Straightforward question that I can't find the answer to: if a vampire changes into a dire bat, is it still vulnerable to light?
Nothing says they don't lose their vulnerability to sunlight when they change shape, so they don't lose it and are still vulnerable.
Well, really it depends on whether light vulnerability is considered "form dependent" or not.
While under the effects of a polymorph spell, you lose all extraordinary and supernatural abilities that depend on your original form (such as keen senses, scent, and darkvision), as well as any natural attacks and movement types possessed by your original form. You also lose any class features that depend upon form, but those that allow you to add features (such as sorcerers that can grow claws) still function. While most of these should be obvious, the GM is the final arbiter of what abilities depend on form and are lost when a new form is assumed. Your new form might restore a number of these abilities if they are possessed by the new form.
Note that it doesn't matter whether you SEE the sun-light or not, it damages you regardless... So I don't think it's tied to any special feature of Vampire eyes. I would say that it doesn't depend on form, and thus it still applies while Polymorphed.
Note that Vampire template can be applied to ANY living creature, so there doesn't seem to be any incompatability with bat form. Although that makes me wonder... if you Polymorphed into a Skeleton... or a Construct, would you no longer use the Vampire abilities/ vulnerabilities? Hmmm...
The limitations on sunlight damaging vampires is in the text for vampires.
You don't need to consult other sources to see if sunlight kills them.
It does.
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Just think of the shenanigans that would occur if creatures could polymorph to avoid their vulnerabilities. If a vampire could travel by day by turning into a bat, then it could also avoid ranger hatred effects by polymorphing or damage from holy water or channeling effects. Any spellcasting undead could also avoid being undead by polymorphing into something not undead. Luckily for the living, none of these cases exist.
In a nutshell, a polymorph effect doesn't let somebody become a different creature as much as it lets it adopt some aspects of the creature that it's trying to impersonate.
For more information, check out the general rules on polymorph from the core rulebook.
Everyone knows that THIS is canon, so yeah.
Just think of the shenanigans that would occur if creatures could polymorph to avoid their vulnerabilities.
I don't think we're supposed to consider vulnerabilities and abilities (or 'special qualities') as completely separate things, I mean "vulner ability" is just an ability that you would prefer not to have. If a vulnerability is "tied to form" in the way Polymorph rules mean, then you should lose it while Polymorphed IMHO.
Even some things listed as "Abilities" in fact amount to Vulnerabilities:
Special Abilities
Brittle (Ex) Bludgeoning and sonic attacks can inflict critical hits on a carnivorous crystal. A successful critical hit from such attacks causes the carnivorous crystal to split, even if the attack causes no damage. The crystal remains immune to precision-based damage, such as damage from sneak attacks.
That said, the effect would need to be physically incompatable with the new form in order to be suppressed during Polymorph, and most Vampire abilities are not going to qualify as that, thus they are not "form dependent".
But I would hazard that a Carnivorous Crystal Ooze's Brittle and Entrap and Subsonic Hum abilities ARE form-linked and don't apply when not in a crystaline/ooze form. The rules do say there is room for GM adjudication here... Although it would be nice for official guidance from Paizo on what exactly is form linked, some cases are clear, some are not.
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Just think of the shenanigans that would occur if creatures could polymorph to avoid their vulnerabilities.I don't think we're supposed to consider vulnerabilities and abilities (or 'special qualities') as completely separate things, I mean "vulner ability" is just an ability that you would prefer not to have. If a vulnerability is "tied to form" in the way Polymorph rules mean, then you should lose it while Polymorphed IMHO.
Woah, that sounds like a trick of phrasing. Sure vulnerabilities does have abilities as part of the root word, but we probably shouldn't break down words too much. Human has man in it but that doesn't mean that every human is a man. The language has too many built in vagaries.
And yet, I probably should have stuck with using the word "weaknesses" for those are the aspect to which I was actually referring. I think we'll agree that these are passed on through a polymorph to the new form. Weaknesses don't get (Su) or (Sp) descriptors, but are still part of the vampire template.
A GM should think long and hard before letting a vampire that travelled by day by polymorphing into a bat lose its weakness to daylight, holy water, mirrors, garlic, wooden stakes, and needing permission to cross portals. Just have it polymorph (via some other spell or like ability from stacked class levels) into something with a tunneling speed to avoid the daylight.
OK, I thought it was clear from my previous post that I wasn't so much disputing the specific case of Vampire vs Bat form,
as much as addressing what some people here are trying to put forward as a general rule...
And demonstrating from actual RAW that it isn't actually as clear-cut as people would like to put it,
including the basic distinction of "Ability" in some cases including vulnerabilities which entail no "action" of the creature itself.
The fact that the RAW does include the possibility of GM adjudication of form-linked abilities remains fact,
although IMHO the standard here should be "beyond a plausible doubt", i.e. if there's a reasonable possibility it isn't form-linked, it's not.
Cases like Vampire where it's a Template (that can be applied to many potential base forms) are especially easily shown to be non-form based.