There was this nobody magistrate of hamsah shifter and there was a mouth. The mouth had a minotaur villager attached to it, and a pincer staff attached to the villager.

They fought a few times, and every time was the same: 4-5 critical strikes would be enough to send the weakling mage running, ABS or not, but it wasn't easy to run with all that cutoff and pincer staff, and if the mage tried to revert to word, he would find that he would get struck suddenly and lagged a round (some say it was Space, or perhaps the minotaur's unparalleled wisdom). So the mage was a little skittish about trying to fight on the mouth's terms, and he hid and waited for an opportunity.

The mouth saw himself as winning, and then he would talk. He wasn't very good at it, but the message was gotten across: "You hahe no retholve to vight vor what you believe in, I thpit on you, coward, blah blah blah."

The mage decided, that if he cannot fulfill the inviolable rule that all criminals forfeit their right to live, he can at least try and work on another commandment: that weapons should always be confiscated. So next time they fought, the mage took the form of a one-humped camel, and (irony of the situation notwithstanding), he spit at in eyes of the villager that was attached to the mouth. He then took shape of a wildcat to swipe the polearm out of the villager's hands, and sacrificed it to the great Umiron. Then he ran.

This repeated many many times and each time the mouth's whining voice grew more high-pitched as he threw around threats. The mage tried to point out that he's only following the commandment of law: criminals are not allowed to possess weapons whatsoever, but to no avail. And then they killed the mouth with the help of a fellow magistrate, a warrior, where the mage used another lesser form, gazelle, as that was the only form he knew that could lag at all.

The villager died and lost all of his weapons, although the mouth lived and continued to talk, and there were many other battles afterwards but that's a whole another story.

The moral is: pick utility focus and don't shy away from lesser forms, and you will find many options presented before you.