Forum: Public Forum

David,

Thanks Laurent. That has helped clear it up for me.
I try to run a game as close to the rules as possible and still maintain an appropriate game flow - and enjoyment I hope. As you know, I also make mistakes that need to be retconned at times.

I agree, I think there may have been confusion about what I was asking in the session, I was checking that when I first entered the room before any spells had been cast if I had noticed if they were wearing/using any metal armour/weopons. I was considering casting chill metal.

Decent idea, but usually high level undeads tend to have cold immunities. I could check the monsters I used last night. I may have mentioned that the room was pretty cold, not cold enough to call for environmental cold related fortitude saves, but cold nonetheless.
The reverse, Heat metal, would definitely have worked of course!

If I had to run the encounter again, I would not tell you the suits were animating, because they should not have animated themselves as they had failed their perception checks on your first foray.

So you lose your Dwarven Darkvision.
I completely forgot about darkvision in my natural form, how foolish.

Yep, you could have seen through the Darkness spell effect once you had reverted to your Dwarven form.

A couple of super bonus questions, more out of interest than anything I currently plan to do.

1. Can I only wild shape into something as it's standard size? Without using a secondary shrink/enlarge creature spell. For example, I couldn't wild shape into a tiny ogre (although why you would want to is a different question altogether)?

You have to wildshape to the standard animal/dragon/elemental/plant/vermin (depending on your Druid level) of its kind, thus the listed default size.
A Halfling (small size) Druid polymorphs into a wolf (medium size) the same way a Human (medium size) Druid polymorphs into the same wolf (medium size). Your size modifiers change of course (the Halfling Druid loses his +1 to hit and +1 to AC for being small).

When reduced (under a spell effect), you count as a Dwarf of small size, but would still polymorph into a standard-size bat (diminutive, not fine).

A Tiny Ogre is not legally possible according to the core rules (this could still happen for specific spell effect designed for a specific adventure for instance), at best you can get a Medium Ogre (after using Reduce Person, because Ogres are large humanoid (giant).
A normal (standard monster) Ogre can become a "medium Ogre", but a Druid or Wizard/Sorcerer polymorphed into an Ogre cannor become a "medium Ogre", because you have to remember the following:
You can only be affected by one polymorph spell at a time. If a new polymorph spell is cast on you (or you activate a polymorph effect, such as wild shape), you can decide whether or not to allow it to affect you, taking the place of the old spell. In addition, other spells that change your size have no effect on you while you are under the effects of a polymorph spell. as the Transmutation Polymorph entry states.
So if you are a reduced Dwarf, the Reduced person effect will be cancelled prior to your wildshape becoming effective (by default you will choose the wildshape effect since you are the one deciding upon it by activating it).

As usual, if a very specific spell-effect, magic item, trap or otherwise, in an adventure breaks this rule this would be an exception of course.

This means that there is a way out for you to dispell the Reduce person effect of the trapped room: Do a wildshape to shake it off, then change back to being a Dwarf.

2. If I was in dwarf form, when I had the shrink (is it diminish?) effect cast on me and then wildshaped, would I wildshape into the standard size animal, and only be shrunk when in dwarf form or would the diminish effect carry through all my wildshapes?

See above, wildshaping cancels the effect. I have just realised that too!
Once wildshaped you cannot use Reduce animal on yourself to become a smaller bat.

About the reduce spells, note that they are very limited in scope: Only Reduce Animal, Reduce Person and Reduce Person, Mass exist, thus can only be applied to Humanoid and Animal types. Shrink Item (there is no Shrink spell per se) only applies to objects.

Some monsters (even non-Humanoid and non-Animal) may have spell-like abilities based on the reduce spell category, but these would not be accessible by spells of the transmutation [polymorph] sub-school anyway; check the Beast Shape ***, Elemental Body *** etc spell descriptions and you will notice that the lists of gained abilities are relatively restrictive.

Thanks again, I'm still learning bit by bit and I want to try avoiding accidently cheating.
Our gaming group is pretty good at playing in a civilised and enjoyable way, and unless you are all experts at it in such a way I cannot see it, I would not accuse anyone of cheating. At times we have indeed rule interpretation issues, but so far you have all accepted that the GM is always right... at least until I check a few things and use retro-active continuity to smooth over prior errors of rule interpretations!

Laurent,