Reply To: Demon power ups
If only I could shape shift then we’d see who had the biggest double thingies..
The problem with shape shifting, and this is true for all shape shifters: therianthropes if you will is that maintaining the foreign form is very difficult, your body wants to go back to it’s default shape.
A wizard spell doesn’t have this problem because the shape is programmed into the spell and requires no effort for the subject/victim/wizard to hold the shape (as long as the mana holds up).
For others doing it more naturally, you really have to concentrate to keep it together. The more familiar the form, the easier it is to keep it together.
Thus you find in nature (Astlan) most therianthropes only have two forms. Their humanoid form and their animal form, and sometimes a hybrid form (werewolves are the most common)
The same is basically true for demons. Yes you can mutate bodyshapes etc, but it takes effort and is often not that stable/long lasting. Thus most demons settle on only a few shapes.
That being said, the older a shape shifting demon is, the more shapes it’s likely to have. You have to spend a lot of time in a shape to get it to feel “natural” or to “memorize” it, and if you don’t use it frequently, you have to work to bring it back. So, the older a demon is, the more time they’ve had to practice different shapes.
Exador has quite a few different human shapes, each generation is a new one and he has different aged versions of them. but as a rule, he stays in whatever human form he has all the time. Simply faking the aging process is enough work as it is. So he’s had probably the most forms of any demon, but he changes through them gradually and doesn’t go back (except perhaps to haunt someone)
Bess has multiple demon shapes, she has her human shape, and a couple different anthro cat shapes that we know about.
Ramses has a number of different human shapes that he’s used (he’s been all the Ramses’ on the timeline–he was doing the Exador thing) and he’s got several different demon forms, we saw a couple of them in Book 1.
But, you also need to keep in mind, a shape shifting demon will still look like it’s power level to demon sight. So even if Tom could shape shift to look like say Asmodeus or Lillith, it wouldn’t be particularly convincing (except maybe to a human–but how would they know what a Demon Prince looked like)