Polymorphing as an academic wizard is not uninteresting at all. It gives you the optimal stats.

I'll assume you meant war wizard instead, but you're still wrong. It does not make it uninteresting. It just makes it suboptimal. I hate to keep using the same obvious example over and over, but it's still pertinent: it's "uninteresting" to play a warrior with pumped intelligence in 9/10 RPGs I've ever played. Does that mean all these games are unbalanced or not fun?

No, actually, using your scenario, the polymorphed academic wizard has exactly the same stats as the non-polymorphed academic wizard wearing the ring. It is therefore completely uninteresting to polymorph as an academic wizard in this scenario.


This is a different use of "uninteresting" – you mean here that it's suboptimal. By "uninteresting" I mean quite literally uninteresting, in that nothing changes and therefore the options are identical.

In practice it mostly ended up with vampires idling in a safe location during the day.


I'm afraid it's you who has missed the point of the example - it was deliberately simplified and based on the assumpion that humans and trolls were already equally balanced. Perhaps the humans can wear special gear, but this is balanced against the trolls' sharp claws and superior regeneration - the specifics don't actually matter for the sake of the example, which is why I left them out.


…unbalanced, when added on top of my example, because you've just made humans "better" than trolls - and you still haven't actually fixed the problem, you've just addressed the symptoms of one highly simplified scenario.

Trolls are now redundant, so the wizards ignore them and pick something else - something that can wear equipment. Like…humans. Yes, the human wizards have just shapechanged themselves into other humans! Fortunately they take on the physical stats of their new form, which makes things easy for them - they can lower their physical stats to the lowest possible value for a human, then shapechange into the form of a different human, gaining the physical stats of an average human while still retaining their superior intelligence. And because the new form is also human, it's guaranteed to have all the options of their original form.

We're using an over-simplified example. In a real implementation, there would be a lot of differences (maybe the troll can't cast spells, but gets lots of cool physical attacks). While their stats would be identical, the playing experience would be anything but.


Shapechanging into the same shape? Hmm. We must have different views on what shapechanging actually comprises if you're allowing that. To me, a "form" is just a generic template. Like "human" would be a form. And "troll" would be a form. Allowing "human #1" and "human #2" as different forms is not something I would ever implement, but I'm not saying one way is better than the other. I will say that I could see where such a problem would arise in your kind of system if it allowed this behavior.

I don't see why you assume all humans could wear such equipment, though. It could be restricted to wizards specifically to balance them.

You're changing the example. If we allow ourselves to throw in random other constraints, then holding reasonable discussion is impossible. The point of KaVir's example, which he said himself was contrived, was to distill things down to a set of easily comparable numbers. It's meaningless to take that scenario and start adding other stuff on top of it.

To have a meaningful discussion you need to present a full scenario. Now, unless we all have time to write and read full design documents, and somehow distill all that text such that we understand all consequences, it's very difficult to discuss full scenarios. That is why we use simplified scenarios to talk about the essence of this or that problem.

You might argue that it's meaningless to simplify to this extent, and that would actually be very reasonable under some circumstances. Or you could argue that the simplification doesn't actually capture what is happening, and changes the rules: this would also be a very reasonable argument. But, it doesn't make sense to say that there is more detail in a real implementation unless that detail has been inadequately captured in the simplified abstraction. (The whole point of the abstractions is that they lose detail.)


I don't see why it's any more reasonable for a wizard to turn into a troll than a wizard to turn into a different kind of human…

Eh.. the details of the implementation are irrelevant. The point was that in any real system there would be any number of things outside of stats that would make the playing experience different in both scenarios, so saying the experience would be identical just because we're over-simplifying the system down to stats and those stats happen to be identical is just plain wrong, no matter which way you slice it.


Because we're talking about a human wizard turning into a troll wizard. Or at least, that's my understanding. If "wizard" and "troll" are mutually exclusive, then we've been arguing about something that isn't applicable, since "wizard" wasn't a "human" to begin with.

To take the logical conclusion of your argument, you are essentially arguing that it is impossible to compare two different things' attributes with a single, boiled down comparison. For if it were possible to make such a boiled-down comparison, then it must be possible to find some abstraction or simplification that somehow does away with the differences, and allows a straightforward comparison.

From this starting point, one wonders how you will ever seek to balance anything more complex than simple numbers, other than with hand-waving and gut feeling perhaps.

I think you don't really get the point of what's being done here. It's not to say that stats are all that there is to it. It's to provide an abstract framework to work in. Arguments on your part are not that stats aren't all there is – that much is obvious. You would need to argue along the lines I provided (or perhaps some others). But simply saying that a real system has more than stats isn't enough – unless indeed you are arguing that it is in general (not meaning usually, but mathematical generality) impossible to produce boiled-down comparisons.


I don't see how this explains that a human wizard couldn't turn into some other kind of human wizard (say, male to female, white to black, short to tall, …) just as the human wizard can turn into a troll wizard.

What, no "alter self" spell for changing your appearence?

But really it's more of a theoretical exercise. I think the design should be robust enough to support the concept of someone shapechanging into their own race without disrupting the game balance - because even if you don't explicitly allow that, the chances are you'll have the wizards doing something similar, whether they're polymorphing into an orc, or an elf, or a hobbit, or whatever else.

If a human shapechanges into a dragon, and gains the physical stats of an 'average' dragon, does that mean that when a dragon shapechanges into a human it gets the stats of an 'average' human?


The wizard wouldn't stop being a wizard just because he polymorphed from a human into a human.

Eh..? I don't really know what to say except that it's pretty obvious you were a philosophy major :wink: You're really abstracting the concepts beyond practical discussion at this point.


I explained this earlier where I said that there are many different takes on shapechanging, including one where traits like this are independent of whatever "form" you shapechanged into. I've been operating under the assumption that if a male human wizard chose to change into a troll form, he'd become a male troll wizard, and wouldn't have any options. If you start getting into dozens of different variations of "troll" and "human", your system becomes overly complex, IMO.

I'm not entirely sure why you're pointing the finger at me when KaVir provided the example to begin with. I'm merely agreeing with him that it's a useful exercise. I will refrain from saying what's pretty obvious about how you're approaching this problem. :tongue:

Incidentally, philosophy majors aren't the only people who deal in abstractions…


I don't see the relevance of what option you have when you become a troll. You objected to the notion of a human wizard shapechanging into another form of human wizard. I don't see what's so wrong about that. If your argument is only based on gameplay, then fair enough, but you sounded like you were making some kind of principled objection to the very notion.

In a system like I'm proposing, yes. I don't see anything wrong with that, and I agree with shasarak(?) that it's a thematical difference of opinion as to whether or not this should be the case. I can see both points of view.


Right, but an issue only exists if you allow a human to polymorph into a different human. I've never implemented shapechanging, so my opinions on the topic are mostly just on-the-fly brainstorming here, but it seems to me that this really hinges on your interpretation of what polymorphing is. Does polymorphing merely change ones race? Or does it change your "body"? There's a huge difference, and they both make sense to me, but I was operating under the assumption that the former would be the case, I guess.

At the risk of being accused of being philosophical again (it's odd how that's become a near-derogatory term), I'm not sure how you could possibly argue that one is changing one's race from human to troll and yet not changing the "body".

I hope you didn't take that as an insult. I was just saying that I'm no longer able to follow along with you. Thus far, KaVir hasn't been hard for me to follow at all, even if we disagree.


No, that's not what I was objecting to. I was saying if a "form" is simply a "race", then it makes no sense for a wizard of a given race to shapechange into the same race, as there would be no literal changing of shape.

David makes eyes glaze over.

Well, I wasn't sure if it was meant to be an insult or not – some people use the term "getting philosophical" to mean something insulting – but I appreciate that you cleared up your intention. If I got snarky about the term philosophical, it was because I (erroneously, as you now explain) got the impression that you were using it to be demeaning, so I apologize for that.

Basically what I'm trying to say is that you are correct that in general a real system will have lots of things going on. I think we all agree on that. But in order to make meaningful comparisons, you need to simplify things. Even in a "full" real system, as you balance it out you will be devising some method of comparing two complex sets of attributes, abilities, spells, and so forth. This method will need to reduce the two complex sets to a simple comparison: A is better than, worse than or equal to B in terms of "playability".

Therefore, because it's extremely difficult for us to discuss full systems without having them laid out in front of us (and even then…!) it is a useful exercise to skip the full system and instead discuss the simplified, abstracted version of it.

In other words, the example that KaVir gave was knowingly simple, but was attempting to reduce everything to two simple numbers. He was assuming that "mind" represented anything you could do with your mind, and likewise for the body stat. He was not proposing a game that only has those two attributes, and no additional skills, etc.

For this reason, talking about adding back in other skills is somewhat distracting, because it's leaving the abstraction. We can add them back in, but then we would change the example. If KaVir is indeed correct about his argument – and, for what it's worth, I agree with you that he hasn't necessarily made that case fully – but anyhow, if he's correct then no matter how many you add back in, only transferring some stats will always have issues.


Well, presumably not all creatures of a given race/form/etc. look alike, right? So why couldn't you (in principle, at least) change into different shapes of a given race? (I agree that for gameplay this is not useful, unless you account for changing appearance to have some useful mechanism like disguising yourself so NPCs don't recognize you or whatever.)

Well, if that's the case, I got the wrong impression. I understood that we were simplifying things down into mind/body, but I was under the impression that by "mind", we're just compressing all of the "mind" attributes (intelligence, wisdom, charisma, etc.), not "anything that relates to the non-physical side of the game". I don't know why the latter would be true, since we began this topic by discussing the location of attributes, specifically, and whether some should be attached to the "body" and some the "mind", or all attached to the "mind". KaVir was making his case for having them all attached to the mind, and I was trying to make the case for the opposite (without actually supporting one or the other, mind you, because I just wanted to discuss the possibility).


Yes, as I said, I have no problem with this in principle. I was objecting in practice. Shapechanging is either changing ones "body" (the Creature/Character/Monster/whatever class you use), or it's changing the "race" (an attribute of said class). I assumed it to be the latter because a system based on the former would be (while flexible and interesting) very complex. Possibly too complex - how do you specify all the new attributes? Would the command be something like "shapechange troll male darkhair lightskin 5'6 210lbs"?

Edit: I guess I've thoroughly confused myself now, since the problem of body/mind separation doesn't exist for shapechanging if it's based only on race, so… meh. :grinning:

Well, I guess we just need to wait for KaVir to weigh in on this issue and explain how he was planning on mapping his simple example to a more complex one. I'll say that I'm curious as well, for I'm not wholly convinced that the argument applies when discussing not only attributes but also abilities. (I'm fine with simplifying abilities into numeric attributes, I guess. But I'm not sure this accurately reflects how the game would play.) But, what he said made sense, so I'm not going to say that he's wrong yet, either. :smile:


Well, if you had to specify it like that, yes, it'd be kind of silly, I agree. I wasn't really thinking about the interface of specifying the target shape. Another interface could be a series of choices (much like character creation, just simpler). You could perhaps store these choices to represent appearances that you take on often enough.

I agree though that to justify this extra complexity, it would have to matter for more than just cosmetics. If it actually mattered that now I'm a dark-haired troll and tomorrow I'm a light-haired troll – because NPCs (or even PCs…) might think it's a different troll – then it's worth it. But if it's just cosmetic, on the same note as wearing blue shirts vs. black shirts, then, well, yeah. Too much trouble.

Oops, just saw this.

Heh. I agree that it's easy to forget what we were talking about. I had to refer back several posts to figure out what KaVir's exact claim was regarding partial attributes. Part of it is that the forum medium makes it hard to have these conversations; you said elsewhere that a discussion was reaching the point where a whiteboard would be very useful. Perhaps the same could be said here. :smile:

No, you're looking at it too literally. Human to human breaks the game balance, because it allows you to replace low physical stats with average ones. Even if you don't allow mages to make minor changes to their appearance (they can turn into a troll but can't increase their height by a few inches?) it's still a useful theoretical stress-test of the design, because the chances are you're going to run into the same problem elsewhere as well. You've "nerfed" trolls, and "blocked" humans, but now the academic wizard is going to shapechange into a dwarf, or an orc, or a giant, or whatever else.


The underlying problem still hasn't been resolved; polymorph allows you to combine the physical attributes of one race with the mental attributes of another. If you want the races to be balanced then you're going to need to balance them both physically and mentally. And you're going to need to do the same thing with players as well, so that they're not physical-heavy or mental-heavy. That's going to be pretty restrictive though, not just for the players but also for whoever designs the different races.



Yes, and the same for physical stats - that was my intent. That's how I would start out balancing the races, focusing purely on the stats.

The idea was that skills, equipment slots, supernatural powers, hairy feet, etc, are all "extras" that could be assigned values and distributed equally…but at a later point. Perhaps the human has the 10 point physical ability "can wear stuff", while the troll has the 1 point ability "eats anything", the 3 point ability "really big claws" and the 6 point ability "heals faster than wolverine". Thus when the human becomes a troll they give up their old physical ability and gain the three new ones.

But all of that stuff comes later, and isn't important in the stat phase.

If you're basing the new form on the physical attributes of the original form then this would be included "for free" as part of the design - thus the example I gave earlier in the thread of the blonde human becoming a white wolf, the black-skinned human becoming a dark red dragon, and so on.

In fact it's only an issue if you don't carry over the physical attributes - because then you've nothing to base the color of their hair, skin, etc, on.