Personally, I'd be fine with that.
They weren’t, but they do have an opportunity now to make them balanced for player use (if only for the benefit of druid wild shapes and conjure animals spells). I’m curious to see whether they will attempt to address that.Monster stat blocks arent particularly balanced because they aren't intended for player use.
You can have all three. Make a list of all the traits that beasts under cr 6 have. List what animals have this trait. Then list a number of actions and natural weapons and what beasts use them. When you wildshape, you can pick traits and actions that share a beast. These replace your racial features and you can only attack with your new chosen weapons. Your physical ability scores increase to 16/16/16 for the duration, and you can increase one or two at higher levels. Also at higher levels, you can gain movement speeds, reactions, different size, and bonus actions too.The classic pick two conundrum is happening: you can have wild shape that is
1. Broad
2. Flavorful
3. Balanced
Pick two.
2014 WS was broad (lots of options) and flavorful (any beast in the world) but unbalanced.
Templates are broad (anything you can think of) and balanced, but dull (all used the same Stats)
2024 is settling on Flavorful (unique monster stats) and balanced (curated list) but not broad (limited options) with the DM allowing you to remove the safety and swap broad for balanced ala 2014.
It is worth having an entire Bestiary as a separate book. The book can list all of members of the Beast creature type, from game versions of reallife animals, to "dire" prehistoric-esque animals, to "drake" animalistic dragon concepts.There's going to be a lot of holes in any PHB list. Dinosaurs, Owlbears (which should be allowable), heck, the current MM is missing Raccoons, Otters, Beavers, Platypus, Kangaroo, among others, and I'm sure we could all list a bunch of animals that are pretty distinct and lack statblocks. Add that these statblocks do not scale and all the other issues, and I'm just seeing this as papering over foundational cracks.
One of these things is a lot harder than the other. It's also a lot easier for a new player to get a few generic forms "strong animal, sneaky animal, bird" and go with that. Druid is BY FAR the class I've seen new players gravitate towards. And its utterly awful to learn to play. Prepared caster plus looking up other stat blocks in other book(s). Oh wait, you use some of your stats. Oh and use your HP. Plus some temporary hit points. Oh don't use the attack bonus in the stat block, you modify it by your proficiency bonus instead. No, this isnt on D&D beyond. Why is this crap so needlessly complicated? Because some min-maxers demand to flex their system mastery to eek out extra dps and shoehorn in their character's trip to Chult to justify having seen a velociraptor?They weren’t, but they do have an opportunity now to make them balanced for player use (if only for the benefit of druid wild shapes and conjure animals spells). I’m curious to see whether they will attempt to address that.