SCS Improved shapeshifting - Symbolic paws missing

Myriel_of_Toril

Heya,

i installed the SCS component 'Improved shapeshifting', after seeing videos with druids having these tokens to 'equip' a certain shapeshift. (SCS readme: ... It does so by creating "symbolic paws": if you equip one, you instantly shapeshift).

My new druid/fighter has now her first shapeshift (lvl 5 winter wolf), but no token apears when using the shapeshift. Would this be a bug, or is it normal for a low lvl shapeshift not to have these symbolic paws? I wanne make sure this is working, before i level up all the way up to fire/earth elemental.

Thanks ,
M.

jmerry

The component varies in how it handles the paws. Sometimes you get them directly (and only once), sometimes you get a daily ability that you have to use to create them. But wait, winter wolf? ... The "improved shapeshifting" component only applies to the vanilla BG-series shapeshifts. You will never get a winter wolf token, no matter what. The component is incompatible with your setup, and you really shouldn't have been allowed to install it at all.

Myriel_of_Toril

Apparently the winter wolf and my new shapeshift, the lvl 7 boring beetle, are part of the icewindification mod (IWD class updates: Druid: Use IWD Shapeshifting and Ability Progression). I thought this was pretty compatible with stratagems. I followed Coredumped's installation guide on this.

Perhaps the token system will still apply with vanilla shifts like werewolf? I guess i'll have to level a bit more and wait and see.

jmerry

IWDification is broadly compatible with SCS. The spells are even explicitly supported. But this component of IWDification and this component of SCS are not compatible. You'll only get tokens if the IWDification happens to leave the original resource names for the shapeshift spells in place. Basically, this incompatibility causes the SCS component to do nothing for you. But I think it still does grant shapeshifting ability to druid enemies, because those don't use the kit ability tables.

Myriel_of_Toril

I uninstalled the IWD component, but unsurprisingly the game didn't add my lvl 7 vanilla shapeshifts in my saved game. But I tested it out in a quick Black Pits run and yep, the vanilla low level shifts now correctly appear as tokens. I could've added the innate abilities with EE on my old character, but i enjoyed fighter-druid so much that i'm just gonne reroll the character

Thanks for your help,
M.

jmerry

Installing or uninstalling components mid-run is always unreliable; some things change immediately, some things don't change at all, and there are several stages inbetween.

In this case, the various shapeshift abilities, in whatever form, are granted by the kit ability tables. These are applied when a character levels up past a key threshold, or when a character that has already reached that threshold joins/rejoins the party. So if it's your protagonist, any abilities tied to levels you've already reached are locked in. Even if you've uninstalled the component that defined those abilities so they're no longer usable (and might well crash the game if you tried to use them). For a non-protagonist party member, dismissing them and bringing them back should grant the new shapeshift abilities.