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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hawk Diesel" data-source="post: 7310891" data-attributes="member: 59848">Why would the druid need more HP/Temp HP? Once again, clerics, bards, and wizards are all full caster classes. Should we also give them more HP? Would you be ok with those classes getting wild shape to get good physical stats and more HP? This is not me being contentious, but honestly curious about how others see it. Druids are already full caster classes that get medium armor, shields, and a d8 HP. Think about Wizards who as full casters with no armor and a d6. Outside of their Arcane Recovery and Archetype abilities, they get nothing additional until level 18. Why do so many focus on those two aspects of my reasoning? What about the artificial distinction between what makes a beast or what makes a magical beast? Why is a CR 1/4 creature ok if its a beast, but suddenly not ok if it is anything but a beast? A great example that comes to mind are blink dogs. They are in the section with all the other animals. Same thing with Winter Wolves and Phase Spiders. Yet for some reason those options are not eligible for Wild Shape. Also, the distinction for what is a beast versus magical beast is not based on reality, as you have options to use giant and dire versions of animals as well as dinosaurs. Sure, those creature might have existed at one point in reality, but do we really know enough about how they lived to create a stat block that is any different than a mythical creature? Or lets consider swarms! Remove the idea of a swarm and the word swarm from the stat block, and you have a creature with a CR just as any other. Why is there a distinction there if you could theoretically wild shape into that particular CR? What about the idea of the Monster Manual not being meant as a player resource? Yes, I mentioned the example about my wife, but that is not the reason I am exploring a change to Wild Shape. I have felt these same things all the way back since 3E before I had even met my wife. And while 5e improves the game in many ways, to me this still feels like something that is the way it is more as a legacy to the 3e druid than anything else.Ok. Good for you. You like Wild Shape as it is. Your experience is different than mine. I am not posting here looking for ways to help me use Wild Shape as presented in the PHB. I am looking for feedback regarding what I have created in terms of balance. If its not for you, cool. I don't expect everyone to like it or even understand my reasons for changing it. But please, don't waste my time or yours trying to give me "tips" to work with the PHB Wild Shape. It doesn't change my opinion that it needs to go.You can't turn into a brontosaurus until level 15 at the earliest anyways if you are a Moon Druid, and never if any other kind of druid. If you want to be an actual brontosaurus, you can still achieve this by using Polymorph (which is on the druid spell list). Also, this highlights one of the issues I have with Wild Shape. The brontosaurus example you make is not in the Monster Manual, but Volo's Guide. With Wild Shape, every book that releases monsters now becomes a player resource. And just as every book released can allow for power creep, I believe this is even more so for new monster stats. CR is not supposed to be a guide for the power level compared to a single player. CR represents the relative difficulty the creature presents to an entire party. It is messy and more difficult to balance against other individual abilities that other players could achieve. But also from a design perspective, I doubt most designers are considering Wild Shape or even spells like Polymorph when designing a creature stat block. Monsters are not supposed to be designed as a player tool, but rather to make an interesting and reasonable challenge for a party of a given level. But a reasonable challenge of a party of a given level does not mean that those abilities or capacities are appropriate for a player character. I have also admitted in my design notes that the normal riders you could gain with the PHB Wild Shape (such as grapple, trample, ect) are missing in my version. I don't know that is a problem, but I also don't know how to address it without either making it more complicated or unbalanced. I don't know that such riders/abilities are appropriate to non-Moon Druids, since once again I see Wild Shape as a whole more for exploration rather than constricting enemies, breaking things, or even using your body as a bridge. I don't think Wild Shape was supposed to be a Swiss Army Knife. But such riders are potentially useful and appropriate for the Moon Druid. I tried to keep them relevant in battle by increasing their damage based on level, as well as using Wisdom in place of Strength or Dexterity for attacks. The damage keeps pace with what most max CR beast could produce (at least using the Monster Manual as a guide. Once again, if expansions are taken into account, the CR 5 Brontosaurus FAR exceeds what the CR 5 Triceratops or CR 5 Giant Crocodile are capable of based on damage and reach alone. Including those options would skew the average higher). This may be less interesting than additional combat options. Perhaps there is a way to include them, but I am not sure how. This is something I can consider.</blockquote>

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