Yeah, that's great what the sage says. It would be even nicer if that was in the book, instead of just a ruling on how the sage would handle familiarity. But I bet even the sage would allow some kind of knowledge skill to do it. Knowledge nature rolls to cover animals, knowledge planes for outsiders etc. It is pretty hard to determine every monster you've seen in your life, the big bad monsters sure, but your backgorund and every day existence will likely cover a wide range of encounters. Also as for the sages ruling I personally don't think it jives with the intent of the wording in the book. The wording there mentioned something about a druid in tropical lands not turning into a polar bear. But it almost seemed to imply that animals from that region you would likely be familiar with, even if you hadn't fought it or studdied it for hours. I think if they intended the sages reading on that text they would of been a bit more explicit in what they meant by such a semingly easy to achieve term like familiar. I guess what I'm saying is if they expected the druid/shifter whatever to kow as much as the sage impies they would of likely said somehting lie you nead hard knowledge of a creature your going to change into like the knowledge you'd gain form fighting it, or from hours of personal observation, and not the type of knowledge gained from stories or a book. By using the term familiar they seem to imply a much less stringent requiremnet than the sage says.
