Shapeshifting, unarmed damage and gloves.

[EasternCheesE]

By now, if we shapeshift into a shape that doesn't have any weapon (unarmed), no offensive enchantments are added to them (neither from weapons nor from gloves).
If possible, can it be fixed so unarmed shapes don't lose those gloves AB and dmg as soon as armed shapes get weapon boni?

[Steve]

Devs and QC have said many times in the past that the unarmed shapes are more powerful than those shapes with weapons, thus to add bonuses from either gloves or bracers would cause imbalance and a power buff that Staff doesn’t want to see.

[EasternCheesE]

Speaking of warlock shapes, 2 out of 3 his unarmed shapes are simply useless compared to his armed shapes.

[Steve]

Speaking of warlock shapes, 2 out of 3 his unarmed shapes are simply useless compared to his armed shapes.

Yes, I definitely agree. One users either the Cornugon (unarmed) or the Planatar (weapon), unless it’s for lolz against a much lower CR encounter, and then it’s fun to use the Flaming Minotaur or the Wood Witch (as you can tell, I’m terrible with names).

[EasternCheesE]

Actually, no. Goristo (flaming moo) has the biggest damage among all the shapes and dryad has highest ab, so they both are useful. But mouther and slaadi are totally useless comparing others.

[Steve]

Yet one of the major aspects of Changing is getting the regen, since in Form there are no Heal potions, Heal Kits or Inventory access.

Without DR or DR spells, and even with, no regen often means Death while Changed.

Mages when using Shapechange have a host of spells to compensate for Shapes without regen, the Warlock not!

[EasternCheesE]

Well, mages can't cast while shapeshifted too, so we are on par here, except for druids.
And arcane casters don't have any long-lasting healing spells anyway.

And, actually, thanks to administration team, we don't have "Unshape to die" issue anymore, so having low health with no regen while shapeshifted is not an automatic ticket to fugue anymore.

Still, i would love to see unarmed shapes either revisited or have their gloves enchantments applied. Any dev team, please comment if we can have certain shapes being revisited to make them be on par with some others? Having 2 out of 6 total shapes i have access to being totally useless is annoying. I want shapes (warlock shapes in first place, cause i play warlock) to be good or unique in their way.
For now, gibbering mouther is useless as the only thing it has is flurry of blows and cool creepy look.
Slaadi has 3 regen, but his "lay eggs" dc is so low that it can't be even considered as something usable past CR 10 area (which you won't go anyway as you need lvl 16 warlock to get access to word of changing).

I like how dryad has the biggest AB among all warlock shapes while lacking some AC, it makes it specialized. Goristo pretty much doubles dryad, with bigger damage and a bit lower AC.
But i don't like that planetar shape is in almost all terms better than Cornugon shape. As soon as they often are "Cornugon for evils, planetar for goodies", having them being unbalanced feels wrong.

[MrSmith]

Devs and QC have said many times in the past that the unarmed shapes are more powerful than those shapes with weapons, thus adding bonuses from either gloves or bracers would cause imbalance and a power buff that Staff doesn’t want to see.

Bear Warrior Wiki Page reads "Elemental damage bonuses from your weapon or gloves transfer" while in bear form. I was thinking about this build, but if this statement is not true... I will have some reservations. Can anyone confirm either way? Thank you!

Cheers.

[zhazz]

Elemental bonuses from gloves/weapons do transfer for Bear Warrior.

They do not, however, transfer for druidic Shapeshifting or the wizard spell. The reason for this is a balance issue due to both those classes having powerful buffs. Buffs which the Bear Warrior doesn't have.

[EasternCheesE]

But warlocks do have few buffs, others come from UMD.
Warlock can have +4 dex, +2 ac and dr 15 as self-buffing only, which is very few comparing arcane/divine caster buffs.

Dire Bear: +12 strength, +8 constitution, +2 dexterity, +7 natural armor, +2 Will saves and Fast Regen +4. All claw and bite attacks have +4 enchantment. 30 base AC.

This form, actually, gets more bonuses than whole warlock buffing can give. Warlock's unarmed shapes don't have +4 eb and they have no access to knockdown/charge etc.

[Svabodnik]

To play devil's advocate, in contrast to Augment Form gishes, Warlocks have about 74 points of extra damage each round (assuming Hideous Blow 14d6 blast damage from a CL 30 Warlock using Eldritch Master) which could also be used to apply some rather debilitating debuffs, or further increased using the Epic Eldritch Blast feat. If the server is intended to be partly balanced around party play, it should also not be forgotten that a divine or arcane caster could complement such a warlock by giving them the enhancements they cannot offer themselves, turning them into a far more potent engine of destruction an AF gish could hope to become.

Comparing any of this to Bear Warrior, typically a non-caster without access to the HB blast/permahaste of a warlock or the self-buffs/summon support of a druid/wizard, feels like apples-to-oranges.

That being said, I can definitely see the argument that certain forms feel rather imbalanced to others, or that there are an insufficient number of forms filling a similar role for users of differing alignments (such as a weapon-using evil outsider to rival the Planetar form).

[Nemni]

Unarmed shapes do have more strength in general, so giving them weapon/glove merging would just be an overall buff. Polymorphing is in a pretty good spot and doesn't need to be stronger. But I agree that some forms are too weak to ever be used. The slaad for example, perhaps the skeleton and zombie. If you want you could list the 3-5 shapes you think are the overall worst and maybe something could be done for those.

[EasternCheesE]

There are 6 shapes available with word of changing for warlock.
Their stats are listed here:
https://wiki.bgtscc.net/index.php?title ... f_Changing
And stats are not correct on wiki comparing to the actual game. As soon as that table is PNG, i can't edit it easily to make them match.

I post screenshots of actual stats of creatures here:
https://imgur.com/a/jZnpA8j

The initial warlock is monk 6/warlock 19 without unarmed weapon focus, +2 AC from tumble.
Shapeshifted stats being shown in blue is game issue, all the screenshots show stats without any additional item bonus (unequipped everything before shapeshifting).

From my experience, both mouther and slaad have no real use outside of RP and are worse than any other shapes.
Non buffed info:
1) Cornugon shape has biggest AC (35) with 29 AB, 3 hp regen, sr 28.
2) Dryad shape has medium AC (28), but the biggest AB (35) and x3 19-20 crits for 80-90 dmg.
3) Goristo shape has lower AC than dryad (24), but the biggest overall damage (2d6 + 12 + 4 + 1d6 fire + 6 (power attack)) with AB (32) being a bit lower than dryad without power attack and same as Cornugon with power attack (29)
4) Planetar is a total all-arounder, having a bit lower AC (33) than cornugon, slightly more AB (30) and a bit higher damage (2d6 + 10 for cornugon vs 2d6 + 7 + 4 + 1d4, good aligned, for planetar). But planetar has 4 hp regen, 30 sr and i can equip some elemental weapon with keen for 17-20 x2 crits and additional 2,5 or 3,5 damage, so, in overall, planetar ends up being way stronger and surviving better than cornugon for having 20% crit chance vs 5% crit chance and higher overall damage and AB with additional 1 point of regen.

5) Mouther has 3d6 +10 dmg, medium AC (28), good AB (30), but 4 dr, no regen. It can't stand any fight well, the only good thing about it is second full AB attack with flurry of blows (which gives -2 AB to all attacks though). Mouther is said to have stun on hit, but i never experienced it working myself, so i can't confirm that.
6) Slaad has 3d6 + 7 + 5 dmg, medium AC (27), low AB (27), dc 17 lay eggs, dr 10 and 3 regen. That "lay eggs" doesn't do anything as it's disease and it needs time to develop. By the moment it happens, you either have already killed enemy or it has killed you/you fled. And DC 17 is something useless against even CR 16 mobs, because they have their saves being higher by that moment already.

I myself wish we could have two of these shapes changed to something els to give more interesting mechanics. Say, shapeshifting into erynie with a bow or some other plane creature with different feats/weapons etc.
For now, mouther and slaad are simply useless as all other 4 shapes outperform them in 90% cases.

Just a small addition. When i play in party, i can have my cornugon shape being buffed with +4 or even +5 EB from GMW. While planetar does already have +4 weapon, why should i rely on other player for adding that +4 EB bonus i have on my gloves for unarmed shapes?
I could understand that if all the weapons for shapes had no EB so everyone were in equal situation, but they are not. Armed shapes do already have +4 weapons with additional effects and they can be further improved with using matching weapon for additional effects, while unarmed shapes' weapons cannot be improved anyhow except for buffs coming from other person.

[EasternCheesE]

To play devil's advocate, in contrast to Augment Form gishes, Warlocks have about 74 points of extra damage each round (assuming Hideous Blow 14d6 blast damage from a CL 30 Warlock using Eldritch Master) which could also be used to apply some rather debilitating debuffs, or further increased using the Epic Eldritch Blast feat. If the server is intended to be partly balanced around party play, it should also not be forgotten that a divine or arcane caster could complement such a warlock by giving them the enhancements they cannot offer themselves, turning them into a far more potent engine of destruction an AF gish could hope to become.

Comparing any of this to Bear Warrior, typically a non-caster without access to the HB blast/permahaste of a warlock or the self-buffs/summon support of a druid/wizard, feels like apples-to-oranges.

That being said, I can definitely see the argument that certain forms feel rather imbalanced to others, or that there are an insufficient number of forms filling a similar role for users of differing alignments (such as a weapon-using evil outsider to rival the Planetar form).

1) Warlocks are medium BAB thus they do have hard times hitting enemies on epic levels. From 7 current attacks my warlock has, i rarely land more than 2 or maximum 3 in a round for ~30 damage each.
2) They are unlikely to land any debuff because CR 20 mobs do already have 20sh saves while you can't easily switch between Fort/Will save hideous blast forms while shapeshifted. You have to unshapeshift, cast hideous blow 2 times to switch it.
3) Warlock DCs overall awful and having 29 DC on 25 save mob means you can't rely on your debuffs. Those also last only for 1 round. 10 round daze is lvl 6 spell, so it will have DC 26-8 fort save, which is very easy to overcome for most of mobs on epics.
4) Gishes don't go for shapeshifting most of time, so they don't have to worry about someone buffing them, they can do it themself and they are also unlikely to be dispeled because of CL 29-30 they have.


Well, as to your last paragrapgh, exactly. Cornugon is good overall, i just feel it lacking comparing to "good guy" shape available and the fact i can "upgrade" my good guy using a good weapon to merge those permanent boni, while i can't do same for cornugon. If we had similar shapes for both good/evil/neutral, it could be easier to find your selection of favourite ones you build for. Being bound to 6 shapes, 2 of which are worse than other 4, leaves us with 4 shapes to use and even among them, planetar and cornugon are the strongest, so dryad and goristo are used rarely.
Say, gibbering mouther or slaad has nothing important cornugon doesn't have, except for different look. But if you run around as cornugon, mouther or slaad, you will have pretty similar PC reaction to it anyway.

[Nemni]

The wiki table says bonus AC, not final AC. For final AC you would calculate dex, bonus AC, shape adjustment (usually -1 for large shape) and items etc.

Anyway, they don't have to be perfectly balanced, they just have to be in the same range. I think for the warlock shapes there are situations where all of them are useful except for the slaad. Most of the shapechange shapes are also useful except for a few outliers (which could be buffed like I said).

While planetar does already have +4 weapon, why should i rely on other player for adding that +4 EB bonus i have on my gloves for unarmed shapes?

Because the cornugon has 9-10 points higher strength than the planetar, for example.

I myself wish we could have two of these shapes changed to something els to give more interesting mechanics. Say, shapeshifting into erynie with a bow or some other plane creature with different feats/weapons etc.

More stuff is always nice but the current forms are supposed to be 1 for each available warlock pact. And the fewer number of shapes for warlocks is supposed to reflect how the class has less spell diversity in general in exchange for infinite casts.