First Wildshape form Question

[GutterFace]

So according to the Wildshape rules i should be able to take the Giant Centipede (MM 323) right? the poison in addition to the bite seems like a lot of damage....for level 2...and the climb speed is nice. is this allowed or is there something i am missing?

[Asuryan9]

You have to of seen it before you can turn into it.

[GutterFace]

Besides that, it is legal and possibly a decent first form, correct?

[Gritmonger]

Besides that, it is legal and possibly a decent first form, correct?

I'd call it legal, and these bastards can be deadly. I had one one-shot a second level character by gaining initiative and then rolling damage plus poison damage, and having the player fail the save roll versus poison. "Bad" news is the poison can't ever kill an opponent by itself - if it is the part that lowers an enemy to zero or below, the enemy is automatically stabilized at zero, and paralyzed for an hour.

Getting healed up from zero doesn't appear to affect this paralysis.

Edited to add: Putting these guys outside the lair of a Carrion Crawler as opportunistic feeders really adds some challenge and atmosphere.

[zingbobco000]

It's legal (1/4 Challenge < 1 challenge, no swim or fly speed, is a beast) but are you sure that you want to turn into a creature that needs to be in melee range to attack and has very few HP? It also has a very easy save DC (of course you can fail it obviously) so it won't poison around half the time. I would not choose this to be my first form, I would go giant spider, higher AC, HP, spider climb which is the equivalent of a second level spell, has a higher chance to hit, has a ranged weapon (kinda), does more damage, does slightly less poison damage but there's half damage on save and the save DC is pretty easy so that makes up for a huge amount. There's also more damage from just hitting normally and you can restrain people with webs giving you and others around you advantage!

Of course, then there's the problem of seeing both creatures.