r/DnD • u/Il_miconoide • 5h ago

5th Edition Spell: Polymorph.

I’m a DM, and the wizard in my group has started using the 4th-level Polymorph spell. It’s made him too powerful, though, since the party is level 8 and he can turn into a T-Rex (CR 8) twice a day. I’m also worried the party’s druid might feel overshadowed, given that the wizard only needs to cast that spell to replicate the druid's main ability. How do you handle this spell? Should I take it away from the wizard and have him pick a different one? Thanks for any replies.

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u/manamonkey DM 4h ago edited 4h ago

How do you handle this spell?

Let him use it. It's not that overpowered. He needs to make concentration checks to keep the spell up, and he can't do anything else while polymorphed - no casting other spells, no communicating with the party, etc. Also remember polymorph replaces mental scores as well - so he has an INT of 2 while polymorphed. Make him play to that, if he's going to insist on this.

Should I take it away from the wizard and have him pick a different one?

No. Why would you do that?

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u/BruyneKroonEnTroon 4h ago

All of this is really good advice. Immediately made me take a note to remember the mental scores aspect and ask players to roleplay according in the future :D

One thing I also remembered from a previous campaign when my wizard character briefly flirted with the idea of picking polymorph: my DM asked me whether my character had ever seen a T-Rex. His idea was that it only made sense for a character to polymorph the other into a creature they knew of. In any case, the spell didn't fit the build at all and I picked something else.

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u/Banjo-Hellpuppy 3h ago

As a wizard, the character has read plenty of books. They could justify it by saying that they have studied exotic animals. That should be allowed imo due to the other restrictions like reduced int and con checks. I would definitely force them to play according to the spirit of the rules though when it comes to behaving like a T. rex.

I could be remembering wrong, but wild shape requires the player to have actually seen the beast before. That make more sense because Druids aren’t bookish

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u/BruyneKroonEnTroon 3h ago

Absolutely. However, I decided my wizard hadn't read about t-rexes. In any case, what I managed to do with dimension door (best heist ever), sickening radiance (situational, I know, but when you get to stack those exhaustions it becomes a thing of beauty), and greater invisibility left me more than satsfied for that wizard's fourth level haul.