Unarmed Kobold Commando?

[awkmage]

Greetings,

I'm new here, hopefully this is the right place to post this?

I have a shifter, player name "Quag", who was using kobold form in the Zhentarim Caves when his kobold commando sword went missing. I guess he was a disarm victim maybe? I thought Bioware fixed it so shifters couldn't be disarmed while shifted, (because picking up a shifter weapon used to crash servers or something like that IIRC) but I'm not 100% sure about that.

I didn't see the sword laying on the ground. All of the assassins were killed, and no one in the party said anything about finding it in a loot drop. After unshifting/reshifting several times the kobold is still unarmed. Logging out and back in doesn't fix it. Any insights on what I did wrong, and how I can keep this from happening again? Also, is there any way to fix this character, or do I have to abandon it?

Thanks,
awkmage

[FunkySwerve]

Thats a bug that shifters suffer from if they existed before patch 1.67. Shifters made after that patch will not have the issue. We spent awhile looking for a fix to no avail. It only affects the kobold commando form of the shifter.
Funky

[awkmage]

Thanks for the reply.

Hm. I came to HG and created this character less than a week ago. Wouldn't that mean this is a post-1.67 shifter? Or am I having an "elder moment"?

awkmage

[FunkySwerve]

That's very odd, because I couldnt reporduce it with a 1.67 shifter, but could with a 1.66, and that was true for two other posters on the bioboards. Must be something else going on. Sorry, wish I could be more help.
Funky

[awkmage]

Very odd indeed. Thanks for looking into this for me.

I'll build another shifter, and try to pay closer attention if it happens again. If it does, maybe I'll get lucky and capture something useful in the logs.

Thanks again,
awkmage

[irongolem]

Happened to my post-1.67 the other night whas well. He had his sword on my previous use, about a week or so ago.

[sabregirl]

It seems that only the epic kobold commando is affected (the form gets upgraded at shifter level 17) so maybe you just noticed after you leveled? This doesn't mean the form is useless though, the epic form's invisiblity spell is long lasting and gives some conceal which is helpful.

-S

[awkmage]

I'm not sure how many cycles this is worth to try and fix, but being curious, I did some testing.

On HG, I deleveled to 16 shifter levels, and the sword came back. Made a quick trip out the east gate to nuke a bandit or three, releveled, and *poof*...no sword. It's not just a visual bug, since the kobold's attack now follows the monk progression, and he gets the "weapon ineffective" floaty.

Additional testing I did:

1. I exported the shifter (Druid 19/Shifter 17/Monk 1) and loaded it into a trainer with no CEP (used "forests of advanced training" from nwvault). Epic sword appears and works correctly. Kobold gets the normal druid attack progression.

2. Loaded same shifter into CEP Opening Day module. Sword appears and works correctly.

3. Started both the trainer and CEP module under the standalone Linux server (I'm running SUSE 10.1). Used a 2nd SUSE 10.1 workstation to log in w/ shifter in local vault. Sword appears and works correctly in both cases.

Unfortunately that's the extent of what I am able to test for now. If I get a lot more free time I'll configure and fire up a "real" PW (I'll get one from nwvault) using NWNX, set up a server vault, stick Quag in there and see if I can make the sword go poof. Oh - one more thing, Quag is a drider subrace. I don't know if that could have anything to do with it.

sabregirl - agreed that the kobold is still useful for invis. I'm just hoping to get my 5d6 sneaks back. :-D

awkmage

[irongolem]

sabregirl said:

It seems that only the epic kobold commando is affected (the form gets upgraded at shifter level 17) so maybe you just noticed after you leveled? This doesn't mean the form is useless though, the epic form's invisiblity spell is long lasting and gives some conceal which is helpful.

-S

My Shifter's been immo for a few weeks... started him shortly after returning to HG; after 1.67

[FunkySwerve]

Interesting. It's possible it's something in our custom shifter script, but I can't think of what might cause that that was changed between 1.66 and 1.67, when the problem first emerged.
Funky

[sabregirl]

awkmage - the 5D6 sneaks appear to be stacking to other forms if kobold is used first - not that a shifter on HG should be meleeing a whole lot . . . but it's kind of cool having a dragon with sneak attack.

-S

[irongolem]

AFter some more testing, some really odd things came to light:
In kobald form, if you have one weapon equipped before shifting, the stats transfer -unarmed, but still transfer. If you have monk-style gloves and a weapon, both gloves and weapon shift.
Unshift and the "weapon" stats stay.
That's interesting on it's own, right?
Now change weapon, and reshift to kobold and check your stats. Now you've got both previous weapon stats AND the current stats. Unshift, they stay again. These do not come through in the combat log (ok, hard to test as your ab is broken by then)
I first noticed this when wearing gloves and holding a weapon in Kobald form; and did some more testing from there. The damaged stats fix once you log; yet will return once you repeat the steps.

Rambling, ok, to sum up - that's what I see on my kobold (only the kobold), not sure if thats only me.

[awkmage]

Wow. Interesting to say the least. I didn't think to try multiple shifts.

Dragon with 5d6 sneak from kobold sword... I wonder if any of the other feats on that sword *cough* HIPS *cough* transfer over the same way. I'll have to test that when I get home from work today.

[awkmage]

I've successfully reproduced irongolem's results, and also confirmed that other properties and feats from the epic kobold commando sword "stick" upon unshifting/reshifting, even though they don't necessarily show up in the character sheet.

I did have the sword briefly the first time reached 17 shifter levels. I am still completely unable to reproduce this behavior outside of HG, and at this point am out of ideas.

Regards,
awkmage