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Message: <blockquote data-quote="eamon" data-source="post: 3901792" data-attributes="member: 51942">Thanks for the balanced reply and reasoning!I think the campaign will be affected by the power creep - but the party is all-round rather powerful and it's not likely to eclipse another PC, so it's OK.  Importantly, the player is already a little itchy at how little value he gets from gear, so I think I'll allow it despite the mild power creep.  I have noticed that he's got problems spending money usefully.  Also, I don't want to encourage them to get a bunch of wands of greater mage armor just to work around "Wild Armor" problems. (which 'll come down to something very similar to wild armor, price-wise).The difficulty in activating items is a good one!  Mental activation would still work, however.I've told him that I'll try to work with him to rewrite problematic feats, but fortunately that'll hardly be necessary as he's happy enough to just take simple stuff.All this has made me very curious what a druid would work like in 4e ;-).It's definitely the case that it's a little too easy to gain AC in the shapeshift variant.  At twelfth level (the most extreme example, I find), a druid gains a plant-shape which improves natural armor by 12.  This stacks with barksin (+5), greater Mage armor (+6), and you've got an AC of 33, without much effort.  Somebody cynical enough to take a level of monk (or god-forbid, a monks-belt), and who has a high dex and wis, could easily push this 6 higher.  A decent dex and wild armor leads to the same result.  If you allow wilding clasps and rings of deflection (or if a friendly cleric helps you out here) you could add another +5 (which would be expensive, as a ring, however).  That's an AC of 44, and you still haven't minmaxed shield or insight bonuses, which I'll bet could push you to around 49.  Right now, I'm interpreting the shapeshift variant as if it provided an enhancement bonus to natural armor instead, which fixes things slightly, and I'm not going out of my way to provide the optimal specializes equipment in-game (and the player it's really into complex builds so he's unlike to try a stunt with a monk or something like that), so it's not as bad, but it's still a bit dubious.Oh well, it's still better than wild shape.  That's just Broken!</blockquote>

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