Ghost wolf forme and you

[ghaskan]

Hello fellow COTHers,

There has been a little issue that has been troubling me lately, and although I have no rush in solving it, I'm still quite curious.

All of you know about one of the most fun shaman spells - Ghost Wolf forme. It is also quite useful, allowing the shaman to run at increased speed and avoiding him or her from having their speed bellow the normal running one. However, having searched a bit using google, wowwiki and wowhead, I'm yet to find the answer to these questions, of a roleplay point of view, of course.

-How does the Ghost Wolf forme work ICly?
-Does this form even exist among normal shamans, or maybe it's exclusive to the ones of the like of Spirit Walkers?

Thank you for your time,
ghaskan.

[FlyingSquirrel]

Um, the majority of my Guild (The Hunt, primarily a Shaman Guild) holds it as basically exchanging bodies with a spirit wolf, while keeping minds, and then holding concentration for that until you break the concentration, which demorphs you.

[Nexi]

-How does the Ghost Wolf forme work ICly?

For the more mystical spells in the Shaman arsenal like Ghost Wolf, Far Sight, Astral Recall, etc, I very often RP the Shaman using a mind-altering substance like smoking an herb, drinking a sapta, inhaling incense smoke, etc, beforehand that's meant to loosen their minds from the mundane and open it to the spiritual. Now for Ghost Wolf specifically, what I do is have the Shaman "join" the Spirit world temporarily much like a Spirit Walker/Champion does, only rather than going incorporeal and remaining in their humanoid form, they adopt a wolf-like form because their reason for the ritual is to be able to move faster. That and going incorporeal in humanoid form is something reserved for Spirit Walkers/Champions, so I just explain that by saying it's far easier to become a Ghost Wolf than it is to become a Ghost Humanoid. ;P

However, when playing with other Shaman characters who don't particularly enjoy making things annoyingly complicated, I don't bother with any of it and just treat it like an insta-cast ability.

-Does this form even exist among normal shamans, or maybe it's exclusive to the ones of the like of Spirit Walkers?

One very important rule to remember while RPing on this server is that any spell in the arsenal of the class you're playing can be used ICly. Same goes for items that you can craft. Just be sure to be reasonable about it. My own idea of being reasonable is making even the simplest spells and abilities take forever to cast, giving crafted items a bunch of materials that are hard to acquire and take a long time to forge ( Which I represent by having it take a long time OOCly as well ), and I sometimes throw in negative side-effects wherever I can find a way to fit one.

However, there are some spells, abilities and recipes that I find ridiculous and simply refuse to use them ICly because I don't feel my character ( or any character at times ) should be able to do it.

So yes, any Shaman character may use Ghost Wolf. But if you don't think your Shaman should know how to do it, no one will force you to act like you do. ;P

[ghaskan]

Thank you for yours responses! That cleared a lot of doubts I had. Personally, I don't like to RP uber strong characters - I find it to be a great responsibility, which is not what I'm looking for as a RPer, and to be frank... being "weak" (if we can consider any normal character weak per human standards :-p) can be fun! However, I can see why a shaman (mine included) would want to use Ghost Wolf forme, and thus I'll probably end up using it one day.

[FlyingSquirrel]

I have another question concerning this.

Can you touch Ghost Wolves? I've always RPd as yes, but I've seen some people RPing as no, and that they are, literally ghosts.

[Nexi]

Physical manifestation. Ghost wolves can still attack things and the form provides no real benefit defensively, so I see no compelling reason to believe they can't just as easily be stabbed as any other wolf. The question is then raised as to how unnerving it would be to actually pet one.

From here!