D&D: The Five Best Critters to Polymorph Your Enemies Into
Dealing with a rampaging owlbear or marauding dragon? Turn them into something much less spiky and watch your problems melt away.
Wizards and witches turning their enemies into newts or frogs is a trope that’s older than Dungeons & Dragons. Little wonder, then, that once you hit a certain level, you can accomplish this feat for yourself. And in 5th Edition, you don’t even need to be a Wizard. Almost every caster has the ability to polymorph someone.
If the spell isn’t on a class list, it’s easy to take a subclass and find it. But what should you transform your enemies into? Pick something too fast or with surprising mobility options and they might get away. With these five options you’ll have your enemies exactly where you want them.
Sheep
This one’s a classic for a reason. Turning your foes into a sheep can effectively remove any damage they can do, and they’re weak enough that you can pretty reliably restrain one if you need to. But be careful, their 30ft. movement speed means they might be able to outrun you if they get a chance.
Crab
Okay hear me out. If you’re turning your enemies into a sheep, you might well consider turning them into a crab. Because sure, the crab does have an attack and blindsight, but it’s also slower than the sheep and you can grapple/restrain/pin them real easy and just toss it in the Bag of Holding. Then just keep your opponent in there until the bag runs out of oxygen, and sure, you’re kind of a monster and definitely a murderer, but 10 minutes is all it takes.
Frog
Okay suppose you don’t want to kill your opponent. You could always just turn them into a frog. Which is a classic. Frogs have the advantage of having enough hit points that they can’t just leap into that fireball you cast to turn themselves back into whatever they were, but their move speed is only 20, so most parties can definitely outrun them.
The one thing you’ll have to worry about is their leaping ability, but that brings us to…
Rat
The rat is a great option. Not only do they not have any mode of speed other than a plain ol’ walking speed, but they also don’t have much in the way of an attack to speak of either. Nor can they leap. Plus you get an adorable rat for an hour. You might lose track of them though, if they can hide.
Killer Whale
Okay hear me out though. The one problem most of those other forms have is that, no matter what, they have limited mobility, and at the end of the day they just have a small buffer of hit points between them and your enemy being back to their true form again, because when you kill a polymorphed form, they pop back into their regular form like nothing had happened.
But if you want an hour long “take the enemy out of the fight” spell, then you need an opponent of at least 3rd level/CR 3 so you can transform them into a Killer Whale. Why would you do this? Because on land, killer whales have a movement speed of 0ft. But they’re also amphibious, and so can breathe on land or underwater according to the rules, so they won’t suffocate.
And you’ll definitely know where they are. No hiding the orca.
Now you know. So get out there and polymorph with style!
