I am working on a role playing game for fun and to practice design patterns. I would like players to be able to transform themselves into different animals. For example, a Druid might be able to shape shift into a cheetah. Right now I'm planning on using the decorator pattern to do this but my question is - how do I make it so that when a druid is in the cheetah form, they can only access skills for the cheetah? In other words, they should not be able to access their normal Druid skills. Using the decorator pattern it appears that even in the cheetah form my druid will be able to access their normal druid skills. class Druid : Character { // many cool druid skills and spells void LightHeal(Character target) { } } abstract class CharacterDecorator : Character { Character DecoratedCharacter; } class CheetahForm : CharacterDecorator { Character DecoratedCharacter; public CheetahForm(Character decoratedCharacter) { DecoratedCharacter= decoratedCharacter; } // many cool cheetah related skills void CheetahRun() { // let player move very fast } } now using the classes Druid myDruid = new Druid(); myDruid.LightHeal(myDruid); // casting light heal here is fine myDruid = new CheetahForm(myDruid); myDruid.LightHeal(myDruid); // casting here should not be allowed Hmmmm...now that I think about it, will myDruid be unable to us the Druid class spells/skills unless the class is down-casted? But even if that's the case, is there a better way to ensure that myDruid at this point is locked out from all Druid related spells/skills until it is cast back to a Druid (since currently it's in CheetahForm)