Dragon Shape

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RedGiant
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Dragon Shape

Post by RedGiant » Tue Dec 21, 2021 2:05 pm

So I always feel like a jerk amid largely positive content updates to point out the one thing.

But the one thing is again Dragon Shape. So, unless I'm misunderstanding the update thread, it looks like this is being replaced for everyone with plant shape.

It feels kinda personal at this point...not for my ego, mind you...but that the staff, from a design point, hates this long established ability.

This ruins years of RP with another flick of a switch. Please reconsider.

Heck, adding it as a new option sounds freaking awesome...and I can see building a new character around it. But please don't take away Dragon Shape from the palette or the players that built their characters around it.
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Red Ropes
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Re: Dragon Shape

Post by Red Ropes » Tue Dec 21, 2021 4:17 pm

This image came from within the community that we all play with and I do think it's pretty funny. It's something we can share a laugh over with this idea that people get sometimes that the staff is out to get you or nerf you or ruin your life. But that's why it's a joke - lots of people laugh at dragon stuff because its that much of a meme in the year of our lord 2021.

Image

I do not think the Dragonshape change is bad for many reasons - while the game is called Dungeons and Dragons a lot of people have been subject to non-self aware "I was a dragon in a past life", "I am a dragon trapped in a man's body", and "im kobold dwagin rawr" stuff that is just incredibly cringe. It's also very much against the rules when you actually are trying to claim that stuff factually (you are allowed to lie, be wrong, and so forth). I know that's not going to be taken well.

Dragon shape makes Dragons less impressive- I get that the setting is Dungeon's and dragons but I am absolutely up to my ears in Dragons just not being cool anymore. They're done to death, RDD's who giggle, people turning into dragons to go "heyas" and eat pineapple. I can't take dragons seriously anymore. We can even kill them ad-hominem, summon them, they just... have been diminished and I frankly think thats awful. We've even had Dragon PCs and there's a reason they're not offered anymore.

People literally get mad if you just don't let them do any of this in public and get super offended when you kill them for being a jackass in the form of a Red Dragon - literally the Hitler of Dragons. It's goofy.

For the reprieve alone from all of this dragon saturation I think its a good change. Also turning into Shambling Mounds and Treants is closer for druids to some of their actual feats in the tabletop and also, not sure if anyone is aware, but Dragonshape is MECHANICALLY AWFUL - I don't care if someone spreadsheets me the AB. You can't move through doors. You get caught on everything due to NWN's janky limitations. It's just a bad port and frankly are too large to properly be used in game.

These new shapes, though still large, actually make them viable things. Not just eye candy but an effective use of their bonuses for the investment need to qualify for them.

---

Where I can have sympathy in this time, for anyone, is change can be disruptive. I think the staff can do better to accommodate people when change comes by warning them (which is what Garrbear has done, hes putting stuff up for testing so you can see stuff and play it with it before it even goes live. Everyone has lots of time to really retcon, reimagine, and whatever).

I think we could be more lenient and figure some system to at least "pay people back" - I don't really care about 5+ Real Life Year old PCs when changes like this happen but I think it's awful when someone just made a character within like 3-6 months of a change, blissfully unaware it was coming has to either start over (lose everything they have) or just end the character.

I don't think, though, that change is bad. A lot of NWN's base game stuff is awful (it being both oudated 3x DnD and just barebones imaginings). There are messes of old code, and on Arelith, we have it compounded with past decisions that go all the way back even to 2006.

Nothing is forever is how the cliche goes and a lot of god-awful classes deserve, nay, must be improved upon. Even if that means we all have to "move on" - either adjusting our stories, retconning things, or just realizing maybe we were being silly all along when we decided to hold Date Night in the Cordor Theatre in Dragonshape at the IRL age of 15.

tl;dr

I get that you're frustrated but I don't think anyone hates you - I think it'd be a bit mad to assume 1) that the staff actually hates you and are doing this to be mean / 2) not really recognize that dragons really are a bit goofy in their abundance at the end of the day - if everyone is a dwagin, then is really anyone? I want to recognize the power of dragons again.

I also sympathize with change fatigue but druids and shifters are godawful base game things that are poorly adapted from an outdated form of 3x and they need to be thought out and cleaned up.

---

In closing; Garrbear did nothing wrong. He is a saint- and dragons needs to be scarce again.
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Dreams
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Re: Dragon Shape

Post by Dreams » Tue Dec 21, 2021 4:20 pm

I'm excited to roll up a druid precisely because I can be a tree!

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Re: Dragon Shape

Post by Nitro » Tue Dec 21, 2021 4:24 pm

I'm glad to see dragons go. Seeing people turning into dragons just to show off, doing silly stuff and almost worse, dying like dogs because they got caught on a small piece of rock was dumb and immersion ruining. Besides, having PC's playing dragons, angels and demons etc all over the place was one of the main splitting points between Amia and Arelith and I don't think they should ever have been reintroduced or made easier to achieve, back in the day getting the WIS prerequisite to be able to dragonshape was at least an actual challenge for most races.

Also turning into a treant is way more thematic for a druid than a dragon.

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Re: Dragon Shape

Post by Aradin » Tue Dec 21, 2021 4:55 pm

For every thoughtful depiction of a PC in dragon shape I saw, there were ten times as many goofy, silly atmosphere-breaking ones. I'm glad to see it go for the same reason I was glad to see the fish club go. I sincerely hope the team takes the same route with balors and some of the other summons (and many of the recent summon & polymorph changes have been great for this!), because there's some reeeeaaaaal silly things I've seen happening with creatures that are supposed to be ten degrees of terrifying.

I enjoy a good bit of silliness in my D&D but unchecked shenanigans lead to less and less immersion.

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Waldo52
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Re: Dragon Shape

Post by Waldo52 » Tue Dec 21, 2021 5:21 pm

Dragons are just too mainstream and ubiquitous. I fully support the existence of dragon disciples and other super niche dragon themed characters, but when a quarter of the server can turn into a dragon the grandiosity of the creatures is lost and they just become a meme.

Good work, devs dev team.

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Party in the forest at midnight
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Re: Dragon Shape

Post by Party in the forest at midnight » Tue Dec 21, 2021 5:40 pm

Aradin wrote:
Tue Dec 21, 2021 4:55 pm
For every thoughtful depiction of a PC in dragon shape I saw, there were ten times as many goofy, silly atmosphere-breaking ones. I'm glad to see it go for the same reason I was glad to see the fish club go. I sincerely hope the team takes the same route with balors and some of the other summons (and many of the recent summon & polymorph changes have been great for this!), because there's some reeeeaaaaal silly things I've seen happening with creatures that are supposed to be ten degrees of terrifying.

I enjoy a good bit of silliness in my D&D but unchecked shenanigans lead to less and less immersion.
I'd be down for shapechange losing dragon form for the same reason. While some druids might do dragon related RP, I've never seen casters do it for anything but memes or maybe trueseeing. But mostly memes. "RARR I AM NOW BIG AND STOMPY."

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Watchful Glare
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Re: Dragon Shape

Post by Watchful Glare » Tue Dec 21, 2021 6:30 pm

Aradin wrote:
Tue Dec 21, 2021 4:55 pm
For every thoughtful depiction of a PC in dragon shape I saw, there were ten times as many goofy, silly atmosphere-breaking ones. I'm glad to see it go for the same reason I was glad to see the fish club go. I sincerely hope the team takes the same route with balors and some of the other summons (and many of the recent summon & polymorph changes have been great for this!), because there's some reeeeaaaaal silly things I've seen happening with creatures that are supposed to be ten degrees of terrifying.

I enjoy a good bit of silliness in my D&D but unchecked shenanigans lead to less and less immersion.
They did, actually. Balors and Pit Fiend summons were replaced by Hezrou and Cornugon respectively, which I also like. Those creatures are supposed to be scarse, incredibly powerful and capable of altering reality. They were few in number. Except you'd walk into a shady place and see them all summoned and being ordered around like pets at times, which was as Red Ropes mentions, a little bit counterproductive for immersion as far as respecting the setting goes. Worse yet they were... Very underwhelming when they became the token summon for evil alignment anyways. They become a lot more commonplace, and a lot less impressive.

Hopefully they are no longer a thing either with the shapechange spell either.

Unless there are Balor around in a way I've still missed.

I am also glad to see dragons go because of this. It'll be less vexing to see people about RP like that. I do wonder how will this change things for the one actual Dragon PC we have left, hopefully for the best.
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Re: Dragon Shape

Post by Void » Tue Dec 21, 2021 6:55 pm

Dreams wrote:
Tue Dec 21, 2021 4:20 pm
I'm excited to roll up a druid precisely because I can be a tree!
Can a tree eat halflings, though?

The purpose of the dragon shape, as far as I can tell is to give the body of the apex predator that sits on the top of food chain. A plant doesn't really match this kind of role. So having more options would be good...
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Re: Dragon Shape

Post by Aradin » Tue Dec 21, 2021 6:57 pm

Watchful Glare wrote:
Tue Dec 21, 2021 6:30 pm
They did, actually. Balors and Pit Fiend summons were replaced by Hezrou and Cornugon respectively, which I also like.
Oh, I somehow missed that! Well done then devs.

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Re: Dragon Shape

Post by Morgy » Tue Dec 21, 2021 8:24 pm

I’m a fan of less dragons. Make them rare and terrifying, as they should be.

As for the meming concerns..
Meming might be funny to you, the individual, but it probably isn’t to the people actually trying to RP nearby.

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Re: Dragon Shape

Post by Sincra » Tue Dec 21, 2021 8:27 pm

I love treeeeeeees.
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Re: Dragon Shape

Post by Nekonecro » Tue Dec 21, 2021 10:00 pm

Void wrote:
Tue Dec 21, 2021 6:55 pm
Dreams wrote:
Tue Dec 21, 2021 4:20 pm
I'm excited to roll up a druid precisely because I can be a tree!
Can a tree eat halflings, though?

The purpose of the dragon shape, as far as I can tell is to give the body of the apex predator that sits on the top of food chain. A plant doesn't really match this kind of role. So having more options would be good...
Sure a tree doesn't eat halflings but they're awsome in their own way. They are not weak and they're cool as hell.

Example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iw0jwrWqOKI

I think this is a great change. It makes the dragons less of a meme and still gives druids something powerful and nature based.
I want to see a march of the trees!

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Re: Dragon Shape

Post by Void » Tue Dec 21, 2021 10:13 pm

Nekonecro wrote:
Tue Dec 21, 2021 10:00 pm
Void wrote:
Tue Dec 21, 2021 6:55 pm
Dreams wrote:
Tue Dec 21, 2021 4:20 pm
I'm excited to roll up a druid precisely because I can be a tree!
Can a tree eat halflings, though?

The purpose of the dragon shape, as far as I can tell is to give the body of the apex predator that sits on the top of food chain. A plant doesn't really match this kind of role. So having more options would be good...
Sure a tree doesn't eat halflings but they're awsome in their own way. They are not weak and they're cool as hell.

Example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iw0jwrWqOKI

I think this is a great change. It makes the dragons less of a meme and still gives druids something powerful and nature based.
I want to see a march of the trees!
While I see that there can be fans of that, it definitely does not give me the "apex predator" feeling a dragon shape would give.

Part of the reason is that I played plenty of NWN2, and in NWN2 you get treant shape at level 12.
https://nwn2.fandom.com/wiki/Plant_Shape
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Re: Dragon Shape

Post by Ebonstar » Tue Dec 21, 2021 10:41 pm

i played on a server right before i came to Arelith that when druids hit level 25 they could shift into treants, simply because they were a very powerful although slow moving form.

Also any druid character who was chosen as Archdruid gained a greater Treant form, and if chosen to be Heirophant changing to a treant was a natural ability gained without limits to changing and could even hibernate as a treant if so wanted.

it was fun but not sure if it fits the druid vision here.
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Re: Dragon Shape

Post by Ork » Wed Dec 22, 2021 1:09 am

I'm gonna dish out a hard pill, but if your roleplay as a druid is dragon-centric, you're not role-playing a druid.

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Re: Dragon Shape

Post by Paint » Wed Dec 22, 2021 2:41 am

Since this has moved into the tangent of dragon shape being used to ruin the mystique of dragons -- and I'm not going to complain about that because it's true, I've seen it, and I've seen dragons done well and done horribly -- I do think that banning dragon shape doesn't necessarily fix the larger problem. There are more than a few dragon enemies on arelith that are very inconsequential. It often leads to conversations of people going, "Hey, let's go kill a dragon," like it's something to do when you're bored on a tuesday afternoon, rather than some thing you fear you might not be coming back from. I think in a setting where PCs can go toe to toe with dragons on their own and brush it off like just another day at work, you're going to have a disconnect. I've been surprised by random encounter dragons in some places and thought I was in trouble, only for them to crumple and die rather quickly. Big, adult dragons the size of a house!

So while this does help address the problem of the terrifying and powerful nature of dragons being diminished by players, it doesn't really do so for the setting of Arelith. And I understand you can just roleplay dragons as more dangerous and terrifying than they are mechanically, but it gets exhausting to do that when they're just so clearly not.

TL;DR -- I don't think removing dragon shape is going to make me take dragons any more seriously when they're so easy to kill. But it -will- take one way for people to break the immersion of the setting by being absolute buffoons away. That being said, please don't take away shapechange; I actually use the iron golem form from time to time to carry heavy loads of stone, and I am happy to entertain any RP that comes from it.

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Re: Dragon Shape

Post by Void » Wed Dec 22, 2021 3:08 am

Paint wrote:
Wed Dec 22, 2021 2:41 am
There are more than a few dragon enemies on arelith that are very inconsequential. It often leads to conversations of people going, "Hey, let's go kill a dragon," like it's something to do when you're bored on a tuesday afternoon, rather than some thing you fear you might not be coming back from.
The earliest dragon kill can be achieved somewhere during level 8-10, by the way. So they don't all feel mysterious, mighty and scary by just existing.

There are several VERY intimidating dragons in the game, however.
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Re: Dragon Shape

Post by Hazard » Wed Dec 22, 2021 3:47 am

I know it's kinda off topic but I really wish big bads like dragons and stuff didn't have unique names anymore.
I really hate seeing "Let's go kill Abby." "I killed Abazur fifteen times and didn't get any adamantine!" etc, it's very common for people to talk this way.

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Re: Dragon Shape

Post by Hazard » Wed Dec 22, 2021 3:50 am

The Dragon Shape doesn't have true sight, it can't fly, it has no significant (or any?) magical DR, blah blah. The list goes on.
It's a horrible, limp-noodle dragon. If it's being changed to some kind of plant, or a treant or something .. I'm going to be playing the HECK out of my druid, that's for sure. That sounds like the coolest thing ever, and way more suited to the balance and themes of the server.

And as someone who's played soooo many druids, I never did really like the dragon-druid RP. I tried to avoid it, but it's really ingrained into the mechanics of the class. Would be great to move away from that. Can some druids be into dragon stuff? Sure. But DRAGON is not the first thing that comes to mind, thematically when I think of nature and druids.

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Re: Dragon Shape

Post by Drowboy » Wed Dec 22, 2021 3:55 am

Hazard wrote:
Wed Dec 22, 2021 3:47 am
I know it's kinda off topic but I really wish big bads like dragons and stuff didn't have unique names anymore.
I really hate seeing "Let's go kill Abby." "I killed Abazur fifteen times and didn't get any adamantine!" etc, it's very common for people to talk this way.
At least they took out the I killed Abazuur tshirt awhile ago, lol.

All for removing dragon shape if only because of the sheer unwieldy bulk of it. Skin streams for shapes would be cool
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Re: Dragon Shape

Post by Void » Wed Dec 22, 2021 4:03 am

Hazard wrote:
Wed Dec 22, 2021 3:50 am
But DRAGON is not the first thing that comes to mind, thematically when I think of nature and druids.
Any shape is fine, as long as it can eat halflings.
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Re: Dragon Shape

Post by Kenji » Wed Dec 22, 2021 7:19 am

One should rethink their approach to RP if one bank it on being special by utilizing one shapeshift form. Personally, I've had far more bad RP experiences with dragon shape (none positive, if any, to be frank) since the interaction always goes:
1. some kind of conflict?
2. character proceeds to turn into a dragon
3. dragon shape gets killbashed

Dragons are supposed to be rare. Dragons are supposed to be these near-mythical and powerful creatures. NWN mechanics and gameplay depict these creatures as the absolute opposite of what they're supposed to be. Any dragon that is sourced from a PC, be it dragon shape or epic dragon knight, is not treated as seriously as it should be due to mechanical balance.

It's not mechanically great. It is thematically jarring. Lore-wise dragons and Nature don't always go hand-in-hand. We're better off without it from both a player's and a non-professional volunteer developer's perspective.

It's a good call to let players have as little connection to Dragons as possible and make it either an end-game boss or a DM-handled character. Even RDD as a class with wings is already a stretch.

I say we go a step ahead and remove RDD wings as well as replace Epic Dragon Knights with golemancy or anything but dragons!

Good job Garrbear, I will stand behind your decision as will many others.

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Re: Dragon Shape

Post by Exordius » Wed Dec 22, 2021 7:37 am

I don't really have any stake in this issue but i will agree dragons on this server are way too easy and underpowered. Even with a small group of well designed characters they fall rather quickly to say nothing of when giant groups of such characters give it a try. Even the longest battle I've been in with a dragon only lasted a measly 7 minutes before it was exterminated.

The server i played on before coming here was much truer to how dragons ought to be. We only had one dragon of note there, and even with an entire army of lv 30 power-builds it still kicked our Snuggybear 75% of the time... and certainly nobody ever soloed it and managed to pull it off no matter how insane their build. Dragon hunts were rare occurrences and even rarer were victories... but that difficulty, plus the absolutely insane reward that awaited any group who could pull it off only made the victory all the sweeter.
Last edited by Exordius on Wed Dec 22, 2021 7:47 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Dragon Shape

Post by Void » Wed Dec 22, 2021 7:38 am

Kenji wrote:
Wed Dec 22, 2021 7:19 am
Dragons are supposed to be rare. Dragons are supposed to be these near-mythical and powerful creatures. NWN mechanics and gameplay depict these creatures as the absolute opposite of what they're supposed to be. Any dragon that is sourced from a PC, be it dragon shape or epic dragon knight, is not treated as seriously as it should be due to mechanical balance.
This idea is not reflected in the server setting, as you can kill your first full sized dragon at level 8. Solo. There are multiple adult dragons you can encounter, and majority are perfectly killable.

Also, shouldn't be people deciding what they want to do with their characters instead of being told to "rethink"? There are totem druids whose entire schtick is centered around a specific form. So there's no problem with being focused on trying to become a specific animal, or preferring to assume a shape of said animal.

Honestly if the shape is taken away, the old druids should've grandfathered i.
Kenji wrote:
Wed Dec 22, 2021 7:19 am
I say we go a step ahead and remove RDD wings as well as replace Epic Dragon Knights with golemancy or anything but dragons!
That sort of change fells like it would be a destructive one.

It feels like it is about taking things away from people without concern of their characters and amount of time spent playing. All in the name of some sort of ideal. And that is instead of providing more things for people to enjoy.

However, it would be a good way to upset plenty of players who invested a lot of time into the server.
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