A Land Far Away

Wildshape is pretty broken stock NWN2, and there's not a lot out there to fix them. Going over the D&D rules I noticed some things that need changing, and I'm looking into what it would take to do them.

"At 5th level, a druid gains the ability to turn herself into any Small or Medium animal and back again once per day. Her options for new forms include all creatures with the animal type. This ability functions like the alternate form special ability, except as noted here." (1)

1) "The new form’s Hit Dice can’t exceed the character’s druid level." (1) (not clue on this one, I think because the new form retains your level this may not need any work at all, maybe? Anyone more familiar with PnP Druids feel free to comment.)

2) "Any gear worn or carried by the druid melds into the new form and becomes nonfunctional. When the druid reverts to her true form, any objects previously melded into the new form reappear in the same location on her body that they previously occupied and are once again functional." (1) No items bonuses or anything should transfer over. (currently modifiers from shield, armor, and I think helmet transfer)

3) "The creature loses the natural weapons, natural armor, and movement modes of its original form, as well as any extraordinary special attacks of its original form not derived from class levels (such as the barbarian’s rage class feature)." (2) This means general feats like KD or Disarm SHOULD still work, but not class specific ones. (currently nothing works)

4) "The creature gains the natural weapons, natural armor, movement modes, and extraordinary special attacks of its new form." (2) (needs to gain appropriate feats for their wildshape temporarily)

5) "The creature retains the spell-like abilities and supernatural attacks of its old form (except for breath weapons and gaze attacks). It does not gain the spell-like abilities or attacks of its new form."(2) Same with point 3, nothing is usuable...

6) "A druid loses her ability to speak while in animal form because she is limited to the sounds that a normal, untrained animal can make, but she can communicate normally with other animals of the same general grouping as her new form."(1) (probably just an RP thing, since I believe the engine forces you to revert when you talk to NPCs anyways)

7) "At 16th level, a druid becomes able to use wild shape to change into a Small, Medium, or Large elemental (air, earth, fire, or water) once per day. These elemental forms are in addition to her normal wild shape usage. In addition to the normal effects of wild shape, the druid gains all the elemental’s extraordinary, supernatural, and spell-like abilities. She also gains the elemental’s feats for as long as she maintains the wild shape, but she retains her own creature type."(1) (This looks to be a whole new bag of worms to mess with as apposed to the normal Wildshapes. The others can MAYBE be fixed all at once, and possibly the fixes applied in some form here as well.)

(1)http://www.d20srd.org/srd/classes/druid.htm#wildShape

(2)http://www.d20srd.org/srd/specialAbilit ... ernateForm

I was looking at what determines the modifiers as it says in (2) the HP doesn't change. However, putting this thread together I see something I overlooked before, Druid HP is modified (refer to 1). The biggest thing, I think, would just be enabling the action bar during Wildshapes, maybe forcing a non-customizable selection, or just greying out anything not flagged (custom flags possible?) for use in Wildshape.

I'll gladly take the time to work on this stuff myself, but I'm a noob to NWN2's scripting, as it basically alters the base scripts, which means hunting through thousands of files to find what's needed.

I think this post comes from a lack of understanding of how EffectPolymorph works-- what you're asking for is a complete workaround of a core engine mechanic.

This is certainly possible-- but the scripts we'd have to use to accomplish as much are pretty horrendously bugged. We'd be looking at either a pretty-tough toolsetting burden (wherein the "Default" movement rate of a creature would never be a valid choice, as we'd convert all possible appearances to use the PC movement rate) or the requirement of a new movement-managing system (wherein we define movement rates on every appearance and create duplicates of a few meaningful ones, and then leverage the bug to replace the existing movement speed handling).

And then of course the UI would need a lot of work, because it'll have no idea what you're doing.

NWN2 does not include panther shape either. But the code for panther wildshape is just commented out. Ronan (one of the tech gurus around here), put panther shape back in a few years ago. It was very very buggy and seems "just dangerous to use" now. I've used it a few times lately, without much problem... except I think this:

After using wildshape recently, my PC's skills....are ALL wrong. I lost most of my ranks in some skills, which I THINK was caused by wildshaping. I posted a ticket on the BG bug forum months ago - but am in no rush. I have tried what i can to test, but the skill ranks have disappeared. ((I do need a re-build, but don't think of myself important enough to ask a DM for that much time to hang out and re-level me ...oh well))

But having +0 to Knowledge: Nature does make most DMs flip out sometimes, and then i have to explain all this again, everytime I roll it... and thankfully the DMs know me long enough to trust my PC does have +6!

The even stranger thing is, Druids have a CLASS BONUS of +2 to Knowledge: Nature... which really should not be gone i would assume due to a wildshape bug... but again, i don't know and do not want to bother anyone for help anymore as usually, i am 99% misunderstood and i don't care for the *sighs*. I'd rather just play on!

So, using Wildshape in any form, is dangerous, for not only buggy reasons, but for the reason i just mentioned.

So, you showing interest in fixing it, just makes me at least feel very happy. I'd be very open to help you (or anyone else) test anything related to this anytime OOC.

Cheers OMEGASAUCE.

I've used the other wildshapes in the OC with no issues, though never the Panther one, maybe that's why it was blocked off?

Another possibility is because of the custom skills. I've been pouring over the scripts (ands there's a lot mixed into wildshape) and it seem to basically replace your whole character, then basically puts your stats and everything back where it was when wildshape wears off (or you revert). To fix it would probably mean finding the variables determining skill modifiers under epoly (haven't found that yet) and add in the custom skills.

That's my guess anyways.

As for the speed thing, wasn't thinking about toying with that at all. The main things I'm looking into are removing the weapon/armor/helmet/shield mods (as per PnP) and adding the ability to use skills form the action bar. Those two alone would accomplish pretty much everything listed.

Take a lower-level view. I'm talking about the actual commands you'll have to use to make this fix, and the collateral damage you'll have to manage.

Zelknolf wrote:I think this post comes from a lack of understanding of how EffectPolymorph works-- what you're asking for is a complete workaround of a core engine mechanic..

You're right, I don't, but I'll figure it out. If a temp small bar is needed for the druids transformations abilities, that shouldn't be a big deal, wouldn't even be half the work of the PCMI tool I imagine. There's already exploits to work around transformations proving nothing is actually disabled except the action bar. All I need to do is figure out how to mess with that setting, or tweak it if nothing else.

Zelknolf wrote:Take a lower-level view. I'm talking about the actual commands you'll have to use to make this fix, and the collateral damage you'll have to manage.

I haven't learned any commands yet, lol.

Hmm... let's see... a script that fires when you polymorph to open a secondary skill bar containing general feats and your transformations skills. What would that require?

Quick benchtest just for how to temp bar might work.

trigger: epoly (***,***,TRUE) \\ third boolean indictates it's a wildshape
create temp bar: overlap action bar
if
knockdown = true
place knockdown in actionbar
if
disarm = true
place disarm in actionbar

if
spell = *** \\whichever elemental or shape
place **** \* elemental or shape abilities */ in action bar

As to removing the armor mods, the notes in the scripts themselves seem to indicate they were added at a later point, kinda after the fact, so removing them should be easy.

Wow, feel kinda stupid, just now discovered the NWN2 toolset that came with the game.

Omegasage wrote:I haven't learned any commands yet, lol.

Hmm... let's see... a script that fires when you polymorph to open a secondary skill bar containing general feats and your transformations skills. What would that require?

A new action bar, form-specific handling to decide which abilities are actually capabilities of the new forms (which would mean creating a system to distinguish between spell-like, extraordinary, and supernatural abilities, and some handling to mark certain ones as breath weapons or gaze attacks-- and a system to identify the sources of extraordinary abilities [it matters if it comes from race or class] -- you'd also probably be rewriting spellbooks to make components of prepared spells available through script; claws can't be used for somatic components), a new set of forms, some sort of data structure to track the presence of abilities before the application of EffectPolymorph (which absolutely must account for any new abilities we add later), and maybe hooks in abilities supress any of those abilities (this one would depend on how that bit of new UI works)


The reason I say that this would be a difficult and complex project to take on is that, while the concept is simple, that concept violates many assumptions made by the game engine, and circumvents a shortcut (granted, a blunt and artless shortcut) that the original content took to avoid a big ol' can of worms (a big ol' can that is pretty much unhandled because the solution was the shortcut). I really would not suggest this as a project for getting your sea legs. You should start with single low-level spells, static quests, or more-isolated systems.

Continuing with the sea theme... I like the cut of your jib omega sage.

Keep that thinking cap on!

^ aye yer a good lad omegasauce...get this werkin' and I'll spoon ya ha!

I see your point Zelknolf. I'll take your advice on starting on some smaller things first, since I'm still learning and all. A simple solution I see is maybe make the new bar's abilities be static depending on the shape, as each shape is actually considered its own spell. Considering Druids are Divine Spellcasters, I don't think the issue with somatic componants applies (though I could be wrong there), though multi-classing and arcane spellcaster could prove problematic...

I'll cut my teeth on some other stuff and stick this on the back burner for now though, as you suggested.

Most druid spells can't be cast in wild shape form because they do have somatic, verbal and/or divine focus components. All of which are unusable shaped. Which is why most druids take the Natural Spell feat.

Looks like you could be looking at specific issues of Wildshape to fix that you point out, like:
- Remove extra AC that transfers over and should not
- Give some fixed feat-based attacks/abilities to appropriate forms (like knockdown for wolf)

To answer the question:

1) "The new form’s Hit Dice can’t exceed the character’s druid level." (1) (not clue on this one, I think because the new form retains your level this may not need any work at all, maybe? Anyone more familiar with PnP Druids feel free to comment.)

It matters because D&D animals have base levels that tie in to balance their hit dice and other properties. Creatures usually don't easily scale sensibly down/up from their base levels, although such scalings can be mathed by a DM to create varied stuff (and also for level drain effects). For example, a Dire Bear (large animal, base level 12) downscaled to level 5 still has 31 STR (their main "property"), and thus hits like a ton of bricks compared to, say, a lvl5 fighter. Thus it makes sense that you have to be lvl12 druid to shape to dire bear.