Change Shape states the following:
Any gear worn or carried by the creature that can’t be worn or carried in its new form instead falls to the ground in its space. If the creature changes size, any gear it wears or carries that can be worn or carried in its new form changes size to match the new size. (Nonhumanoid-shaped creatures can’t wear armor designed for humanoid-shaped creatures, and viceversa.) Gear returns to normal size if dropped.
Is there any way to prevent the dropping of equipment from happening? (ie, it melds into the body instead. It doesn't matter if the gear continues to function in this new form or not.)
Edit: The change in shape would be from humanoid to something like a wolf or a raven. The new shape would not normally be able to wear the gear in question. (An example might be like vampires "Alternate Form (Su)" ability, or abilities like this)
Best Answer
By RAW, there is apparently no way to do this. The closest you can get is a Wilding Clasp (from Masters of the Wild, p. 30), but those only prevent melding in favor of wearing, they cannot prevent dropping in favor of either wearing or melding. Therefore, the only way you will be able to get this to happen is by house ruling. Personally, I strongly recommend that any campaign using such creatures (as PCs or otherwise) house rule were-shifts and other gear-falls-to-ground shapeshifts into gear-absorbs-in shifts. With NPC shifters, this dramatically cuts down on the amount of fridge logic and outright discontinuity, and with PC shifters, it saves a choice between a ton of bog-down from having to track dropped gear, or a hand-wave of such tracking, the latter pretty much amounting to this change anyway.
Another option for a less sweeping change (and one that might be more appealing to a DM who considers the dropping to be a balancing factor) is to allow a variant version of the wilding clasp that turns drops into melds instead of melds into wears. Such an item would likely have the same price as a regular Wilding Clasp.