The Shapeshifter's mask is very interesting, but I've noticed that, as Fane, you will lose your "Fane" tag if you shapeshift into other races, which is potentially an oversight/bug.

It's a shame really, since I enjoy the immersion of appearing as living while talking to others, but I don't want to lose his unique dialogue in the process. I don't know why he loses it, but it'd be great if he retained it.

As a companion, Fane also appears to lose the ability to speak with the player while shapeshifted.

All companion lose their tags while shape shifting which kinda suck.

A bandage fix for now, look up the character quest on where it will trigger now without reading the flavour text much. When I know I'm in the quest area for that companion, I will turn of the shape shifting so I don't miss the text and the quest.

They still talk though even while shifted but for the exclamation dialogue, you will have to toggle the shape shift off first before talking to any of your companion for them to be involved again.

I do wish they remove this limitation though.

I don't think that is a bug.

After what the others have said - not being able to talk to shapeshifted NPC companions and missing out on their quest triggers - I am pretty sure this is a bug, or at the very least should be addressed in some way.

Well, nine months later and this is still an issue that hasn't been addressed. Fane losing his unique tag while using the shapeshifter's mask renders it completely useless because it breaks all of his dialogue and his quest.

It's disappointing - I was rather fond of the idea of maintaining the 'masquerade' by appearing human as a player Fane, yet it disables everything that is unique about him so what's the point outside of using it in combat? Why remove his tag, to begin with? I'd mod this if I could but I don't know where to begin. I'll have to content myself with wearing a hood, but I'll hold onto hope that this can still be fixed by bringing it to attention again.

I took some time today and created a mod to remedy this problem, called "Shapeshifting Origin Tags" (no idea what else to call it, haha). Basically I made it so origins tags are preserved when shapeshifting, and you can now talk to companions while they're shapeshifted. Reflection and party decision dialog should work for them too now, though I haven't tested that personally.

Links:
Steam Workshop
Nexus

Tags are removed when shapeshifted because it wouldn't make sense that most NPCs would still recognize the character, etc.
This was actually brought up shortly after release, but modifying the design so it would allow party dialogues, etc, when in another form (but not other types of polymorph, like chicken) and continue to work properly for NPCs (all dialogues function properly that use the changes to the tag system) isn't an easy/safe task, but expect some changes in a future update.

Thank you! This is pretty neat, I'll see how it works.



I did consider that it might be an issue in regards to the game itself, so I recognize this might be difficult to solve. I understand the reasoning behind it, but it comes with the risk of missing out on unique dialogue and quest triggers, which the player may not even realize. I think this overshadows the issues you mentioned, but I'm looking forward to seeing how you change it though.

We went through all dialogs in the game at some point (I don't remember when exactly, I think it was for Patch 6 or Patch 7), and added shapeshift support for all origin characters (since everyone can use the Mask of the Shapeshifter) everywhere it made sense. I.e., in case the origin character itself remarks something (asks a question), they will generally be able to do so regardless of their shapeshift form, since shapeshifting does not change who they are or what they know. On the other hand, if the NPC in the conversation is supposed to recognise them, being shapeshifted will block that unless the NPC is somehow supernatural and can see/sense through shapeshifting (like Malady, Saheila, the Doctor, ...), or they are characters that have been recruited/become part of the LV crew (Gareth, Tarquin, Han, ...).

In which dialog(s) were you unable to say Fane-specific things while shapeshifted?