As opposed to mass polymorph or true polymorph which both explicitly say that you choose.
I'm always kind of amazed that DND is such a big budget game that has so many weird problems.
this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2023
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Don't need to hire proofreaders when people buy the books and post their own interpretations anyway!
If not for that we wouldn't have story-driven adventures anyway. The game was initially focused on dungeon crawling.
Mechanically it still is
5e is in this weird space where, on the one hand, it's loose and flexible, but on the other, it's designed around balanced encounters and precise readings of kind of a lot of rules.
I found it an exhausting balancing act as a DM.
Don’t worry. It sounds like WotC is planning to fix the issue with not enough people wanting to DM their jank by implementing AI DMs in their new VTT.
They did say before that no one at Wizards was working on AI DMs, but it’s all but officially confirmed Hasbro had a 3rd party working on it for them. That’s why you gotta keep your eye out for those little loopholes. 😲
Yeah, I remember that. Along with the focus on digital tools, all I can think is, That's a video game. You're designing a video game. Those already exist. That is not what your flagship product is.
Seriously. If I want to play a video game, I can already do that. Even some amazing D&D video games! But the reason tabletop D&D and other RPGs haven't been supplanted by video games isn't because the technology wasn't there yet, but because they do a different thing entirely. If they made Digital D&D, and even if it turned out amazing, it would be a completely distinct type of game, not a new edition of D&D.
If video published games publisher put out titles with gamebreaking bugs and expected the player’s computer or console to figure out what was wrong and fix them, there would be riots.
I’m always kind of amazed how many people defend WotC putting out products with so many weird problems and expecting DMs to just shadow-patch the issues and not complain about it.
Right? And a lot of websites provide a front end, but imagine if you had to look up the API docs, figure out auth, and do your own http post to reply to messages here. "it's more flexible that way. the DM can decide if they want to use like postman, or requests, or write their own tool!"
I mean this site is hardly the big budget Triple-A title equivalent of D&D. It'd be more like if the new version of Twitter/𝕏 did that.
That's pretty funny. Once again a reason why D&D was not made to be played RAW.
I always feel like even True Polymorph should require some sort of check or a pseudo-spellbook of studied creatures so that the user can only turn into creatures it knows well enough. Turning into anything the player can pull a stat block for is not only overpowered, it's downright immersion breaking.
Well, true polymorph and mass polymorph at least aren't overpowered for their levels. Comparatively polymorph as commonly interpreted to be a "caster decides" effect, is routinely considered the best 4th level spell overall. It has better single-target save-or-suck disabling ability than banishment, it rival arcane eye in terms of scouting utility, and as emergency temporary healing or a combat buff it outperforms the 6th level Tenser's transformation.
The only other 4th level spell that even comes close is the "caster decides" interpretation of conjure woodland beings, mostly because you get eight polymorphs for the price of one.
Yeah it's weird pixies can caste polymorph, like why do they need that spell at their CR. I don't think it makes sense for lore ether.
A way to fix the banishment type effect is make it so it can only be cast on a creature who is not a threat (like being tied up, unaware, or several levels below you) so its more balanced and keeps the idea of a witch/wizard curseing someone to become a frog. Scouting I'm fine with because it is a common fantasy trope. My only solution for being a combat buff is capping the health you can have per level or stronger forms have a lesser duration.
I mean... if you're homebrewing a fix anyway, just make it CR up to the CR of the target or up to half their level if they don't have a CR, to keep its power in line with other spells of that level. If the unbalanced save-or-suck is an issue at your table, give an unwilling target advantage on the save if they're not incapacitated. Unless you rebalance other things, it's just going to mean people won't take/prepare polymorph as much though.
The way you can nerf it, if needed, and still keep it RAW (for those AL DMs out there) is spelled out in the meme. 😁
Either way, let your players know how you're going to run polymorph before they design their character around certain expectations.
true
True but you should be able to choose a little. When things like woodland creature are so random( and I guess know polymorph) its hard to form tactics around become rather useless. If you have a mean DM it can be a hazard like turning into something useless and not contributing to combat or summoning something that ether dies immediately or just clogs the initiative not helping.
If you have a mean DM, get a new DM. D&D isn't an adversarial game where a DM plays to win or turn every player plan on their head like an evil genie. Even if they get to decide what kind of creature the players get, they should pick whatever would be the most fun to introduce to the scene, not whatever would be the worst for the players. If they can come up with something that isn't the most obvious good pick and surprises the players while being useful in their own way, it's a good pick. Not to mention, usually forcing the players to improvise parts of their strategy on the fly leads to more fun play than just letting them steamroll an encounter using a predetermined, infallible plan.
The more I look into it the more I start to feel like it's entirely intentional. As OP mentions, the other forms of polymorph explicitly spell out you get to choose, but normal polymorph does not.
Also, while it's of course not directly related to DnD, there are some older dungeon crawling media that have both been inspired by DnD and been an inspiration to it that run with this interpretation. For example, in Nethack, a dungeon crawling game first released in 1987, polymorph is entirely random making it a gamble. At least DnD 5e caps the challenge rating so at worst you'd get another monster in the same ballpark strength as you had initially, in Nethack you could just as easily turn a goblin into a dragon.
Powder does the same thing, unless you have a ring or artifact that grants you polymorph control.
But, as an aside, a CR 𝓝 creature is intended to be an appropriate challenge for a party of 𝓝 level characters, not the equivalent in power to one of them. If you were to actually calculate the CR of an 𝓝 level character it's closer to ½𝓝 like in mass polymorph.
""I acknowledge the rulebook has made a decision, but given that it is a stupid decision, I have elected to ignore it""
--several people here probably
"Fine then. I cast Fireball instead."
"You know, it doesn't say you can choose which spell to cast."
There’s a whole chapter dedicated to spellcasting rules. There’s a fair number of steps involved beyond just choosing which spell you want to cast. There’s a wide variety of reasons that might not work, especially since there no rule that allows you to change what you’re casting after you start.
It doesn't normally talk about choosing. Like it says you can move during your turn, but not that you can choose if you move or where to move. If the DM chooses everything that the rules don't specifically say the player can choose, then they're practically playing the game by themselves.
It actually does say you can choose if you move, several things about when you can choose to move, and lots of stuff about when you can’t move or how much it cost you to move, or to move in certain ways, but you’re correct that (unless you’re using the Variant: Playing on a Grid) the game rules never specifically say the character moving gets to choose where they move, only how far.
Of note; certain game effects, such as the frightened condition, or the effects of spells like dissonant whispers or confusion can limit, enhance or control certain aspects of a character’s movement that might need to be wordier if a specific blanket general rule explicitly said players can choose where to move.
Also of note; The example given in the rule for using the Ready action if “you choose to move up to your speed” (emphasis mine) is “If the goblin steps next to me, I move away.” This example implies that you do at least choose which direction, at least in general, you’re moving when you choose how much to move, even if you don’t get to choose exactly where to move to.
Another noteworthy rule; Becoming Lost under the Wilderness Survival section clearly indicates a circumstance where the characters do not decide where to move, but the do determine a desired direction and a successful ability check allows them to move in that direction.
Certain exceptions apply; for instance, some means of movement such as the spell dimension door do allow to choose exactly where to move, (certain restrictions apply,) or if a creature is an independent mount is “it moves and acts as it wishes.” (Being an exception based game certain rules may contradict that creature’s wishes, such as the rule that says you can move up to your speed on your turn.)
Automatic disadvantage on your next roll for rules lawyering the DM.
I personally just rules lawyer back twice as hard.
- Well, technically revivify requires you to target a creature not the corpse of a creature…
- Actually detect magic doesn’t exclude itself, and the passive detection is pass/fail, so unless you’re immune to divination…
- Oh, the demi-lich got errata’d to have more hit dice, but they never “corrected” the default hp based on the special Undead Nature trait, so now it actually has %60 more hit points than the stat block would imply.
- Sure, freedom of movement lets you escape these non-magical restraints, but you have to spend 5 feet of movement to do it and your speed is currently 0.
A fair chunk That Guy’s tricks depend on a lenient or permissive DM/cherry-picking the most favorable rules & interpretations. If you don’t shadow-patch a bunch of fixes to make things work how people expect them to the game breaks down. If they want me strictly following the rules I’m happy to oblige, but I’ve never seen a powergaming munchkin who could withstand the amount of nerfing actually playing RAW causes.