[3.5] Level 10 Gestalt Druid wants to be a T-Rex

[Arros Winhadren]

I'm DMing a lvl 10 Gestalt game for a bunch of people who have never played D&D before (I know, bad idea right? It's a long story). Because I don't want them to be put off by all the numbers and rules of the game I'm building characters for a few of my players. One wants both to "have a T-Rex" and "be a T-Rex", which I told him a Druid could easily do. Using Beastmaster and Natural Bond I'm pretty sure I can get him a T-Rex at level 10, but the problem lies in getting him to turn into a T-Rex. The druid class description is quite clear that you cannot wildshape into a form with more hit dice than you have druid levels, however, is there any way to bump this amount up?

I've heard of the Divine Minion template, but nowhere in the template's description does it say that you are allowed to stack your wildshape ability with the druid's for determining available shapes; as far as I can tell, the Divine Minion ability is treated as similar to but separate from the Druid's.

I know that Master of Many Forms is supposed to stack with the Druid's wildshape in terms of hit dice, but by Gestalt rules that shouldn't work since you aren't supposed to double-stack class features (and even if he could, that will still only give him 15 hit dice, and the T-Rex has 18).

I know that T-Rexes are not optimized choices, but that hardly matters since we're playing to have fun and everyone will likely be overpowered anyways. Thanks for any assistance given!

[Urpriest]

There's nothing that will work straight-out short of house rules. Honestly, why not just have him be a Megaraptor or similar?

[*.*.*.*]

(and even if he could, that will still only give him 15 hit dice, and the T-Rex has 18)

Wildshape Amulet(magic of faerun) gives +4 effective HD for wildshape.

[Arros Winhadren]

Yeah, I'm still going to have him just be a level-appropriate dinosaur, I was just hoping there was some way to get him to be a T-Rex.

Since he's not interested in changing into a lot of different forms, would MoMF be better for him than Warshaper, or should he only go MoMF until he gets Fast Wildshape? Extraordinary Wildshape is cool, but that's a whole four more levels to get it.

[Skaven]

Custom feat I have used before:

Advanced Shaper: Adds +4 to the HD of forms assumed through natural or class based shapeshifting. This feat can be taken multiple times and stacks with itself.

Helps them compete with the 'lol wizard gets everything you do and more' shapechange spell that just throws out of HD forms your way.

[Darrin]

The druid class description is quite clear that you cannot wildshape into a form with more hit dice than you have druid levels, however, is there any way to bump this amount up?


Cave Tyrannosaurus. Miniatures Handbook p. 58. Large size, 9 HD.

[Sydonai]

Have him wildshape into an immature T-Rex, just use the method of advancing HD in reverse.