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Polymorph Self & Shapechange


Demivrgvs

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I've done some small adjustments here and there trying to follow players feedback. I've updated the first post, and the detailed descriptions posted there are now displayable in-game too, as I've added them to their respective spell descriptions.

 

There are some things I'd like to do with these spells sooner or later, like replacing the two useless elemental transformations from Shapechange with something better, or adding a "normal" troll form to Polymorph Self...but unless I take 10 red bulls to not sleep tonight I'm not going to do this for V3. :)

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I do agree, you'll never use them anyway because Iron Golem outperform them in every aspect. I've done them for completeness, but I'd like to add at least one form if I remove those two...possibly one with ranged attacks. :rolleyes:

a beholder maybe? or a gauth, if you think that beholder will be too overpowered. They are ranged attackers and it opens some interesting possibilities while in the beholder city :)

 

Spell casting while in a Illithid form really has to go.

It has become the biggest cheese EVAR for me.

At high level, memorise 2-3 Timestops, 1 Shapechange & haste.

Cast time stop. Attack

Recast time stop. Attack

Recast time stop. Attack

 

 

You can kill up to 4-5 ennemies with ease using this method.

And there's nothing they can do, because you can recast Timestop at will.

 

Absolutely and totally imbalanced :/

 

Might be a problem with timestop beeing too powerfull :/

 

Oh, you're killing me :D you tell me that you would rather remove TS from the game because of it?

 

If there is a good idea, but for some players it could end up exploitable, I say - who cares? :D

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I do agree, you'll never use them anyway because Iron Golem outperform them in every aspect. I've done them for completeness, but I'd like to add at least one form if I remove those two...possibly one with ranged attacks. :rolleyes:

a beholder maybe? or a gauth, if you think that beholder will be too overpowered. They are ranged attackers and it opens some interesting possibilities while in the beholder city :)

Spell casting while in a Illithid form really has to go.

It has become the biggest cheese EVAR for me.

At high level, memorise 2-3 Timestops, 1 Shapechange & haste.

Cast time stop. Attack

Recast time stop. Attack

Recast time stop. Attack

 

 

You can kill up to 4-5 ennemies with ease using this method.

And there's nothing they can do, because you can recast Timestop at will.

 

Absolutely and totally imbalanced :/

 

Might be a problem with timestop beeing too powerfull :/

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I'm a genius. :rolleyes: Let me know if you still have problems with the fix. Regarding the Beholder's form...I guess it would be nearly impossible to "balance" such a powerful form, I would have to remove half of its powers! But I'm going to do a little research, I'd like to know if in PnP a mage would be allowed to do such a thing!

C'mon, it's so much fun! :) Of course they would. Even better, they allowed to shapechange to a DRAGON via fabled Dragonshape spell :D

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I do agree, you'll never use them anyway because Iron Golem outperform them in every aspect. I've done them for completeness, but I'd like to add at least one form if I remove those two...possibly one with ranged attacks. :rolleyes:

a beholder maybe? or a gauth, if you think that beholder will be too overpowered. They are ranged attackers and it opens some interesting possibilities while in the beholder city :)

Beholder is exactly the first creature I'd like to work on, but trust me, it's a pain to implement because of its rays.

 

 

Spell casting while in a Illithid form really has to go.

It has become the biggest cheese EVAR for me.

At high level, memorise 2-3 Timestops, 1 Shapechange & haste.

Cast time stop. Attack

Recast time stop. Attack

Recast time stop. Attack

 

 

You can kill up to 4-5 ennemies with ease using this method.

And there's nothing they can do, because you can recast Timestop at will.

 

Absolutely and totally imbalanced :/

 

Might be a problem with timestop beeing too powerfull :/

I already told you...you could do the very same even without the "spellcasting while in mind flyer form" feature.

Cast time stop. Switch to MF form (it takes an instant). Attack.

 

What's wrong here is that using Devour Brain (which I slightly nerfed) during Time Stop is an incredibly broken exploit imo (I do prefer 3rd edition TS where you can't physically affect opponents during it).

 

And what's wrong here is consecutive Time Stops, as having a continuous 9 rounds Time Stop is almost a cheat imo.

 

I'll think about possible solutions...

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I already told you...you could do the very same even without the "spellcasting while in mind flyer form" feature.

Cast time stop. Switch to MF form (it takes an instant). Attack.

 

What's wrong here is that using Devour Brain (which I slightly nerfed) during Time Stop is an incredibly broken exploit imo (I do prefer 3rd edition TS where you can't physically affect opponents during it).

 

And what's wrong here is consecutive Time Stops, as having a continuous 9 rounds Time Stop is almost a cheat imo.

 

I'll think about possible solutions...

Actually, no.

 

Shapeshifting counts as an action for the round.

That means you have to :

Round 0 : Cast time stop.

Round 1 : Shapeshift, then attack.

Round 2 : Shapeshift back into human form

Round 3 : Cast time stop

 

At least you can't cast consecutive timestops without a lot of disadvantages.

 

Oh well, you're probably right, the problem lies within time stop anyway.

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Honestly I think the Devour Brain strategy with Time Stop is rather broken. Why don't you just remove the Mind Flayer's ability to kill people with melee attacks in some manner? Maybe give them an additional psionic attack to compensate or something.

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Beholder Form

I'm a genius. :rolleyes: Let me know if you still have problems with the fix. Regarding the Beholder's form...I guess it would be nearly impossible to "balance" such a powerful form, I would have to remove half of its powers! But I'm going to do a little research, I'd like to know if in PnP a mage would be allowed to do such a thing!

C'mon, it's so much fun! :D Of course they would. Even better, they allowed to shapechange to a DRAGON via fabled Dragonshape spell ;)

As I said I'm not against a Beholder form, and I actually love to implement it, but it's really hard to do, because the rays are normally handled by scripts, and I don't know how to make them work. Rays within BG are handled as spells (instead of ranged attacks as per PnP), and this is what makes this form incredibly difficult to handle.

 

One solution may be to have them as innate abilities just like Mind Flyer's Psionic Blast, having the Beholder form under a permanent "Improved alacrity" effect and assign to rays a casting time 1 or 2. This solution would still have two problems:

1) if the mage has any item which improves casting time we may end up with a Beholder which can fire hundreds of rays per round. This may be blocked by making each ray reappear only once every 6 seconds, but I don't think it would be an easy task.

2) this form would require a lot of micromanegement as player need to select each ray each round.

 

Mind Flyer Form

I already told you...you could do the very same even without the "spellcasting while in mind flyer form" feature.

Cast time stop. Switch to MF form (it takes an instant). Attack.

 

What's wrong here is that using Devour Brain (which I slightly nerfed) during Time Stop is an incredibly broken exploit imo (I do prefer 3rd edition TS where you can't physically affect opponents during it).

 

And what's wrong here is consecutive Time Stops, as having a continuous 9 rounds Time Stop is almost a cheat imo.

Actually, no.

 

Shapeshifting counts as an action for the round.

That means you have to :

Round 0 : Cast time stop.

Round 1 : Shapeshift, then attack.

Round 2 : Shapeshift back into human form

Round 3 : Cast time stop

 

At least you can't cast consecutive timestops without a lot of disadvantages.

 

Oh well, you're probably right, the problem lies within time stop anyway.

Yeah, the problem lies within the Time Stop + Devour Brain combo, it's an exploit I hate with all my heart. :D

 

Honestly I think the Devour Brain strategy with Time Stop is rather broken. Why don't you just remove the Mind Flayer's ability to kill people with melee attacks in some manner? Maybe give them an additional psionic attack to compensate or something.
But how could I justify the removing of this well known feature? :)

 

Regarding psionic abilities, adding at least Psionic Domination would be cool yes.

 

P.S I just noticed I actually nerfed Mind Flyers much much more than I thought. I set the form's attack rate to 1 per round, instead of vanilla's 4!! :D

 

Polymorph Self

I'm thinking about replacing two forms of this 4th level spell. I'd like to replace Flind form with Fire Salamander form, and Ogre form with Troll form. I think this would greatly enhance the opportunities granted by this spell:

- Flind's only cool feature is the fire damaging halberd (neither its PnP version nor the ones you may encounter in-game have it) and it would still be available via Fire Salamander's spear, and the latter form also has fire resistance making it a cool variant to another form currently granted by this spell, Winter Wolf.

- Ogre form is by far the least appealing one imo, as it doesn't have any unique feature, whereas the Troll would obviously grant a huge advantage, regeneration. I actually thought the regeneration feature was too much, but it's probably convenient rather than really overpowered. Am I wrong?

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Beholder form

As I said I'm not against a Beholder form, and I actually love to implement it, but it's really hard to do, because the rays are normally handled by scripts, and I don't know how to make them work. Rays within BG are handled as spells (instead of ranged attacks as per PnP), and this is what makes this form incredibly difficult to handle.
I see nothing wrong with making rays into a ranged attack using 'Set Ranged Effect [249]' and setting a percentage chance on which effect will fire every time.
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Beholder form

As I said I'm not against a Beholder form, and I actually love to implement it, but it's really hard to do, because the rays are normally handled by scripts, and I don't know how to make them work. Rays within BG are handled as spells (instead of ranged attacks as per PnP), and this is what makes this form incredibly difficult to handle.
I see nothing wrong with making rays into a ranged attack using 'Set Ranged Effect [249]' and setting a percentage chance on which effect will fire every time.
Wouldn't it be simplier to just have their ranged weapon cast the original .spl files on hit? Does using eff files via 'ranged effect on hit' has any advantage? :)

 

Anyway, leaving aside technical implementation, I'd like to know how much players would like this solution (I'm not sure myslef). Not being able to choose the ray also means the form should be less powerful, but I don't have too much problems with that. I can also make sure that once they reach the target rays are still considered spells (not bypassing immunities/protections/magic resistance) thus the remaining questions should be:

- does players like the solution even if the rays are randomly chosen? Not to mention the charming ray may not work too well if the beholder form shoots rays as a machinegun. :D

- does players like the solution even if the rays require a successful ranged attack roll? This can be partially "fixed" by granting a godly thac0 if necessary, but critical hits will still miss the target. :rolleyes:

 

 

P.S Beholder Death Ray needs a small fix, as the 'kill target' opcode is set to power level 0 instead of 7.

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Beholder form

Wouldn't it be simplier to just have their ranged weapon cast the original .spl files on hit?
I suppose yes.

 

- does players like the solution even if the rays are randomly chosen? Not to mention the charming ray may not work too well if the beholder form shoots rays as a machinegun.

- does players like the solution even if the rays require a successful ranged attack roll? This can be partially "fixed" by granting a godly thac0 if necessary, but critical hits will still miss the target.

Give them an innate ability? IIRC beholders can't use the same eyestalk more than once per round (they can't, can they?), so it can be considered as PC carefully aiming with a concrete eyestalk.

 

PS Actually, I find the successful atttack roll requirement to be a plus.

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Beholder Form

 

Well, I must say I am thrilled by the idea of having such a form available but at the same time I am not really fond about the player not having full control over it and the inconsistency with the ingame beholders' behaviour so I think I'd rather leave it behind.

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