http://qs321.pair.com?node_id=352526

muba has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I am creating a fairly simple text-based MUD alike hack'n'slash game, that knows about three entity types: Player (the one who plays), Items (things like weapons and armor and magical items and such) and Foes (the ones you have to fight).

Well, Foe and Item are two very similar packages but they behave different on certain points (d'uh, an item is not supposed to walk around and fight you, while a foe is).

Now here's the problem: when the player kills a foe called "a male elf soldier", it should turn into an item called "the corps of a male elf soldier".
Therefor, I need to change the parent of this particular instance of Foe to Item.
I have tried to change its @ISA but that has two more problems:
- first, I failed.
- second, this is not the thing I want, actually, since the Item module has some methods with names that equal method names on the Foe module, but with different code in it.

So I really want to change the parent of the instance itself.

It might be useful to know that all three entity types (Player, Foe and Item) have a common parent called MotherOfAll, altough I don't know why. Consider this a FYI.