian warcries and their features. We seemed to have found a bug in how the damage reduction for Taunt and Damage Reduction of Battle Cry interacted. (That DR was such that if the mook hit you, it reduced damage by a certain percentage). I am pretty sure they patched it, since a few months later I tried the combo again once the patch was released and discovered that it wasn't doing what we had seen before.

In that regard, theory crafting is a way to discover loopholes (which is where the Wish / Simulacrum combo platter fits).

[Skylivedk]

Theorycrafting is a game in and of itself. Not a TTRPG but a puzzle. There's a fundamental misunderstanding that something has to be "useful" to be valid, but dnd itself isn't really all that useful either. It's just a way to pass time and enjoy yourself, and some people find loopholes fun...

I can relate. In high school and university, I couldn't help, but notice and come up with ways of cheating the exam systems. Never did, but finding the flaws was its own past time when waiting for the assignments to be handed out/exam to finish. I've had similar experiences with military security systems.

Really good catch with the lazy writing of Shapechange. I've read that spell so many times I cannot believe I overlooked that loophole!

As for Magic Jar and true polymorph: I don't think it would... At least not if the 1h time limit had passed. True Polymorph explicitly makes you another creature which doesn't gel well with the text of Magic Jar. I read it as your body (since it is now another creature) no longer being within 100 ft and you probably proceed to a permanent career change to Dead Person.

[BloodSnake'sCha]

Looking at the OP post, I just don't see this as working. I think what you are getting at is that as the wizard shapeshifts, the clone memorizes the form. Then when the wizard shapeshifts again, the clone memorizes the new form. Do this ad nauseum for an hour. The end goal is the clone memorizes all the powers and keeps them, but only retains the very last form. Well, if I were to agree with the clone retaining all the powers, then I'd say the clone retains all the shapes...and bam, the wizard is now a culmination of all of the forms the wizard cycled through. The clone is now an amorphous blob and categorized as an aberration (congrats, your clone is an npc), or the mutation was something along the lines of the first X-Men movie, and you just turn into a puddle of goo and die.

Your game statistics are replaced by the statistics of the chosen creature, though you retain your alignment and Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma scores.

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.

[JoeJ]

As for the OP, I don't have the text of Shapechange in front of me, but I don't think any spell effects would carry over to the clone anyway. Otherwise, you could cast any kind of buff on yourself and then clone yourself to make the buff permanent. And the effects can stack. Aid for infinite HP, for example. No, I'm pretty sure spell effects, including Shapechange, would not carry over to the new form.

As I read the text of Clone, it copies your abilities at the moment you die, not the moment the spell was originally cast. For example, if you cast Clone and then increase in level, you don't have to recast it for your clone to have that new level.

And with Shapechange, you don't only lose the abilities of a creature whose form you assumed when the spell ends, you also lose them when you use the spell to change to a creature with different abilities. IOW, you have the abilities of the creatures you turn into one at a time, not concurrently.

[qube]

Why can't it? According to who?

Welll ... you. Sage advice specifically is not RAW. This?

In 3.5, optimization takes place in a vacuum. There is no game involved, no players and most importantly no DM. Rules are followed to the letter, even if the letter leads to something ridiculous

This is exactly what sage advice is not. And that you claim that it's official doesn't matter. Pun pun uses RAW (books & Errata), not RAI, not RAF, and not Sage Advice (or did you not know that Sage Advice was around during 3.5 as well?).

If RAW doesn't say X, you can't argue "but someone who uses RAI as their guideline says X so I can assume it's X".
If RAW doesn't say X it doesn't say X. Why? Because

Rules are followed to the letter, even if the letter leads to something ridiculous
~~ You

it's a knife that cuts both ways.

Sage Advice can say things that contradict RAW. Pun Pun crafting can not.
Sage Advice does't overwrite RAW - it advises how to use it (again - which is explicietly not wat you want when making Pun Pun)

[qube]

Even more fundamentally, all text is capable of being interpreted in multiple ways, especially if there's nothing keeping you honest.

Yup. There's a fun example of this: People are using the teleport spell wrong

This spell instantly transports you and up to eight willing creatures of your choice that you can see within range, or a single object that you can see within range, to a destination you select.
~~teleport spell (a.k.a. not the misty step spell)

Now, at best, there's a side note on a misty step ruling of Sage Advice, that talks misty step allowing you to take your "gear" ('gear' is a direct quote) and stuff. The Sage Advice notes that teleportation effects always presume you teleport with your "clothes" (again 'clothes' is a direct quote).

... since no teleportation effect in the game assumes that you teleport without your clothes,

...

...

I invite you to check how much of your inventory & carried objects are not clothing? Oh, did you just ASSUME your weapons, spellcomponents, etc ... just teleported with you?

[PhoenixPhyre]

Yup. There's a fun example of this: People are using the teleport spell wrong

This spell instantly transports you and up to eight willing creatures of your choice that you can see within range, or a single object that you can see within range, to a destination you select.
~~teleport spell (a.k.a. not the misty step spell)

Now, at best, there's a side note on a misty step ruling of Sage Advice, that talks misty step allowing you to take your "gear" ('gear' is a direct quote) and stuff. The Sage Advice notes that teleportation effects always presume you teleport with your "clothes" (again 'clothes' is a direct quote).

... since no teleportation effect in the game assumes that you teleport without your clothes,

...

...

I invite you to check how much of your inventory & carried objects are not clothing?

Yeah. The text is not written with the intent to be taken literally (not even legalistically, because legal text isn't written or read that way either[1])--it's intended to have a large helping of common sense, common knowledge, and game-play needs injected into it. Teleporting without your gear would suck, so that gets bundled into an assumption. If read literally, the whole thing turns into a ball of mud. And adding more words doesn't help--it only opens more loopholes because the interactions grow non-linearly (combinatorial explosion is a thing) with the number of rules.

Unlike computer code, which has to be free-standing and act the same way all the time (basically being deterministically non-deterministic at most, so it can invoke random generators but all the outcomes of those generators have to be part of the code, if nothing more than just as rule-sets for generating the outcomes), TTRPGs don't. They're not self-executing. They're a tiny set of additional instructions and guidelines, designed to be run by a thinking machine (ie a DM) who applies the relevant ones if they fit well. They're tools, not compiled code. Reading them like computer code just means you can get anything you want out of them--the meaning is underdetermined.

[1] I have it on good authority from practicing lawyers that if you tried the kind of loophole-hunting that "theorycrafters" do in court, you'd get not only laughed out but sanctioned for frivolous arguments and wasting everyone's time. The law does not just look at the words, even for contracts, despite what people think. Judges look at how the contract was understood by the participants, and if they didn't agree then (speaking broadly) the contract is vulnerable to an attack as not having a true meeting of the minds (one of the prerequisites for a valid contract). And that's the most highly-specified part of the law, written much more closely than any rulebook on the planet.

[BloodSnake'sCha]

Yup. There's a fun example of this: People are using the teleport spell wrong

This spell instantly transports you and up to eight willing creatures of your choice that you can see within range, or a single object that you can see within range, to a destination you select.
~~teleport spell (a.k.a. not the misty step spell)

Now, at best, there's a side note on a misty step ruling of Sage Advice, that talks misty step allowing you to take your "gear" ('gear' is a direct quote) and stuff. The Sage Advice notes that teleportation effects always presume you teleport with your "clothes" (again 'clothes' is a direct quote).

... since no teleportation effect in the game assumes that you teleport without your clothes,

...

...

I invite you to check how much of your inventory & carried objects are not clothing? Oh, did you just ASSUME your weapons, spellcomponents, etc ... just teleported with you?

But you are forgetting that objects can be defined as outer organs.
Like a book can be defined as extension of your brain memory capacity or phone in the modern world.

Some will say a sword in an extension of their arm and clothes as extension of their skin.

Other will say that because you can only teleport one object if you teleport a box full with goods and kobolds you will be left with goods and kobolds, the other side will get a box full with vacuum.

[Greywander]

Related to the previous qube's post, there's a similar issue with dismissing your familiar to a pocket dimension. It has been proposed that a chainlock can use this to steal things from miles away, dismiss, and then recall their familiar to bring the item right to them. However, there's some doubt that dismissing a familiar to a pocket dimension allows them to bring items with them. But then again, one of the familiar options for a chainlock is the sprite, who has their own equipment. I don't really see how you could have a sprite bring their equipment into the pocket dimension without also allowing them to bring any item they can carry.

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

[MaxWilson]

Related to the previous qube's post, there's a similar issue with dismissing your familiar to a pocket dimension. It has been proposed that a chainlock can use this to steal things from miles away, dismiss, and then recall their familiar to bring the item right to them. However, there's some doubt that dismissing a familiar to a pocket dimension allows them to bring items with them. But then again, one of the familiar options for a chainlock is the sprite, who has their own equipment. I don't really see how you could have a sprite bring their equipment into the pocket dimension without also allowing them to bring any item they can carry.

Why you couldn't simply rule that a familiar sprite's equipment materializes along with the sprite whenever you summon it and disappears whenever you dismiss it? This satisfies both sets of requirements: no bringing equipment, and yet sprite has equipment per Sprite stat block.

[Frogreaver]

Why you couldn't simply rule that a familiar sprite's equipment materializes along with the sprite whenever you summon it and disappears whenever you dismiss it? This satisfies both sets of requirements: no bringing equipment, and yet sprite has equipment per Sprite stat block.

IMO that sounds more like an addition than an interpretation.

[MaxWilson]

IMO that sounds more like an addition than an interpretation.

It's an interpretation of the addition made by chainlocks:

Pact of the Chain
You learn the Find Familiar spell and can cast it as a ritual. The spell doesn't count against your number of spells known.
When you cast the spell, you can choose one of the normal forms for your familiar or one of the following special forms: imp, pseudodragon, quasit, or sprite.

Conclusion: sprite familiars come with everything in the Sprite statblock, even if they wouldn't otherwise have it. When you turn your Imp into a Sprite, it acquires a bow and arrows. When you turn it into something else, the bow and arrows go away.

I honestly don't see any other way to rule it that makes Sprite familiars work as intended.

[Keltest]

It's an interpretation of the addition made by chainlocks:

Pact of the Chain
You learn the Find Familiar spell and can cast it as a ritual. The spell doesn't count against your number of spells known.
When you cast the spell, you can choose one of the normal forms for your familiar or one of the following special forms: imp, pseudodragon, quasit, or sprite.

Conclusion: sprite familiars come with everything in the Sprite statblock, even if they wouldn't otherwise have it. When you turn your Imp into a Sprite, it acquires a bow and arrows. When you turn it into something else, the bow and arrows go away.

I honestly don't see any other way to rule it that makes Sprite familiars work as intended.

I mean, familiars aren't actually the creature they look like anyway, so there isn't any reason the magic shouldn't be able to make gear for the sprite as part of its form.

[J.C.]

The clone is physically identical to the original. Physically does not include magically as magic is not physical unless it specifies a permanent irreversible physical change. Any magical effects that can be dispelled are not able to be cloned as they are not physical (i.e. permanent and intrinsic to the object in question). Shapechange is a magical effect that can be dispelled and is not an irreversible permanent physical change. Therefore, Clone entirely ignores Shapechange just like it entirely ignores Aid.

[MaxWilson]

The clone is physically identical to the original. Physically does not include magically as magic is not physical unless it specifies a permanent irreversible physical change. Any magical effects that can be dispelled are not able to be cloned as they are not physical (i.e. permanent and intrinsic to the object in question). Shapechange is a magical effect that can be dispelled and is not an irreversible permanent physical change. Therefore, Clone entirely ignores Shapechange just like it entirely ignores Aid.

What about True Polymorph? If I'm permanently True Polymorphed into an Ogre, and someone takes a handful of Ogre flesh and Clones it, does it produce a human clone or an Ogre clone? I'm guessing you'd say "human" because you said only "irreversible" physical changes count, but would like confirmation that I'm understanding you correctly.

[ftafp]

The clone is physically identical to the original. Physically does not include magically as magic is not physical unless it specifies a permanent irreversible physical change. Any magical effects that can be dispelled are not able to be cloned as they are not physical (i.e. permanent and intrinsic to the object in question). Shapechange is a magical effect that can be dispelled and is not an irreversible permanent physical change. Therefore, Clone entirely ignores Shapechange just like it entirely ignores Aid.

That's... not what physical means.

You retain the benefit of any features from your class, race, or other source and can use them, provided that your new form is physically capable of doing so.

Shapechange's own text states that the form is physical (unless you're implying something that is not physical can physically do something).

Something like Aid or Bless wouldn't be copied since they don't physically alter you, but something like Alter Self would because it transforms your physical form rather than your game statistics.

[Unoriginal]

What about True Polymorph? If I'm permanently True Polymorphed into an Ogre, and someone takes a handful of Ogre flesh and Clones it, does it produce a human clone or an Ogre clone? I'm guessing you'd say "human" because you said only "irreversible" physical changes count, but would like confirmation that I'm understanding you correctly.

If you cut the hand of the True Polymorphed person in a duel, does it go back to being an human hand?

[MaxWilson]

If you cut the hand of the True Polymorphed person in a duel, does it go back to being an human hand?

If you're asking for my ruling as DM, I would say "no."

But I would also saying "cutting hands off in 5E is incredibly difficult and requires either powerful magic weapons like a Sword of Sharpness, or first inflicting more damage than the enemy has HP." Characters in 5E look upon amputation as even more bizarre and morbidly fascinating than we do in real life because it's harder to achieve.