Wildshape Woes

[AlanBruce]

Greetings! In my current campaign, we have a player who, seeing as the party needed a tank and bruiser, came up with this build:

Giles Mercibund: Human Wild Shape Ranger 5/Master of Many Forms 7/ Nature Warrior 1

As a human, Giles has a Constitution score of 22 (base 18 , +4 from an item).

But Giles is rarely seen in human guise. Giles likes to transmute his body into forms best suited for battle.

In the current encounter against a formidable foe, Giles is a War Troll (MM3), with a Constitution score of 33 and all the (Ex) abilities such beast carries.

And that's fine. I like a druid who isn't a druid wrecking face and pouncing around (Giles loves to pounce, can't get enough of it.)

Which brings us to the foe Giles and his party are facing: an ancient fey rider with a Wounding Whip that deals 1 point of Constitution damage per hit and has Robilar's Gambit and respectable reach with his weapon.

The battle has been spread out in a small duchy, as the party has been teleporting around and facing the guy in rooftops and alleys and finally in the main road of town, with two well respected church leaders who have come to assist in, if not killing the Rider, at least driving him away.

The Rider and Giles have faced off several times, with Giles, in War Troll Form, pouncing on the guy and using his cold iron blade to great effect, but...

This Rider is no pushover. For every attack Giles does, he gets one in return thanks to Robilar's Gambit and as a result, Gile's current Constitution score has dropped from 33 to 23.

The player has decided to use his wildshape reserves to turn into a new form and therein lies the question:

What happens to the Constitution damage? Does it remain? Is it a clean slate once he switches to a new form?

What if he changes to a form immune to Con damage? Does the damage remain in Limbo and then come back to bite him when he changes to a new form or his original human self?

This is the first time I have to deal with this particular problem. The player mentioned Greathorn Minotaur (MM IV) for the earth glide ability- buy him some time under ground and hopefully rest up while the rest of the party engage thus guy.

Basically, I;d like to know what happens to the Con damage suffered so far. Will it remain, disappear when he chooses a new form? Be negated?

Any and all input is more than welcome.

[Khedrac]

The rules are really unclear on this, however my take on this follows:

For the moment consider hit points: If you take 50 points of damage while in a different form then revert to your original form the 50 points of damage remain taken by the character (well, subject that changing from can restore hit points as if for a night's rest).

So now consider Ability Damage. The character has taken 10 points of ability damage - why should changing form affect this at all?
The character has still taken 10 points of constitution damage, but is just in a form with a different constitution to apply them too.
Same goes for ability drain.

Where it gets cheesy is with abilities other than Con - because they have minimums of 1.
The question becomes "what happens if I take my belt of strength off and then put it on again?" Since my strength cannot go down below 1 does this mean that when I put it on I now have a strength of at least 7?
Personally I say "no" - just because the stat cannot go below 1 does not mean the ability damage/drain/penalty is not there, again the character still has the same total negative to the stat, it is just that a minimum applies.

Note: See barbarian rage for the closest thing to a RAW answer.

[ZamielVanWeber]

This exact problem occurred with my Master of Many forms (to Con even) just last week. I ultimately went with the most restrictive ruling and applied to penalty to all forms, including my base form (so my HP dropped, for example). Not 100% RAW since RAW was not clear, but worked nicely and kept us from hanging up combat with a rules discussion.

[Crake]

The rules are really unclear on this, however my take on this follows:

For the moment consider hit points: If you take 50 points of damage while in a different form then revert to your original form the 50 points of damage remain taken by the character (well, subject that changing from can restore hit points as if for a night's rest).

So now consider Ability Damage. The character has taken 10 points of ability damage - why should changing form affect this at all?
The character has still taken 10 points of constitution damage, but is just in a form with a different constitution to apply them too.
Same goes for ability drain.

Where it gets cheesy is with abilities other than Con - because they have minimums of 1.
The question becomes "what happens if I take my belt of strength off and then put it on again?" Since my strength cannot go down below 1 does this mean that when I put it on I now have a strength of at least 7?
Personally I say "no" - just because the stat cannot go below 1 does not mean the ability damage/drain/penalty is not there, again the character still has the same total negative to the stat, it is just that a minimum applies.

Note: See barbarian rage for the closest thing to a RAW answer.

Emphasis mine, why do you think they have a minimum of 1? They can most certainly drop to 0.

That said, the same issue occurs, just with 0 instead of 1. But I believe the general rule is in fact that if you have a belt of strength, are reduced to 0 strength, and then someone takes the belt off and puts it back on, you will have the belt's value as a strength score. So if you had taken 20 dex damage, in a form with 30 dex, then wild shaped into something with 5 dex, you would drop ot 0 dex, but when you wild shape back to the 30 dex form, you would go up to 25 dex, because you only have 5 dex damage.

This is because ability scores do not drop below 0, but you do retain the damage between forms.

[Stryyke]

In all of the, non-core, places I read, they specifically said ability damage does not heal with shape changing. Core only says that hp damage is restored, and makes no mention of ability damage. But my ruling, during my games, is that since it specifies hp damage, ability damage is not hp damage. You can rule whichever way you want, but I think that healing ability damage by shape changing is a bit OP. Just my opinion.

[Crake]

Also, a suggestion as to how to deal with the rider, go something with improved grab and grapple him, that'll stop him from using his whip, so no more con damage all over the show, he won't be able to robilars either, since he doesn't provoke anyone, and he will be nice and vulnerable for your allies to curb stomp him.

[Efrate]

Heck of a fort save on a Fae versus the daze which is pretty hard to protect against.

Polymorph has the line "Upon changing, the subject regains lost hit points as if it had rested for a night (though this healing does not restore temporary ability damage and provide other benefits of resting; and changing back does not heal the subject further)"

Wild Shape references alternate form, but polymorph is the closest thing I find, and I think it makes sense.

[AlanBruce]

Heck of a fort save on a Fae versus the daze which is pretty hard to protect against.

Normally yes. His Fortitude is +16 after class levels. This Rider is considered a Champion amongst the evil fey the party is fighting in a very long arc.

He's been sent to annihilate the party because they have been murderhoboing a bunch of mighty fey lords and the big bad has had enough:

She sent this guy to pursue them and kill them. No holds barred.

The party is not in top form, but they have two friendly NPC wizards (with a very depleted spell repertoire), a pair of RSoP allies, an Cuthbertine Inquisitor and her Kolyarut bodyguard.

The Kolyarut has been sent to tank with the troll- he is a construct and Con damage won't affect him- plus his DR makes sure he isn't hurt that bad.

And yes, a grappling form has been suggested by the player. What form will it be? I have no idea, but we can only hope it works, because the Rider can fly and the troll cannot.

Thank you for your suggestions- they pretty much line up with mu initial idea regarding Con damage and new forms.

Thankfully, the party cleric has an Archon planar Ally with a heal prepared just for this situation, so if she can fly close to the troll (and not get whipped), he should be freed from the Con damage and healed back.

[eggynack]

Heck of a fort save on a Fae versus the daze which is pretty hard to protect against.

Polymorph has the line "Upon changing, the subject regains lost hit points as if it had rested for a night (though this healing does not restore temporary ability damage and provide other benefits of resting; and changing back does not heal the subject further)"

Wild Shape references alternate form, but polymorph is the closest thing I find, and I think it makes sense.
This isn't really a solution, and neither is Strykke's claim. The core issue isn't whether you "heal" the ability damage. The rules don't say you do, so you don't. The core issue is that, when you use wild shape, you alter your ability score to match a specific number. So, if you've taken five points of constitution damage, taking you from, say, 14 to 9, and then take a form with 20 constitution, do you go straight from 9 to 20, because 20 is explicitly your new constitution score, or do you keep the constitution damage as baggage and go to 15? No healing involved. Just numbers changing to become other numbers. And, as has been said, the issue is, to my knowledge, fully ambiguous. It is adjudicated by nothing, either on the wild shape side or the ability damage side.

[Stryyke]

The Con damage follows you through all of your forms. If you shift into a creature with a 20 con, but have taken 5 con damage, you have 15 con in the new form. At least that's how my games run.

[eggynack]

The Con damage follows you through all of your forms. If you shift into a creature with a 20 con, but have taken 5 con damage, you have 15 con in the new form. At least that's how my games run.
Logical outcome, but not a strictly RAW following outcome. It's a weird situation.

[Khedrac]

Emphasis mine, why do you think they have a minimum of 1? They can most certainly drop to 0.
Because I wasn't thinking - thank-you for the correction.
It's just that Con 0 kills you ending the shenanigans.