Polymorph Self?

[zimmerwald1915]

The shifter's headband and tentacle cloak found in Ultimate Equipment both list the spell "polymorph self" among their construction prerequisites. This spell, however, does not seem to exist. So to what spell is the book referring? Alter self? Polymorph?

[Val'bryn2]

Polymorph.

[Tacticslion]

Wow. What a call-back.

Val'bryn2 wrote:

Polymorph.

This is correct.

zimmerwald1915 wrote:

The shifter's headband and tentacle cloak found in Ultimate Equipment both list the spell "polymorph self" among their construction prerequisites. This spell, however, does not seem to exist. So to what spell is the book referring? Alter self? Polymorph?

Those are actually very astute and reasonable guesses, lacking the actual information and history! Well thought-out!

Polymorph used to be two different spells in the original incarnation of the d20 system: polymorph self and polymorph other (among a host of other differences between the current incarnation and the originals).

They were folded into a singular spell, polymorph during the 3.5 transition, and that spell was brought over to Pathfinder.

Looks like some of the writers and editors of Ultimate Equipment have writing pedigrees stretching back to the beginning of the system! :D

Just as a fun/weird trivia bit, alter self used to be called change self instead. That was one of the more arbitrary changes, but it's a reasonable and understandable change, if not entirely necessary - they wanted to clarify that you weren't becoming a different person, merely altering the same person.