Author Topic: Option for Druids to toggle back to more grounded animal forms.  (Read 897 times)

Tohuvabohu

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Option for Druids to toggle back to more grounded animal forms.
« on: December 16, 2022, 11:48:54 AM »
I hit level 12 on my druid and was horrified to discover that my animal forms had increased and changed in size. I was using the wildshape forms before as an avenue for RP, because they blended in with the animals of Barovia and other places. (In particular, raven forms and wolf forms and normal sized bears.)

Now, I turn into a giant dread raven and a dire wolf. That took me out of it so much and I am disappointed that I can't continue to blend in with the animals and do subtle druid rp that involves the wildshape forms. The wildshape ability that druids possess is intrinsic to their uniqueness and RP.

I think that there should be a toggle of some kind, to be able to revert back to the normal and more grounded animal forms.

Branchie

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Re: Option for Druids to toggle back to more grounded animal forms.
« Reply #1 on: December 16, 2022, 11:57:43 AM »
1+

Grendlykins, Simp of Azalin Rex

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Re: Option for Druids to toggle back to more grounded animal forms.
« Reply #2 on: December 16, 2022, 03:21:29 PM »
Being a Druid is already suffering; being forced to lose out on an entire avenue of infiltrating societies under animal guises is just an additional kick in the teeth. Give them a toggle to choose between dire and mundane forms at 12, rather than forcibly "upgrading" them.

Day Old Bread

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Re: Option for Druids to toggle back to more grounded animal forms.
« Reply #3 on: December 16, 2022, 03:48:50 PM »
Being a Druid is already suffering; being forced to lose out on an entire avenue of infiltrating societies under animal guises is just an additional kick in the teeth. Give them a toggle to choose between dire and mundane forms at 12, rather than forcibly "upgrading" them.

make it a permanent choice. a free feat at that level and lock it in.

Also, I can't tell if you're being facetious. But I find your comment comical.

bloodless

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Re: Option for Druids to toggle back to more grounded animal forms.
« Reply #4 on: December 16, 2022, 03:53:23 PM »
It's no more disruptive than a monk's level 20, or drd and pm's progressively growing ocr. All the other forms grow in size and power as the druid does, why wouldn't these?

Day Old Bread

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Re: Option for Druids to toggle back to more grounded animal forms.
« Reply #5 on: December 16, 2022, 03:54:34 PM »
Aren't there mundane animal shapes they can take if they want to play furry friend?

Tohuvabohu

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Re: Option for Druids to toggle back to more grounded animal forms.
« Reply #6 on: December 16, 2022, 04:04:59 PM »
Aren't there mundane animal shapes they can take if they want to play furry friend?

This isn't about playing a 'furry friend', really. There /are/ cat and dog forms you can take to blend in inside the city around other domestic animals, but I've seen these forms get clowned around with as well, with people well... trying to play 'furry friends' and get pets and stuff. I'm simply asking for a toggle of some kind to revert to more natural and native animal forms that you'd find in any forest around Barovia, because the forests and the wilds are the domain of a druid.

I'd like to be able to fly around as a normal sized raven and observe people treading in the forests, or prowl around as a wolf in the darkness on unsuspecting adventurers. Because this is more rp than mechanical, I don't think there should be a feat investment. There is no mechanical advantage to this that would warrant a waste of feat space. just a toggle to go back and forth between the upgraded forms and the basic animal shapes.

Tohuvabohu

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Re: Option for Druids to toggle back to more grounded animal forms.
« Reply #7 on: December 16, 2022, 04:11:28 PM »
It's no more disruptive than a monk's level 20, or drd and pm's progressively growing ocr. All the other forms grow in size and power as the druid does, why wouldn't these?

I'm not saying that these forms shouldn't grow in power, there's nothing wrong with that. It would make sense that you could transform into a larger dire creature for combat purposes and encounters, as you grow in strength and experience in your powers. But being forced to automatically become a dire creature with no way to go back to a more grounded animal form kind of strips you of the cool rp potential you had playing as a druid who could shapeshift and be able to blend in with the environment around them, for passive encounters. I've had some really cool scenes of rp where I've been able to observe events and characters after dark or fly around and emote at people as a raven when they leave the city and walk along roads, but unfortunately this avenue of RP is no longer open to me because I've been forced into these gigantic wildshapes.
« Last Edit: December 16, 2022, 04:20:48 PM by Tohuvabohu »

Vissy

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Re: Option for Druids to toggle back to more grounded animal forms.
« Reply #8 on: December 16, 2022, 04:14:38 PM »
I agree it'd be super cool to have this ability. For now the easiest work-around to achieve that effect is to multiclass a druid. Druid/rogue for instance is a very nice build.
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Tohuvabohu

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Re: Option for Druids to toggle back to more grounded animal forms.
« Reply #9 on: December 16, 2022, 04:18:26 PM »
There /is/ a vfx toggler for hexblade curses. So I don't see why it wouldn't be out of the question for there to be a toggle between mundane animal forms, versus their dire variants.

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Re: Option for Druids to toggle back to more grounded animal forms.
« Reply #10 on: December 16, 2022, 04:24:43 PM »
Very much agree. It's one of the main reasons I have avoided leveling my druid all the way to 12, prowling as a wolf is a major faucet for the character to exemplify the connection to nature, and the dire wolf models make me die a little on the inside. 
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Re: Option for Druids to toggle back to more grounded animal forms.
« Reply #11 on: December 16, 2022, 04:42:39 PM »
make it a permanent choice. a free feat at that level and lock it in.

Also, I can't tell if you're being facetious. But I find your comment comical.

Half and half. Druids have complex lore that gives them interesting narrative levers to pull on, but are also saddled with a lot of responsibilities as a result; aversion to metal armour, oaths of varying sorts, moral obligations, etc. It can be difficult playing that straight when many others don't, even moreso when your limited toolset is sabotaged.

It's no more disruptive than a monk's level 20, or drd and pm's progressively growing ocr. All the other forms grow in size and power as the druid does, why wouldn't these?

Level 20 Monk capstone, Dragon Disciple and Pale Master's OCR are all symptomatic of their growth as characters, true. But unlike Druids, these are involuntary. I've checked D&D editions 2 through 5, and all of them are very specific; you choose the form your shape takes. There's nothing involuntary about the specific appearance, shape or characteristics of the shape you've chosen. While this is not entirely reasonable to accurately 1:1 recreate on NWN, such as adding 50+ animal forms, it is most certainly possible to allow players to choose whether they become an animal that can reasonably be assumed to be just that, or to go HAM.

Aren't there mundane animal shapes they can take if they want to play furry friend?

Yes, but those have their own issues also. There's a slew of character concepts that don't align with playing an urban druid. Hamstringing the capability of players to pursue varied options in character portrayal ultimately lessens the narrative availability on offer. Also, anecdotally, a lot of those forms suffer a lot of scrutiny because of the unfortunate frequency of other Druids using them; Garda make it a point to punt rabbits when they see them, just in case, if not trying to put arrows in them for a rabbit stew. If someone wants to pick something innocuous and also unlikely to be attacked, such as a crow or raven, that's more or less impossble past 12 since your raven form becomes something out of nightmares.

SardineTheAncestor

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Re: Option for Druids to toggle back to more grounded animal forms.
« Reply #12 on: December 17, 2022, 03:12:31 AM »
Would be great, weirdly enough some of the dire creatures that simply don't exist in the game world like panthers are the ones without dire upgrades.
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zDark Shadowz

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Re: Option for Druids to toggle back to more grounded animal forms.
« Reply #13 on: December 17, 2022, 07:34:18 AM »
As long as I don't have to relevel my druid if the other forms are added back in. Lost all my progress from 19->20 last time.

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Re: Option for Druids to toggle back to more grounded animal forms.
« Reply #14 on: January 29, 2023, 12:17:57 PM »
A gentle bump to this for consideration, the mundane forms are nice of course - but having the regular raven shape as a mundane would be lovely.

Being able to toggle would open up a ton of shapes, but adding raven/wolf to the mundane option would be quite nice.

Wilkins1952

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Re: Option for Druids to toggle back to more grounded animal forms.
« Reply #15 on: January 29, 2023, 01:03:09 PM »
Will also echo that giving druids the option to use all their forms rather than just hte most powerful is a good idea. For one it adds to RP and gives more options for Druidic chars outside of "I am this giant dangerous bear fear me."
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Re: Option for Druids to toggle back to more grounded animal forms.
« Reply #16 on: January 29, 2023, 01:32:30 PM »
Will also echo that giving druids the option to use all their forms rather than just hte most powerful is a good idea. For one it adds to RP and gives more options for Druidic chars outside of "I am this giant dangerous bear fear me."

+1. It would be interesting if it were a feat that could supplement another one of the wildshape choices.
« Last Edit: January 29, 2023, 01:40:07 PM by Hemlock »
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Re: Option for Druids to toggle back to more grounded animal forms.
« Reply #17 on: January 29, 2023, 02:07:03 PM »
Not opposed to it but not a priority either, so until a developer wants to work on it, it'll remain on the wish list.

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Re: Option for Druids to toggle back to more grounded animal forms.
« Reply #18 on: February 03, 2023, 07:21:56 AM »
It's a nice idea, but the work to implement it and the resources it would take might be in excess of what it would bring. I'm thinking about it only in passing, they would need to create new instances for each shape at each level. The default version of Wildshape would just stay the same, as there isn't a way to tell the game to choose a different model, there is no multiple choice since it just pulls from a pre determined set of values, like model appearance, skills, feats, and attributes. So they would need to create a new version of wildshape? They would maybe take each value at each level and copy it, and just change the model appearance. I don't know if there are better ways to go about it, but it's pretty clunky that way.

Could you elaborate EO?

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Re: Option for Druids to toggle back to more grounded animal forms.
« Reply #19 on: February 03, 2023, 10:57:04 AM »
It's a nice idea, but the work to implement it and the resources it would take might be in excess of what it would bring. I'm thinking about it only in passing, they would need to create new instances for each shape at each level. The default version of Wildshape would just stay the same, as there isn't a way to tell the game to choose a different model, there is no multiple choice since it just pulls from a pre determined set of values, like model appearance, skills, feats, and attributes. So they would need to create a new version of wildshape? They would maybe take each value at each level and copy it, and just change the model appearance. I don't know if there are better ways to go about it, but it's pretty clunky that way.

Could you elaborate EO?

Rather than tinker with the wildshape and greater wildshape feats themselves, when a druid gets the greater wildshape feat, you could create a customized "wildshape junior" feat that they receive at the same time, that allows for polymorphing into the original forms (or even some additional mundane forms for flavor).  Maybe?


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Re: Option for Druids to toggle back to more grounded animal forms.
« Reply #20 on: February 03, 2023, 11:17:25 AM »
It's a nice idea, but the work to implement it and the resources it would take might be in excess of what it would bring. I'm thinking about it only in passing, they would need to create new instances for each shape at each level. The default version of Wildshape would just stay the same, as there isn't a way to tell the game to choose a different model, there is no multiple choice since it just pulls from a pre determined set of values, like model appearance, skills, feats, and attributes. So they would need to create a new version of wildshape? They would maybe take each value at each level and copy it, and just change the model appearance. I don't know if there are better ways to go about it, but it's pretty clunky that way.

Could you elaborate EO?

We'd probably not even need anything so convoluted, the wild shape script isn't hardcoded and it is likely such change could be integrated within it. In the end, it's really a question of time and interest. Nothing else. A dev will pick the project or won't.
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Re: Option for Druids to toggle back to more grounded animal forms.
« Reply #21 on: February 03, 2023, 01:24:57 PM »
+1 as well. It would be a very neat QoL option for RP.
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Tohuvabohu

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Re: Option for Druids to toggle back to more grounded animal forms.
« Reply #22 on: March 23, 2023, 06:33:40 AM »
I don't think a QOL of life thing for RP should be coded in as another feat to take, because it would be a little disruptive to character building and would likely be a niche feat that doesn't see use outside of characters that are more RP minded.

I think a much better hypothetical implementation would be an option in the rest or druid radial menu to be able to switch between the forms.