Quick Lamia Question

[Wikkidkarma]

Hello All,

I am running a campaign that features a Lamia who is disguised as a human female. Lamia's have Disguise Self at-will, as well as major image and charm monster. My question is can a Lamia use disguise self to make herself look like a standard human? The description of the spell says specifically: "You cannot change your creature type (although you can appear as another subtype)." so my interpretation is that she would essentially need both Disguise Self, AND Major Image to convey herself looking like a human.

Any help in understanding this more clearly would be appreciated!

[Cylyria]

Lamia have had a long history of disguising themselves as humans, at least the matriarchs. If I was using them I would just give them a simple shapechange ability so that they could appear as a single humanoid creature.They could use thier disguise self spells to change that if need be.

[Wikkidkarma]

@Cylria

That's what's so confusing. The campaign I'm running uses a pre-published book as the base, and the brief synopsis about the Lamia specifically says that she IS disguising herself as a human, I just want to make sure the RAW backs that up. My players usually don't get involved on "calling" me on stuff that doesn't specifically fit the rules, but I like to be able to legitimately have it work out if I can.

[AnnoyingOrange]

I think it is supposed to work for humanoid forms by the designer of the monster, though the spell in this case does not support it's use.

You could perhaps use it to change the lamia into a human with a single monstrous feature hinting at it's true nature, though Cylyria's solution would work for me too.

[James Jacobs]

Yeah; this is an error that's crept in because of the change to disguise self—in previous editions, it DID let you appear as human.

The lamia matriarch, from Bestiary 2, has the change shape ability and can use it to appear humanoid.

The best fix is, if you want lamias to have a similar ability, to give them the same type of change shape ability that the lamia matriarch has.

I'll forward this on to the design team so that we can get that change into the Bestiary for the lamia.

(An alternative to the change self supernatural special quality is the ability to cast veil [self only] at will... but I prefer the physical transformation to the illusory one since there's weirdness when you have a large creature disguised as a smaller creature when it comes to the monster's space on the grid...)

[Wikkidkarma]

Thanks for the quick feedback guys! This helps a lot. I'll use the suggestion from James and add on a change shape ability. I was similarly worried about having a large creature "illusioned" into a medium sized creature. It makes it very complicated if the PC's get too close to her.