Does stoneskin actually turn your skin to stone or just make it hard as stone?

[Yqatuba]

I actually think the second one because: 1. Its abjuration not transmutation 2. The text doesn't say it turns your skin to stone, just that it makes you resistant to slashing, piercing, and bludgeoning damage.

[Kayerloth]

Number 2

[Darigaaz the Igniter]

It's definitely only making you tougher.

That being said, there's not harm in flavoring it as actually giving your skin stonelike qualities as long as mechanically it does the same thing.

[Meirril]

Neither actually. It gives you DR 10/adamantine, which is not hardness 5 like stone.

[Adjoint]

I agree that is no trnasmutation, and I think that therefore it doesn't affect skin at all. I imagine it creating a paper-thin, yet extremely durable layer of diamond and granite dust (the material component of the spell) around your skin, and this layer is what gives you damage reduction.

[Val'bryn2]

As they say. A lot of spells have names that don't exactly match up with what they do. burning hands doesn't set your hand on fire, Chill Touch does no cold damage, Stoneskin doesn't change your skin

[LordKailas]

Val'bryn2 wrote:

As they say. A lot of spells have names that don't exactly match up with what they do. burning hands doesn't set your hand on fire, Chill Touch does no cold damage, Stoneskin doesn't change your skin

burning mouth on the other hand....

[Yqatuba]

I imagined it would turn the caster's skin sort of a slate gray color.

[deuxhero]

For what it's worth, NWN2 (maybe 1) did make a character (the entire character, clothing/armor included) under stoneskin have a stone texture. Of course NWN2 also neglected to include the material component cost making it massively OP.