Bought Stats and Alternate Form?

[TheHengeProphet]

I have a large creature (15' cloud) that can transform into a lesser humanoid form, but has bought up DX at and Striking ST at reduced costs. Shapeshifting: Alternate Form specifies that these abilities transfer over to the alternate form, but does not say if they are required to be bought up for that form.

DX was bought up at the reduced rate for No Fine Manipulators
Striking ST was bought up at the reduced rate for No Fine Manipulators and for being size +2

Would I have to buy those abilities for the humanoid form, due to them costing different rates, or would they transfer free of charge?

[Anders]

I'd say you pay for the difference. No freebies on my watch!

[TheHengeProphet]

I would agree, and that is what I am likely going to do.

The book does fairly clearly imply that everything just... transfers over, at no cost. That seems horribly breakable to me.

[Anders]

However... does that mean my muscle-man gets a discount when changing into wolf-form?

[TheHengeProphet]

Valid point, because such an assumption about costs would imply that it goes both ways. In either direction, you might recieve "free points".

[SCAR]

Or, the points expenditure on ST and DX stay the same, they just buy fewer levels.

So ST+5 (SM-20%) = [40]
Alternate form SM+0, 40 points in ST would give you ST+4

[TheHengeProphet]

Okay, I'm going to quote the defining part of this issue.

Personal traits (including
all attribute levels, advantages, disadvantages,
and skills bought over and
above racial norms) remain intact,
although your skill levels are affected
by changes to the controlling attribute
scores.

Attribute levels are levels, not points spent, and I find that very clear. I do find it odd that it specifies nothing about point cost, though.

[SCAR]

Retaining the straight Attibute Levels (or the relative level to the racial norm) regardless of SM (or other) point reductions, is by far the simplest approach in play.

Anything else involves recalculating points or levels - for Morph rather than AF, the new base Racial Form may not have been know in advance, so you'd have to be doing the calculations on the fly.

If a characters has +5 ST, and they change Form, retaining +5 ST is simple - and in anything but an extreme case, any point differences are going to be relatively minimal.

[Yako]

The problem of big quadrupeds changing into humans shows why you should always go with point differences.
There is no reason to treat a elephant becoming human differently than a human becoming an elephant, so just take the points in ST and DX and see how much the cost differs for adjusting them to their new value.

[TheHengeProphet]

Say my 15' cloud creature (very roughly explaind in the OP) has Striking ST 20. This cost the creature 40 points.
It shapeshifts into a human, retaining the Striking ST, costing the now human form 100 points.

This is a 60 point cost.

Say there is a human who has Striking ST 20. This cost him 100 points.
He shapeshifts into a 15' cloud with No Fine Manipulators.
I don't need to explain this part.

This is a LOSS of 60 points.

I see nothing that would let you get those points back. This hammer swings both ways, so scaling down from large quadrupeds is not a good solid reason for going entirely with point difference. I wish it were that simple, though.