Shape-shifting Rules (For Half-Ghosts)
- Be careful when making changes to your brain, heart, and other vital organs. Making significant changes to any of them can result in brain damage or heart/lung failure (or with any other organ) and the inability to shift them back to how they're supposed to be.
- With that said, a full shift (including changes made to heart and lungs) is possible if you shift into a form that can support your brain.
- Partial shifts, mainly revolving around the alteration and creation of limbs or other surface/skin deep shifts are more commonly used. If the creation of wings, for example, does not have the deeper internal shifts needed to allow one to fly, then they will not be able to and those wings will be mainly heavy feathery blankets.
- The better you understand what you are attempting to do, whether through the biology of the animal you want your arm to become, or the (pseudo)science that would be behind your shift in hair or eye color, the easier and faster it will be to change it. This also works the other way around in that a lack of understanding results in a slower, stuttering, and sometimes painful shift. "Glitching" occurs as the body's method of defense against such painful shifts that would result in damage to its function, like the failure of the vital organs mentioned above.
- For full ghost shape-shifters, the limitation on the brain and other organs is not so strict. They will experience pain if things go wrong, but will not die unless the changes made are extreme/serious. Instead, they must watch out for their core, which is simultaneously their heart and spirit, housing their soul. For half-ghosts, their core surrounds their heart like a liquid or semi-liquid shell.
- Shifting does not automatically affect things like strength, endurance, and speed, for example. They may give a small aid to such things, however, by the design of the creature depending on whether it's a full or partial shift.
Danny's favorite partial shifts are: aquatic/snake-like tail in place of his legs; wolf or lion limbs in place of his human ones (each of these require addition changes to the neck to support the different angle his head would be in, and a slight shift in things such as bone structure/organs to account for being on four limbs.) Minor shifts that he takes to are pointed and slightly elongated ears, fang-like canine teeth, and cat-like eyes.
Because of these shifting limitations, Team Phantom relies more on illusions and their ghost glows to hide their identities. They often use invisibility and intangibility when wanting to hide from the public, and Danny tends to use his cryokinesis in the form of mist to further help hide his own identity.