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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kinematics" data-source="post: 8957493" data-attributes="member: 6932123">OK, I've been reading this thread off and on, so I've seen a lot of the discussion, but far from all of it. Still, this idea occurred to me, and I thought I'd share and see what people's thoughts were.1) Keep the basic template idea. I'm not sure which features to base the template on, but likely something other than the land/sea/air templates. Maybe mount/predator/tiny/elemental, or some such. Possibly restrict some templates (eg: elemental) to certain subclasses. I'm not sure about stats just yet.2) Get rid of the restriction on wildshapes per day. You can use it casually, whenever you want, for however long you want (til a long rest, at least). Though also get rid of the free Alter Self feature.The above gives us an unrestricted, but bland option that seems both overpowered and underpowered at the same time. So:3) Add a "metamagic" feature for Wild Shape.  This grants traits to the basic template, similar to how metamagic modifies a spell.  And this is where your limiter comes in. You only have so many "sorcery" points to spend each day, and the number and types of traits you can add would be gated per level, similar to how you can select new metamagics as you gain levels in sorcerer. The idea would be that the "flavor" of a druid being a shapeshifter exists no matter what. You can play with it freely instead of feeling like you can't use it without screwing with your ability to be effective in combat at some point in the day. (I'd probably do a similar thing for at least the "advantage on strength checks" aspect of Rage for barbarians.)Instead, the specialized utility and combat effectiveness is the only part that's limited, but in a way that your druid has control over what types of things to focus on. Instead of the power limiter being the number of times you can transform per day, and all the arguing being over what you're allowed to transform into (and monster manuals and such), make the limiter be the power that's being exhibited.So a spider-themed druid might pick up wall/web crawling, webs, a poisonous bite, and chitinous armor.  Without it, she could still turn into a spider and scuttle around (which might be sufficient for many purposes, including roleplay), but would be more limited in both combat and scouting.Or you could have a mount template that starts off as a horse, but when the "flight" trait is added becomes a hippogryph or pegasus.  Or use an "aquatic" trait to become a kelpie.Maybe have a "mastery" feature (like wizards, or Level Up's fighters) where at certain levels you gain the ability to always add a given trait to your Wild Shape form, without needing to spend your "sorcery" points on it (or reduce the cost, depending on how it's implemented). For example, if "flight" was a trait, a druid who liked turning into an owl would eventually always be able to fly in that form without spending resources on it.</blockquote>

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