D&D 5E Wildshape oddities.

[Li Shenron]

I have now re-read the wildshape text, so I'll add more comments...

My genenal feeling is that the current version is actually pretty nice, because it the text is short and simple. As I mentioned in my previous posts, I regard vagueness as a good thing.

There are some things which could be taken away because they add nothing to the game:

- the "part of another action" is an unnecessary complication, just say it takes one action or alternatively a free action, or even a reaction, but then stick with the choice, we don't need exceptions

- duration is more complicated than needed also, why do we need to add Con? It's totally inessential to the game, and will need update every time the Druid increases the Con score, 1 hour/level is easier to remember [or why not even have no time limit at all?]

1) You lose your druidic class abilities. Many of these represent mystical abilities gained from your connection with nature. It is particularly odd that while using your mystical shapechanging you lose your poison and disease immunity, your increased healing rate (which is specifically stated to have come from studying and shapechanging into animals), and your slowed aging.

I think that "game statistics" is an ambiguous term, they should be clarified. My interpretation is "everything appearing in the animal stats below change their correspondent on your character sheet": therefore your total attack bonus, weapon damage, Str/Dex/Con scores for checks and ST, size, speed, AC, and senses change. And nothing else.

Therefore I don't think druidic abilities are lost at all. Level-based attack bonus is lost (who cares, it's max +2 anyway) because it is overwritten by the animal's final attack bonus. Spellcasting is specifically lost. Proficiencies become irrelevant. But other class abilities remain.

2) You technically lose access to all your hd since they are not mentioned in the new statistics. These could be interpreted as being retained along with your hit points, but I believe it should be called out.

Healing rules will change for every gaming group, so every gaming group should basically figure it out. If your group uses HD, I guess they use it also for animals, so in animal form you still have your HD. But even if the group uses HD only for PCs, even in animal form you're still a PC, so IMO the default is going to be that whatever your group's rules for natural healing, wildshaped or not your Druid follows the same rule.

3) Though you retain your own mind and (intelligence, wisdom, and charisma) you lose training in sneak and similar skills. Most odd of all is that you lose your advantage on recall natural lore checks from being a druid. I should point out that this is understandable and flavorful if you assume that your mindset has changed into a more animal like one, but retaining your own intelligence, wisdom, and charisma seems to contradict this.

Skills and feats are ambiguous (are they "game statistics" or not?), but my take is that since animals don't get feats and skills i.e. they don't appear under the animal form, then they are not replaced. I think you can be allowed to use your feats and skills, except that in wildshape you won't be able to attempt anything that requires hands or speech, but it should be pretty easy to figure out.

4) You would retain the effects of a feat that increased your maximum hp, but would not gain the benefits of one that allowed you to regain more hp when spending hit dice. This is because the wildshape ability specifically calls out your hp as a statistic that doesn't change even if you technically don't have that feat in this form, but says nothing about hd or healing rates. Particularly noticeable since the druid gains an increased healing ability, as stated above.

See above.

5) You can wildshape and bite someone's head off as part of the same action, but cannot wildshape directly from one animal form to another. This is because in animal form you technically lose the wildshape abiliy. The ability to change back as an action is easily interpreted as being part of the initial activation of wildshape (like a spell that you can dismiss as an action), rather than as a class ability.

This would be too silly to be true.

6) You lose the abiliity to cast spells, and the benefit of your feats and skills while using the "Thousand Faces" class feature. I do believe a more reasonable interpretation of this ability would be that it consumes a use of your wildshape but does not use the same rules. It should be pointed out that "none of your statistics change from using this ability" to avoid possible confustion.

I agree. Thousand Faces specifically change your appearance not your stats. You still retain all your stats. This could be written explicitly just to be clearer.

 

[kerleth]

I've wondered exactly what statistics meant myself, but came to the opposite conclusion for a couple of reasons.

1) If only what is mentioned is replaced, than a dwarf retains darkvision and poison resistance as a hawk. Note that there is no specific calling out of racial versus class based abilities, so even though this seems nonsensical, it would be true. I'm talking about the crunch of the mechanics here, the explanation of how things work, not our assumptions.

2) Combining the advantages of wildshape with a retention of skills and feats could quickly become ridiculous. The cat can easily outstrip the party's rogue stealth specialist, for example.

3) They say that your game statistics change and then call out the exceptions. If only 3 scores and a couple of traits changed, it seems that it would make more sense to say that instead.

THAT SAID, there are good reasons to assume otherwise as well.

1) They specifically call out spellcasting. If everything is replaced, why should they need to do that?

2) You retain your own mind, so perhaps trained skills and feats would remain also. Of course, most skills/feats are combinations of both mental and physical adaptation, but that's probably getting a bit too picky for a game.

I find it funny that even a term as simple as game statistics can be vague. It is extremely difficult to design instructions that can stand alone without a person there to clarify.

BTW, as far as the seeming silliness of "change as part of an action". This way of handling it does add something to the game. If such abilities are free actions then a character could do 5 of them in one turn. This method allows a character to use the ability and do something else without having to add in a swift action mechanic or running the risk of "breaking" things. I find it easy to understand both here and in the spells, but that's just my opinion.

In the end I like wildshape and the druid fairly well. I just think that this is exactly the sort of thing they want players to take note of and discuss. I am okay with either general method, because they both have pros and cons. I simply want to know which is the way it was designed to be used and for it to be balanced and crafted around that method. Making people make a judgement call on a core ability like wildshape is okay in corner cases, but we're talking about the base mechanic and how it will work every time you use it. I think with a little more fine tuning they could make it specifically called out and work well either way.

 

[Li Shenron]

1) If only what is mentioned is replaced, than a dwarf retains darkvision and poison resistance as a hawk. Note that there is no specific calling out of racial versus class based abilities, so even though this seems nonsensical, it would be true. I'm talking about the crunch of the mechanics here, the explanation of how things work, not our assumptions.

In my post I mentioned "senses" and said that IMHO they should all change, on the ground that the hound form stat block contains an entry for them (it grants you low-light vision) so I assumed this could become a general rule. After all, you are getting the animal's eyes, right? So it would seem natural for me that you lose all your original form's senses, and gains the animal form's senses, including sight (low-light vision, darkvision, other bonuses), hearing, smell/scent, tremorsense...

However I just noticed that the hound form is the only form granting low-light vision at all. Great cat and rodent don't, although several forms grant bonuses to notice hidden creatures. Meh...

Your mention of darkvision got me thinking however, that some senses are supernatural. How about an undead druid (if that ever makes sense)? Some creatures might have magical sight in which case I'd be tempted that they should keep them in wildshape. Not a very important case perhaps...

2) Combining the advantages of wildshape with a retention of skills and feats could quickly become ridiculous. The cat can easily outstrip the party's rogue stealth specialist, for example.

Which should be better at sneaking unnoticed, a human rogue or a rat? It's not that obvious question... the Rogue which specializes at sneaking through the appropriate scheme will get a +d6 bonus while the wildshape Druid will get +8 which is obviously better.

It's a reasonable concern, and the wildshape limits per day don't make up for it.

I think some way to prevent the problem could be a combination of not allowing small animal shapes until higher level, and limiting the animal forms known even more than now, so that at least only some Druids can use their wildshape for sneaking.

2) You retain your own mind, so perhaps trained skills and feats would remain also. Of course, most skills/feats are combinations of both mental and physical adaptation, but that's probably getting a bit too picky for a game.

Agreed. If I had to make a choice I'd say keep the feats and skills from class definitely, since even the most physical ones could still be the result of training. Racial feats and skills are more tricky because they could be from culture (in which case they should easily stay) or from birth.