Polymorph in SFS

[DrakeRoberts]

A few questions about using Polymorph in SFS:

1) What sources are legal for taking Racial Traits from? The Alien Archives? Core Rulebook? Pact Worlds? What about alternate racial traits from the Character Operations Manual? How about races from scenarios provided as boons (and do you need to slot the boon for that?)?

2) The Additional Resources says: "No ability that is not explicitly called out in the spell description can be gained from this spell." Does this mean that trample, compression, breathing, breath weapon, and amphibious are disallowed? The polymorph rules say that those options are always open. Is the intent of the quoted line to override that?

3) What racial traits do you lose if you polymorph into a made-up form? What about if you transform into a specific creature form?

4) Do you apply Weapon Specialization to your Natural Attack damage? What about if you have Versatile Weapon Specialization? Does taking the Natural Attack Racial Trait (say of a Vesk) give you their 1.5 x level Weapon Specialization. If any of these Weapon Specialization scenarios is valid, do you use the CR of the form, or your level, to determine damage?

[Xenocrat]

1) Good question! Legal races to play are probably your safest bet, plus all the legal options from COM.

2) I always thought the intent of this language was to prevent the "special abilities" issues from taking a specific form and trying to get something OP from an alien stat block, but as written I think you're right, it does disallow trample, compression, breathing, breath weapon, and amphibious because those are mentioned in the general polymorph rules, not in the spell description.

3) I don't think you lose any in either situation. You add abilities from your Polymorph form and look different, but your existing abilities don't change, although they might be disguised (if you take an eyeless form, your skin has nonobvious light sensing spots, for example).

4) You don't apply weapon specialization to the free natural attack, it's garbage and limited by design. If you take a racial natural attack I think your weapon specialization bonus is capped by the CR of the polymorph spell in use, just as caster level would be on a racial trait SLA.

[DrakeRoberts]

1) Well the Additional Resources mentions using Racial Traits that are in the sidebars. I assume that's only for races in the Alien Archives books, since the Core Book racial traits aren't exactly in a Sidebar. But since as of Alien Archive 2 there were no races legal for play without a boon, I don't think "legal races" can be right...

2) I thought it was to prevent the special abilities too, but since there is already a bullet point for that, I was figuring it likely had to be something different. Weird not to allow amphibious/breathing though... makes something like a fish form basically impossible.

3) I imagine you need to lose some things? I mean, how can you have the four-armed racial trait in a form that only has two arms? The text says you only lose what you explicitly lose, though. I guess the question is if the Appearance traits would count as explicitly losing something (like four-arms)? Although, that seems more implicit than explicit.

4) So you're saying taking the Vesk racial trait for Natural attack should give you 1d3 + Str + (1.5 x (min of CL and CR))? With your normal attack roll of BAB + Str, rather than the attacks and damages dictated by the Natural Attack form rules?

Thanks for weighing in Xenocrat. I really like the idea behind Polymorph, but the rules are complicated, and the SFS rules just add to them.

[Xenocrat]

DrakeRoberts wrote:

1) Well the Additional Resources mentions using Racial Traits that are in the sidebars. I assume that's only for races in the Alien Archives books, since the Core Book racial traits aren't exactly in a Sidebar. But since as of Alien Archive 2 there were no races legal for play without a boon, I don't think "legal races" can be right...

2) I thought it was to prevent the special abilities too, but since there is already a bullet point for that, I was figuring it likely had to be something different. Weird not to allow amphibious/breathing though... makes something like a fish form basically impossible.

3) I imagine you need to lose some things? I mean, how can you have the four-armed racial trait in a form that only has two arms? The text says you only lose what you explicitly lose, though. I guess the question is if the Appearance traits would count as explicitly losing something (like four-arms)? Although, that seems more implicit than explicit.

4) So you're saying taking the Vesk racial trait for Natural attack should give you 1d3 + Str + (1.5 x (min of CL and CR))? With your normal attack roll of BAB + Str, rather than the attacks and damages dictated by the Natural Attack form rules?

Thanks for weighing in Xenocrat. I really like the idea behind Polymorph, but the rules are complicated, and the SFS rules just add to them.

1) And now I think you're probably right!

2) I think you can still accomplish a lot of these via racial traits. There's a breath weapon from Haan, compression from a couple of races, amphibious breathing I think from 1-2 races.

3) I think you could choose to trade away some things, but you could also be a Kasatha who turns into a four armed elf and explain it away as using the biotech version of extra arm augmentations. Or you're just a weird looking mutant who doesn't care to explain why you're so nonstandard. Not optimal if you're trying to blend in as a disguise, of course.

4) Yes, I think that's the outcome of the rules. Offensive output just isn't the strong point of polymorph in this game.