Backporting 5e Wild Shape

[Aetis]

I really like how they did Wild Shape in 5e, and I was wondering if anyone had success in backporting it into 3.5 edition.

[Gildedragon]

I'm not familiar with it. Any chance you could describe how it is done, or what it is you like of it?

[Zaq]

Disclaimer: I own the 5e PHB, but I haven't actually played the game.

Basically, Wild Shape is based on CR of the target critter rather than the HD. When you start, you can't WS into anything that can swim or fly, and those restrictions are slowly relaxed. When you're in WS, you can't cast spells (there is no Natural Spell equivalent), and your physical statistics (including HP, and I think including to-hit bonus, but I'm fuzzy on that) become that of the animal. Your WS HP are totally different from your humanoid HP, and when you take enough damage that you run out of HP in WS, you just revert back to humanoid form with no ill effects (though I think excess damage does spill over, but still, WS HP are basically temp HP, even though they aren't technically temps).

If you choose to go Circle of the Moon (WS-focused Druid) rather than Circle of the Land (spell-focused Druid), you get the ability to WS faster, you get the ability to expend spell slots in WS to recover HP, and you get access to higher CR forms faster than you otherwise would. The CR you can WS into is very very limited (non-Moon Druids ever can't go above CR 1, and Moon Druids are limited to Druid level / 3), though 5e CR is obviously different from 3.5 CR.

This would obviously need a lot of work to be backported elegantly. I kind of like the idea of WS HP serving as a barrier protecting your real HP (especially because that provides a mechanic to knock a Druid out of WS), and while the idea of basing forms on CR rather than HD has merit, it seems like kind of a nightmare to just port directly to 3.5 without some really heavy-handed balancing, since 3.5 CR is so insane.