[Powers] Shapeshifting Others

[Anders]

Originally Posted by Bruno

It's a 0% switch. Pick one.

A "I turn you into a toad! AHah!" affliction is more useful as an attack, less useful to sneak your friends in through toad-sized holes or containers or what-have-you.

A "I give you the TOAD power! Ahah!" affliction is FAR less useful as an attack but FAR more useful as a buff for your friends and yourself.

6 of one, half-a-dozen of the other.

If your friends are buffed by being able to turn into a toad you need new friends. The only animal more useless would be a tree sloth.

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by Asta Kask

If your friends are buffed by being able to turn into a toad you need new friends. The only animal more useless would be a tree sloth.

This can be a 0 point toad template, think about it, that can be some serious toadness there.

[Bruno]

Frog might have been a better example, but I tell ya, turning the 600 lb minotaur barbarian into a 2-5 lb toad would have made hauling him out of that pit trap much easier on Monday...

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by Bruno

Frog might have been a better example, but I tell ya, turning the 600 lb minotaur barbarian into a 2-5 lb toad would have made hauling him out of that pit trap much easier on Monday...

Eh... frog, toad... you will get the same potential for surprise from either one (most of the value for those low-point animal forms, IME).

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by Asta Kask

If your friends are buffed by being able to turn into a toad you need new friends.

Nope, no spies here. Just some toads.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Not another shrubbery

Eh... frog, toad... you will get the same potential for surprise from either one (most of the value for those low-point animal forms, IME).

Small size for easy transportation (had a PC regularly become a small bird perched on the wagon or somebody's shoulder), surprise value, flight (a big one . . . see previous parenthesis), rapid swimming (fish form for the win!), etc. Most forms that get ST-7 [-70] to ST-9 [-90] and one of Ichthyoid [-50], Quadruped or Vermiform [-35], or just No Fine Manipulators [-30] have enough downsides that buying off a racial IQ-6 [-120] or IQ-7 [-140] still leaves a cheap-and-easy Alternate Form. Especially when you consider that it's often really IQ!-6 [-60] or IQ!-7 [-70] that's being removed.

For instance, take the canonical "large falcon" but remove its racial IQ penalty and Domestic Animal/Wild Animal meta-trait to get a bird form with full human intellect:

Attribute Modifiers: ST-7 [-70]; DX+4 (No Fine Manipulators, -40%) [48].
Secondary Characteristic Modifiers: SM -4; Per+2 [10]; Basic Move-4 [-20].
Advantages: Acute Vision 3 [6]; Enhanced Move 1 (Air Speed 24) [20]; Flight (Winged, -25%) [30]; Sharp Beak [1]; Sharp Claws [5].
Disadvantages: No Fine Manipulators [-30].

That's 0 points, so the Alternate Form costs 15 points. But it lets you fly around at Move 24 and spy on things with Vision 15. You're also light (5 lbs.), small (SM -4), and unobtrusive (somebody's trained beast, of a species that may well be admitted to see kings). Very handy! Most forms that trade off human-average ST and tool-use ability for animal senses and movement are, rather.

[Bruno]

Which is a great example why being able to be a (smart) hawk, when it's convenient, is 15 points, while being a hawk all the time isn't.

I was thinking frog, not toad, because they're more acrobatic (well, better jumpers anyways) and better swimmers for getting past water hazards. I just sort of forgot to explain what I was babbling about.

Being able to turn into a frog is a buff for anyone. It's a 15 point advantage! You get to be SM -5, jumpy, and aquatic, whenever it suits you. Doesn't matter if your buddy is the 300 point 600 lb minotaur or not - there are still times where it's more convenient for him to be a 2 lb 0 point frog.


Never mind that he gets to be a ~260 point frog not a 0 point frog (replacing Minotaur racial template with Frog, keeping everything else, including Fit, extra HT, extra DX, extra ST, combat reflexes, etc etc etc).

[Cernig]

The only animal more useless would be a tree sloth.

Not true. A bunch of friends brainstormed this one night in the '80s with reference to the D&D "Polymorph Other" spell. As long as you're on dry land the most useless animal is a jellyfish. Lacking any movement ability or attack method on dry land it can't do anything except sit there, drying out until it dies.

For 22 points, that's a nasty affliction.

[Not another shrubbery]

Originally Posted by Bruno

I was thinking frog, not toad, because they're more acrobatic (well, better jumpers anyways) and better swimmers for getting past water hazards.

Yeah. That kinda balances out with toads having fewer predators and better environmental adaptivity. In the short term [because who wants to be either one for long?], the frog form will often be a more useful buff.

[Gurps Fan]

Originally Posted by Cernig

Not true. A bunch of friends brainstormed this one night in the '80s with reference to the D&D "Polymorph Other" spell. As long as you're on dry land the most useless animal is a jellyfish. Lacking any movement ability or attack method on dry land it can't do anything except sit there, drying out until it dies.

For 22 points, that's a nasty affliction.

Yes. Affliction (Advantage, Alternate Form, Something Very Vulnerable, +150%) [25] is indeed a nasty affliction. For the same 25 points, you even could buy an Affliction that turns someone else into an anaerobic microorganism that dies in Earth-normal atmosphere.

However, compare it with Affliction (Unconsciousness, +150%) [25]. The rules say that once you've made the victim unconscious, you can kill him as you like, instantly, with no die roll required (Instant Death, p. 423). A 25-point Affliction is powerful. It's supposed to be lethally nasty.

For more discussion on "Shapeshift Other"-type Affliction, see this thread.