Wildshape into larger (higher HD) animals

[Hiro Quester]

A 15th level druid can wildshape into Huge animals.

The wildshape rules say you turn into an average animal of the type. And they say that the animal is limited to forms of the same hit dice as the druid's level.

Tigers can grow huge (13+ HD). There are rules for improving monsters by size. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/improvingMonsters.htm#sizeIncreases) So can the druid wildshape into a 13+ HD Huge tiger?

Are there other animal forms that would be accessible this way, by choosing an advanced HD form that is a larger size than "average", but less HD than the Druid's level?

[Venger]

A 15th level druid can wildshape into Huge animals.

The wildshape rules say you turn into an average animal of the type. And they say that the animal is limited to forms of the same hit dice as the druid's level.

Tigers can grow huge (13+ HD). There are rules for improving monsters by size. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/improvingMonsters.htm#sizeIncreases) So can the druid wildshape into a 13+ HD Huge tiger?

Are there other animal forms that would be accessible this way, by choosing an advanced HD form that is a larger size than "average", but less HD than the Druid's level?

by an average member of the animal's species, it means the one with the stats printed in the book.

your druid can't assume an advanced form of a printed monster.

just turn into a dire tiger instead. its numbers are better.

[Hiro Quester]

Dire tiger isn't available until 16th level (16 HD).

Plus Dire Tiger only has 29 Str and 17 con.
A Huge (15HD) Tiger has 23+8=31 Str and 17+4=21 Con. Better attacks than a dire tiger or dire lion.

A Huge tiger is printed in the book (any tiger over 13 HD):


Advancement: 7-12 HD (Large); 13-18 HD (Huge)

And a 15 level druid can assume the form of a huge animal of 15 HD.

So why can't a 15 level druid wildshape into a huge 15HD tiger. Or, after 17th level, a 17HD (huge) Dire Lion?

As far as I can see the "average creature" rule only excludes applying a template (as the Alternate form rules specify).

Is there an actual rule that excludes advanced HD larger animal forms when they are printed in the Monster Manual entry?

[daremetoidareyo]

Dire tiger isn't available until 16th level (16 HD).

Plus Dire Tiger only has 29 Str and 17 con.
A Huge (15HD) Tiger has 23+8=31 Str and 17+4=21 Con. Better attacks than a dire tiger or dire lion.

A Huge tiger is printed in the book (any tiger over 13 HD):



And a 15 level druid can assume the form of a huge animal of 15 HD.

So why can't a 15 level druid wildshape into a huge 15HD tiger. Or, after 17th level, a 17HD (huge) Dire Lion?

As far as I can see the "average creature" rule only excludes applying a template (as the Alternate form rules specify).

Is there an actual rule that excludes advanced HD larger animal forms when they are printed in the Monster Manual entry?

That's DM's call. It is both average for the species and a standard MM entry. A Judge decides that one.

As a DM, I only allow wildshaping into forms that the wildshaper would be familiar with. In mechanical terms, that means that a druid must encounter one of these creatures, (even in passing) but it must be face to face on the same plane (no spell workarounds) before they can have an idea of how to construct them from nature magic. So if I sent a huge dire tiger at you, it's in your wildshaping stable. If you want a huge dire tiger for wildshaping, you can use off time to hunt one in between level ups, make some advanced survival checks with modifiers set by environment. That way you aren't getting polar bear wildshapes in the desert unless the druid is from the poles, and you're not getting huge tiger form before the dragon arc of the campaign with no pre-emptive effort on your part.

[Hiro Quester]

As long as there is no rule preventing it. (I can't find one.) I just didn't want to not know about such a rule before running it by our DM.

I'm playing a Druid Lion of Talisid, so prefer big cat wild shapes. There are not many huge creatures worth playing, without using dinosaur forms.

But if I can add a huge Tiger (note: not dire tiger which is a stronger large tiger--but a regular Tiger with more hit dice grown to Huge size), sticking with the Big Cat theme might be consistent enough and amusing enough for the DM to allow it.

Our DM also requires personal knowledge of a creature for wildshape. (But summoning one a few times can count.)

But since we are in the jungle with tigers, and my animal Companion is a tiger, this won't be an issue. Thanks to Natural Bond my AC will be more than 13 HD and so huge before I get to Huge wildshape ability.

[TheTeaMustFlow]

If the druid turns into an average tiger, then that surely precludes turning into an advanced tiger, because the advanced tiger is by definition not an average tiger. That there exist rules for advanced tigers isn't relevant - it doesn't make the advanced tiger a different species. It is still a member of panthera tigris, the average member of which has 6hd, so that's what the druid is turning into.

And it's not as druids are lacking for form options.

[ApologyFestival]

Our DM also requires personal knowledge of a creature for wildshape. (But summoning one a few times can count.)
As an aside, I've seen this little house rule come up a few times on these forums, and it's got me curious. Is it a common one? At the tables I've played at, it's been taken as a given that familiarity is a function of the Knowledge skills, making them a necessary investment for any polymorpher.

It seems a little odd that a druid could invest heavily in a Knowledge skill and completely smash the fixed DCs necessary to know every little thing about a particular creature when taking 10, yet be arbitrarily considered to be not familiar with said creature for the purposes of their class feature.

[Albions_Angel]

I agree. Trying to make them see something in game is far too limiting, while also saying "Whatever is in your back story is also ok" leads to druids that toured the world.

Having DMed a druid that wildshaped into a fleshraker out of the blue though was kind of immersion breaking. You construct a cold, snowy world based on 900s scandinavia and then suddenly DINOSAUR RAWR!!! Shrugged my shoulder and left it, but next time I will ask druids to be mindful of their environment and the setting, even though I wont require them to write every animal encounter in to their backstory, or actually see the animal in game. Some things just dont fit.

[Apricot]

The problem with just using knowledge checks is, generally speaking, a problem with knowledge checks in general: increased ranks in knowledge simultaneously grant you height and breadth of experience in the subject. You get knowledge of more powerful entities and more obscure entities at the same time, granting you power and flexibility in your wildshaping by just ranking it up. Whether or not this is a problem mostly depends on the optimization level of the group.

Also, as a side note, knowledge doesn't necessitate personal experience over book-learning. And when you consider the kind of illustrations that show up in medieval or even Renaissance nature-books, you wonder if a druid trying to wildshape from one of them might need the Aberration Wild Shape feat to match the horrors on those pages. (Knowledge doesn't necessarily map to personal experience.)

[LTwerewolf]

That house rule tends to lead to abuses just to get the forms you want. Master earth+commune with nature is the quickest way, but takes a long time to come online. Before that you're either not able to get any new forms as the dm rushes you from place to place, or you're halting all the things wandering around trying to get something new. Beyond all that, it doesn't even balance the forms they DO know. This makes it so they only go about getting the strongest ones, and they don't bother for more fun or utilitarian ones. It ends up compounding the balance problem rather than fixing it.

[daremetoidareyo]

That house rule tends to lead to abuses just to get the forms you want. Master earth+commune with nature is the quickest way, but takes a long time to come online. Before that you're either not able to get any new forms as the dm rushes you from place to place, or you're halting all the things wandering around trying to get something new. Beyond all that, it doesn't even balance the forms they DO know. This makes it so they only go about getting the strongest ones, and they don't bother for more fun or utilitarian ones. It ends up compounding the balance problem rather than fixing it.

This has not been my experience. The "You must have encountered it rule" is a way to make the druid compatible with the environment he has been operating in. And the worst abusers of druid wild shape can't be contained by knowledge checks alone because they jump right into aberration wildshape and rukaynir all over your face. All of this, in addition to pimping out a ton of other highly powerful forms. I don't want to ban any creatures just because a druid is in the party, so I meet folks in the middle. If you want a powerful, but somewhat inappropriate form, you can totally take care of that by preparing for it, making some survival checks, and hunting for the beast in question to get ahold of it. This also means that if you want a rukaynir, you have to get to a place that has some strong far realm influence going on. I'm more than willing to tailor the campaign around the PCs gaining cool powers. What I'm trying to avoid is overemphasis on "gamebreaking" which is exactly what a druid can be if you just handout the monster manuals and all the books with monsters with them as an open palette for the PCs.

Let's admit it, some players want to be super powerful for whatever reason. The expression of this varies between different people, and some of those folks can be power gamers in such a way that they always fly under the radar, DMs love them, other players love them. Then there are those guys who would rather have unlimited unchecked power disproportionate to the game world that all the other players are trying to be in, and they simply don't care about what feathers they ruffle. They will derail everything In character and OOC if they don't get exactly what they want.

That second group of players always prioritizes power even D&D based power over real life social dynamics, and they feel cheated if you out of the blue deny them a thing that, although mechanically possible, is not fitting the rules or situation as the DM intends. If you warn these guys ahead of time, you head them off at the pass. They know, going in, that there are dictatorial limitations. So they don't flip out in the middle of the session when you deny them huge 16HD dire dinosaur form to their vermin specialized druid from the arctic in the middle of a boss fight. This rule makes you, as the DM, seem caring. You avoid big arguments at the table, you know, the kind where 3 players are like, "let's just get on with it." and this one player is peeling through books, looking for an exact phrase and then looking up each word of that phrase with a dictionary app on their phone. As a DM, I hate that. As a player, I just want it get going again, I don't care if druid gets his way or not.

And if this PC gets weird and curatorial about collecting all the possible wildshape forms under this ruling, that is a cue to address that player OOC.

They are playing the best if not THE BEST class and still feeling insecure. This is a game of imagination + rules, and this player is unwilling to cede any possible weakness, even if it is imaginary, and in part, totally necessary to have fun in this game.

When you have less extreme cases of gamers playing a druid under the "you must have seen it" rule, the rule rarely comes up. And it doesn't lead to prioritization of stronger forms as has been postulated, at least, not in my DMing experience. It leads to the exploration of the weirder, more common forms and how they interact with spells.

[eggynack]

But since we are in the jungle with tigers, and my animal Companion is a tiger, this won't be an issue. Thanks to Natural Bond my AC will be more than 13 HD and so huge before I get to Huge wildshape ability.
The other thing probably doesn't work, but this thing here definitely doesn't work. Bonus HD do not confer that sort of advancement to an animal companion. You just get HD, and those HD do things which are explicitly defined by the rules.

On the wild shape side, there are arguments either way, though I think that those on the side of it now working are more convincing. And, critically, allowing larger animals has some absurd ramifications. For example, you're claiming that you're allowed to make use of the standard HD advancement table, but what if the creature you're becoming advances by class? Can you use humanoid wild shape to become a 17th level elf wizard? If not, why not? There's tons of crap like that that you can pull off, and it's not a pile of stuff you probably should be able to pull off. Such an argument isn't a strict RAW one, but it should still be considered, and the argument that you're not becoming an average tiger is still a valid one.

[atemu1234]

The other thing probably doesn't work, but this thing here definitely doesn't work. Bonus HD do not confer that sort of advancement to an animal companion. You just get HD, and those HD do things which are explicitly defined by the rules.

On the wild shape side, there are arguments either way, though I think that those on the side of it now working are more convincing. And, critically, allowing larger animals has some absurd ramifications. For example, you're claiming that you're allowed to make use of the standard HD advancement table, but what if the creature you're becoming advances by class? Can you use humanoid wild shape to become a 17th level elf wizard? If not, why not? There's tons of crap like that that you can pull off, and it's not a pile of stuff you probably should be able to pull off. Such an argument isn't a strict RAW one, but it should still be considered, and the argument that you're not becoming an average tiger is still a valid one.

Well, you wouldn't get spells because those are supernatural, n'cest pas?

[LTwerewolf]

Well, you wouldn't get spells because those are supernatural, n'cest pas?

Easy ways around that.

[eggynack]

Well, you wouldn't get spells because those are supernatural, n'cest pas?
Pretty sure spells aren't supernatural. Not sure what they are, which causes problems anyway, but it's not that. Anyway, the point is these wider ramifications. Practically speaking, imagine anything you can do with the factotum's cunning brilliance, except you get all the abilities of an entire class rather than three abilities of any set of classes, and you have those abilities up permanently. Except you can also get Su abilities sometimes. And you can swap on a dime. And you can still do all your normal wild shape stuff. And you can do this starting at level six. It's just insanity.

[Andezzar]

Well, you wouldn't get spells because those are supernatural, n'cest pas?Spells must be natural, because they are neither extraordinary, nor supernatural nor spell-like abilities.

Making the druid/transmuter go through hoops to get the forms he wants is just annoying for those that are set on getting them, and overly limiting to those that do not aggressively pursue the goal of knowing many forms. Unless you outright ban certain species, what's going to stop the druid from asking his wizard buddy to use planar binding to show him the creatures he wants to know about?

it's "n'est-ce pas?".

[LTwerewolf]

Spells must be natural, because they are neither extraordinary, nor supernatural nor spell-like abilities.

Making the druid/transmuter go through hoops to get the forms he wants is just annoying for those that are set on getting them, and overly limiting to those that do not aggressively pursue the goal of knowing many forms. Unless you outright ban certain species, what's going to stop the druid from asking his wizard buddy to use planar binding to show him the creatures he wants to know about?

it's "n'est-ce pas?".

Nothing at all. (http://i.imgur.com/eQgmt.jpg)

[Andezzar]

Ze goggles do nussing! (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juFZh92MUOY)

[Bronk]

Dire tiger isn't available until 16th level (16 HD).

Plus Dire Tiger only has 29 Str and 17 con.
A Huge (15HD) Tiger has 23+8=31 Str and 17+4=21 Con. Better attacks than a dire tiger or dire lion.

A Huge tiger is printed in the book (any tiger over 13 HD):



And a 15 level druid can assume the form of a huge animal of 15 HD.

So why can't a 15 level druid wildshape into a huge 15HD tiger. Or, after 17th level, a 17HD (huge) Dire Lion?

As far as I can see the "average creature" rule only excludes applying a template (as the Alternate form rules specify).

Is there an actual rule that excludes advanced HD larger animal forms when they are printed in the Monster Manual entry?


You are totally right... through some twist of awesomeness, huge tigers are definitely better than dire tigers.

Here's the thing. There is no 'Average Creature' rule. It doesn't say that anywhere.

The explanation for why bigger sized animals are already allowed by RAW is basic: Wild shape follows the rules for 'alternate form' except as noted in the wild shape entry.

The entirety of the rules about this from 'alternate form' are 'no templates', and:


The creature gains the physical ability scores (Str, Dex, Con) of its new form.

From wild shape, we get:


The new form’s Hit Dice can’t exceed the character’s druid level.

and


Her options for new forms include all creatures with the animal type.

Nowhere does it say that you have to stick to any kind of average animal. The rest is just a lot of paperwork keeping track of your forms as you level up.




Edit: by the way, when you hit level 13, the seventh level spell 'Megalodon Empowerment' comes online, allowing you to take a wild shape form one size category larger than normal.

[Apricot]

If a form is common, then the Druid should already know it.

If a form is uncommon, then the Druid should make their desire known to the DM, and in general it can be handled with a half-DM-fiat'd take 20 during group downtime.

If a form is especially rare, then the Druid should make their desire known to the DM, and the group gets to do an awesome themed sidequest to give the Druid a major power-up, same as how the DM can make a sidequest to get a new weapon for the face-smasher, a high-level spell for the Wizard, or something else of the same nature.

I don't see how any of these are going to spoil people's fun. And if people start going down the munchkinry route, then all hope is already lost and the houserules don't really matter at that point.

[Hiro Quester]

Bonus HD do not confer that sort of advancement to an animal companion. You just get HD, and those HD do things which are explicitly defined by the rules.


Not to add a third topic to the thread, but don't the rules explicitly say that a tiger (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/tiger.htm) of 13+ HD is huge sized?

I'm totally on board with the DM nixing or nerfing any spell or ability, or wildshape form, for balance and/or fun-for-everyone reasons. We have talked about this from the beginning, because I'm an inveterate optimizer, and our party is not all optimized. (That's why I run particularly powerful options by the DM before bringing them out at the table.).

For example, my Druid PC uses big cat forms because we are in a tropical setting, and I wouldn't know enough about bears. Plus banning bear summons and wildshapes keeps the Druid on the sensible side of the line, beyond which is overpowered. (This is also why we have nerfed the Biteof the X spells. In Tiger wildshape with bite of the werebear, I'd have 39 strength. So we made the bonuses granted somewhat dependent on caster level, maxing at CL 16, so the barbarian doesn't feel bad about the Druid outdoing him in damage dealing.)

Anyway, it's good to know which options are forbidden, so I don't bug the DM with too many requests and options, and I can also try to keep my character's power just this side of the overpowered line.

But adding class levels to your humanoid wildshape seems obviously excluded by these two clauses:



Except as described elsewhere, the creature retains all other game statistics of its original form, including (but not necessarily limited to) HD, hit points, skill ranks, feats, base attack bonus, and base save bonuses.
The creature retains any spellcasting ability it had in its original form, although it must be able to speak intelligibly to cast spells with verbal components and it must have humanlike hands to cast spells with somatic components.



Class levels should be included under the first clause. And spell casting of your original form seems explicitly covered by the second clause there.

Back to the original question, though. Can anyone cite the rule about wildshape forms being "an average member of the species"?

I'm probably being blind but I can't see it anywhere. And I'm now wondering if this is just folk wisdom of the boards, something we say, but which only refers to the "no templates" clause in the Alternate form rules.

And in the absence of seeing that rule, it seems that some animals (like tiger and dire lion) have size increases built into the rules regarding their HD advancement (a 13+ HD tiger just is Huge sized).

This should make such Huge animals fair game for animal companion and wildshape, given animal HD advancement and/or Druid level (modulo DM approval, of course).

[Bronk]

Back to the original question, though. Can anyone cite the rule about wildshape forms being "an average member of the species"?



I know we were definitely writing our posts at the same time, I'll put it here too: You aren't missing anything, there is no such rule.

[squiggit]

Speaking of templates. If you're playing with the "must physically see the animal" rule and the druid encounters say, a Dark Tiger what happens if the druid tries to wildshape into it? Obviously in normal play you just turn into a regular tiger because no templates, but under this house rule the player has to be familiar with the animal directly and the druid's never seen a regular tiger, only a dark tiger.

[Andezzar]

If a form is common, then the Druid should already know it.

If a form is uncommon, then the Druid should make their desire known to the DM, and in general it can be handled with a half-DM-fiat'd take 20 during group downtime.

If a form is especially rare, then the Druid should make their desire known to the DM, and the group gets to do an awesome themed sidequest to give the Druid a major power-up, same as how the DM can make a sidequest to get a new weapon for the face-smasher, a high-level spell for the Wizard, or something else of the same nature.

I don't see how any of these are going to spoil people's fun. And if people start going down the munchkinry route, then all hope is already lost and the houserules don't really matter at that point.If all the player needs to do is make his desire known to learn about a creature, why would he invest in knowledge skills? Also how can a character have the desire to learn about a creature whose existence is unknown to him?

[Hiro Quester]

If all the player needs to do is make his desire known to learn about a creature, why would he invest in knowledge skills? Also how can a character have the desire to learn about a creature whose existence is unknown to him?

You would still have to make the appropriate knowledge checks (take 20 was mentioned).

The player asks DM if his character would know about creature X enough to wildshape into one.

And it's not like knowledge nature is not useful in many many other ways to.

[Andezzar]

Generally you cannot take 20 on a knowledge check. However the knowledge check should be sufficient. If you know about a creature you know about it. If the check is high enough you know enough you should know enough to use wildshape. At that point it is simply a numbers game.

If you don't know about a creature, you cannot go on a quest to find out about it. If the notion that large aquatic mammals exist is alien to you, you would not go about trying to find out about whales.

There is also the other problem of integrating the other characters into the quest. Why would they join the druid when they have better things to do like advancing the plot? Going off alone probably isn't a good idea in character and definitely isn't good for the players, as the majority will have to sit around doing nothing while the spotlight hog druid does his thing.

[daremetoidareyo]

Generally you cannot take 20 on a knowledge check. However the knowledge check should be sufficient. If you know about a creature you know about it. If the check is high enough you know enough you should know enough to use wildshape. At that point it is simply a numbers game.

If you don't know about a creature, you cannot go on a quest to find out about it. If the notion that large aquatic mammals exist is alien to you, you would not go about trying to find out about whales.

There is also the other problem of integrating the other characters into the quest. Why would they join the druid when they have better things to do like advancing the plot? Going off alone probably isn't a good idea in character and definitely isn't good for the players, as the majority will have to sit around doing nothing while the spotlight hog druid does his thing.

If I'm totally honest, the biggest problem this ruling has is defending it on forums. Where the reaction is usually pro-power/anti-limitation because the rules say so. Just as it is with any conversation in regards to nerfing a T1.

Most times the PCs are like, cool. And they work under the assumption that weird entries from various sources are on a provisional, "ask about it" scenario.

For me, most of the time templates don't count. But it's a case by case basis. If you encounter a dark huge tiger, and the party and adventure is easily balanced around it, sure it works. You can extrapolate the Tigeryness of the dark creature, if it is indeed a dark tiger and not a mechanical stand in for a catlike pouncer from the plane of dark that I used. In the latter case, the answer is no.

It needs to be understood that I'm not limiting people from commonly known animal forms. If the setting has dinosaurs, the druid gets dinosaurs. I'm also not super militant about it until incarnate construct duststuffed godblooded living wish spell is the chosen wildshape. That's for other tables, not my main campaign.

[Andezzar]

My point is that personal experience with a certain creature is not necessary by RAW and if the DM fiats that necessity it is easily provided (with planar binding for example). That leaves the problem of knowing enough to ask the right questions. Which is solved through knowledge skills, which generally govern whether a character knows anything. So whether or not the DM forces the extra step, a sufficiently high knowledge check will get the druid what he wants.

The problem with rarity is how to determine it. Is it global (or in reference to the prime material plane) or local rarity? If it's global rarity a lot of creatures would have to be considered rare because many environments don't support all creatures. If the gameworld has a similar amount of water as the earth you would have to call pretty much all land based animals rare.
In case of local rarity, you will simply get druids that have already been everywhere, as mentioned in their backstory.

BTW how do you get the living wish spell? templates are explicitly out.

[daremetoidareyo]

My point is that personal experience with a certain creature is not necessary by RAW and if the DM fiats that necessity it is easily provided (with planar binding for example). That leaves the problem of knowing enough to ask the right questions. Which is solved through knowledge skills, which generally govern whether a character knows anything. So whether or not the DM forces the extra step, a sufficiently high knowledge check will get the druid what he wants.

The problem with rarity is how to determine it. Is it global (or in reference to the prime material plane) or local rarity? If it's global rarity a lot of creatures would have to be considered rare because many environments don't support all creatures. If the gameworld has a similar amount of water as the earth you would have to call pretty much all land based animals rare.
In case of local rarity, you will simply get druids that have already been everywhere, as mentioned in their backstory.

BTW how do you get the living wish spell? templates are explicitly out.

The players know about all the monsters. The knowledge check is there to determine if the CHARACTER knows about those things. The character makes a knowledge check to see if the player can use his or her metaknowledge as in game knowledge. Rather than make scaling DCs for the knowledge checks, I have opted for this in most of my campaigns.

planar binding will get you an outsider, not an animal. I hand wave the "you must have met it" rule for elementals, seeing as how they're nature spirits and all.

The template stacked example was just a parody of the type things folks attempt to pull. Stacking powerful things until it all shuts down.

Side note:

Ever have someone introduce the concept of "shotgun" to you for the first time? Where they get to sit in the front seat of a car as a passenger by yelling shotgun first?

The group of dudes I played with often did this while carpooling. Their competition was so fierce that they were calling shotgun for drives that would not occur for weeks. They fully expected for that to be respected. Regardless of future circumstances. So when they make their car trip, a new person is hanging out, and they happen to be prone to carsickness. He said as such, but the other guy had shotgun, can you guess what happened? Someone threw up in the back seat of the car and had a headache for the rest of the day. That's what happened.

Hopefully, this illustrates how out of hand some people get about what they believe that they are entitled to. Houserules are totally necessary to herd these types of dudes into cooperative apes they were supposed to be raised to be.

[eggynack]

Not to add a third topic to the thread, but don't the rules explicitly say that a tiger (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/tiger.htm) of 13+ HD is huge sized?
Not really. That's just a particular form of monster advancement. You're on a completely different track, that of animal companion advancement. The 13 HD tiger is essentially an entity unto itself, one that just exists in a 13 HD form, while the companion is a normal tiger that had a blob of HD stacked onto it.

But adding class levels to your humanoid wildshape seems obviously excluded by these two clauses:

Class levels should be included under the first clause. And spell casting of your original form seems explicitly covered by the second clause there.
Those clauses couldn't possibly exclude anything. All they do is establish what you retain. You can easily retain your casting, and then also get other casting.


Back to the original question, though. Can anyone cite the rule about wildshape forms being "an average member of the species"?

Right, I was thinking of companions. The issue with wild shape is whether these forms can justifiably be considered creatures independent of their baseline HD form. Are you allowed to specify HD quantity at all, and critically, can you consider something a creature by game rules if it doesn't even have a statblock? It's messy, overall, and it winds up being really hard to justify the expansive reading without also allowing a lot of really really stupid things. Sure, you can always just not use those stupid things, but they'll still just sit there, being stupid.


This should make such Huge animals fair game for animal companion and wildshape, given animal HD advancement and/or Druid level (modulo DM approval, of course).
Again, I say definitely not on companions, because that's just not a thing that the HD says it does, and it's ambiguous on the forms, but you get a lot of baggage with your way.

[Hiro Quester]

Edit: by the way, when you hit level 13, the seventh level spell 'Megalodon Empowerment' comes online, allowing you to take a wild shape form one size category larger than normal.

Ooh. Good point. We have few books open but Stormwrack is one of them (core plus PH2, DMG 2, Stormwrack). I forgot about that clause.

And thanks for clarifying that there is not a clear rule about this.

[Andezzar]

planar binding will get you an outsider, not an animal. No, the spell gets you "a creature from another plane" not necessarily an outsider. If you are not on the prime material plane anything from the prime can be bound. Even if you don't planehop there are animals on other planes.
The most important aspect of the Beastlands is how the plane favors animals of all kinds. Like Arcadia, it is a plane heavily populated by animals and magical beasts.So the requirement personal experience can be easily met.

What I am trying to say is, people who want something will find ways to get it unless the DM outright bans it. Such extra requirements will just annoy the casual players and not do anything to the committed ones.

BTW which animal shapes are so bad? The fleshraker? Sure being a good melee combatant is nice, but the druid's spells probably still are his most potent weapon. If you are talking about non-animal shapes, the character has invested resources (feats) to get those. It would be unfair to then deny him the shapes.

As for the shotgun story, that silliness deserves to be punished. Whose car it is and who drives has the say who sits where and what the passengers can do. If the driver knew about the passengers problem and did nothing about it he deserves the dirty car. If he did not know the person not offering the carsick person his seat deserves the cleaning bill.