Enlarge person and polymorph

[Selveem]

c 'enlarge person' self
Cast this on yourself? Very well.
You begin to chant.

<100%hp 100m 97%mv>
A pinch of powdered iron glows briefly and a whisp of smoke rises from it.
You resist the effects of your spell.


This seems to happen every attempt. Is Huge size category not in-game yet?

[Raona]

Centaurs are "monstrous humanoids," but enlarge and reduce person only work on (non-monstrous) humanoids. Thus they do not affect wemic, centaurs, yuan-ti, and the like. Clarified the helpfiles to indicate this.

This is in accord with d20 rules, though it's understandable to think that centaurs would fall under the simple "humanoid" label (that was my first reaction, too!).

[Nysan]

Close to topic... You can cast enlarge person as an elf/dwarf/human then polymorph into a monstrous race, troll for example. Haven't done it recently, I'll test it again later to be sure. Since this topic says monstrous races can't use enlarge person, would the enlarge person/polymorph combination be an unintended bug?

Edit: Just tested to confirm: My moon elf casting enlarge person followed polymorph into a monstrous form, troll in this test, gains a stacked effect from both spells.

[Raona]

Hmmm. Thanks for reporting that, Nysan! It's not a failing of enlarge/reduce person per se, because that spell is being cast on a humanoid in that instance. The question is whether polymorph should strip the effect. In my reading of d20 that isn't explicit, but my personal opinion is that it does not make sense for the bonuses to stack because, as you point out, the net result is that of casting enlarge/reduce person on a monstrous creature. I'm moving this back to general reporting. If anyone thinks it makes sense for an enlarged, polymorphed PC to gain double size bonuses (and end up as, say, a huge troll), now would be the time to speak up. Otherwise I'll put in a Bugzilla ticket to have polymorph strip enlarge/reduce person. (But not, for example, bulls strength, because that you could cast on a troll.)

[Nysan]

Glad to help.

Since I have experience stacking these two spells, I'll toss in my two cents: They should not stack.

The carrying weight limit is useful when several group members are dead, but the stat enhancing is too imbalanced in-combat... especially in a monstrous form capable of spell-casting. It reminds me of group and single-target spells stacking, such as magic circle and protection. The double-effect is just too good.

[Keltorn]

I took a look at the 3.5 descriptions of those spells as well, and I can't find any reason they shouldn't work that way, either. There's nothing saying that magic that's already in effect should be stripped away when you polymorph. It's just a bit iffy because of the whole "person" thing. I've never heard discussion before on how those "Person" spells should work if the target ceases to be a person during the spell's duration. I'm kind of curious what the guys on the WotC boards would have to say about this.

Is this increase in size somehow gamebreaking? I might not be seeing what makes it such a problem except that the caster used his spells intelligently since, you know, he knows how his own spells function and plans accordingly. I mean, as far as game balance goes, it just doesn't sound any worse to me than, say, casting Bulls Strength, Mage Armor, Shield, Stoneskin, etc. before morphing into a purple worm or something equally powerful and equally incapable of casting spells. Should all magical effects be stripped away upon a successful polymorph to keep wizards from becoming all powerful? Is the problem related to game balance or just that odd "Person" circumstance?

I guess the short version is that I don't see a reason this shouldn't work. I might just be missing something, of course.

[Ceir]

Another rainy day bug for you, I suppose. When casting 'polymorph' while under the effect 'enlarge person', the size bonuses stack. For instance, if Ceir normally casts "cast polymorph spider", he turns into a large spider with the appropriate size bonuses and penalties. If Ceir casts enlarge person on himself then "cast polymorph spider", he turns into a huge spider with what appear to be the appropriate size bonuses and penalties.

The effect on gameplay is somewhat negligible as is, since wizards generally don't disarm or trip, and the damage boost is relatively minor. The worst exploit I can think of right now is letting my horse mount me when it gets tired towards the end of a long journey. This DOES has troubling implications if you ever implement grappling, though. Actually, the thought of you implementing grappling is troubling all on its own, but that's for another thread...

I haven't tested to see whether the same goes with reduce person, but I would assume it does. Most worrying, I can see enlarge person -> polymorph -> buddy casts animal growth on you as a problem. If there is a valid huge animal form, that might result in a colossal wizard-mammoth, surely everyone's most terrifying nightmare.

[Althasizor]

Unfortunately for budding colossal wizard-mammoths, when I tested this before, animal growth did not stack with the effects of enlarge person. Enlarge person -does- make your polymorphed form larger, but nothing in SRD explicitly says it shouldn't.. But I don't know my SRD that well if somebody wants to correct me. Regardless, there's not a whole lot of room for abuse with this, so it is likely low priority.

[Raona]

Setting this to confirmed, as right now enlarge person followed by polymorph (my test race: horse) leads to double-enlargement, and in the d20 listing for Enlarge Person it explicitly states:

Multiple magical effects that increase size do not stack

The "easy" fix for this (the one I tried to implement) is to change the spell code so that polymorph strips enlarge person. But I can't seem to pull it off, it doesn't work for me.

If/when someone smarter figures out how, enlarge animal probably needs a similar fix.

There might be a broken fix for this in hardcode, since reduce person and polymorph don't stack, according to Solaghar.