Help Me Understand Shapeshifting (e.g. the Avenger's Fire Salamander Form)
Dux89
Member Posts: 47
Hi all. I've never played through with CHARNAME as a druid before and I've always noticed that Jaheira's shapeshifting into bears or a wolf is basically garbage so I don't have any experience shapeshifting. The Shapeshifter kit would be cool but seeing as it's so terribly nerfed and I hope to play into BGII, that's out. However, the Avenger looks like an interesting kit, with the new forms as melee possibilities since CHARNAME clearly wouldn't be taking on melee himself wearing leather and wielding a club.
That said, I don't quite understand the mechanics of shapeshifting. Does the shapeshifted form have the Thac0 and HP equivalent to my character's level? Do the number of attacks change, or will the spider always have the 4 attacks he has when you first get the ability to change?
Most importantly, what weapons are these forms attacking with? If I play through into BGII and ToB, will the shapeshifted forms become totally useless in melee against, say, Fire Giants, or tougher opponents that can only be hit by magical weapons? Or is that Fire Salamander's spear magical? Or does it get better over time? There just isn't enough info in the manual for me to answers these questions on my own so I'm hoping you can!
That said, I don't quite understand the mechanics of shapeshifting. Does the shapeshifted form have the Thac0 and HP equivalent to my character's level? Do the number of attacks change, or will the spider always have the 4 attacks he has when you first get the ability to change?
Most importantly, what weapons are these forms attacking with? If I play through into BGII and ToB, will the shapeshifted forms become totally useless in melee against, say, Fire Giants, or tougher opponents that can only be hit by magical weapons? Or is that Fire Salamander's spear magical? Or does it get better over time? There just isn't enough info in the manual for me to answers these questions on my own so I'm hoping you can!
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Comments
The Fire Salamander's weapon is not magical. (the Gnoll from Polymorph Self has a magic weapon.)
Shape shifted forms do not improve with level.
HP may change (up or down) if your new form changes your Con. Some forms also get bonus hp.
On the whole, shape shifting is not very good in the BG series.
To answer some of your questions:
The forms use your HP, modified by the form's CON bonus, if any. It also uses your THAC0, modified by the form's STR bonus. The forms use their own creature weapons. But I think it also takes into account your weapon proficencies in the case of the Fire Salamander.
The forms don't get any better.
The Fire Salamander is hasted, has 50% fire resistance, and has 18/75 STR, 19 DEX, but only 15 CON. It can also breathe fire onto an enemy for a bit of damage 3x/day.
The Wyvern form has 16 STR, 17 DEX, and 16 CON. It attacks twice and can poison on a failed save vs. death. The poison does 1 damage per second for 1 round. The poison save doesn't proc every hit though.
I forget the stats of the spider, but it attacks 4 times per round for pitiful damage. Not sure if the attacks cause poison.
The bay wyvern also gets bonus hp like the regular druid forms, and thus can be used to heal yourself.
Yes but will this be a viable strategy against Bodhi's Lair in BG2?
If I'm taking this character through, it seems to me that people agree that shapeshifting basically stinks before long. Too bad; I would have enjoyed taking on Irenicus with a powerful spider who wasn't still doing non-magical dagger-esque damage with each hit.
Was the Shapeshifter kept nerfed by design?
Well, at that time you'll have a bunch of chain lightning spells. So I'd expect you're not using the shapeshifts except for some filler (well and your deadly Chromatic Orbs.)
I assume there wasn't enough development time alocated to kits to rewrite shapshifting to scale with level.
The EE team have given no indication that they are interested in buffing underperforming kits. If they where, they would have done the Wizard Slayer first, which needs much much less work to fix.
Again, different from the Wizard Slayer or the Beastmaster or other kits that just suck.
The argument that the werewolf is somehow "nerfed" is based on the stats for the forms being different from the stats for an actual werewolf.
Apparently the kit werewolf stats are not listed; I'm going off of the stats the all other werewolfs/greater werewolfs have. As Fardragon points out.
@Fardragon
I see. I don't see how that warrants a "somehow 'nerfed'" when there is no info given, since I think it's more than reasonable to assume the form would behave as other werewolves do. But I see that it's always been intentional to make the kit's forms different from the other good werewolves in the game.
Now, the best way to do the shapeshifter would have been to have the form gain power as you level up. I'm pretty sure the reason it wasn't done was down to insufficent development resources, not a desire to deliberately make a rubbish kit.
Agreed that that would be the best way to handle it. Forms that don't change at all with new levels makes them unplayable no matter the form.
There are some mods which attempt to do this, by giving Druids better forms as they level up, just like their spells get better as they level up.
The engine can handle it.
You could, for example, give the werewolf form +2% Magic resistence per level. However, if you wanted it to gain immunity to normal weapons at a certain level you would have to remove the old version of the power and give a new version. It's possible, but you would have to give the new version a different name, which would cause problems in scripts and elsewhere.