Prerequisite: 15th level
You can cast Alter Self at will, without expending a spell slot.
Master of Myriad Forms: A Change for the Worse
Review by Sam West, Twitter: @CrierKobold
Alter Self is a nifty little 2nd level spell; you get to pick between water breathing and a swim speed, a changeling-style body swap, or bad magical natural weapons. At 3rd level when characters first get access to this, adding these three tools to your belt for just one 2nd level spell slot is a fine enough deal. You probably aren’t ever getting much out of the natural weapons, and with how specific your environment needs to be to make aquatic adaptation valuable, you’re most often leaning on the change appearance section of Alter Self to get value from it. Master of Myriad Forms lets you do this “at will”, but there’s a major hiccup with that: it eats your concentration. On top of that, each of these abilities you can get WAY better tools to engage with for a much cheaper cost earlier in the game. Getting the flexibility of all three by 15th level is just not it.
For starters, Gift of the Depths gives you the aquatic adaptation text permanently, no concentration required, and gives you a free cast of Water Breathing once a long rest. I don’t love Gift of the Depths, as Water Breathing is often good enough to have on somebody with ritual casting (which can be you with Book of Ancient Secrets). Master of Myriad Forms requires you to be TEN LEVELS HIGHER to get access to it, and ties up your concentration to breathe underwater in the first place.
Mask of Many Faces gives you Disguise Self at will. While not strictly better than the change appearance section of Alter Self, as it can’t hold up to physical inspection, it has a few other major things going for it: it doesn’t take your concentration (ever) and adds on illusory changes to your apparel. Both of these are critical to having a flexible tool you can bust out whenever you want, regardless of what else you're concentrating on, and this is something you’ve had access to since 2nd level. 13 levels earlier.
Natural Weapons are terrible. You don’t want to be spending actions making one-two unarmed strikes for 1d6+1 damage. You can do better than that. You can get the same average damage out of a mundane greatclub, and nobody is excited to bust out a mundane greatclub. You can’t attack with your casting modifier or anything; you’re just getting +1 Strength based attacks with your unarmed strikes, and dealing mediocre damage. Instead, you could take Thirsting Blade or Agonizing Blast.
If this just gave you all three of the Alter Self abilities you could toggle on and off at will, I’d say it was fine, but shouldn’t have the outrageous 15th level prerequisite. As it stands, I wouldn’t even recommend it for builds that could get it at 2nd level for long term play, as there are other cheap and effective ways to get these effects without eating your concentration. When you staple these two problems together, I can’t justify recommending Master of Myriad forms to anyone. There are just far better options to get exactly what it's offering, and in a way that works alongside other spells you want to be using.
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