[MakeshiftWalrus]

Here's a hot take that hasn't been properly discussed yet. Stat-padding is lame, and this is just stat padding, the buff.

For example the skill could be:

Minor Demon Translation:
-3m Cost, Some HP/FP Cost
-Grants 15% Damage Reduction, +3 all stats for 4 rounds, counts as a transformation skill
-5 Round Cooldown

Demon Translation (Potential)
- Uses 3M and 20% of maximum FP to forcefully release Minor Demon Translation for 4 rounds. +3 to all stats.

Demon Translation (Wrath)
- When lowered to 50% or less HP, unleashes Minor Demon Translation's proposed bonuses for 4 rounds. +6 to all stats.

Demon Translation (Rebirth)
- Upon being lowered to 0 HP, recovers Character LV * 3 HP and unleashes Minor Demon Translation for 4 rounds. Can only happen once per fight. +9 to all stats.

These are disgustingly good. Why wouldn't you run something like this on every build? In that regard, if everyone has their own, special transformation, nobody has a cool, special transformation, because then it's just 'What flavour of meta transformation did this person design?'

To even make it remotely fair, these buffs would need some serious drawbacks that isn't just 'Lose 20% of your health/FP', because if the cost is in-fight, it'll be healed back.

So here's what I would change about this idea, because it admittedly is a cool idea:

- Cost should be 7 momentum, at minimum; From these proposals, you're getting minimum 33 free bonus stats from this, which is a gross amount of stat points. My actual opinion is just just remove the stats in the first place, and replace them with something much cooler, like actual abilities, or gimmicks. Stats are terrible for RP, cool skills/spells are fun for RP, prove me wrong.

- Cool variant abilities: There's talk of having different variants, and that's cool, having multiple ways to use things is good in terms of broad scope, and RP. Have each variant apply different buffs that change how they play, like dropping Dark Cinders when they walk, or making your basic attack hit the three tiles in front of you like Pillawag, and destroy tiles, or apply some nasty debuff unique to the form on-hit that, I dunno, seals skills at random. The point is to create hard differences between the forms, and to stop it from being just another way to become an awful stat-stick.

- Potent drawbacks depending on variation: They should be specific to what kind of transformation you've got going. One example could be a huge weakness to specific elements, or debuffs that could potentially ease how oppressive the forms are, like a weakness to Clumsy infliction checks if your archetype is highly mobile, etc. I don't think you should be able to dispel the status, but you should be able to fight it with generalist skills, so you're not at a massive disadvantage because you didn't roll one of the local stat-stick builds that circulate the meta at the moment.

- It should not be easy to get: I don't want it locked behind LE'ing, because the Lord knows we're definitely not going to enjoy grinding up just to unlock it. It adds another unnecessary, unpleasant hurdle to an already daunting task when you decide to roll a new character. I also don't think it should just be a trait anyone can pick up, because then we will just see everyone using it. I don't have any real proposals for how one should attain it, I don't think there's presently a good system for it in the game.

If I could design a new one, I'd probably make it similar to how custom tomes are made, but without the need to actually carry a specific item on you. We would get a new location, or NPC who could slot in various enchant catalysts for various effects, and drawbacks. I'd finalize it by making the thing that gives you the skill in the first place a torso enchant simply because then you couldn't run it with Boneheart, or Giant Gene, and would need to actually make a decision.

- Moonblade gains a 100% bonus damage to the transformation: 200% if it's orichalcum.

I'm all for the inclusion of interesting skills, but I'd like the skills to actually be interesting too. It's no offense meant to the original idea, but I've made it no secret my distaste for stat padding.

[K Peculier]

- Moonblade gains a 100% bonus damage to the transformation: 200% if it's orichalcum.

That's all you had to say. I support your post.

[Snake]

I agree too, yikes... Though as I have mentioned, that's a more 'hands on' attempt to implement.

I'd very much rather those be handed by GM applications.

[Autumn]

Here's a hot take that hasn't been properly discussed yet. Stat-padding is lame, and this is just stat padding, the buff.

For example the skill could be:

Minor Demon Translation:
-3m Cost, Some HP/FP Cost
-Grants 15% Damage Reduction, +3 all stats for 4 rounds, counts as a transformation skill
-5 Round Cooldown

Demon Translation (Potential)
- Uses 3M and 20% of maximum FP to forcefully release Minor Demon Translation for 4 rounds. +3 to all stats.

Demon Translation (Wrath)
- When lowered to 50% or less HP, unleashes Minor Demon Translation's proposed bonuses for 4 rounds. +6 to all stats.

Demon Translation (Rebirth)
- Upon being lowered to 0 HP, recovers Character LV * 3 HP and unleashes Minor Demon Translation for 4 rounds. Can only happen once per fight. +9 to all stats.

These are disgustingly good. Why wouldn't you run something like this on every build? In that regard, if everyone has their own, special transformation, nobody has a cool, special transformation, because then it's just 'What flavour of meta transformation did this person design?'

To even make it remotely fair, these buffs would need some serious drawbacks that isn't just 'Lose 20% of your health/FP', because if the cost is in-fight, it'll be healed back.

So here's what I would change about this idea, because it admittedly is a cool idea:

- Cost should be 7 momentum, at minimum; From these proposals, you're getting minimum 33 free bonus stats from this, which is a gross amount of stat points. My actual opinion is just just remove the stats in the first place, and replace them with something much cooler, like actual abilities, or gimmicks. Stats are terrible for RP, cool skills/spells are fun for RP, prove me wrong.

- Cool variant abilities: There's talk of having different variants, and that's cool, having multiple ways to use things is good in terms of broad scope, and RP. Have each variant apply different buffs that change how they play, like dropping Dark Cinders when they walk, or making your basic attack hit the three tiles in front of you like Pillawag, and destroy tiles, or apply some nasty debuff unique to the form on-hit that, I dunno, seals skills at random. The point is to create hard differences between the forms, and to stop it from being just another way to become an awful stat-stick.

- Potent drawbacks depending on variation: They should be specific to what kind of transformation you've got going. One example could be a huge weakness to specific elements, or debuffs that could potentially ease how oppressive the forms are, like a weakness to Clumsy infliction checks if your archetype is highly mobile, etc. I don't think you should be able to dispel the status, but you should be able to fight it with generalist skills, so you're not at a massive disadvantage because you didn't roll one of the local stat-stick builds that circulate the meta at the moment.

- It should not be easy to get: I don't want it locked behind LE'ing, because the Lord knows we're definitely not going to enjoy grinding up just to unlock it. It adds another unnecessary, unpleasant hurdle to an already daunting task when you decide to roll a new character. I also don't think it should just be a trait anyone can pick up, because then we will just see everyone using it. I don't have any real proposals for how one should attain it, I don't think there's presently a good system for it in the game.

If I could design a new one, I'd probably make it similar to how custom tomes are made, but without the need to actually carry a specific item on you. We would get a new location, or NPC who could slot in various enchant catalysts for various effects, and drawbacks. I'd finalize it by making the thing that gives you the skill in the first place a torso enchant simply because then you couldn't run it with Boneheart, or Giant Gene, and would need to actually make a decision.

- Moonblade gains a 100% bonus damage to the transformation: 200% if it's orichalcum.

I'm all for the inclusion of interesting skills, but I'd like the skills to actually be interesting too. It's no offense meant to the original idea, but I've made it no secret my distaste for stat padding.

I would 100% be down for a torso slot enchantment, that is a reasonable enough cost for this type of ability, something akin to a "Demon Heart" and could be a boss drop catalyst, or a catalyst available from the Tower on Sigrogana as a new floor entry, having it be a "Divine" enchant would require you to find a very high level enchanter as well to fix it up, or hell, even beyond that and having it be a lvl 6 enchantment.

I fully get what you mean though, my idea in the OP is something simplistic to allow ease of implementation, but I am down for any sort of ability, my bias towards the implementation of an ability like such is obviously very much skewed, and I am more excited of the idea than a specific goal with said transformation.

[Neus]

As a quick mention, there has been a problem with character variety for a while now (in the sense that people tend to feel characters are mechanically very samey, which isn't preferred in a roleplay game)

This is going to derail the topic a bit, and for that reason it may be preferable for you to make a new topic discussing this, but I am interested in hearing in more detail what people believe causes the sense that characters are 'samey'.

[Snake]

Probably the archetype of 'transformations' (in Fern's case, as a speculation) being pseudo-locked to specific class combos, such as Ghost/Hexer, since other methods of transformation are vastly overshadowed and/or other transformations beyond Death Knighting are plain boring or under-performing. And the fact that you're always transforming into a Spectre Knight, no matter what theme you're trying to go for. Or always having to be a Hexer even when you don't really want your transformation to be tied to dark arts.

There's no freedom of creativity for our anime power ups beyond an Eventmin's interference.

[MakeshiftWalrus]

It's a multi-factor problem. It doesn't have anything to do with transformations, or the lackthereof, it's an issue with the ease of access people have to the same builds, and how easily people can hot-swap around to the best 'Meta-builds'. New item drops? Ten people are rolling it at the arena. New class drops? Double that number. People tend to steer towards what's strong, because after what, four years of the stat system, most veterans are exhausted on options left to explore despite the vast toybox before them.

To give an example: Before the volcanic nerf, the majority of the casual PvP-scene was dominated by anchor edges, because it was grossly good, leading to many matches that were effectively mirrored. Before the Tarnada stopped being the most oppressive weapon in the game, you couldn't go an hour without seeing a tornado somewhere, and the same issue was present in Sogensora when it was released.

From my perspective, it's less that we don't have cool things to do, and more that players tend to conform to what's strong at any given time, because all it takes is 5 bucks, or a day of suffering through the leveling process.

[Autumn]

It's a multi-factor problem. It doesn't have anything to do with transformations, or the lackthereof, it's an issue with the ease of access people have to the same builds, and how easily people can hot-swap around to the best 'Meta-builds'. New item drops? Ten people are rolling it at the arena. New class drops? Double that number. People tend to steer towards what's strong, because after what, four years of the stat system, most veterans are exhausted on options left to explore despite the vast toybox before them.

To give an example: Before the volcanic nerf, the majority of the casual PvP-scene was dominated by anchor edges, because it was grossly good, leading to many matches that were effectively mirrored. Before the Tarnada stopped being the most oppressive weapon in the game, you couldn't go an hour without seeing a tornado somewhere, and the same issue was present in Sogensora when it was released.

From my perspective, it's less that we don't have cool things to do, and more that players tend to conform to what's strong at any given time, because all it takes is 5 bucks, or a day of suffering through the leveling process.

I really like this post, more elaborated on in Fern's separated thread, but for the most part you're never gonna be able to change this without what is effectively another GR, this is why other games have entire teams dedicated to overhauling metas, because eventually players always will settle on what's the best after everything's been figured out already.

Beside that point, I would still like to talk about the transformation topic. I am fully up for the idea of it being a Divine-level torso enchantment, potentially obtained from a Tower Update in the future. And though I would like it to be beyond just stat padding, my request is simply a way to display a visible transformation of my character in a desirable way that showcases them "Powering Up" such as an aura/hair color change/eye color change, and all that juicy wonderful stuff.

[Snake]

Perhaps. Torso enchantment could be the way, or Accessory enchantment given how many things Torso already has.

Don't mind me, just spittin'. Though I really wish we could have access of those things in a less mechanical way and more 'GM approval' way. The ugly of 'everyone having a transformation' is because of how much we'd have to trust everyone will use it respectfully, and doing that when waving the freedom flag next to it is bound to cause people to start looking at this feature with greed rather than need.

[Kiranis]

So ive parsed this thread and decided to dumb down everyone's argument to one sentience

"We have goku when can we be sailor moon"

Edit: which i wholeheartedly support.