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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DracoSuave" data-source="post: 5166018" data-attributes="member: 71571">Bottom line is, relating your D&D experience as a retort to 'You need to need to play games that aren't D&D' is a failure to understand the rebuttal.  So I'll be more plain.D&D is not the only RPG out there.  Get more in touch with RPG design that's popped up in the two decades.  You'd be surprised at how many of them follow the same attitude towards how stuff works.I'd hate to see you play Mage: The Ascension, Over the Edge, or any other such game.How's this.If you don't have the ability to fly through a power, then chances are you wouldn't roleplay turning into a bird, now would you?  Cause if you did, that could be bad roleplay if you then turn around with 'But I can't fly, baawwwww!'  Cause as a DM, I'd say 'Then why, as a player, did you choose to turn into a bird you know can't act as a bird?  Why did YOU make that choice?  Why did YOU think that choice was available?  Are you attempting to roleplay playing a druid who can turn into a bird but doesn't know how to fly?  That's good rp.  Are you attempting to make a point that you can turn into a bird without being able to fly as a game rule complaint?  That's bad rp.'Wild Shape isn't there to hold your hand and go 'There, my child, you can do these exact forms and that's it' because, and I know this might seem strange, but that's not ACTUALLY POSSIBLE.What DOES constrain your forms is your powers.  (even more than feats, to a considerable degree.)So, let's say you picked mainly Beast Form powers, including Pounce, and took some stealth-based abilities.  Congrats.  Your Beast Forms tend towards sleek, darkfurred creatures, like a jaguar.  You can do others too, depending on the story.  But mainly, that's your primary form.But, if you're primarily human-form powers, and your only Beast Form power is Savage Rend to get you out of danger but you have high Con... then you might transform into a bear, swipe at them, then change to a mouse to escape them before turning back to human form.This is the issue at hand:  Roleplay is not 'I read my power and did exactly what it said I could do!'Roleplay is 'I expressed my creativity and pretended to be a role.'  You're expecting the constraints of Wild Shape's shapes to be listed in its power in a game where you can have millions of permutations of the same class and therefore beast forms, which would require a description longer than the amount of paper available for the entire game system.  Instead, it simply says 'Do as you will' and the constraints are written into what powers you have.  You're expecting Wild Shape to tell you what you can't do, when it's THE ENTIRE REST OF YOUR CHARACTER SHEET that does that.</blockquote>

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