Jumping off the thread for the Custom Stat Edit suggestion, I'd like to put forth my own:

A way to reassign any cat's stat distribution. Without changing their base stat total!

Given that the future alchemical plans are proposed to cover (potentially) everything else about a cat, why not let people tweak stats as well?

There are potentially a few ways to do this:
Either go in for manual editing, potentially with limits per item use, so drastic changes may require more of them to finish. (This would be my preferred method!)
Or have a stat reshuffle be just that - a random redistribution of the cat's current stats.

I'd imagine you could only apply this to adult cats! It could be an item made alchemically, or maybe there could be some sort of retraining centre/dojo kinda thing.

Pros:
- Anyone with regrets over their Customs can fix whatever it is they're no longer happy with.
- Cat stats can be 'minmaxed' to help with Gathering/Speciality Roles. (This is also a con, potentially!)
- Don't have to choose between lore/good stat for jobs cats
- Cats can be adjusted to better fit their lore. Eg: a cat I see as clumsy can have their Finesse stat lowered to match. You can make as many 4 CLV orange cats as you like!
- Fits thematically with how all the other attributes can be changed with Alchemy.

Cons:
- ngl I'm pretty biased so I'm struggling to find many! Please feedback me.
- if it's a randomised choice you might get The Wrong Results?
- If manual stat tweaks are limited per item use/dojo visit it could be pretty tedious to save up for? (This could also be a pro, economically?)

Neutral? Effects:
- May shift community cat values further toward BST and/or ID numbers, as these still remain immutable traits.

Thoughts?

I'm not really convinced this would fix anything. A randomized shuffle will not fix the woes people have about their customs: some regret balancing stats and that won't fix that. Some regret minmaxing and that won't fix that. While the manual distribution is better than a shuffle, I still don't see how it fixes the problem. Low stat cats stay low stat.

At this point, the problem with cats and stats feels like something people need to come to terms with. I personally have several adult cats with awful stats in my village. The lowest is 75 base stats with his highest stat by a long shot being Luck. He's also Dramatic, making him have negatives for every job. He's one of my favorite cats and I've never sent him traveling.

I can't seem to understand why people need to constantly be maximizing their output either? The difference between a +2 cat and a +4 cat is so little for gathering. My custom who has base +10 at level 1 for some jobs regularly rolls the lower end of the scale more often than not it feels like. Cats still bring back items regardless of their roll. There's no race to win with unlocking anything. In fact, the way PCE is set up, which is a solo dev with large gaps between major updates, actually suits the weaker cats because you have so much time to just exist and slowly build up over time.

[Disclaimer that this is not to be taken as a confirmation that this will happen. I have 700 billion ideas that get rolled around in my brain like a washing machine that may or may not ever occur]

I think this could be fun for lore tweaks as long as it was pretty limited in the power of what it could do and all of it is somewhat hard to acquire (eg. users have to work very hard for it). That's gonna be the case for most of alchemy so that I'm not too terribly worried about. I intend to work very hard to ensure that the ability to change cats in any way devalues those factors as little as possible.

This kind of thing would fit in with alchemy decently well too. Some other ideas I've idly had in the past were things like:

- Item that just rearranges the existing stats, like when you set up d&d character creation, you get numbers like [17 14 12 14 16 8] and you pick where those go. Something that either rearranges the numbers randomly or by choice could be kind of interesting.

- A probably controversial and not particularly realistic option where you raise one stat +1 but now you have to lower two stats -1 so it's a matter of how far you're willing to push it.

I do feel pretty strongly that anything like this not be essence fragment based because I do not want the game to be pay-to-win. I also feel pretty strongly that things with "random" aspects are not tied to essence fragments as I don't want it to feel like gambling.

Lore-wise small things would work as irl you can work really hard to improve at something. Send your cats to study the blade once a day and it drains their perception but they get soooooo strong. Or whatever.

support! i think like you said, seen as alchemy changes a lot of things it wouldn't be out of place to have something like this. abd it shouldn't change the meta too much because you're not adding onto a cat's stats, you're just reshuffling their existing ones. and it can satisfy the ppl who regret how they stated their customs to re-organize the 108 bst they were given into something that fits with their current game style more. i do agree that it should be something somewhat expensive/ takes some effort to earn so people don't abuse it

I think a stat-shuffler would be fun. In my mind it would just take the cat's stat total and re-roll the stats at random to still equal to the original total, which could still give you an equal distribution, or it could give you the highs and lows.

I like the idea where the stat values for all the stats are kept, and you just shuffle what stats they're assigned to, though I do totally see the argument for a total reroll! Maybe it could be 2 different items/services for either option?

Yeah this could work, and also potentially cater to every type of user. Support

So I have this one cat with a BST of 69 this cat is an adult cat that doesn't come from a different family or anything like that and honestly I intentionally sought the cat out just because, y'know? For the laughs! Honestly it would be very helpful if you could adjust some stats around because instead of that cat having a 17 in luck, I could put it towards a different stat that helps out with job stuffs. Support!

this one I like a lot the amount of times i see a cat on the CRB and I go “Good heavens. You would be perfect if that 9 in perception and 23 in luck were switched” is a frankly surprising number and it doesnt completely devalue the distribution for the BST
and an alchemy based scatterscroll type reshuffler would be quite fun not sure about the “take their bst and turn it into stat points to redistribute freely” idea bc i feel like that’d put way too much value on the sole BST number and i’m a huge fan of silly cats who do great things despite having <108 bst
i support some kind of stat shifter overall because as it stands rn stats (and ids) are the one thing that arent set to be changeable with alchemy but my favorite is the dnd reshuffle

edit: if it was the bst -> stat points method it would get very very overpowered extremely fast. youd only need a bst of ~104(!) to get a mayor that gives +2 in every main adventuring stat except health (23 in str, agi, fin, per), and like, 119 for that + a +2 in health

Oop, I thought I'd replied but apparently I forgot. lmao

Anyway! I'd be super happy with either of these options, honestly! I'd definitely prefer some element of choice here but I'd use both for sure. I think I prefer the DnD-like method. I can see that as something I would drop a lot of resources/notes on to keep rolling a cat's set-up to be what I want it to be, haha!