Alternate form question

[Lucian]

I have a player who wants to be a dryad a 70 point template and turn into a giant bird as well.

So his bird template, as it sits,
Is worth 76 points

Flight, strength , all that jazz.

My question :

RAW says your personal traits like skills carry over
Does that mean I have to buy bow skills and spell skills
Increasing the cost of alternate form even if that form can't make use of it?

Or only pay for skills that can theoretically still be used
Like tracking, or survival

Edit: I think I found my own answer, you're creating a template not a individual. So the final stats of the individual in alternate form are relative to the previous form

[weby]

yes as you noted in your edit the existing skills carry over, basically you only replace the racial template things with another template, the other traits stay as before.

So if you have a skill at IQ+1 in one you still have it at same relative value in the other.

[Lucian]

So for instance if he wanted to retain normal iq in bird form , the template should have an iq of 10 essentially Iq +0 so when he shifts, his iq remains identical.

Hes an iq 13 caster with an St of 9

That's st-1 and iq +3

His giant bird is 18 st
And 10 iq

When he becomes a bird
He'll have 17 st and 13 IQ
Is that right?

[Leynok]

Originally Posted by Lucian

So for instance if he wanted to retain normal iq in bird form , the template should have an iq of 10 essentially Iq +0 so when he shifts, his iq remains identical.

Hes an iq 13 caster with an St of 9

That's st-1 and iq +3

His giant bird is 18 st
And 10 iq

When he becomes a bird
He'll have 17 st and 13 IQ
Is that right?

Assuming that the Dryad's have 10 naturally in IQ and ST, then yes, and feel free to ignore anything I'm about to say below.

However if, say they naturally had 9 ST and 12 IQ, the result would be a 18 ST and 11 IQ bird, since the lowered ST wasn't it wasn't his own personal lowered ST, and his IQ would only be 1 higher than the bird's, since his personal IQ was 1 higher than his racial average.
When dealing with Alternate Forms, you first take away everything that your Racial Template gives you, and then add in the new one.

[Edges]

Originally Posted by Lucian

I have a player who wants to be a dryad a 70 point template and turn into a giant bird as well.

So his bird template, as it sits,
Is worth 76 points

Flight, strength , all that jazz.

My question :

RAW says your personal traits like skills carry over
Does that mean I have to buy bow skills and spell skills
Increasing the cost of alternate form even if that form can't make use of it?

Or only pay for skills that can theoretically still be used
Like tracking, or survival

Edit: I think I found my own answer, you're creating a template not a individual. So the final stats of the individual in alternate form are relative to the previous form

You may already have done it. But be sure to include all the disadvantages in the bird template. No Fine Manipulators is a big one and it further discounts some stats as well. If the character Cannot Speak in bird form, that's another big one. And in many game worlds, giant bird characters will also have social disadvantages.

[Varyon]

Yeah, you compare the current racial template with the one that's replacing it. If some traits, like IQ, need to remain the same (so that your character still thinks as he did as a human/dryad/whatever), you check to make certain this is OK with the GM, then just remove that part of the new template, leaving the trait the same. Similarly, traits like Bestial may be inappropriate, so you remove those as well (or possibly downgrade them - the characters from Animorphs sort of replaced Bestial with Stress Atavism with their morphs, had a lesser frequency of their morphs' Bloodlust/Berserk, and so forth). Do note that skills typically aren't appropriate as part of a racial template, so shouldn't be applied as part of Alternate Form - turning into a cat might help you with sneaking (due to the high DX, small size, and morphological adaptations like silent paws and natural camouflage patterns), but it's not going to actually give you more ranks in the Stealth skill.