Words of power: change words

[Atracious]

SO I've recently created a wordcasting wizard to try out the system, and I'm confused on one series of words: alter/bestial/monstrous form. they seem very similar to monstrous physique I/II/III but there's no explicit mention of a size change in the words' descriptions, just that the target "...receives a +[X] size bonus to Strength...". I would think that they would actually alter the size of the target(and it's equipment) but I'm not sure if that's an explicit difference they put in for wordcasting...any thoughts from the community?

Edit: also, if it does affect the size, would the size bonus be lessened if cast on a creature that was large+ to begin with?

[partyrico]

In this case the target of the spell doesn't actually increase in size. You'll notice the claw and bite attacks stay the same size depending on the size of the target and don't scale with higher levels. Thus this spell could be cast on any sized creature for the same bonus.

[Atracious]

partyrico wrote:

In this case the target of the spell doesn't actually increase in size. You'll notice the claw and bite attacks stay the same size depending on the size of the target and don't scale with higher levels. Thus this spell could be cast on any sized creature for the same bonus.

My understanding was that alter form was small/medium as monstrous physique I and that bestial and monstrous form would be tiny/large & dimunitive/huge, as per monstrous physiqueII/III, respectively. But since they don't re-list the bite/claw attack values I think you're right. That kinda sucks though because it means that a wordcaster can't enlarge person...unless I missed something...

[partyrico]

Yea, the wordspells are very different from the standard spells. There are some effects wordcasters don't get, some that standard casters don't get, and some that are more or less powerful (eg the servitor wordspell is a standard action instead of a full-round action)

[hogarth]

Unfortunately, the Change words got kind of botched. For instance, they're from the polymorph subschool, but they seemingly don't follow the usual rules for polymorph spells (e.g. the polymorph subschool says you get the natural attacks of the base creature you're mimicking, but the Change words don't say anything at all about a base creature).