Wait a minute. Alter self says you gain the natural weapons, but then says extra limbs do not allow you to make more attacks than normal. So if you get claws and bite, you can't use them? What is "normal"? I'm wishing I hadn't bought the first printing of the 3.5 stuff.. sooo much copy paste and poorly worded rules. I'm voting that the Masters of the Wild wildshape rules override 3.5.
It's not a copy/paste problem. In 3.5, Alter Self didn't used to have a restriction preventing you from getting extra attacks for having more limbs - primarily because it also didn't give you natural weapons at all. Now it gives you natural weapons and says you don't get attacks for having natural weapons.
The best part, is that when this particular direct contradiction was brought to Custserv's attention, the response was less than encouraging:
custserv said:
We don't know. We can't figure it out either.
Right now, when you wildshape into a bear, or an octopus in 3.5 - there is no way to determine what it is that is supposed to happen with your attacks - regardless of whether you are using daggers in your tentacles or not.
Make sure you get the natural spell feat from MotW. The legendary Ape form is off limits, first off it's got 13 HD, and secondly wild shape never applies to legendary animals.
1> There is no hit die restriction in 3rd edition. You only get a size restriction unless you take levels of "shifter". Shifters have a hit die restriction, Druids do not.
2> There is no restriction on becoming Legendary Animals,
anywhere in 3rd edition. The restriction is that you can become anything that is an Animal and is not Dire. At 12th level you can become Dire animals. While the rules don't literally say that you ever can't become a legendary animal (and they fulfill all the restrictions) - most people I know restrict you to only become a legendary form when you can become a Dire form - as it is more than a little weird to be able to be a legendary Wolf at 5th level and have to wait to 12th level to become a Dire Wolf.
Fortunately, we are talking about a 12th level character - so there's no real reason he couldn't be a legendary Ape.
PHB said:
If a character's Constitution score changes enough to alter his or her Constitution modifier, the character's hit points also increase or decrease accordingly.
Yes. According to the new modifier. When you upgrade to a +3 sword from a +2 sword, you don't add +1 more to your to-hit and damage - you recalculate your to-hit and damage with a +3 enhancement bonus instead of whatever you had before. That's how all bonuses work in D&D.
That's how Constitution works too. When you raise your Constitution from 18 to 20, you
don't add +1 to all of your hit dice - that wouldn't stack. You add +5 to all of your hit dice individually
instead of adding +4 like you were doing before.
It recalculates, it doesn't delta. That's actually a
good thing because otherwise being poisoned would be advantageous:
If you just did things by delta, then every wizard should poison themselves down to within an inch of their life. Con reduction can't lower your hit points below 1 point per level, right? So if you drop your constitution down to 1 (and there are reliable ways to do that), you would have a -5 modifier. But you'd be a Wizard, so the maximum you could roll would be 4 on any of your hit dice. Nevertheless, when your Constitution was 1, you'd have 1 hit point per level - as that is the minimum.
Then you'd start healing yourself - when you gained 2 con points, you'd gain 1 hit point per level. When you gained 2 more con points, you'd gain 1 more hit point per level, and so on all the way up to 11 - where you would now have a Con Modifier of +0 and 6 hit points per level. More hit points than you had in fact, actually rolled.
Fortunately, it
doesn't work like that. You can't poison yourself for hit points, because when you drop your Con to 1, you recalculate your hit points with a -5 modifier (with a minimum of 1 per die). When you go back to a modifier of zero you don't add +5 hit points per die - you recalculate your original hit points with a +0 modifier. Nothing moves.
And
that is why you can get the hit points after you polymorph or wildshape in 3rd edition. When your con changes, you recalculate your hit points as Original Rolls + (Current Modifier times hit dice). Polymorph doesn't trigger a recalculation, but an Endurance spell does - and then it's just like the Polymorph
had changed your hit points because its alteration is factored into the new modifier.
At no time does Polymorph create a new modifier, or split your Con Modifier, or anything like that.
-Frank
) would indicate that I do have several attacks.
