What's the consensus on the possibility of shapeshifting?

[Megabass]

Of all that crawl has to offer, there's the noticeable lack of 'polymorph self'. I mean I suppose serious business polymorphing would be hard to balance, but I can see it being reasonable for things like a potential Druid class's Wild Shape (Reference http://www.d20srd.org/srd/classes/druid.htm#wildShape), or other such themed morphing.

I was just wondering if anyone knew if there was an official stance on this sorta thing, i.e. is it something that has been considered int he past, never brought up, or that the devs are outright against?

Either way, it'd be fun to hear others' thoughts/ideas, so shoot.

[whelen]

Another consideration is the rather limited purpose of shapeshifting. Few monsters have a ranged attack that doesn't use ammo or have a breath timer, so... the variety is limited. We've got low ac fast (spider form), high ac slow (statue form), ice (ice beast), fire (dragon form), high damage without losing equips (blade hands). What else is there? The big bases are covered, so what else is worth implementing that isn't redundant?

Having a shapeshifter race similar to felids (limited equips, monster-ey rather than player-ey) or demonspawn (unexpected race changes) would be pretty nice, but that takes a lot, lot, lot of balancing and implementation.

[dpeg]

whelen nailed it down. We also got the undead form, with all the benefits it brings.
A little side note: There's also bat form for Vampires, and hog form for everyone
There probably is some potential left, but I am pretty sure Nethack's fully open self-polymorphing is out of the question. (It is a very interesting mechanic, to be sure, I just don't think it makes for very good gameplay.) Perhaps some holy form, or a form where you naturally lead a band? Just don't expect too much

[galehar]

I'd like if we could add one more swimming and one more flying forms. Maybe shark (water only, high stealth) and griffon (high EV / speed).

[jackalKnight]

Yeah, Griffon would give Transmuters and alternate to Fly that would open some interesting opportunities.

[Tiber]

An electric type maybe?

[Stormfox]

Electric type? Isn't that how Nikola went wrong?

In all seriousness, do an electric eel instead of the shark and that would cover that.

[danr]

But wait - what about sharks with lasers? We need a water-based transmutation with a ranged attack!

Hey - a transmutation with a ranged attack could be fun - manticore?

[smock]

Hey - a transmutation with a ranged attack could be fun - manticore?

I'd cast "Mantle of the Manticore." Awesome.

Also, I'd like Ice Form better if it turned me into a polar bear. Losing the freezing attack would be tough, but I really like the idea of turning into cool things, and ice beasts are cold not cool.

[galehar]

Hey - a transmutation with a ranged attack could be fun - manticore?

Dragon Form already gives you a ranged attack. The only problem is that nobody uses Dragon Form.

That's why I think a more accessible flying form would be nice. And a Tmut/Air spell sounds fun
Forms with ranged attack why not, but manticore? really? Not very exciting...

[zasvid]

I think it would be interesting to have some crazy transformations. An acidic jelly. A swarm of bees. Yeah, a swarm of bees would be a fun one.

[mageykun]

Oh my god, +1 for the swarm of bees. Tmut/poison/air. For your ranged attack, you launch some of your own bees at the enemy. The number of bees you transform into scales with hp. Your attacks per turn scales with the number of bees, ie remaining hp (like a hydra- but with bees instead of heads). Using your ranged attack costs bees/hp. Or maybe if we make them bees of returning, it only costs hp if the launched bee(s) don't make it back.



Edit: Maybe give felid like restrictions on inventory use (throwing, evoking, etc) to balance out the awesomeness. Possibly disalow picking up items for the duration, since bees lack hands.

[danr]

I want dogs that bark, and when they bark, bees come shooting out of their mouth (credit to Homer Simpson for this idea).

For me, it's either that or sharks with lasers.

/silliness

Swarm of bees would probably me much easier to implement as a summoning spell. Sort of a blend between butterflies and scorpions. Problem is that butterflies is already crazy good.

Actually, I just did this today! I cast shadow creatures in the Hive, and I got not one but 6-7 bees!

[galehar]

Swarm of bees would probably me much easier to implement as a summoning spell. Sort of a blend between butterflies and scorpions. Problem is that butterflies is already crazy good.

There's actually a user currently working on patch to implement swarms as a kind of cloud-like monster.

[galehar]

Summoning a swarm of bees sounds great, too. Being usable in the same way as Summon Butterflies is not a problem, as Summon Butterflies is only overpowered because it's a level 1 spell; if Summon Bee Swarm is level 7, you aren't going to see people spamming it like they can Summon Butterflies.

Currently, only the monster is coded, I'm not sure if there's any plan for a summon spell. The patch has been submitted. I think it doesn't apply to trunk though, because I made lot of changes on the wall clinging code.

[MrMisterMonkey]

who needs a summoning spell when you have Breathe Bees