Dispelling Druid Wildshape, Dragon Paralysis Immunity, and the Wand of CLW effect

[Gort]

Okay, I have two questions that arose from todays adventure - I'm GMing a fight on a ship between the party (fighter, druid, wizard, rogue, and cleric, all level 9) and a sahuagin attack force made up of about fifteen sahuagin rangers of level 6, and their two sahuagin clerics of level 9.

The rangers attack first, about four or so coming over the side of the ship at a time, with reinforcements each round. The party fights back, the wizard blasting, the fighter fighting, and the cleric putting buffs up. The druid wildshapes into brown bear form. I don't want the sahuagin clerics to engage at once, so I have them throwing area dispels at the party to knock their buffs down instead.

Now, the actual question. Can druid wildshape be dispelled? I ruled that it could be, owing to it's description along the lines of "as the polymorph self spell". Was I right?

Second question. A character, a half-dragon, runs across a monster that requires a will save or be "paralysed by fear for 2d6 rounds". Does the half-dragon get it's "immunity to paralysis effects" against this? I said no, seeing as it wasn't a paralysis effect as such, but a fear effect. Was I right?

Oh, and any other comments are welcome too.

 

[James McMurray]

Wld Shape is a (Su) ability, and there fore cannot be dispelled.

Fear affects are not paralysis, so the half-dragon is not immune.

 

[Gort]

Oh, alright. Cheers for the prompt reply. Actually, I forgot one of my main points, so here goes.

Does anyone else find that the "have five encounters of equal challenge rating per day, each using 20% of the party resources" doesn't work at all? What I find is that the players buy a wand of cure light wounds, and heal up after each fight. Thus, they don't use 20% of their resources, usually a lot less. The result is that in order to challenge them, I usually have to do encounters that by the CR method are rated as overpowering or impossible, since they're pretty much good as new after each fight. I have no trouble with this, as it allows me to throw tougher challenges at them, which are always funner to run, but it does increase their chances of dying, so I have to moderate things more often.

I do have a pretty experienced party that knows how to make and play their characters, so that's part of it. Do any other GMs find this?

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

If not for the Wand of CLW there would be too vast a gap between healing rich and healing poor parties, and the CR system would collapse. As is, a single level of Cleric, Druid, Bard, Ranger, or Paladin will allow use of a wand for healing between encounters, so the party does not require 4 days of bed rest between each day of adventuring.

A CR = party level fight is not usually "challenging" in the commons sense of the word to tactically skilled players. It is not a surprise they can take on 4 in a day without real risk of dying -- that is by design. You only expect deaths under those conditions in cases of extreme luck or astoundingly foolish mistakes, especially if the PCs have half a clue about what kind of opponents they are up against.

If you want white knuckle excitement for a big finale, you will probably want to pit a CR = (party level + 3) event against a fresh party.

 

[Darklone]

To answer your question: No, I don't use that system.