Houseruled Wild Shape

[GuyLoki]

Its always sorta bothered me that if you are playing something with wild shape your physical stats become dump stats. Seems to me like if you are all about using your body as a weapon and shape changing you should try to be beefy at all times, not just sometimes.

So what are the possible unbalancing or balancing outcomes of putting in place a rule where you keep your base stats but modify them based on the creature you wild shape into? This is just instead of being an 'average' form of a badger you are YOU in a badger form. I know it takes a bit of book keeping, because you can't just look up a form and go "Stats... done". But if you were playing in my game and you were planning on doing a lot of wild shaping (or summoning for that matter) I would expect you to have pre-statted those things out so you don't slow the game. No reason you can't pre stat that "Bill the Druid" is as a badger instead of just "A badger"

I just think its silly that if two druids meet in the woods, one who is a big powerhouse and the other a weakling when they both turn into a bear they are now a perfectly even match.

[Retech]

Well most decent level druids are in wild shape all the time, so they are burly 24/7. :smalltongue:

[Flickerdart]

Shapeshift variant (PHBII) is pretty much this.

[Jack_Simth]

So what are the possible unbalancing or balancing outcomes of putting in place a rule where you keep your base stats but modify them based on the creature you wild shape into?
Well, there's extra bookkeeping... but there is anyway with wildshape, so that's not really a big deal.

You'll have a question: Does "Base stats" refer to the actual stat rolls (possibly modified by level-based stat increases), or just the immediate pre-wildshape statistic? E.g., if both players put a die roll of 10 into their Strength score, which has the higher strength as a bear: The half-orc Druid, or the halfling Druid?

There will be some effects:
Druids will be marginally more diverse - you'll have dexterous druids (who will also generally prefer forms that enhance, or make use of, their dexterity), strong druids (who will also generally prefer forms that enhance, or make use of, their strength), and casting druids.
You're giving the Druid more options (oddly) which makes the Druid stronger. The Druid player who primarily wants to be a bear beating people up in melee can now do so more effectively than before. Previously, Statistic priorities were generally Wis > Con > Rest, as most of the rest of the stats didn't matter. Now you'll see Con > Str > Wis > Rest (or similar) in some more melee-oriented combat druids.

[GuyLoki]

I would rule it based on the dice rolls going into the stats.

So in the halfling half orc example you give they would be a bear of the same strength. They lose the physical stat benefits and disabilities of their race and gain those of the form that they take.

While this does give more options and can make for more specific design to a druid, I think that the additional requirements for doing so make it relatively balanced.

Given, a druid who is going to be wild shaping is going to generally have a 13 strength anyhow, as he will want the power attack tree open to him. So this does translate to an additional +1 attack and damage to a wild shaped druid just as a baseline. And I suppose it is unlikely to see many druids that actually have a penalty on those stats. Very rare to see people walking around with stats that are 6's or something significant. So I do see how this simply acts as a boon to all druids. On the whole unless the druid got really awful stats (or extremely lopsided) they are going to net a benefit from this house rule.

Perhaps then creating a feat which allows it so it is not just a free benefit to keep them in line (well as much as one can) with other classes.

Its just that something about having a 16 dex human Druid / MoMF who wild shapes into an elf becoming LESS dextrous seems silly to me.

[Urpriest]

Yeah, I'd either use Shapeshift Variant or Pathfinder rules. Both do this quite reasonably, and require less bookkeeping.