Proof of Concept

Don't get too excited yet. It's a little janky.

 

@dolio Alleluia! I'm looking forward to having a variety of forms based on the caster's CL, kinda like Wild Shape.

 

Cool! Now the tricky part is getting the creature SLAs... that Owlbear was not acting confused

On a related note, you and @Sagenlicht often end up needing API extensions to call this or that C function. For prototyping at least, I was thinking of adding a semi-generic wrapper that allows you to call any cdecl function by its address and list of args (casting anything that isn't a primitive or PyObjHndl to pointer). I'm sure you won't say no, but I'm wondering how useful you'd find it.
Also assuming that the cross compile will work in the near future since @DarkStorm is on the case

 

The confusion is a supernatural ability, so polymorph doesn't give it to you. It can basically only give you the 'mundane' combat abilities of a monster; no magic. Maybe some of the more specific polymorph subschool spells are different, though (I'm not familiar with most of them).

I do think the generic wrapper thing sounds useful. I kind of feel bad always bugging someone for them. Maybe I'll actually be able to start writing some of them myself not too far in the future. But for instance, I think the proof of concept might leak animation handles, because I can't call the function to free them like wild shape does.

 

Yeah that's what I had in mind in this case.

Also, this video is incomplete without Baleful Polymorph

 

That owlbear also got pretty luck with the crits!

 

Yeah, that was payback, I think. I did another take before this where I forgot to remove the guisarme, so it wasn't clear whether Polymorph was causing the reach increase (which it is). The PC got a critical in that take.

The reach thing is an example of how funky this is. It's automatically taking that from the proto, I guess. It also automatically gets the natural armor bonus from there. But it doesn't pick up the physical stats or the number of natural attacks. I guess maybe they were thinking that Alter Self doesn't change your stats, so that's good. But just being polymorphed disables all inventory access/worn equipment, which isn't how Alter Self works. So it's a weird mix.

 

I think stats and various other things are set through the druid condition itself. Also vanilla ToEE didn't have adjustment for reach and number of natural attacks at all (as well as size category, model scale and other bugs).

 

I'm not using any of the Co8 reach stuff, though. I think it automatically pulls the reach number from the Umber Hulk proto.

I guess being less generous, it probably has to do with which things are customizable on a PC. Like, you pick your stats, they aren't just calculated from the proto for each PC race. But you don't pick your reach or base natural armor. So maybe there are a bunch of canned stats that just get swapped out be substituting the polymorph proto num for the normal one (I haven't really dug into how it works in the engine).

 

Yeah I meant those things are hooked in Temple+.

 

Oh, I see.

As requested:



Regenerataing toad.

Did you fix coup de grace to not work unless the weapon used for it is lethal? I could have sworn I killed trolls with coup de grace way back in the day without flaming/acid weapons.

 

You mean you can't bash in someone's skull with a club or the pommel of a sword?






What about the quick twisting of the head to break a neck?

Or just strangle the poor guy; a pillow over your face will do it, too.

I guess throwing an unconscious body off the side of a cliff won't be considered a coup de grace either.

Merriam-Webster says this:
English Language Learners Definition of coup de grâce
formal
: an action or event that finally ends or destroys something that has been getting weaker or worse
: a hit or shot that kills a person or animal that is suffering

 

Clubs and swords can usually do lethal damage (maybe even with the pommel, although there probably aren't rules for that). But for someone who can regenerate their head after it's cut off, it's probably reasonable to say you can't kill them by bashing it in.

I've read that the suffocation and drowning rules get around trolls' regeneration (because they don't kill you via damage), so you can actually use those, I guess.

Also, there are rules by which you could normally coup de grace with your bare hands even when you're not trained to do lethal damage with them. You can take a -4 attack roll penalty to do lethal damage with a normally non-lethal weapon. But I think regeneration supersedes that. I'm always kind of amazed how many cases like this are actually covered by rules, although it can be hard to know the combination of places you need to look.

 

I don't recall changing CdG, perhaps it’s not possible when unarmed.