Polymorphing

[Splemish]

Hey! I've been playing on and off forever, but never really got involved with many DM events or the forum. I enjoy the server, enjoy the RP I get, but I play the game in large bursts. 2-3 months at a time, then I take a break for the same amount of time. I'm not a spree of playing at the moment, and have sorcerer in the underdark. Really good fun. Exploring the new areas, finding ways to travel, marking runes, making money. The RP is uncommon, but really great when it happens. Fits my style very well. Enjoying some mindless grinding in different areas, spattered with good RP. I was playing a necromancer, and it was fun, but I had gone 10 in shadow adept, which I felt I lacked the RP chops to really do justice, and I was going high in pale master and wizard. It felt both a little too power game-y, and a little too annoying. Necromancer is fun in PnP, but when your fiddling with their stupid AI in tunnels its just a pain. After I git 9th spells, I picked up shape change, and really enjoyed it. Honestly, my necromancy kinda got put on the back foot. Why summon 12 HD zombies when I can turn into a hydra and eat the world.

And so, I RcR'ed into a fairly bland standard sorcerer Gish. I played around with the build a bit, got 30 casting level, and 6 attacks. So far, leveling is slow, but not very deadly. I don't have shapechange any more, so no frost giant to crush the world with, but with enough buffsm polymorph makes me a tanky, if low damage character. Its playable, which is all I care about.

This question may be pointless, and this may be in the wrong section. Sorry if it is. My main point is the RP side of thing. I'm playing up the shapechangeing, the master of many forms. Not just for combat gishyness, but for RP. Find a group of drow that may be aggressive? Turn into a beetle and watch. Want to enter the city? Turn into a drow, and no problem. Its a master of many forms type of thing. Wears a mask, hides her true form. All that silliness. I have one question, which may be pointless, as I'm not sure if its even possible, but is it possible to allow shifting between forms. Going from troll to drow to insect. Or orc to human to drider. Its not really that important, and it pretty much only applies to builds like mine, but it seems, unless I am missing something, or would be to broken. I could see going from big damaging giant, getting low on hp, switching to spined devil if your in danger could be very powerful, or too powerful. Or it could simply be the way shapechanging works. How very few things can be active. No idea, but shifting from base form to troll to base form to insect to base form to drow is just a bit tiresome.

Sorry for the length of this post, if this post is in the wrong section, or such thing. My knowledge of the forum is very small. I mostly just read it for build advice. I'm hoping to get more involved. Thanks for any responses.

[Blackman D]

well the issue with bypassing your base form to go from one poly form to another poly form is that you are suppose to gain whatever abilities of the form you take, and said form likely does not have the ability to polymorph and only if you are a druid doing wildshape can you cast spells when shifted - and even then wildshapes cannot use the base druid wildshape ability

so you end up having to return to your base form to use those abilities/spells that poly forms cannot use

so unless you did something like drow/hummie vampire bat/gaseous form or drow/hummie/w/e lesser important vertically challenged gnome race dragon w/e a dragon feels like shifting into; then i dont think it would make any sense to go from one poly form straight to another, given that we cant shift into vampires and why would you shift out of being a dragon unless you had to rest

[Blackman D]

which one

[Splemish]

Just looked. I don't think you get one? At least not in a form outside of human. Like, you can shift back to base, then into a new form, but you cannot go form to form, at least

[Splemish]

And while I understand keeping shapechange as a return to human form thing. It kinda only lets you turn into combat monsters. Outside of like... Mindflayer? Not much mechanical use. But the base level 4 spell lasts forever(1 hour/level,) allows you to shift form over and over. You can go human-kobold-gargoyle-human-bat-human-ogre-human-goblin in like, a minute. I am mostly talking about polymorph. The thought of going dragon-devil-frost giant is just combat, but I really like the RP implication of a polymorping character switching forms around. Like for my UD character. Beatle to Drow, and pretending to be that underdark stalker thing with my high bluff. Or bat to rat to beatle, to follow somebody. That RP is cool RP stuff, and has no real mechanical implications

[Splemish]

Also not saying you should be able to cast spells in polymorph, or use abilities. That would be combat wise, a little broken. I'm mostly talking about this for RP reasons. There are some mechanical uses. Like going elf archer-troll to become more tanky, but outside of the level 10 ish range, thats useless. Your going to want to use shapechange the second you get it for combat. Polymorph is nothing compared to the combat power of shapechange. and for shapechange, I suppose going like ice giant to dragon would be powerful, a defensive form to offensive, ETC. I'm not a master player, and have never had a character over like 17, so I have no idea about the mechanical power of such a thing

[Splemish]

Thanks. Its a small change, but would make my RP a lot more interesting.