New role based on a “loup du noir” archetype, possibly called the Lycanthrope - you start with a pelt, a new sort of cloak-slot armor that polymorphs you into a specific type of monster when you wear it. You also are inflicted with some sort of delayed lycanthropy - you won’t randomly polymorph into a monster like with standard lycanthropy, but after not using a pelt for a while, you do start feeling the urge to put one on, and if you still refuse, you are eventually compelled to put one on. (It isn’t specified what happens if you get rid of your pelt(s) by the time you would be compelled to wear one; possibly you just die from insanity, or else the addiction is implemented in some other way like continuous worsening HP damage.)

The form you get from wearing a pelt has some boosted stats from the base form - in particular, your carrying capacity and damage would be better than the stat blocks for the monsters suggest.

You could start with either a “default” pelt which is not very good, but can be turned into an ideal one later, or start with a specific animal’s pelt, which you can control with the pettype option. This role never starts with a pet.

Pelts might also work as a standalone concept or one that works with a druid, ranger, or caveman role:

• You can obtain a pelt by using a knife to skin the corpse of some monster that would reasonably have a pelt. This will probably be an occupation, and either its time or success rate will vary based on your knife skill and if you have a role-specific bonus.
• By using some sort of magic (instead of it being inherent to a role), you can transform into the animal whose pelt you are wearing.
• Pelts confer some benefit when worn as a cloak besides the ability to polymorph, which varies depending on the monster species, such as a boost to damage.

When you unpolymorph, you temporarily keep any intrinsics you had from that form and which you no longer have. How long it is before these intrinsics time out isn’t specified, but probably contains some random component so you can’t plan around when the intrinsic will lapse.

This was suggested for a hypothetical druid role, but noted that it doesn’t have to be a role-specific mechanic and could apply to other roles as well.

Add a Druid role: intended to be a more balanced form of SLASH’EM’s doppelganger race, druids are highly attuned to nature and possess innate shapeshifting abilities.

• You begin the game with polymorph control and get polymorphitis at XL 5 or so.
• Possibly you start with a wand of polymorph, or potions of it.
• Inventory could be severely restricted, so you have to figure out how to do most things through polymorph.
• You have the power to change into a tree, which will make most monsters ignore you. While in tree form, you are immobile but regenerate HP and Pw faster. Orcs might attack you with axes, a la Tolkien.
• Without extrinsic polymorph control, your polymorph control limits you to changing into forms with the M1_ANIMAL flag.
• Possibly have limited access to #polyself outside of wizard mode, so they can change intentionally and not randomly. Would work best as an ability with a timeout, or cost Pw outside of wizard mode.
• Possibly, the monsters you can polymorph into must have a certain base level or difficulty that’s tied to your XL somehow (maybe XL/2). If their base level is too high, you can’t polymorph into them.
• Your controlled polymorphs always succeed - you will never accidentally fail and “feel like a new woman” with the 20% chance that all other roles have.
• You are seriously bad at combat in your regular form, having very little weapon skill (nothing can be advanced to Expert, possibly not even to Skilled), and physically weak in your normal form. Combat in a polyform should be incentivized enough so that it isn’t really worth it to wear any armor. Maybe you should get to-hit and damage bonuses while in a wild form?
• Diminishing returns on polymorph time limit that prevent you from reusing the same form(s) over and over and over again. (This may actually be applicable as a general YANI for polymorph control).
• The critical balance needed is to make polyselfing powerful and awesome to play with and use for typical combat, but simultaneously polyselfing needs enough restrictions that it doesn’t just turn into Master Mind Flayer: The Game.
  • One proposed restriction: you can only turn into monsters you have already encountered, or if that is too lax, into peaceful or tame monsters adjacent to you at the time. The druid should be able to pacify most animalistic monsters to take advantage of this (temporarily?)
• The starting pet is a woodchuck (or wolf). Pantheon is probably drawn from Celtic mythology, though hopefully not overlapping with Knights.
• Some heavy polymorph / monster / player as monster tweaking is probably required, in the sense that there should, ideally, be valid reasons to exist in any given polymorphable form.
• You should keep the intrinsics from a polyform after you no longer have that form, but only temporarily, so they time out eventually.

A “druid staff” artifact, which can be invoked to create a patch of grass similar in size to a stinking cloud, radius 4-5. Enemies within the grass radius become rooted to the ground, making them unable to move (but still able to fight, shoot, etc) for some time. While wielding it, you can chat with trees, which causes them to give you some food, mana, or rarely a pet (possibly an ent).