Making the werediggle the true terror of the night.

Welcome back, V!

 

This has been one of the more interesting threads to read. I'm not a coder so I can't really comment on that side of things so I'll just give my impression of a player who's used the skill:

I mostly play rogues and werediggle is great for a little early toughness boost to get you started - not enough to make several levels a cakewalk, but more than enough to get you off the ground. After that, you start getting some pretty useful utility boosts. The problem as I see it is that after several of these useful utility abilities, the skill goes back to giving you more combat ability (which is too little too late at that point). I personally very seldom take the skill past egg laying.

As suggestions for fixing this:

I think laying eggs should be the capstone. Unlimited omelets and brimstone flasks (assuming you have the skill and a source of plastic) is pretty damned crazy.

The bonuses for diggle plague should be incorporated into the initial skill pick and the 2nd tier replaced with the heal-on-transform ability.

I'd replace archdiggle smash with either a charm/summon diggle spell or an large AOE that confuses/antimagics so you can run away.

Somewhere in the middle, I'd throw in a teleport (diggle dig).

After the first level, offensive bonuses should be eliminated and replaced with hefty defensive bonuses.

Anyway, looking at the skill conceptually, to me it seems reasonable that you'd get some offense from the transformation to begin with (you now have claws and a beak that you didn't have before), but after that it makes no sense to add tiny bonuses to offense. Making it into a pure utility line would let players be less confused and disappointed when the stats gains of the skill seem to make it a melee skill but such a weak one as to be pointless. Having the skill be almost pure utility/defense would make it clearer to players how to use the skill.

That's all assuming you're going to keep it as a rogue skill. If changing it to a warrior skill, I'd keep everything as is except combine levels 1 and 2 as mentioned earlier and add a capstone, "partial transformation", where you keep all skill bonuses in diggle form (if this is possible codewise). In my opinion, the current skill doesn't encourage taking the last two points in the skill tree and I feel like EVERY skill should have a capstone worth achieving.

 

I must admit that the main problem is the mix of warrior and rogue builds into the werediggle, and you make a good point here about how late are the other phisical options of the skill.
So, there is something stopping us from creating a overpowered class with mixed everything-a-player-should-have, and let's underline this: we are talking about polymorphing into a yellowish jar of tar, namely a Diggle.
So, why should it crush its opponents behind the very first floors? Why not follow the way its Class Architecture (Rogue - not a warrior) demands? It's indeed in the nature of the Diggle to live and survive underground, unseen, not very strong nor very intelligent; but, still, it's the main inhabitant of Big D's dungeon. Why not focus on this when we talk about becoming one of them?