Alter Self: People Can Change

Usable By: Artificer, Sorcerer, Wizard

Spell Level: 2

School: Transmutation

Casting Time: 1 action

Range: Self

Duration: Concentration, up to 1 hour

Components: V, S

You assume a different form. When you cast the spell, choose one of the following options, the effects of which last for the duration of the spell. While the spell lasts, you can end one option as an action to gain the benefits of a different one.

Aquatic Adaptation. You adapt your body to an aquatic environment, sprouting gills and growing webbing between your fingers. You can breathe underwater and gain a swimming speed equal to your walking speed.

Change Appearance. You transform your appearance. You decide what you look like, including your height, weight, facial features, sound of your voice, hair length, coloration, and distinguishing characteristics, if any. You can make yourself appear as a member of another race, though none of your statistics change. You also can’t appear as a creature of a different size than you, and your basic shape stays the same; if you’re bipedal, you an’t use this spell to become quadrupedal, for instance. At any time for the duration of the spell, you can use your action to change your appearance in this way again.

Natural Weapons. You grow claws, fangs, spines, horns, or a different natural weapon of your choice. Your unarmed strikes deal 1d6 bludgeoning, piercing, or slashing damage, as appropriate to the natural weapon you chose, and you are proficient with your unarmed strikes. Finally, the natural weapon is magic and you have a +1 bonus to the attack and damage rolls you make using it.

Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold

Alter Self is lying to you. It's not one spell, but three. Each is kind of wildly different from the other, and while I think all of them would work just fine as 1st level effects, having them packaged together doesn’t really matter when only one of the options is what you’ll realistically want from it.

Aquatic Adaptation will be useless in most games. However, sometimes you’ll be swashbuckling up and down the Sword Coast and somehow be the only person without a swim speed. Aquatic Adaptation offers you a tool to explore with the rest of the group. The moment you get access to Water Breathing you’ll likely never cast this mode again.

Natural Weapons is frankly atrocious. The only redeeming quality is getting that magical tag that lets you overcome resistances. This would be way better if you could stick it on a friend instead, but when it's just going on you, you’re left wondering if you’d have been better off casting a damaging spell (which by definition is magical) instead of making attack rolls with a +3 or +4 to hit and dealing tiny amounts of damage. Of all the modes available, despite being the damaging mode, Natural Weapons is something you’ll want the least.

Change Appearance is Disguise Self with the slight upsides of being physical and allowing you to shift forms. Being able to shift from form to form is nifty, and can give you the chameleon feel quite well. Functionally you’ll become a changeling for an hour, and that’s oftentimes going to be long enough for whatever deception mission you’re on. This isn’t going to be something used often, though, unless you’re deep into an espionage arch or actively running a bunch of cons. It's definitely the strongest mode here, and is the only option that’s really better than 1st level effect.

Looking at all three options together highlights the kinds of characters that want it: if you’re in the market for Change Appearance, this is that with two other more or less pointless modes. Having this in your spellbook as a wizard isn’t an enormous ask, but as a sorcerer you really can’t afford to spend one of your precious few known spells on something you don’t plan to regularly cast. If you want to do the Natural Weapon things or the Aquatic Adaptation stuff, you really need to be looking outside of your spell list towards subclasses or multi-classing. These versions are basically unusable.

5e Spells

Alter Self: People Can Change