Shapeshifting gone for good??
 

...with no Alternate Form for druids and no shapeshift spells in "DF Spells" - has supernatural shapeshifting been officially banned from the Dungeon Fantasy line?
So no druids turning into cave bears, no barbarian-druids with wolf totems changing into their totem animal?

Re: Shapeshifting gone for good??
 

I rather like the WoW druids (and the Iron Druid...). I'd miss shapeshifting. :-(

Re: Shapeshifting gone for good??
 

"Not in the core material" doesn't mean "banned." It just means "not in the core material." I do not know why it's not there, but I suspect it was seen as potentially complicated in play, and since the DFRPG is all about easy play out of the box, anything complicated but not necessary could get cut. Perhaps, should there be DFRPG supplements, there'll be a druid splatbook or something similar with clearly optional rules for shapeshifters.

Re: Shapeshifting gone for good??
 

I'd be reluctant to allow the spells without more analysis, but happily use the Shapeshifting rules from DF:11 - Powerups (and DF:5 - Allies for Super Animal stats). But that's a lot of word count and implicit GURPS: Basic Set rules to include in the DFRPG.

Re: Shapeshifting gone for good??
 

I believe that one of the books says that such abilities aren't included in DFRPG because because GURPS uses point costs for such things, but as DFRPG doesn't include point costs for such critters it kinda hard to do.

Re: Shapeshifting gone for good??
 

Why do you think that?

Re: Shapeshifting gone for good??
 

Only that I haven't read them in a while, and can't remember how much 'on the fly' computation and handwaving is required to use them. They may well be OK, but as I said, I haven't checked.

Whereas the 'Druidic Ability' approach from DF:11 looks solid, and all the animal stats are pre-calculated in DF:5, so minimal prep required. Thematically, I prefer this approach in any case. Seems more 'natural' than spell casting, somehow.

Re: Shapeshifting gone for good??
 

IIRC none you just cast the spell

Re: Shapeshifting gone for good??
 

The point cost of the creature affects the casting cost for Shapeshifting. A "default" casting cost is 6/2 (that is, 6 to cast, 2 to maintain) but a Bear might be 10/4 while a Pigeon would probably hit the minimum of 3/1. Dungeon Fantasy 5: Allies gives the casting cost for each animal in that book.

The point cost to casting cost calculation is wiggly enough that you can easily ballpark the casting cost. The harder part is having the animal stats handy, but a decent Bestiary (such as the one in DF5 or the DFRPG) will give you the stats.

Re: Shapeshifting gone for good??
 

That's not the case. See Beast Flight on p. 24 of Adventurers.

Re: Shapeshifting gone for good??
 

Not the same thing. A good way to make sure everything is relatively sane is (for example) to have the list from DF Allies and say "You can only pick from these written-up forms." No "I want to shapeshift into $arbitraryAnimal", a set list of "These are druid forms."

WOW Druids only have access to a limited set of forms, and I have to say I still found it a barrel of fun, even from launch day back when shapeshifting Druids were sorely neglected by the development team.