New Species: Shapeshifter


Although the central place for design discussion is ##crawl-dev on freenode, some may find it helpful to discuss requests and suggestions here first.

Mines Malingerer

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Joined: Monday, 16th May 2011, 16:04

Post Wednesday, 6th July 2011, 20:56

New Species: Shapeshifter

just a random idea i've been playing with. would it work?

you are a shapeshifter. all weap/armor slots in your basic, unshifted form are disallowed, as they would interfere with your ability to shapeshift.

you are given a few very basic forms to start the game with. after, you may shapeshift into the form of any monster (excluding undead and demons) you have previously killed in the game, as long as that creature's total HD/HP are lower than your current HD/HP. yo may shapeshift to another form during or outside of battle, as long as the new form's HP does not exceed your current HP (if it does, you get a message like 'you feel too weak to manage the transformation')

in shapeshifted form, you can pick up/use any type of equipment that they could use, at their skill level (or an approximate). this also includes spells, if you have the appropriate books. spells would have to be relearned when you shapeshifted to a casting form though, and would be forgotten immediately if you left that form.

in shapeshifted form, you slowly consume mana (or, maybe, simply not regenerate it by normal means?). when your mana is completely depleted, you revert back to a basic 'shapeshifter' form, whereupon you begin to regenerate mana.

would this work?



possible variants:

you have to commit to certain forms by committing a percentage of your total HP to each form you want to use (the percentage would be the average total of that creature's HD), and those forms are then 'locked' in your memory, you can change between any at will. shapeshifter HD would be higher than normal. you would 'store' forms like spells, and require a scroll of amnesia to forget a form and 'free up' the HD for another form.

do not use monster skill levels, but rather keep your own, training based on whatever you use in your different forms? (might be really tough though since your skills would likely be very spread out. could be compensated by quicker learning?)
Last edited by QTQuazar on Wednesday, 6th July 2011, 22:57, edited 1 time in total.

Dungeon Master

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Post Wednesday, 6th July 2011, 21:52

Re: New Class: Shapeshifter

Backgrounds in Crawl never give game-modifying features; that is left to species and gods.

Shoals Surfer

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Joined: Thursday, 9th June 2011, 19:12

Post Wednesday, 6th July 2011, 22:14

Re: New Class: Shapeshifter

This might work as a species (what I think you intended it to be), but it would need a lot of fleshing out.

Bim

Crypt Cleanser

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Joined: Wednesday, 5th January 2011, 15:51

Post Wednesday, 6th July 2011, 22:31

Re: New Class: Shapeshifter

There have been LOADS of similar ideas (brain parasites, ghosts and all sorts) and I think it really has potential, but imagine the difficulty as a player (let alone coding and balancing!!) of playing as loads of different creatures?!?
Not only this, but you also have to take into account that monsters don't work the same as players at all, so it wouldn't be a case of just throwing the stats and sprite over to the player, it'd need for all monsters to be basically re done (or sort of made again) so that this could work.
Finally, how would you balance it? none of the creatures are as strong as a player (as you can kill them all!) especially if they had to be relatively weak to be changed into.

I'd have a look at the wiki pages and find things like this and contribute. It's a really good idea, and it would be awesome if this could be achieved, but I don't think crawl is right for this kind of thing at the moment.
2012 Winner of fewest proposed ideas implemented by devs.

Mines Malingerer

Posts: 42

Joined: Monday, 16th May 2011, 16:04

Post Wednesday, 6th July 2011, 22:57

Re: New Species: Shapeshifter

dpeg wrote:Backgrounds in Crawl never give game-modifying features; that is left to species and gods.


i meant species. tired, have insomnia. subject adjusted.
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Vestibule Violator

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Post Friday, 8th July 2011, 11:35

Re: New Species: Shapeshifter

And the ghosts of Shang Tsung will flood the upper dungeons. =)
If you find any mistakes or typos in my post, feel free to PM me about it. Thanks in advance!

The Verse flows throughout Aquaria...
Through each ripple and wave...
Through every living being...
The Verse binds us all as one.

Abyss Ambulator

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Location: Maryland, USA

Post Friday, 8th July 2011, 13:21

Re: New Species: Shapeshifter

MyOtheHedgeFox wrote:And the ghosts of Shang Tsung will flood the upper dungeons. =)

You die...
The voice of Xom booms out: "FATALITY!!!"
You fall off the wall. You have a feeling of ineptitude.

For this message the author Stormfox has received thanks:
MyOtheHedgeFox
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Vestibule Violator

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Post Friday, 8th July 2011, 13:43

Re: New Species: Shapeshifter

Or:
You kick the ghost!
A shady image of a happy man in a cap appears in the corner of your vision for a short moment!
You hear a high-pitched shout!
If you find any mistakes or typos in my post, feel free to PM me about it. Thanks in advance!

The Verse flows throughout Aquaria...
Through each ripple and wave...
Through every living being...
The Verse binds us all as one.

Mines Malingerer

Posts: 42

Joined: Friday, 7th January 2011, 01:41

Post Saturday, 9th July 2011, 21:58

Re: New Species: Shapeshifter

To avoid re-doing all the monsters, you could make the shapeshifted player play as one of the monsters while melding his/her equipment (except maybe amulets and rings) and not using his skills to modify his actions, just his HD, while if he shifts into one of the playable races, he would be playing using his stats and skills but with the species traits. Maybe you could have an 'unshifted' form (something like weaker humans (in stats and skills)) to allow skill training for when you shift into one of the races, also you could set a 3-4 turns delay to transformations to avoid abuse, and the "plus" the species would have to give incentive, is that you have a special abbility to temporarily shift into a creature with bigger HD than yours (I don't know about how long it would last)

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