Activating command-word magic items in wildshape.

[Hiro Quester]

I'm playing a druid who spends a lot of time in wildshape. Before wildshaping, I take off certain items (or remove them from my backpack) and a party member helps put them on my tiger form.

So I'm wearing an amulet of mighty fists (with a wisdom enhancement added). And bracers of Armor +3. Those function all the time.

I'm also wearing a (newly acquired loot, never yet used) ring of blinking. It's a standard magic ring, so command word activated. Tigers can wear rings on their paws.

Can a tiger-shaped druid, with Natural Spell of course, utter the command word to activate the blinking?

The relevant part of Natural Spell says this:

You can complete the verbal and somatic components of spells while in a wild shape. You substitute various noises and gestures for the normal verbal and somatic components of a spell.

You can also use any material components or focuses you possess, even if such items are melded within your current form. This feat does not permit the use of magic items while you are in a form that could not ordinarily use them, and you do not gain the ability to speak while in a wild shape.


I don't have a pearl of speech (mostly-core game). My DM allowed me to make a hat (a handsome Indiana Jones fedora) of speak with animals 5/day that I use sometimes, but give to our party rogue to use when I ned to take to the party. So in wildshape I can't speak common, or make human sounds.

Would the part of wildshape that says I can use animal sounds to substitute for the verbal parts of spells operate here?

Or would the part that says I cannot speak, and can't use magic items that I could not ordinarily use apply here?

I'd like it to be the former, so I'm looking for a justification of the former interpretation that I can use when I run this by my DM.
I'm afraid that it maybe should be the latter, though.

[ekarney]

Can you use UMD in wild shape?
That should solve it, iirc.

[Extra Anchovies]

You'd need to take a Pearl of Speech. Speak With Animals doesn't work here, because it lets you "comprehend and communicate with" animals but doesn't let you actually make the same noises that they do; it's implied that the magic imparts the meaning of each individual's communications and imparts it to the other. Also because humans aren't Animals in d20.

[Segev]

It won't help with found items, but technically command-activated items can be given command actions, which need not be specific utterances. It'd be a bit weird, but a hypothetical ring could be activated by, say, licking it. Your tiger form could absolutely perform that action.

[Hiro Quester]

You'd need to take a Pearl of Speech. Speak With Animals doesn't work here, because it lets you "comprehend and communicate with" animals but doesn't let you actually make the same noises that they do; it's implied that the magic imparts the meaning of each individual's communications and imparts it to the other. Also because humans aren't Animals in d20.

Pearl of speech isn't in our books. But rule 0: DM ruled that "communicate with" is transitive. SWA lets you speak with tigers. And a Druid in tiger wildshape can speak with tigers. So SWA lets a person speak with tigers and with a Druid in wildshape who can speak with tigers.

But that isn't the point right now.

[emeraldstreak]

Would the part of wildshape that says I can use animal sounds to substitute for the verbal parts of spells operate here?


By RAW, no, they aren't the same things. By logic, probably: a spell's verbal component includes far more talking than a simple command word; it will be praising nature/divine powers, or call on arcane mysteries, etc. Its almost always complicated occult phrases. A command word is something a Commoner won't mess up: like abracadabra* - and that's it.

*- admittedly, commoners do mess up abracadabra sometimes