Darkness Falls: The Crusade: Werewolves

Wolves were always one of my favorite classes.  I'm a fan of the idea behind the berserker type of fighter and the shapeshifting ability is just the cherry on top for me.   My largest non-good realm character was a level 35 wolf named "Ultimatemooo" and I can't really remember why I stopped playing him.  Anyway, as I have elaborated in the troll post, I have made a strong attempt to re-implement berserk and make it useful at higher levels and not really a death sentence.   The theoretical method for calculating berserk is to take half of the berserk skill and add it to the weapons skill, while taking the same % off of defense.   Having run a few simulations, PVPwise, using berserk does provide a significant damage increase and the defense decrease isn't so damaging that the wolf is killed by a random level 1 town npc, which I remember happening more than once in DFC.

As for shapeshifting, I initially wanted to keep it as a skill, and have the damage related to the shapeshifting skill % but that doesn't seem feasible for various reasons.   Instead it seemed easier to implement it as a spell casting ability.  If I recall correctly, blood coven vampires had spells to shapeshift themselves into bats and I remember more than once staff using spells to shapeshift themselves and targets.  I mentioned in previous posts that monks and gnolls forms were less diverse and fewer in number.  Monks and Gnolls operate in their forms with only one real choice, their highest level form.  To use any other form would be stupid.  Wolves, being the natural shapeshifters they are are given a much more diverse setup.

First tier of forms:
2) Physical damage, single attack
7) Earth damage, single attack
11) Cold damage, single attack

Second tier of forms:

16) Physical Damage, chance of attack being a double attack
20) Cold Damage, 10% stun chance
25) Earth Damage, 10% fatigue damage chance
30) Fire Damage, 10%  chance for a second attack


Third tier forms:

35) Physical damage, 100% double chance
40)  Cold damage, 25% stun chance
45) Earth damage, 25% fatigue damage chance for a second attack
50) Fire damage, 25% fire damage chance for a second attack

Each tier's forms have the same basis for damage and defense values meaning a level 50 wolf in any of the third tier forms will get the same usefulness from them.