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So the Lost Omens Mwangi Expanse book has this to say:
Anadi in their true form resemble human-sized spiders with a variety of colorations.With a 5th level ancestry feat giving:
Mastery of your shapeshifting lets you combine the best features of your humanoid and spider forms.However, the Toolbox in the most recent AP volume says:
Anadis have three distinct forms—human, spider, and a beautiful but unnerving hybrid shape that is their true form
Now while you could write this off as one of those things where bestiary Strix can all fly real well, but PC ones can't (for balance reasons) this is confusing because of the nature of a "true" shape. Like when Anadi are born (hatched?) are they spiders, are they humanoid spiders, or are they humanoids? Is one of these two books just in error?
Like long ago, before they made contact with other sapient life forms and worked on the transmutation magic that allowed them to shapechange, they must have looked like something so what did they look like?
Original form is spider. A paizonian (Ron Lundeen I believe) confirmed it on the boards.
"A paizonian" :)
So what I'm gathering is the intent here, is that if a GM is presenting an Anadi as a shallow NPC (I'd say "Antagonist" but Anadi mostly want to make friends) that a GM should present them in Hybrid form, because "looks like a human" and "looks like a giant spider" are more likely to be read as a human or spider respectively. Is that about right?
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The thing that confuses me, if their spider form is their true form, then why are they only qualified as Humanoid? Surely being a spider natively would qualify as a Beast?
The humanoid tag says humanoid has more to do with mental state and capacity. Humaanoids are able to more or less reason and act like humans. The number of limbs or similarity yo any shape is just a common feature of most humanoids.
The thing that confuses me, if their spider form is their true form, then why are they only qualified as Humanoid? Surely being a spider natively would qualify as a Beast?The humanoid tag says humanoid has more to do with mental state and capacity. Humaanoids are able to more or less reason and act like humans. The number of limbs or similarity yo any shape is just a common feature of most humanoids.
Interesting that Conrasu, Leshies, and Sprites aren't humanoids.
Interesting that Conrasu, Leshies, and Sprites aren't humanoids.The thing that confuses me, if their spider form is their true form, then why are they only qualified as Humanoid? Surely being a spider natively would qualify as a Beast?The humanoid tag says humanoid has more to do with mental state and capacity. Humaanoids are able to more or less reason and act like humans. The number of limbs or similarity yo any shape is just a common feature of most humanoids.
Well leshys are immortal nature spirits who take a vacation in a body in the material plane, Sprites I feel like could have a stronger argument to be humanoid especially since the Sprites that are playable has less of a tether to the first world and the perhaps bizare logic connected to it. And the Conrasu are literal shards of Planar essence whose main interaction with the world are wooden exoskeletons. all of them are connected to different planes or phases of being I suppose.
That makes sense. It would be an interesting challenge to try role playing then as characters who don't think like humans.
That makes sense. It would be an interesting challenge to try role playing then as characters who don't think like humans.Heck, I struggle to roleplay elves for this exact reason!
And that's pretty much just "how might a human think if they had a lifespan of centuries." Something like a Conrasu is going to be much more complicated.