3.5 Choker Druid of Reachfulness Help

[WhatsWithCanada]

Hey, guys!

I have had this idea tumbling around my head for awhile now and I was hoping I could get some help on making it viable.

My goal is to gain as much reach as possible and absolutely cover the battlefield in an AoO Denial Zone, using trip attacks or possibly Stand Still to prevent anyone from approaching the rest of my party. The problem is: the idea I have so far requires waaaaay too many feats and is awful for Dex.

Build right now: Duergar Druid 19

Useful feats:

Aberrant Blood (Prereq for Aberrant Wildshape)
Aberrant Wildshape (To wildshape into a Med Choker)
Combat Reflexes (For AoOs naturally)
Stand Still (Some things just cant be tripped)
Assume Supernatural Ability (Choker's Quickness)
Imp Assume Supernatural Ability (To prevent all the nastiness of ASA)
Natural Spell (Because Druid)
Impoved Psi-like Ability (To get more than 1 Expansion/day)
Inhuman Reach (+5' Reach)


The general idea was to use expansion and choker to get massive reach with a reach weapon and just halt any movement and punish any non-moment. The boon of Choker's quickness is that I can keep buffing and contributing as a full caster to the party even as I full attack.

Choker 10' reach + Expansion to Huge (+10 or +20 depending if chokers get +5' reach or double reach) + Inhuman Reach (+5' Reach) Reach weapon (+25' or +35' again depending) for somewhere between 50' and 70' reach. All while full attacking and casting a spell every round for freesies.

The problems may or may not be apparent. First, too many feats and, of course, I want all of them by 7th level to go choker ninja (obviously not an option). Second, all this expansion is great for my Str but it drops my Dex by 4, but that can probably be recouped by one of the various Bite of the WereX's.

So my question is: What would you do to improve this build? Doesn't have to stay druid. I just thought it would be awesome to be a choker ninja of spell death.

Thanks for any insight you can provide on this!

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Ok so we switch to Thoon Elder Brain, instead of choker, this delays the core of the build until ECL 12 but I'm sure there are plenty of fun aberrations to play around with until then. And by changing Druid to Psion and Duergar to Elan it's simply a matter of Metamorphosis to get the requisite TEB.

Elan Psion 10/Slayer 10

Feats

Track
EK: Expansion
EK: Schism
Practiced Manifester
Combat Reflexes
Metamorphic Transfer
Open Feat x3 (1 Lvl + 2 bonus)


Magic Items:
[*}Gloves of Man to turn those masses of tentacles into hands.

[eggynack]

Choker is great, but if you're only using the form so that you can attack and magic in the same round, then you might be better off skipping that form, as well as assume supernatural ability, and just using thoon elder brain (MM V, 121). That form has an ability, dual action, which grants it two turns each round, one physical and one mental. As it's an Ex special attack (I think. The notation is kinda weird in MM V), you don't even need to use enhance wild shape to make use of it, let alone assume supernatural ability. Moreover, the thoon elder brain is much better for combat purposes, with large size, eight tentacle attacks, an AC of 26, and a flight speed. There's also fast healing 10 and an SR of 26 if you do use enhance wild shape. The fact that you don't need to spend a feat in this feat heavy build is also a plus.

[HighWater]

The general idea was to use expansion and choker to get massive reach with a reach weapon and just halt any movement and punish any non-moment. The boon of Choker's quickness is that I can keep buffing and contributing as a full caster to the party even as I full attack.
I'd like to point out that the Choker's Quickness was removed in a Monster Manual update. Sadly, this change was not incorporated into the SRD for reasons unknown (it should have been, for all intents and purposes, a permanent old-fashioned haste is very much broken).
Consult with your DM to find out whether you'll have to use errata'd Choker, or SRD Choker. If he says SRD Choker, try saying "thank you" politely, before snapping his game over your bendy knee.

[WhatsWithCanada]

Quite frankly, a choker revision is entirely reasonable. :P

That leaves me with the clearly superior but delayed until CL 13 Elder Thoon brain! What a monstrosity! It only appears to have tentacles though, so reach weapons would be out of the question. Hmmm, I seem to recall either a magic item or spell that gave your tentacles hands, though...

And it saves me two feats to boot, which is amazing!

[eggynack]

Quite frankly, a choker revision is entirely reasonable. :P

That leaves me with the clearly superior but delayed until CL 13 Elder Thoon brain! What a monstrosity! It only appears to have tentacles though, so reach weapons would be out of the question. Hmmm, I seem to recall either a magic item or spell that gave your tentacles hands, though...

And it saves me two feats to boot, which is amazing!
On the handedness part, there are really two options. First, you can pay 42,000 GP for gloves of man (SS, 57), which is an item that does exactly this. Second, you could switch out your race for something like anthropomorphic bat, and get the 5th level ability of fangshields druid substitution levels (CV, 40), which does the same thing, but requires that you be non-humanoid. Finally, I should note that the form actually comes online at level twelve, as it only has twelve HD.

[.Zero]

I see a problem with Thoon Elder Brain and spellcasting. Its dual action lets you take two full rounds, but the second one must be made of purely mental actions. And casting spell with verbal or somatic components is not purely mental, and even if it could be by RAW, i don't believe that a sane DM will let someone cast V or S spells as a mental action. On the other side Choker's Quickness gives you not such a limitation, but, you know, Thoon Elder Brain is waaaaay better than Choker.

If you want to be a threatened-area-AoOs-melee-monster, and you want to affect the battle field in such a manner, i suggest you go fully psionic. You could go straight PsyWar (it's not a full caster and it's only tier3, but has damn good power list for fighting purposes. Just try to transform in a Thoon EB and manifest Form of Doom for hilarity . This needs your DM's approval for the stacking of all those tentacles, i think.) or just go Psion Egoist/Slayer or Sanctified Mind. With the psionics you have the advantage that manifesting a power is by nature a pure mental action, and this synergies at best with TEB form. Sure, if you left Druid, you lose the ability of affecting the whole game, but it seems to me that a melee oriented psionic class just fits better with what you wanna do.

But there's even a better way to do that. In any case you are either a psionic race (Duregar) and/or a psionic class (Psion Egoist or PsyWar), thus you have access to every psionic feat, and can use or *craft* psionic items. As an Egoist you have Metamorphosis on your power list and now all you need to do is grab Craft Universal Item feat and self craft a Psychoactive Skin of Proteus. This absurdly broken items grants the wearer a continuous Metamorphosis effect, based on the crafted items manifester level (which is 7th, if you buy it). The fun starts when you craft by yourself that item, because you can increase the manifester level of the Metamorphosis effect, spending more money, exp and time for crafting, granted.
I suggest you to craft it a couple of times, the last one must be at manifester level 15, which is the cap of the Metamorphosis power.

Now you can freely transform in a TEB, mental action cast augmented Expansion for Gargantuan size and start the massacre, bonus points if you manage to wield 8 gargantuan-sized spiked chains. This hurts a lot your Dex, but there aren't many things that can resist this, so i don't think you really need to do a lot of AoOs. But if you still want to do that, just skip everything i wrote, or try to find a way to insanely improve your Dex!

Oh, and as a psionic character you get to use Psychic Reformation to get rid of that "wasted" feat of Craft UIs (wich will take the place of Natural Spell i suppose). Then you should grab Metamorphic Transfer feat (wich i find to be better than Assume SA) and you should really find some feat slots for Expanded Knowledge: Schism and Practiced Manifester. With them you get to have your two minds manifest Schism and now you have your two main minds and two additional partitioned minds at manifester level -6 (Practiced Manifester reduces the gap at -2) and now you can manifest three powers per round and still get a full-round action worth of tentacles.

When you reach higher levels you get access to Fission, Fusion and Greater Metamorphosis, three of the best psionic powers. I really don't know if G Meta allows you to get a creature's spellcasting (i hope it doesn't, but if it does you better not use it in that way), but you can always Fission yourself (Practiced Manifester blows to 0 the loss of ML) transform the both of you in something like a Balor, use it to summon other two Balors, swift action turn yourself again in a TEB and then Fusion with em. There are now two gestalt-like monster of you, a THB and a Balor. The original "you" has four minds, two at full ML, and the other two at ML -2, the Fission-ed/Fusion-ed other "you" has four minds, two at full ML and the other two at ML -4.
Who needs AoOs now? XD

Granted, you'll need a lot of time doing this, but Temporal Acceleration is your friend.

I think just about everything i wrote is correct, but if it isn't, don't flame me for this!

Go here if you want to know more about the Skin of Proteus and Metamorphic Transfer fun.

http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=2926.40

(Page 12, search for Lycantromancer's build)

In general, what i want to say is that if you want to have fun with lots of attacks, attacks of opportunity and reach, i feel that you'll do better out of Druid, because you need to spend two feats to get those sweet aberrations, thus your general spellcasting, animal companion and summoning will end up being severely weaken, and that's a pity considering that the true power of the Druid comes up from a good balance of those things.
I think you'll definitely be better with a Transmuter Wizard gish build, dedicating a large part of your 4ths and 5ths spell slots to Polymorph and Draconic Polymorph. And you could start at 3rd level with Alter Self. In this way you'll still benefit from transformations and you'll suffer less from "abandoning" spellcasting, for the Wizard's list necessitates less attentions respect to Druid's. I mean, being a Druid, a Druid that does these things, without some good Extend Spell goodies is sub par, and you won't get as much as good stuff/power as being a Transmuter or a focused Psion/PsyWar.

[eggynack]

I see a problem with Thoon Elder Brain and spellcasting. Its dual action lets you take two full rounds, but the second one must be made of purely mental actions. And casting spell with verbal or somatic components is not purely mental, and even if it could be by RAW, i don't believe that a sane DM will let someone cast V or S spells as a mental action. On the other side Choker's Quickness gives you not such a limitation, but, you know, Thoon Elder Brain is waaaaay better than Choker.

It's certainly a plausible argument, and one I've considered, though the lack of definition of either term means that the whole thing hangs out in ambiguous territory. Of note on the pro side, however, is that the qualifiers attached to the actions aren't technically "purely mental" and "purely physical", but rather just mental and physical. Purely mental is merely an attribute of the particular example, rather than a global restriction. The fact that there essentially exists no purely physical action lends credence to that argument as well. There's definitely a higher chance that this works if spellcasting need only be a mental action.

Edit:

In general, what i want to say is that if you want to have fun with lots of attacks, attacks of opportunity and reach, i feel that you'll do better out of Druid, because you need to spend two feats to get those sweet aberrations, thus your general spellcasting, animal companion and summoning will end up being severely weaken, and that's a pity considering that the true power of the Druid comes up from a good balance of those things.
I don't think this is accurate, at least not the assertion that aberration wild shape weakens the overall build. Imagine something like greenbound summoning, aberrant blood, natural spell, and aberration wild shape as the first four feats in a build. Is that druid really lacking in any core proficiency? It would be nice to pick up natural bond, sure, but it's not all that much you're missing. It helps that aberration wild shape actually is kinda a spell casting feat. After all, what better place to deliver spells from than the invisible, immune to magic, perfect flying body of a will-o'-wisp? If your answer is from the intermittently ethereal body of a dharculus, the aforementioned dual-action wielding body of a thoon elder brain, or the immune to illusions body of a grell, then, well, you may be right. This isn't the only good druid build out there, but there is no way that it's a severely weakened one.

[.Zero]

You know, to cast a spell you must be concentrated on that, and that's mental. Eventually you need to say some strange words, and that's not mental, Also i don't even remember if a TEB has a mouth or can speak. You need to make wierd gestures and that's not mental. The fact is that casting a spell concerns a mental state of concentration plus some other physical actions.
The problem with TEB is that his second mind seems not to have control over his limbs and by the fact that those two minds are explicitly two separate things (this is what lets you have two rounds after all) i don't believe that is possible at all to cast a V or S spell with that mind. Unless you have Silent and Still Spells.

Psionic powers do inherently benefit from those feats instead.

[eggynack]

You know, to cast a spell you must be concentrated on that, and that's mental. Eventually you need to say some strange words, and that's not mental, Also i don't even remember if a TEB has a mouth or can speak. You need to make wierd gestures and that's not mental. The fact is that casting a spell concerns a mental state of concentration plus some other physical actions.
The problem with TEB is that his second mind seems not to have control over his limbs and by the fact that those two minds are explicitly two separate things (this is what lets you have two rounds after all) i don't believe that is possible at all to cast a V or S spell with that mind. Unless you have Silent and Still Spells.

My main argument there is that the action in question doesn't need to be entirely mental at all. It can, by its designation as only a mental rather than purely mental action, be only mostly mental. That would presumably free up the ability to use verbal and somatic components.

[TuggyNE]

I'd like to point out that the Choker's Quickness was removed in a Monster Manual update. Sadly, this change was not incorporated into the SRD for reasons unknown (it should have been, for all intents and purposes, a permanent old-fashioned haste is very much broken).
Consult with your DM to find out whether you'll have to use errata'd Choker, or SRD Choker. If he says SRD Choker, try saying "thank you" politely, before snapping his game over your bendy knee.

I'm not seeing it in the MMI errata. Where's this change made?

[WhatsWithCanada]

On the handedness part, there are really two options. First, you can pay 42,000 GP for gloves of man (SS, 57), which is an item that does exactly this. Second, you could switch out your race for something like anthropomorphic bat, and get the 5th level ability of fangshields druid substitution levels (CV, 40), which does the same thing, but requires that you be non-humanoid. Finally, I should note that the form actually comes online at level twelve, as it only has twelve HD.

Sorry, what I meant to say was ECL 13. You have +1 from Duergar which is there to get a max level expansion. So Gloves of Man it is.

As for the TEB, it does seem that it puts a damper on spellcaster. But the point was brought up of just Metamorphing an Elan psion, which saves on LA (no by-off allowed sadly) and a couple of feats, as well as bringing the bignasty online earlier. I do love me some psionics.

What would folks suggest to help either A. Extend reach to even crazier proportions or B. Help bring the pain/annoyance with AoOs? Stand Still keeps allies out of harms way when dealing with melee (which is a vast majority of really nasty monsters) but what about just punishing other types of AoOs? Maybe just start sundering components/potions/whatever other plans foes have?

[WhatsWithCanada]

Oh, and as a psionic character you get to use Psychic Reformation to get rid of that "wasted" feat of Craft UIs (wich will take the place of Natural Spell i suppose). Then you should grab Metamorphic Transfer feat (wich i find to be better than Assume SA) and you should really find some feat slots for Expanded Knowledge: Schism and Practiced Manifester. With them you get to have your two minds manifest Schism and now you have your two main minds and two additional partitioned minds at manifester level -6 (Practiced Manifester reduces the gap at -2) and now you can manifest three powers per round and still get a full-round action worth of tentacles.

When you reach higher levels you get access to Fission, Fusion and Greater Metamorphosis, three of the best psionic powers. I really don't know if G Meta allows you to get a creature's spellcasting (i hope it doesn't, but if it does you better not use it in that way), but you can always Fission yourself (Practiced Manifester blows to 0 the loss of ML) transform the both of you in something like a Balor, use it to summon other two Balors, swift action turn yourself again in a TEB and then Fusion with em. There are now two gestalt-like monster of you, a THB and a Balor. The original "you" has four minds, two at full ML, and the other two at ML -2, the Fission-ed/Fusion-ed other "you" has four minds, two at full ML and the other two at ML -4.
Who needs AoOs now? XD


This is insane! I don't know that I would go "4 minds crazy" but man, does it sound fun and this is the Char Ops board, so absolutely appropriate! You've definitely sold me on psion. (Though really Psion is one of my favorite classes so it was an easy sell. :p)

[.Zero]

I don't think this is accurate, at least not the assertion that aberration wild shape weakens the overall build. Imagine something like greenbound summoning, aberrant blood, natural spell, and aberration wild shape as the first four feats in a build. Is that druid really lacking in any core proficiency? It would be nice to pick up natural bond, sure, but it's not all that much you're missing. It helps that aberration wild shape actually is kinda a spell casting feat. After all, what better place to deliver spells from than the invisible, immune to magic, perfect flying body of a will-o'-wisp? If your answer is from the intermittently ethereal body of a dharculus, the aforementioned dual-action wielding body of a thoon elder brain, or the immune to illusions body of a grell, then, well, you may be right. This isn't the only good druid build out there, but there is no way that it's a severely weakened one.

You misunderstood me. I never said that aberration forms are useless/awful, all i wanted to say is that
if you want to have fun with lots of attacks, attacks of opportunity and reach, and you want to do this as a Druid, you are wasting two feats only to get a single new type of form. When you realize that spells like Polymorph or powers like Metamorphosis let you do the same and even more things without requiring feats, well, you start to think about it. This is an extension of what i wanted to say to you in my The Power of Nature! thread, that is that Wizards or Psions definetely out-wildshape Druids, becouse the get every single Druid form plus other too good stuff. The advantage of a Druid is that he gets to "spontaneously cast" wild shape without spending spell slots and that his transformations last longer. But on the other side, Wizards (especially focused specialist transmuter Wizards) can choose on the fly which form fits better that situation and whed the duration expires, the can freely live up their day in normal shape without risking anything. I mean, the vast majority of Wizard builds are not entirely focused on polymorph after all, while Druids *need* to be wild shaped to get the most of their power, and that's a fact.

My point is that if i choose to play a Druid, i wanna do druidry things, and i'm not going to spend two precious feats to get forms other casters can access simply by their spell list. This also feels not druidry to me.

[eggynack]

You misunderstood me. I never said that aberration forms are useless/awful, all i wanted to say is that , and you want to do this as a Druid, you are wasting two feats only to get a single new type of form. When you realize that spells like Polymorph or powers like Metamorphosis let you do the same and even more things without requiring feats, well, you start to think about it. This is an extension of what i wanted to say to you in my The Power of Nature! thread, that is that Wizards or Psions definetely out-wildshape Druids, becouse the get every single Druid form plus other too good stuff. The advantage of a Druid is that he gets to "spontaneously cast" wild shape without spending spell slots and that his transformations last longer. But on the other side, Wizards (especially focused specialist transmuter Wizards) can choose on the fly which form fits better that situation and whed the duration expires, the can freely live up their day in normal shape without risking anything. I mean, the vast majority of Wizard builds are not entirely focused on polymorph after all, while Druids *need* to be wild shaped to get the most of their power, and that's a fact.

My point is that if i choose to play a Druid, i wanna do druidry things, and i'm not going to spend two precious feats to get forms other casters can access simply by their spell list. This also feels not druidry to me.
The duration factor really does mean everything, I think. Take polymorph as an example. The thing lasts minutes/level, so when are you casting it? If you're not getting the drop on your opponent, then this is a spell you're tossing out during combat. You're losing an entire round on this, which is everything when you're at this level of power. Yes, you also need to spend more spell slots, but that's less important than the fact that you're just doing this thing worse.

Also, especially in the case of aberrant wild shape, you're not really getting the same stuff at all with nothing but the spell list, due entirely to enhance wild shape. As a basic example that I listed above, druids can use aberrant forms, plus enhance wild shape, to get access to immunity to magic. Wizards, to my knowledge, can not really do that. The fact that druids run higher BAB seems vaguely relevant in a beat down build as well.

[.Zero]

I premise that Enhance Wild Shape is a wonderful spell.

Now, you cast it and choose to gain all the extraordinary abilities of your next form. You are now a Will-o'-the-Wisp with full invisibility, immunity to magic and the like. Good. You are Druid McSneak. But that's it. The Enhance WS benefits will end in the same moment you change again your shape. This means that to get the most of it you have to remain in a Willothewisp form all the day, or you are like wasting 1 minute and a spell slot. The willothewisp form is beautiful, for sure, but for that day you won't do anything besides sneak casting (which is amazing in any case) IF you want to benefit at all from EWS. And if you are going to use the willothewisp form for a single encounter, i don't see much difference between you and a wizard using his standard action to Polymorph.

Regarding wizardry, there are few scenarios in which polymorph is mentioned.
A) the wizard is a gish and relies a lot on his melee abilities
B) the wizard scry-'n-die his opponents, knows where they are, polymorphs into something with extreme high dex, teleports above them, annihiliates them in the surprise round, wins initiative, and resurrect their corpses in his first round.
C) the wizard does the same thing in B) without polymorph.
D) the wizard never uses the polymorph line and is still a badass.

Now, for seriousness, for Wizards Polymorph is an option, for Druids is a need. And this pushes them sky high in terms of power and versatility.

I forgot to respond you to your last TEB post.
"Mostly mental" is not mental. By that assumption you can't ignore spells components. To cast a V or S spell you need to speak and to move your limbs in a certain manner. A TEB second mind simply cannot accomplish V or S components, i don't see how you can say the opposite. I mean, i don't see any space for speculations here.

[eggynack]

I premise that Enhance Wild Shape is a wonderful spell.

Now, you cast it and choose to gain all the extraordinary abilities of your next form. You are now a Will-o'-the-Wisp with full invisibility, immunity to magic and the like. Good. You are Druid McSneak. But that's it. The Enhance WS benefits will end in the same moment you change again your shape. This means that to get the most of it you have to remain in a Willothewisp form all the day, or you are like wasting 1 minute and a spell slot. The willothewisp form is beautiful, for sure, but for that day you won't do anything besides sneak casting (which is amazing in any case) IF you want to benefit at all from EWS. And if you are going to use the willothewisp form for a single encounter, i don't see much difference between you and a wizard using his standard action to Polymorph.
It's a limitation, but it's not really significantly greater than that held by the wizard. You can't really swap to another enhanced form mid-combat, but a wizard obviously can't do that either, and the cost of swapping to an enhanced form is the same as that of a wizard polymorphing in the first place, in addition to a resource that wizards don't even have access to. Druids also get a mantle of the beast for swift wild shape, which increases versatility. It's less relevant for the usually EWS requiring aberrant forms, but it's nifty for stuff like dragon or exalted. Aberrant wild shape is definitely a feat that prioritizes spending lots of time in a single form, likely for reasons beyond the EWS thing.

Polymorph has a lot of advantages, admittedly, but it definitely doesn't have all of the advantages. I mean, you're acting like losing the advantage of the rest of a will-o'-wisp duration is a bad thing, but that's an advantage that the wizard never had the ability to lose in the first place. Wild shape also has a lot of advantages, after all, in duration, speed, spontaneity, and occasionally power, in the case of EWS. It's a lot of stuff you're getting.



Now, for seriousness, for Wizards Polymorph is an option, for Druids is a need. And this pushes them sky high in terms of power and versatility.
I'm not really sure what this means. All druids wild shape, because it is of low cost and high benefit for druids to wild shape, but it's not really a need. If wizards could be polymorphed all the time, they probably would be as well.


"Mostly mental" is not mental. By that assumption you can't ignore spells components. To cast a V or S spell you need to speak and to move your limbs in a certain manner. A TEB second mind simply cannot accomplish V or S components, i don't see how you can say the opposite. I mean, i don't see any space for speculations here.
That assumption isn't one you can just make. You could similarly assert that "mostly physical" is not physical, but the fact that you must take mental action in order to use nearly any physical action means that this would be an incorrect premise. I mean, if you want to play the definition game (it's a lot of fun), the dictionary definition of "mental" is, "Of or pertaining to the mind." I think it's reasonable to assert that something can thus be mental, and simultaneously make use of non-mind resources.

[HighWater]

I'm not seeing it in the MMI errata. Where's this change made?
Yeah, it's not in any separate errata list. This is probably why it was never changed in the SRD. Instead, the Choker-without-Quickness can be found in the new prints of the Monster Manual with Errata that WotC printed in 2012. Any reference to quickness has been removed from the Choker text, but it was never announced separately, instead:


On sale September 18, these 3.5 Edition premium reprints feature new covers and the latest errata -- so, be sure to pick yours up at your friendly local book or gaming store!
For the monster manual this actually meant changing the text of the creatures involved. I happen to have that rulebook or I probably would never have found out.
The 2012 reprint is the most recent version of the Choker, and that Choker doesn't get an extra standard/move action per turn.

[TuggyNE]

Yeah, it's not in any separate errata list. This is probably why it was never changed in the SRD. Instead, the Choker-without-Quickness can be found in the new prints of the Monster Manual with Errata that WotC printed in 2012.

Stealth errata-for-sale strikes again. :smallsigh:


The 2012 reprint is the most recent version of the Choker, and that Choker doesn't get an extra standard/move action per turn.

Does it get anything at all to replace that? :smallconfused:

[HighWater]

Stealth errata-for-sale strikes again. :smallsigh:
Lol yup. Errata-ninja's!


Does it get anything at all to replace that? :smallconfused:
Checked and double-checked for you: nope. Nothing. Except for the removal of Quickness from the statblock and the Combat section, nothing about the Choker section has been changed. It seems to be a straight-up nerf to plug one of the action economy abuses. The Choker as a straight up monster didn't really need Quickness either, so I can see why they wouldn't compensate it for the loss...

[.Zero]

Polymorph has a lot of advantages, admittedly, but it definitely doesn't have all of the advantages. I mean, you're acting like losing the advantage of the rest of a will-o'-wisp duration is a bad thing, but that's an advantage that the wizard never had the ability to lose in the first place. Wild shape also has a lot of advantages, after all, in duration, speed, spontaneity, and occasionally power, in the case of EWS. It's a lot of stuff you're getting.

You're putting duration & good-stuff-from-a-single-form above cherry picking the right form for a specific situation. I respect your point of view, but for how i'm used to handle things, versatility is a better choice. ALWAYS. And i'm not seeing how a druid can have more versatility than a wizard in this cases. The fact that Polymorph is not good in the middle of a fight is true, but, you know the scry'n'die abuse... Also, we have to consider that for a wizard, Polymorph is not vital. If a wizard wastes his standard action during a fight to cast polymorph he's sucking for that round, because he could have cast another spell that would have been far more relevant for that encounter [i'm pretty sure that my english in that phrase was incorrect. Hope you menage to get what i wanted to say!]. That's what i mean when i say that a wizard doesn't need at all to change his shape. Druids are mechanically encouraged to do so instead, and that's basically why they defeat wizards in change shapes. But when a Druid get to change shape faster and longer, he's restricted to animals-only, and he needs to spend feats to get more forms. If he wants to widen his choices, he needs to get Aberrant Blood, Aberrant Wild Shape, Dragon Wild Shape, Exalted Wild Shape and Frozen Wild Shape. That's 5 feats! And even with those, he's restricted to animals, aberrations, medium-sized dragons, blink dogs and a limited number of magical beasts.

So, i see an equal rating for a Druid's Wild Shape and a Wizard's Polymorph. But what if we consider Polymoprh any Object? He can morph himself in something with sky-high mental stats. Permanently. Or just grab the Otherwordly feat or be an Elan and become any outsider. Druids can't do that before Shapechange.



That assumption isn't one you can just make. You could similarly assert that "mostly physical" is not physical, but the fact that you must take mental action in order to use nearly any physical action means that this would be an incorrect premise. I mean, if you want to play the definition game (it's a lot of fun), the dictionary definition of "mental" is, "Of or pertaining to the mind." I think it's reasonable to assert that something can thus be mental, and simultaneously make use of non-mind resources.

Well, moving my arm is a physical action. The fact that my brain governs my movement can be seen as a mental action. But that's the real world. In dnd we have not to care about such things, because in general, a move action is considered a physical action in the game. I see some exceptions on this, however. If you are a TEB i see no problem in, say, wild shaping *as* a move action, casting a spell as a move action or activating a totemist's blink shirt as a move action with your second mind. But that said, a TEB two minds control different parts of its body, so one mind does physical actions and the other one does mental actions. And, i repeat, in this game, moving limbs is not a mental action. I have no quotes that confirm what i say, but, really, no one will ever find a quote to counter this. And if we follow your line, how can you explain that mindless creatures move?

Aside from that, i have the MMV in my hands and it says this:


Dual Action (Ex) A Thoon elder brain is a creature made up of multiple minds, all touched by the unreality of the Far Realm. Make two initiative checks for the creature. The higher result represents a mental action turn, and the lower result is used for a physical action turn. This means a Thoon elder brain can do more in a single round than most creatures. For example, it could perform an overmind blast (a purely mental action) on initiative count 17, then move and make a tentacle attack (a physical action) on initiative count 12. These initiative counts can change if a Thoon elder brain readies an action or delays to let its other half go first.

So, no dual casting nor manifesting, i think. If we think by extreme RAW, i see no possibility a TEB can even cast a spell (but it can manifest powers normally). Casting a S or V spell, is both a mental and a physical action. A TEB has two distinct minds that have control over two kinds of actions: one is mental and one is physical. It seems to be no relationship between these two minds, so how can a TEB concentrate on a spell and make gestures at the same time? It is not explained, for the dual action wording is crappy. And overall, if one mind is restricted to mental actions (like manifesting a power) and the other one is restricted to physical actions, only the first one can manifest powers, and cannot cast spells.

[eggynack]

You're putting duration & good-stuff-from-a-single-form above cherry picking the right form for a specific situation. I respect your point of view, but for how i'm used to handle things, versatility is a better choice. ALWAYS. And i'm not seeing how a druid can have more versatility than a wizard in this cases.
Reliability is, in many ways, worth just as much. Just being able to apply these benefits full time, having access to flight speed/high AC all day, is incredible stuff.


If he wants to widen his choices, he needs to get Aberrant Blood, Aberrant Wild Shape, Dragon Wild Shape, Exalted Wild Shape and Frozen Wild Shape. That's 5 feats! And even with those, he's restricted to animals, aberrations, medium-sized dragons, blink dogs and a limited number of magical beasts.
I would absolutely make that an or rather than an and. You don't get that much benefit by having all of these feats, as opposed to just one (or two, in the case of aberrant).

So, i see an equal rating for a Druid's Wild Shape and a Wizard's Polymorph. But what if we consider Polymoprh any Object? He can morph himself in something with sky-high mental stats. Permanently. Or just grab the Otherwordly feat or be an Elan and become any outsider. Druids can't do that before Shapechange
Yeah, PaO is probably better. It's a crazy spell.

So, no dual casting nor manifesting, i think. If we think by extreme RAW, i see no possibility a TEB can even cast a spell (but it can manifest powers normally). Casting a S or V spell, is both a mental and a physical action. A TEB has two distinct minds that have control over two kinds of actions: one is mental and one is physical. It seems to be no relationship between these two minds, so how can a TEB concentrate on a spell and make gestures at the same time? It is not explained, for the dual action wording is crappy. And overall, if one mind is restricted to mental actions (like manifesting a power) and the other one is restricted to physical actions, only the first one can manifest powers, and cannot cast spells.
I think we're mostly where we were to start with on this one, which was mostly ambiguous. The quote you indicated doesn't really provide anything like proof in any direction. In any case, while it's probably not as good here, the crazy multiple actions plan on aberrant wild shape is different now. Nowadays, as in since a day or two ago, it's all about applying enhance wild shape to the nilshai (UE, 67), thus gaining an extra standard action every round. As in, an extra standard action you can cast spells in, in addition to the normal standard action where you can also cast spells. It's basically choker form, except it was never revised in a later book, and it's better in most conceivable ways. TEB is still better for beatstickery, but man, nilshai is some sweet business.