Why does Wild Shape restore hit points? It opens the door for the infinite-HP loop at 20th level, but more generally, what's the justification? Why not just have the druid retain his hit point total in animal form?
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D&D 5E Why does Wild Shape restore hit points?
- Thread starter doctorhook
- Start date
Negflar2099
Explorer
Does it? I thought the PHB said that druids return to the hit points they had before they turned. I don't have my PHB in front of me though so I'm not sure.
Oops, I'm an idiot. Yes, they return to their original HP total, if I'm reading correctly. I think my question remains valid though: why bother tracking HP separately at all? Wouldn't it be simpler to just use the same total?
Maybe they wanted it to be consistent with polymorph which is really better balanced this way. Now if you turn a foe into a goldfish they will just turn back next round upon drowning.
Another reason is that druids aren't great melee fighters and animal attacks aren't that much better. (I mean, the are not bad, but not omg awesome.) Animals generally have crap AC too. A nice hit point buffer means the druid won't Wild Shape into a glass cannon.
Also, you can only transform twice between short rests. So you'll probably wait until things are bad, when hit points are low. So it's nice that the animals hit points guarantee you'll have at least a couple of rounds of Wild Shape.
Another reason is that druids aren't great melee fighters and animal attacks aren't that much better. (I mean, the are not bad, but not omg awesome.) Animals generally have crap AC too. A nice hit point buffer means the druid won't Wild Shape into a glass cannon.
Also, you can only transform twice between short rests. So you'll probably wait until things are bad, when hit points are low. So it's nice that the animals hit points guarantee you'll have at least a couple of rounds of Wild Shape.
That's a pretty good answer to my question.
The reason I've asked is that one of my players wants to make a druid/monk based on some thread on Reddit. (I know, I shuddered too.) I don't want to reject the idea completely, so I said he could roll with it if he can create an in-game justification for mixing those two classes. We settled on one explanation that sounds plausible on the surface: ignore the druid fluff, and just say his druid features are from a special form of monk training--when he wild shapes, he's not actually shapeshifting, he's just using "wolf style kung-fu".
Also, I already made a joke about Kung Fu Panda.
Andor
First Post
I'd go the other way on that and say that Tiger-style Kung-Fu means actually turning into a Tiger, but that's just my taste.
Historically Druid shapeshifting provided some healing, but did not seperate the HP pools. The presumed explanation being while you were reknitting the flesh into a new form you knitted some wounds at the same time.
In 5e you don't get any healing, but you do seperate the HP pools (excepting excess damage past 0). To my mind the implied fluff is not so much a literal shape-shifting but that you are conjuring an animals form and dropping your ghost into it Eclipse Phase style. Presumably your normal form is hanging out in hammerspace with the Wizards familiar.
How you want your fluff to interact with the class abilities is entirely up to you. I would try to find some way to give him the HP though. In my game the Monk drops so often it's really disheartening the player. Over powered they are not. Although at least they don't have the 3e Monks MAD issues.
Li Shenron
Legend
I think it solves a lot about the problems of previous editions' polymorph/wildshape at once. Mearls wrote a L&L article about it IIRC.
The "infinite HP" is due to Wildshape becoming "at will" at 20th, not because of Wildshape itself.
