This addon mod is designed to rebalance Shifter Titans from Danny’s AOT by addressing two major issues: Shifter Titans being far too invincible outside Paradis, and hostile entities from outside Danny’s AOT not properly targeting player-shifted Titans. In other words, this addon is mostly made of nerfs. There are quite a few more enhancement features now.
In the original Danny’s AOT, Titans do not take damage except through the nape, and they only accept certain types of attacks. Because of this, if you shift into a Titan outside Paradis and pick a fight with vanilla entities, the Titan can end up existing outside the normal concept of damage entirely, rather than simply being strong or weak. This mod is intended to solve that problem.
This addon allows Shifter Titan bodies to lose HP even when attacks hit areas other than the nape. Damage can be roughly divided into the head, nape, torso, and limbs, with configurable damage multipliers for each body part. This makes Shifter Titans generally vulnerable to damage even outside the nape, while still making non-nape hits much less devastating than proper weak-point attacks. This is meant not only for balance, but also to recreate scenes from the original work where Titan shifters have difficulty maintaining their Titan bodies after taking serious damage outside the nape.
However, with only this change, it would theoretically become possible for a huge Titan to die from having only its toes bitten by a single zombie, which would look pretty absurd. To avoid undermining the fear factor of Titans from the original work, this addon adds a small amount of additional regeneration on top of the original behavior, compensating for the fact that Shifter Titans become easier to damage.
There are other changes as well. This addon makes nape attacks directly reduce the HP of the player inside the Titan by a certain percentage. This is because, unlike Pure Titans, intelligent Titans clearly have a human body inside the nape. Even attacks other than cutting out the nape, such as bullets, should be able to
damage the shifter if they pierce through and hit the body. However, the shifter regeneration from Danny’s AOT still works while transformed, and the damage is percentage-based, so this is not designed to make the player inside die too easily. Also, since it would be strange for even the weakest attack to pierce through the nape, the final calculation includes a flat reduction so that very low damage can be filtered out.
You might wonder whether entities actually aim for the nape in the first place. When they become hostile, the existing entity responsible for the nape hitbox can be targeted, so in practice, they can target it. This addon does not add any advanced AI that makes mobs circle around to the back, but as a result, the behavior does not conflict too much with the original system and can still make body-part damage multipliers matter in combat.
As for hostility outside Paradis, even in the original Danny’s AOT, hostile mobs can become hostile if you attack them first. However, there are issues where hostility is lost after shifting from the player form into a Titan, or entities that should naturally be hostile to the player behave as if they are neutral toward the shifted Titan. This mod also addresses that problem.
Alongside these system changes, the forced release behavior when a Shifter Titan body’s HP is depleted has also been adjusted. In the original Danny’s AOT behavior, this is treated similarly to losing all Titan stamina, causing heavy debuffs and leaving the player unable to shift again even if they still have stamina. This is an appropriate penalty for Shifter Titans that are normally almost invincible outside the nape, but it becomes too harsh when this addon is installed. Therefore, this addon changes the condition for receiving that severe penalty. By default, the penalty is only applied when the player inside the Titan is near death, at 2 hearts or less, and is forcibly released due to the Titan body’s HP being depleted.
This is not only for balance. It is also meant to recreate situations from the original work where, no matter how badly the Titan body is damaged, the shifter can immediately transform again if the person inside is still healthy and has enough strength left. Conversely, it also aims to recreate situations like the Beast Titan after being defeated by Levi, where the shifter cannot transform again immediately because the person inside is severely injured.
In addition, this addon adds a dedicated armor system for the Armored Titan. It is completely immune to attacks below a certain strength, making it feel almost unstoppable. However, attacks above that threshold will reduce its armor value, eventually causing it to lose its armor. It’ll shatter like thin ice!
This addon supports Mod Menu, and most of its features can be configured.
The creator of this addon is a Japanese speaker and does not understand English, so this description was machine translated. Some wording may sound strange. This addon was also created with AI assistance.
Lastly, I would like to thank Danny7, the creator of Danny’s AOT!
Required mod
Recommended mod
The Shifter Titan Rebalance Team
