A guide to shapeshifting

[Valkuk]

So, been asked a couple times now about the shapeshifting system from people either not understanding or getting some unexpected results when they tried to use the system, so, even if I feel like shapeshifting is something pretty easy to get into once you try it in the game, figured I’d make a little guide in case someone wants to try it and doesn’t know where to start, or in case someone doesn’t understand something that’s going on.

I think the main issue with the system is that it has a lot of helpfiles. And you might think you get the system, and it just happens to be you didn’t read one, or you weren’t aware some restriction was happening, so there will be here a lot of information straight from helpfiles, likely sumarized to make it easier… And of course, anything is subject to changes.

Sizes

So, one of the first things that you will faced when making a shapeshifting form is the size, since sizes are something that are restricted depending on what foci and what level you have them at. Animal sizing is also important for the disciplines of the animal, as it provides a multiplier for both offense and defense, but the math for that I’ll tackle on later with the animal stats, and it is basically determined by the weight of the animal.
Information in this section can be found in HELP ANIMAL WEIGHTS and HELP SHAPESHIFTING SIZE CHART

Sizes are, in the following format, size – weight (offense multiplier, defense multiplier):

• Tiny – 0.1 kg or under (10%, 1%)
• Small – 0.1 to 5 kg (40%, 25%)
• Small-Medium – 5 to 40 kg (75%, 50%)
• Medium – 40 to 70 kg (90%, 80%)
• Mansized – 70 to 100 kg (100%, 100%)
• Large – 100 to 200 kg (110%, 110%)
• Very Large – 200 to 1000 kg (120%, 120%)
• Monstrous (Requires the legend Monstrous Shifting) – 100 kg or up (150%, 150%)

As for what each foci can access and what levels do they need to be:

• Fae Knight and Primal get the same sizes at the same levels. Mansized at 1. From medium to large at 2. From small to large at 3. And any size at 4.
• Natural Magic gets small at 2. From small to small-medium at 3. And from tiny to small-medium at 4.
• Illusory Magic gets small at 3. And from tiny to small-medium at 4
• Dark Magic gets tiny at 3. And from tiny to small-medium at 4

A couple miscellaneous things to take into account about animal size are: Turning into any size bigger than mansizes will over time tear clothes if you’re wearing them when you change, adding torn to their short and long strings, as well as making them lose coverage. You cannot change from small-medium or small directly into something bigger than mansized, and viceversa, you’ll need to either turn back to human in between or go through a medium or mansized form. Monstrous shifters shouldn’t be able to shift in rooms marked as indoors, but as of right now, they can do so.

Genus

The genus of the animal is also important because that, like what kind of foci you have, will limit what sizes you can use, specifically by limiting your max size, so you can always go smaller than listed. Aside from that, each genus has some specials or added bonuses that they can get. This information can be found in HELP ANIMAL GENUS, but do take into account, everything there is noted under specials, some of these are things you get by default by having that genus, others are things you need to get as stats. I personally will refer to the ones you need to get as animal stat as specials, and the default ones as inherent.

The genera are, in the following format, genus – max size (inherent | specials):

• Insect – Tiny (No eye color | Flying, Poisonous)
• Rodent – Small (No eye color | Flying, Amphibious)
• Bird – Small-Medium (Nothing | Flying)
• Aquatic – Very Large (Breath underwater, faster in water, +30% tooth and claw in water| Nothing)
• Reptile – Very Large (No eye color, -10% tooth and claw when cold | Amphibious, Poisonous)
• Mammal – Very Large (Nothing | Nothing)
• Mythological – Very Large (Requires Mythological Shifting | Poisonous, Armored, Amphibious, Flying)

Animal Stats and Discipline Calculation

Now, the beefier part of shapeshifting, the actual stats. When changing into a shapeshifting form you will lose some of your human stats or powers, and retain some others. Normally you retain those that aren’t all that useful, and lose all that you could likely use. For instance you’ll retain something like “education”, or contacts but will lose “ranged defense”, or “stealth”. And the main reason for this is that animals have another way to gain physical stats, disciplines, and sometimes powers. The main idea is that your animal and human form are difference and isolated for the most part, so count on losing most useful stats when shifting unless it’s a stat that has been made precisely for shapeshifting.

Animal stats don’t work through experience, they instead use a system called the shapeshifting pool, which basically will give you 5 points to spend for every point into the shapeshifting power, or shapeshifting related legendary (Legends will set you at least to 15 points if you have less). You will not be able to make any form when having less less than 8 points, so you need shapeshifting 2 at least or a legend in order to shift. Making additional forms will reduce your pool by 20%, but this is capped at a maximum of 3 points, so you will not be penalized more than that for making new animal forms. Your primary form will also get 5 extra points to spend on stats.

Now, the cost of animal stats varies with the size, and that information can be found in HELP ANIMAL STATS so I don’t have to list it here, because that’d take a while. And then there’s specials, which have a uniform cost despite of size. I will list what each stat will do, and the cost for those that don’t change based on size, but before that, I’ll get into how disciplines are calculated.

The animal stats “power” and “toughness” do give something that I personally call the power mod or the tough mod, but that can be interpreted as the disciplines directly. The first point in each will give you +20 to its matching mod, and reduce half from the other mod. And with every increasing point, the bonus is 2 lower… So power 2 will give +18 instead of +20, and power 3 will give +16. It also means it will reduce your tough mod is affected less for every point in power, using the previous example, power 1 will give you -10 tough, power 2 is -9… And so on.

Shifted forms will normally only get one offensive discipline and one defensive one. Tooth and claw, and natural toughness. The math to get these is, your tooth and claw will be half your highest ranged discipline, plus your highest armed discipline, plus your highest unarmed (striking/grappling), plus the power mod, and the result from that is multiplied by the size offensive multiplier. Natural toughness is more straight forward, the addition of all your defensive disciplines, plus the tough mod, result multiplied by the size defensive multiplier.

But with disciplines out of the way, animal stats are the following:

• Power – Always costs 5 points. Affects the power mod like mentioned in the previous paragraph. Each point gives +2 strength
• Toughness – Always costs 5 points. Affects the tough mod like mentioned in the previous paragraph. Each point gives +2 stamina
• Speed – Each point gives +1 running
• Agility – Each point gives +1 dexterity and +1 ranged defense. Every 2 points gives +1 fast reflexes. At 4 points, if bigger than small-medium it’ll give super jumping
• Camouflage – Each point gives +1 stealth in natural or dark areas. Will challenge people’s perception
• Senses – Always costs 1 point. Each point gives +1 perception in natural areas. Every 2 points gives +1 perception in other areas

And the specials:

• Flying – Costs 5 points. Will give you the ability to fly
• Nocturnal – Costs 2 points. Will give +3 night vision and +1 perception at night
• Poisonous – Costs 5 points. Rises your tooth and claw to 100% of the base if small sized, to 50% if tiny sized
• Amphibious – Costs 4 points. Allows to breath underwater and removes debuffs for moving or fighting in water
• Armored – Costs 5 points. Will give a flat +30 natural toughness
• Acute sight/hearing/smell – Costs 1 point. Will give the power of the same name, and +1 senses

The form command

All of these things previously described are handled through the form command. So once you understand what everything does, you can start allocating things with this system. First FORM VIEW will show you a visual, showing you whatever forms you have, its name, viability, weight, species, genus, point count, intro, change strings, stats and description.

The new things you will see here are name, intro, change strings, description and viability. The viability will show you if you can turn into the form, and basically does a check to see if every field is filled and if it all matches the logic shown above. Name will be defined upon creating the form and it’s how you reference it. The change strings are the CHANGETO and CHANGEFROM fields, basically strings that will display when you change in and out of that form, they will not display in FORM VIEW even if you have them filled, and currently CHANGEFROM is bugged and will not be shown when you shift back to something. The description and intro are also strings, and basically the intro and the description that people will see when looking at the animal. Species is just a string, but it will show on top of the room when you are shifted, as a visual indicator for yourself.

You will also see stats listed as X(Y), and then broken down individually. X is the amount you have spent on the form currently, Y is your shapeshifting pool, aka the points you can spend. Note that the extra 5 for your primary form will not show on the Y, but will not make your form not available even if your X goes over Y.

Another note. Untraining a stat or deleting a form put you in a one week cooldown before you can start changing things with the FORM command again, likely to prevent abuse from people changing things on the spot. A lot of the fields can be changed without that cooldown, but untraining will trigger it, so be mindful when making changes unless you want to wait a week to continue

Werewolves

Now that you understand everything about shapeshifting, making a form and allocating its stats… Werewolves. Forget everything you read before, they don’t get to do any of this, their points are allocated automatically, and so is their weight. The game will do it for you, and you don’t need to worry about having more points spent than on your pool because that’ll just be ignored. Now, you still will be able to set the descriptions but stats, genus, size and species are not really something you get to choose, it’s automatic.

Having said that, werewolves can get shapeshifting as a stat and they can get additional forms. They are able to interact with the system normally, just not on their wolf forms, which by the way, will always be the primary form. So wolf forms are outside of the system, but a werewolf character will still be able to individually get the stat and go through the entire thing.

The only way a werewolf can modify their base stats is by getting Primal 1 for +1 tough, Primal 2 for +1 power, or get Monstrous Shifting, which will set their power to 4 and their toughness to 3.

Shapeshifting Legendaries

As mentioned before, all shapeshifting legends will give +5 points to the pool, or set it to 15 if you’re below 10. And now to give a summary of each legend.

• Monstrous shifting. Unlocks monstrous size, turning any forms large or above into monstrous, stat-wise. Changing descriptions and weight is up to you. Also thematic for forms
• Mythological shifting. Unlocks mythic genus, which allows every size and offers a bunch of specials. Additionally, it allows animal stats to go higher than 6. Also thematic for forms
• Hybrid shifting. Unlocks hybrid genus, which can only be mansized. Allows you to speak, open doors and retain stats even while shifted. Will automatically turn werewolves into hybrids. Also thematic for forms
• Swarm shifting. Unlocks swarm genus, which turns you into a group of animals, depending on your size. For a group of X animals, the damage per hit will never surpass your max HP divided by X. Your offense will be debuffed though, multiplied by the percentage or remaining HP you have.

Shapeshifting related stats/commands

First of all, shifterstash. This command will toggle whether you want your items to go to your stash when you shift, or if you want them to appear in the room inside of a bag item called “X belongings” where X is the character name.

Aura shifting is a stat that will allow animals below mansized, mansized not included, to keep their inventory and gear whenever they shift. Making it so that they don’t unshift naked, or that they can receive texts or be traced.

Meta shifting is a stat that allows some of the stats of your primary form to bleed over into your human form. Ignoring previous versions of this, in its H7 version it will set the stat to whichever is higher, your human or your animal stat, but there will be no addition of any kind. Thematically it also makes the characters more affected by the nature, habits and sometimes physiology of their primary animal form.

Fluid shifting is a stat that reduces incoming damage in combat so long as you’ve just shifted and you aren’t shifting cyclically into the same forms. The reduction is a 40% damage. It also removes the cooldown to shapeshifting outside of combat, the line that says “You don’t feel like changing”.

Illusory/Natural affinity are stats from arcane focus lines that allow you to use your illusory or natural mancing, as well as telepathy, while in a shifted form.

Soldiering. Yes, soldiering. Basically, if you look at the last ability it gives, you can see something called naturalize. Basically naturalizers revert shifters to their human forms. Outside of combat anyone can do it as long as they have a naturalizer, but it has a low chance of success unless you are helpless. In combat only those with soldiering can do it, still having the item, and it has a higher chance of forcefully unshifting shapeshifters. (I say combat also has chance, instead of guaranteed like I thought, because I’ve recently seen it fail in combat personally)

H7 details and some notes

Shifters have received a light change in H7 when it comes to how they handle damage in combat. While they were announced as lacking and bypassing the round cap, the reality is that they simply have a different round cap. While for people it’s at 60, for shapeshifters it’s at 120. Meaning they will be able to deal you that much damage every round, but also receive as much. Damage against monsters and monster guests for them seems to be completely uncapped.

If a shapeshifter is neutralized (not naturalized), their tooth and claw will be converted to a flat 30, but they will retain most of their animal stats.
While aura shifters are safer in combat because of retaining their gear even while shifted, all items still count as still being in their person, so things like weapons and armor will still slow them down.

Shapeshifters can get pregnant while shifted, but only by other shifted shapeshifters. So only animals impregnate animals. But if it happens, the shifter that gets impregnated will remain stuck in their animal form until either it gives birth or there’s a miscarriage.
While in the past it seems cleanses got shifters stuck in their animal form similarly, in H7, I’ve tested that walking into a cleansed borough automatically turns you into your human form, without giving you any echoes about it.

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And that’s it, at least for now, don’t think there’s anything I forgot to mention. If there is, make sure to let me know. Feel free to ask questions or point out if I got anything wrong. I did also make a shifter calculator back in H6 with the old code release that I kind of adapted to H7, so if anyone is interested in that, I could drop it here, and you could make a copy, but other than that, that’s it for me. Hopefully I solved some doubts or some confusion from people

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