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Message: <blockquote data-quote="woodelf" data-source="post: 937196" data-attributes="member: 10201">Re: Re: Wildshape/Polymorph'Cause that would be "unbalanced" apparently.  It's ok if shapeshifting lets you kick all the butt, but if it lets you do something cool and non-combat-oriented?  Nope, too powerful.  I don't get it.  I'd understand changing polymorph and wildshape so that you get everything *except* the combat abilities.  Maybe my D&D games over the years have just been weird.  But i've seen those abilities used a lot (in multiple editions), and i can only think of one instance where they were used for combat.  Heck, the druid in the game i'm in now used wildshape literally every chance she got (the player thought it was cool, so she'd use it any time she had an excuse).  At least once a session.  In the course of 2 years, she turned into a rhino once (to deal with some, essentially, dire wolves), and that's the *only* time she used wildshape for combat.Anyway, on druids and roles in general: i think, if they're trying to get all the classes equally played, they may be missing the point.  I'm not convinced the underlying archetypes are equally popular, so adding more carrots may not be the answer.  I'll take my old D&D campaign as an example: It ran for 7 years, had an *average* of 8 players at a given session and a dozen players "active" at any given time (max 19 at one session, probably about the same for active players), and a fair bit of turnover (6-8 players were the same ones all the way through, others were there for a couple of years, and there was a complete newbie (who might or might not have become a regular) at about every other session).  All told, i can come up with ~60 characters from that game (count's a little fuzzy in my head).  Of those, there was exactly one single-class, non-specialist wizard.  One fighter/wizard and 3 or 4 specialist wizards. Several druids.  A fair number of clerics. A couple bards. The only classes that were underrepresented were the wizard, the monk (1), and the paladin (0).  (This was under AD&D1, then AD&D2, then AD&D2 + copious house rules. Balance wasn't what kept people away from a class--if they liked the concept, i made sure they didn't feel shafted--i was more interested in happy players than strict game balance.)  Interestingly, i had a disproportionate number of clerics.  I attribut this to their customizability--i went gung-ho with eth concept of specialty priests in 2e, and let players help me customize their abilities for their deity.  I don't think i had a single cleric who could turn undead in the entire 7 years.  ;-)  My point is, i think those who don't play clerics, don't play clerics because they don't want to, not because they want to, but they feel shafted if they do. To that end, i think the narrowing of the class concept (from 2e specialty priest to 3E cleric) is the problem, not them being underpowered. And i think that giving them more variety is the solution.  Similarly, i think lack of flexbility is what's hurting the druid, if anything is. As others have said, the druid seems to be being relegated to a narrower role, so even fewer people are gonna be interested in it--it doesn't matter how powerful your shapeshifting circus-master is, if you don't want to play a shapeshifting circus-master.</blockquote>

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