Is there an option for pre-focus shifter avatars,post focus?

[jelricle]

Is there any way to get the pre-focus avatars that our shifter forms had, after focusing?  My post-focus Beholder and Basilisk avatars are always getting stuck in tunnels and doors (and the post-focus vamipre form looks like a doofus, floating around like that!   :-)   )  ie. something like "!opt oldshape" or some such?  Srsly, what kind of Beholder shape is getting stuck in Beholder tunnels!   :-D

I think it would make sense from a role-playing sense in that a shifter would certainly remember how to be in the old form, and it definitely makes sense from a quality-of-playing sense (imho).

[Deleted]

Sizes and speeds, whether positive or negative are prices to pay for the various subraces and forms.

[chirality]

It seems like a character entirely based on changing shape at will should be the last build in the game to have trouble with getting stuck anywhere.

As for aesthetics, I understand thinking that a given form looks like a doofus and wishing it was the older one that you think looked cooler, but kind of like getting stuck, well...it's also only temporary.

Ugly/uncraftable/doofus-looking models abound in this game; as a shifter, you're the one thing that doesn't have to be stuck with it, unlike the 20 crappy subraces and pariah who have to take it on the chin as part of playing one.

Cool idea, but the idea of a shifter using class abilities to change shape and then a command to change that shape into another shape because they don't like the shape they changed into seems a bit much. It also seems confusing. To be fair, size and collision issues were addressed for some models that are stuck that way permanently (eg cloud giant, treant). On the other hand, for shifters, ginormous dragon shape did finally get a change to make it less ridiculous; and, to your point, for years the argument was that the size was part of the price for being that shape, and this decision was eventually made, so that's an argument in your favor. However, beholder or basilisk size is a far cry from dragon.

Having a command to change shape back into another shape but keeping the same abilities of the first shape, after changing shape, just seems either needlessly complicated, difficult to implement, or both.

I think the best solution (especially considering that development for stuff like this is probably kind of frozen indefinitely at the moment) is probably to just, well, take advantage of being a shifter and shapeshift into something else and then back again if you have collision issues.

As for the part about making arpee sense that a shifter would remember to be in the old form, I'm not so sure the logic follows through to allow for your proposed solution. After all, if you want to look at it from an RP-reasoning perspective, changing shape isn't just applying a superficial video-game skin onto something--it's actually changing form, for real. So a shifter might "remember" how to shift into the "old" form, sure, but they wouldn't be shifting "into the old form, but with the new form's abilities"--they'd just be shifting into the old form, with the old form's abilities. You kind of want to have the cake and eat it too, but it doesn't really work that way: they have changed form, and that shape is what it is. It's not a "skin" on top of something else, which is what the argument of "looking like" the "old form" but having the benefits of the "new form" is predicated on. Shifters shifting to an advanced form but still looking like the younger form would be more of an illusion than a shapeshift. You wouldn't expect a shifter to be able to shift into an elder dragon form, and have the abilities of an elder dragon, but still look like a wyrmling, would you? That would imply that the shifter isn't actually shifting form at all.

[KnightErrant]

/Role Play/ The Vampire can't see itself in a mirror so it has no idea if it looks dorky...

Since no other shifter player has reported this problem in all these years I'm going to say it isn't worth hours of very precious dev time to redo the forms.

KE.

[jelricle]

Jan 16, 2022 21:15:38 GMT KnightErrant said:

/Role Play/ The Vampire can't see itself in a mirror so it has no idea if it looks dorky...

KE FtW! :-D

Ah well, just a thought.

In all honesty, I did think somebody would bring up “but the old shape would have the old powers” point that Chirality made. I think I subconsciously just wanted to complain that I feel like I am a protagonist in some supernatural teen romance drama with that Vampire form. :-)