Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
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Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
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from what i can tell, dragons can transform into their humanoid forms at will.
if i cast true polymorph on myself and hold concentration for the full hour, can i then transform between normal bard form and dragon form at will?
Technically, the shapechange features of either 2014 or 2024 dragons key off of Challenge Rating, and so cannot turn into PCs since character sheets do not have a Challenge Rating.
Yes, and quite apart from that, it really doesn't seem like the intent of any of this is to effectively give a PC the ability to cast a ninth-level spell as many times as they want whenever they want.
pronouns: he/she/they
well, would have been nice for when i run out of spell slots
If you really want to be a dragon:
Now, strangely enough, this doesn't actually get you all of the dragon's features in 2024. It does get you the dragon's hp, HD, str/dex/con, speeds, and senses. But you do retain all your features, including racial features strangely enough, and that means you can still cast spells. (Talk to your DM about if you get anything else; it is a little weird that you end up with this big mouth full of teeth, and these large claws, but your unarmed strike still does just 1 point of bludgeoning damage + strength.)
You can cast Magic Jar a second time whenever you need to do so to repossess your body without returning the dragon's body to it. Or you could use Shapechange or similar to resume human form when you need to do so. (Amusingly, you can also shapechange your dragon body into... a dragon, and get temp hp on top of your dragon hp + their actual abilities like attack routine and breath attack).
I recommend leaving your original body somewhere with a Sequester Spell and a Glyph of Warding containing a Deathward spell, both set to trigger when your soul returns to your body. (In 2024 rules, if the jar is broken and your body is >100' away, your soul first returns to your body, then dies. So the Deathward triggers first and prevents your death, then the Sequester ends and you're free to act, but your body has been perfectly preserved).
A bard is one of the few ways to do all these things by himself, because of Magical Secrets.
Note that the target of Magic Jar is the original body, so you can't dispel the jar or the possessed target (because the magic is in neither place), only the original body (which is safely sequestered somewhere), so Dispel Magic should not be a problem.
Finally, Magic Jar only targets the possessed body at the moment of possession, so you don't need to dutifully cast Nystul's for 30 days to make it permanent. Once you're in possession, you're free to allow it to lapse.
The bit about the saving throw is getting a bit meta for in-game instructions.
They can voluntarily choose to do it, so there must be some way to express it in-world.
Potentially, but given that it takes a 5th- well, actually 8th in this case- level spell to get allowing itself to be harmed on the table, you're really stretching the power budget of a 2nd level spell to the breaking point. Plus, strictly speaking a creature can't necessarily know if a spell will deal damage to it before the effect resolves, so instructing it to allow a spell to take effect would seem to break the limits of Suggestion in the first place. Note that neither example given for the spell causes the creature to allow someone it should know is an enemy to do something to it directly.
At the end of the day, spells like Suggestion are always going to need a DM to referee the intent of their restrictions, because you can't write a one-paragraph summary that covers all of the "what abouts" people will split semantic hairs over. It's a 2nd level spell, intended to be on the level of "you don't need to see our papers, these aren't the droids you're looking for". Turning that into "let me possess you" is quite the leap.
I agree with Ace, but I just wanted to share here a similar thread from "Dungeons Master Only" if it might be interesting to you: True Polymorph.
It only needs to sound achievable. At no point do you do anything to it which deals damage, which is the only thing Suggestion forbids - this is clearly within both the literal wording and the intent. There is no prohibition on the suggestion being harmful in some more general way in 2024. Indeed, the examples of valid suggestions are certainly 'harmful' in a more general sense than damage; handing over the key to the vault is a betrayal, liable to get you killed or at least expelled and shunned when your buddies know what you did. Making the target do something not in their interest is the entire point of the spell. And it doesn't even have to be a course of action that won't deal damage, just not obviously deal damage. Suggesting someone cross that (illusionary) bridge across the mountain gorge is, from their perspective, not obviously going to deal damage, because they don't know its an illusion (and that they'll actually fall to their death). Suggestion is just that good and versatile - there's a reason it's one of the best spells in the game. And the wording was deliberately changed to be very permissive in 2024. It is not just a 'these aren't the droids you're looking for', it's 'get the target to do what you want them to do'. Indeed, you could probably literally say 'let me possess you', and that both sounds achievable and does not obviously do damage, so it passes the only restrictions on Suggestion.