In my campaign, the rules for generating the animal form of a shapechanger come out of the logic of how I decided they work. Shapechanging is a magical ability. Shapechangers have no MA, because all of their Magic Aptitude goes into changing forms. They can not be spell casters. They also don't get the higher magic resistance of non-spell casters, because they do use magic, only in a very limited way.
With the exception of shapechanger wolves, shapechangers always take on a smaller version of their animal. A shapechanger bear turns into a smaller (say 400 lbs) bear. A shapechanger tiger turns into a 300-350 lbs tiger. This is
because the human-form of the shapechanger is normal human size (120-200 lbs depending upon sex and height). They have to magically create all that extra mass. It is easier to create an extra 200 lbs of mass and be a 400 lbs bear than it is create 800 lbs and be a 1000 lbs bear.
The need to generate mass means they are the smaller version of these animals. I therefore tend to use the lower limits for strength and endurance, but higher numbers for agility and fatigue.
(Wolves can be the exception. If the play wants, they can turn into a wolf of the same mass as their human-form. That makes for a big wolf and higher wolf stats.)
To create the shapechanges human-form stats, the player first creates the vanilla human, assigning points to stats as they wish. Then we figure out the animal stats. Then we average the animal and human stats to find the human-form stats. (That's my understanding of the book's
instructions.)
This increase in mass when changing to animal form also explains why shapechangers have a reputation for being dangerous and uncontrollable. When they have first changed (gained in mass), they have burned through a lot of energy and are ravenously hungry. If a shapechanger has not planned ahead, he or she will eat whatever is in front of them. My shapechange players have learned to hunt BEFORE changing or they carry around a large leg of lamb for emergencies. Of course, if they shapeshift in front of an enemy, they can just eat the villain. The rest of the party will have to deal with all the other
villains as the shapeshifter settles down for a hearty (and disturbing) meal in the middle of the fight.
When shapechanges change back to human form, they have to slough off all that extra mass. This means they tend to leave behind big puddles of disgusting and unidentifiable goo, fluids, bits of flesh and hair. Its not a pretty sight. They usually want to bath before putting on their clothes and armor.
My difficulty with shapeshifters is how to deal with critical hits from mundane weapons. Sure, a shapeshifter can normally only be hurt by high strength, silver, magic or fire, but if a character wielding a mundane knife roles a critical hit and stabs the shapeshifter in the eye or throat, it might not kill them but it should certainly inconvenience them.
How do you all handle this?
Kyle
From: Jeffery McGonagill <igmod@comcast.net>
To: DQ-RULES@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sunday, November 24, 2013 5:13 PM
Subject: Re: Re: Re: [DQ-RULES] Shape-changer animal form characteristics
I'm applying the difference in the averages between
human and the animal form.
The animal is just an animal, but the shapechanger
has human intelligence. An alternative would be to not apply modifiers to
MA and WP.
~Jeffery~
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, November 24, 2013 5:03
PM
Subject: RE: Re: Re: [DQ-RULES]
Shape-changer animal form characteristics
OK,
I see what you are doing. Now how come you don't subtract 15 from each of the
animal form's MA? None of the animal forms have any value for MA would not
that make their average 0, subtracting the human average of 15.
I
am just attempting to understand how it is that your group interprets this
rule, and determine how my group might adjust your group's
interpretation.
---In DQ-RULES@yahoogroups.com,
<igmod@...> wrote:
That's advantage of a shapechanger.
The disadvantage of course is the multiple, the low chance to become
one and any other considerations the GM comes up with.
For example: In my world the general
population regards shapechangers the same way they regard lycanthropes, as an
uncontrolled, rabid monster.
~Jeffery~
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, November 24, 2013 11:44
AM
Subject: RE: Re: [DQ-RULES]
Shape-changer animal form characteristics
Does this not produce animal form characteristics that can be wildly
outside of that forms ranges?
---In
DQ-RULES@yahoogroups.com, <igmod@...>
wrote:
My interpretation of the Shaperchanger
rules results in the following Modifiers applied to the Human
characteristics to represent the animal form:
PS MD
AG MA EN
Ft WP PC
PB TMR NA
Wolf:
-4 +4
+4 -7
+3 +13 +5
+7 -7
+3 +5
Tiger:
+11 +9 +12
-7 +7
+12 -6 +11
-8 +4
+5
Bear: +23
+9 +13
-7 +18 +18
-6 +5
-7 +1
+6
Boar: +10
+1 +8
-7 +8
+8 -8
-1 -7
+2 +6
~Jeffery~
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, November 24, 2013
4:52 AM
Subject: [DQ-RULES] Shape-changer
animal form characteristics
When our group first started playing DragonQuest, the
rules pertaining to shape-changer animal form characteristics were
always a bit unclear to everyone within our group. Our solution was to
develop our own way to determine the animal form characteristics. I
have recently reviewed all the official DragonQuest rules (1st, 2nd
and 3rd editions) dealing with the shape-changer characteristics and
still find them a bit confusing.
"5. The shape-changer must devise a set
of characteristics for his animal form. Take the difference between
the average for each characteristic in animal and human form, and
modify the human characteristics appropriately."
Our group interpreted this rule in a few different ways over the
years:
Scale the animal form range the same
way you would scale the human range. Example: PS of human is between 5
and 25 while the PS range for a wolf is between 10 and 12. A PS of 5
for a human would convert to a 10 for a Wolf, while a PS of 15 for a
human would be an 11 for a Wolf, and the PS of 25 for a human would
become a PS of 12 for a wolf. The 21 possible numbers for human would
be spread among the 3 possible numbers for a wolf. Or ([3 ÷ 21] ×
human value) + (minimum animal -1) round up.
Our group has also
toyed with adding 2 to every listed animal characteristic, to adjust
for heroic characters (when you compare dwarf, elf, halfling and each
of the giant races it becomes obvious that player characters have been
granted a range 2 greater than non-player characters.
Our group
has also scaled the human form characteristics based upon 1 to 25 and
correspondingly scaling the animal forms from 1 to their max value.
This made for some fairly low valued animal form
characteristics.
Our best method was had many formulas to
calculate the animal form values. This turned out to be very
complicated and therefore failed badly.
We have always had the
human WP and MA remain the same. And we have always scaled the EN and
FT from the human 1 to 25. The PB we have adjusted by plus 1 to
account for the shape-changer modifier.
We would like to try again to come up with a simpler and
balanced way to determine the animal form characteristics. Please
respond with examples if you can.
We are also aware that there
are differences in some of the listed values between 2nd and 3rd
editions for the Tiger form.
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Database: 3629/6834 - Release Date: 11/13/13