D&D 5E Brainstorming New Wildshape/Polymorph

[MENTION=16728]schnee[/MENTION], would you say "significantly more" spells for land Druid over moon? It looks like 1 extra of your highest level at most points before level 10, or multiple low levels.

But you are right. I'll want to compare my variant against something like a war cleric for effectiveness.


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I personally believe the best system to manage wildshape would be using some sort of point system combined with choosing attributes. It is the easiest way to standardize abilities without worrying about the wishy-washy and ill-balanced nature of CR (which I don't find to be that great of a judge of balance for wildshape at all).

I was working with and trying to propose something that could both work for wildshape as well as animal companions for beast rangers. It adds some complexity to the class of course, but it also allows one to more easily separate mechanical benefits with how a creature is skinned.

A druid in wildshape could be a bear, or a werebear. A ranger's beast companion could be an ape, or a shadow-self.

I will try to find it and post it. I went pretty far in trying to break mechanical beast abilities down into discrete components and attempting to determine a point/resource cost. Basically you would start with a kind of base chassis and you could learn additional mechanical beast advantages to paste on.

Xeviat said:

@schnee, would you say "significantly more" spells for land Druid over moon? It looks like 1 extra of your highest level at most points before level 10, or multiple low levels.

Click to expand...

You spurred some curiosity. I crunched some numbers.

If we're counting spell slots, it boosts the volume of 'spell levels' you cast per day a bit.
- 33% increase at level 2
- 10% increase by level 10 (where it basically stays from then on)
It also stops scaling a bit in raw power around 10, since it only refreshes spells at 5th level or below, which means more frequent uses of utility spells more than encounter-ending stuff.

The Circle spells granted are a bigger boost:
- From Druid levels 3-9 it doubles the number of spells you know
- Even at Archdruid, it works out to (assuming 20 WIS) 30% more known spells than a Moon Druid

So, on average 10-15% more spells per day, from a much broader selection, with fewer spells consumed by self-healing.