Transplant Visage and natural attacks

[Guessed]

According to the wording of the spell, the caster removes the skin and eyes from a recently dead creature and then fuses them to their own face, taking on the guise of the deceased. But how different can the subject and caster be? Would an orc caster still have tusks jutting up through an elf's lips? Would an elf gain a bite attack from wearing the face of a tengu? If you've taken a gorgon's eyes and face, would you have a gaze attack?

What is and isn't affected?

Is the limit based on bone structure, or more on what sort of strangeness the GM is ready to allow? Can grandma take off her face and there's the big bad wolf underneath?

[Fuzzy-Wuzzy]

Guessed wrote:

According to the wording of the spell, the caster removes the skin and eyes from a recently dead creature and then fuses them to their own face, taking on the guise of the deceased. But how different can the subject and caster be?

Anything that doesn't make the GM's head outright explode works.

Guessed wrote:

Would an orc caster still have tusks jutting up through an elf's lips?

Nope, those are part of the caster's face, so they're gone. It's transmutation, not illusion, remember.

Guessed wrote:

Would an elf gain a bite attack from wearing the face of a tengu? If you've taken a gorgon's eyes and face, would you have a gaze attack?

No and no. You get no natural attacks or special abilities, because spells only do what they say they do and it doesn't say that.

(Now you're going to say "but it doesn't say you lose your natural attacks either, so the orc whose tusks are gone can still bite with them?" To which I firmly reply: Um.)

Guessed wrote:

Can grandma take off her face and there's the big bad wolf underneath?

Well, she needs to use transplant visage, greater polymorph, miracle or wish to take it off, but that aside, yes.

[Guessed]

Fuzzy-Wuzzy wrote:

Guessed wrote:

Would an elf gain a bite attack from wearing the face of a tengu? If you've taken a gorgon's eyes and face, would you have a gaze attack?

No and no. You get no natural attacks or special abilities, because spells only do what they say they do and it doesn't say that.

(Now you're going to say "but it doesn't say you lose your natural attacks either, so the orc whose tusks are gone can still bite with them?" To which I firmly reply: Um.)

It looks to me like the big difference between this and a polymorph effect is that Beast Shape etc. all mention form and Transplant Visage only mentions appearance. Those words are synonyms, but I'm fully ready to say that they are distinct enough that changing form would give/change/remove a natural attack while changing appearance would not.

It's a strange spell. Thanks for bouncing ideas around about it w/ me.