greenbound wildshape

[samuraijaques]

hello guys,

i am a long time lurker and first time poster. I was looking for some advice on a feat i designed for a druid that i am playing that focuses on summoning with the greenbound summoning feat. I constructed this feat based on exalted wild shape and the idea is to make my character match my summons both visually and functionally. so here it is.

Greenbound Wild Shape (based on exalted wild shape)

You can use your wild shape ability to assume the form of plant animals

Prerequisites: wild shape class ability, wild shaping class level 8

Benefit: you may apply the following template to any animal you can wild shape into. You gain the extraordinary and supernatural abilities of any plant or plant animal form you assume.

Template: applied to any animal

The creature takes on a more plant like appearance. Moss grows where there was once fur, leaves grow to replicate scales or feathers, hard polished wood makes up any bones the creature had, etc.

Size and type: Animals with this template become plant animals and gain all plant traits except for immunity to mind affecting effects (you keep your own mind while wild shaping). Size is unchanged

Special attacks: plant animals retain all the natural attacks of the base form and gain a slam attack, the damage of which scales with size. 1d6 for medium creatures, 1d8 for large, 2d6 for huge.

Special qualities: plant animals retain all the special qualities of the base form, and gain the following qualities
• Tremorsense, 60’
• Damage reduction based on HD,
• Resistance to cold and electricity based on HD
• Fast healing 1
• +10 to hide checks in forested areas

Damage reduction and elemental resistance based on HD
HD Resistance to Cold and Electricity Damage Reduction
1-3 5 -
4-7 5 5/magic
8-11 10 5/magic
12+ 10 10/magic

so what do you guys think? not too powerful? no one in this campaign is really trying to exploit the game in any way so it being broken isn't that much of a concern but i would still like to know if i have done anything that would make the game too easy.

so here is what i would like to know. please rate each thing on a scale of 1 to 5 and give an explanation if you can.

- balance: how does it compare in power to other feats
- flavor: how do you like the overall feel of the feat, does it fit into the game
- rules: how well did i follow the rules of the game including format of feats
- overall: give it an overall score

thanks a bunch guys, your help is really appreciated, i look forward to hearing from you.

cheers.

[RFLS]

This looks really powerful; I'd rank it just slightly below Natural Spell. You might want to tone it down. Of course, you might also want to move this to the Homebrew Section =P

[samuraijaques]

@RFLS

i based it off of the feat exalted wild shape. which gives the following benefits.

You can use your wild shape ability to turn yourself into a blink dog, giant eagle, giant owl, pegasus, or unicorn. You can also turn into a celestial version of any animal you could normally transform into. (At the DM's discretion, other magical beast forms might be available to you. In general, only creatures of CR 3 or lower are possible.) You gain the extraordinary and supernatural abilities of the creature. This ability counts as a use of your wild shape ability and functions the same way.

so i took out the ability to wild shape into new forms and just kept the ability to apply a specific template to the animal shapes you take.

i built the template based on the celestial template which provides the following benefits.

Size and Type: Animals or vermin with this template become magical beasts, but otherwise the creature type is unchanged. Size is unchanged. Celestial creatures encountered on the Material Plane have the extraplanar subtype.
Special Attacks: A celestial creature retains all the special attacks of the base creature and also gains the following attack.
Smite Evil (Su): Once per day a celestial creature can make a normal melee attack to deal extra damage equal to its HD (maximum of +20) against an evil foe.
Special Qualities: A celestial creature retains all the special qualities of the base creature and also gains the following qualities.
Darkvision out to 60 feet.
Damage reduction (see the table below).
Resistance to acid, cold, and electricity (see the table below).
Spell resistance equal to HD + 5 (maximum 25).
Hit Dice Resistance to Acid, Cold, Electricity Damage Reduction
1–3 5 —
4–7 5 5/magic
8–11 10 5/magic
12 or more 10 10/magic
If the base creature already has one or more of these special qualities, use the better value.
If a celestial creature gains damage reduction, its natural weapons are treated as magic weapons for the purpose of overcoming damage reduction.

so as you can see a lot of the template remains unchanged. i took out the smite for a slam attack because greenbound creatures gain a slam attack. although i will probably never use it but it adds good flavor. greenbound creatures have the same numerical elemental resistance but only against cold and electricity so i changed that. the damage resistance of celestial creatures applies against everything but magic, greenbound creatures are also weak to slashing so i added that. i took out the spell resistance as greenbound creatures have none and instead added fast healing 1 which is just for fluff really. greenbound creatures have tremorsense so i took out the celestial darkvision and instead gave tremorsense. and finally i gave them all plant traits except for immunity to mind affecting effects.

so in comparison to the feat exalted wild shape would you say my feat is more powerful, less powerful or the same?

also, i looked in the homebrew section and it looked like it was mostly for variant rules sets for playing different games. it seemed like this thread belonged with the other DnD 3.5 threads. if however i have made a poor choice will a mod please move this thread to the appropriate forum?

thanks for the help, looking forward to hearing from you

[Lateral]

so as you can see a lot of the template remains unchanged. i took out the smite for a slam attack because greenbound creatures gain a slam attack. although i will probably never use it but it adds good flavor. greenbound creatures have the same numerical elemental resistance but only against cold and electricity so i changed that. the damage resistance of celestial creatures applies against everything but magic, greenbound creatures are also weak to slashing so i added that. i took out the spell resistance as greenbound creatures have none and instead added fast healing 1 which is just for fluff really. greenbound creatures have tremorsense so i took out the celestial darkvision and instead gave tremorsense. and finally i gave them all plant traits except for immunity to mind affecting effects.

so in comparison to the feat exalted wild shape would you say my feat is more powerful, less powerful or the same?
It's way more powerful. That fast healing 1 adds up when you can stay wildshaped for hours at a time, a single smite is way less powerful than a slam attack that can be used all the time, tremorsense is far, far more powerful than darkvision, and the plant type's immunities are very powerful- lack of immunity to [Mind-Affecting] notwithstanding.


also, i looked in the homebrew section and it looked like it was mostly for variant rules sets for playing different games.
Nope.

[samuraijaques]

@lateral

okay, so obviously it needs work then. i don't care about the slam so that can go. i thought fast healing 1 was going to pretty much be useless but i guess that can go too. what should i cut the radius on tremorsense to to make it the same effective power of 60' darkvision? and i can drop the plant traits if it's going to break the game.

but then what does that leave me with? DR 10/magic and slashing, 10 cold and electricity resistance and a +10 to hide checks in forested areas. while not bad it is not at all what i was going for. what if i took out the DR and the resistance and added back in plant traits? would that be more reasonable? consider the fact that i can just turn into a plant with enhanced wild shape by the time i can get this feat.

what is the protocol for getting a thread moved to a diffrent sub-forum? i'm sorry that i posted in the wrong place.

thanks for the continued help, looking forward to hearing from you.