The Nitty-Gritty of Wild Shape

[Palanan]

I’ve played druids extensively in 3.5, but much less so in Pathfinder, and now that I’m looking at the rules for wild shape I’m unclear on several points.

1. What stats and skills carry over in wild shape? In 3.5 it was clearly spelled out, with the wildshaped druid gaining the animal’s physical stats but retaining the druid’s mental stats. I assume this is still the case, but I can't find the pertinent rules text. And for skills shared with the animal (e.g. Perception) does the druid use his own skill modifiers, or the animal’s?

2. What magic items continue to function while in wild shape? I’m not sure where to find the rules text on this.

3. The bonuses from Small shape—are these added onto the animal’s base values for Dex and AC?

4. What’s this about being limited to a 30’ fly speed? That’s less than half the fly speed of a standard eagle, and I’m not sure why that limitation is there.

[Daefos]

1. Nothing from the animal carries over in Pathfinder except for what the relevant Beast Shape spell grants to you. Your Wild Shape class feature will tell you which spell to reference depending on your level, and you use your own stats and simply apply the modifiers and abilities (if applicable to the animal you’re turning into) as the spell directs. If you want your druid to wade into melee, you can’t simply ignore your physical stats and then spend all your time in bear form like you could in 3.5.

2. I think they might be buried in the rules on Polymorph or the Change Shape ability, but the gist of it is: constant or passive bonuses (like a Belt of Giant’s Strength) continue to function and provide their bonus, but items that require you to activate them (Cape of the Montebank) or physically manipulate (a wand) cannot be activated while melded into your form.

3. See #1. The animal’s stats are irrelevant, you add the modifiers to your own stats.

4. It means that if you turn into a creature with a 60ft fly speed, then your fly speed would only be 30ft. It doesn’t limit your options for what you can turn into, it just puts a cap on your fly speed. As to why Paizo felt the need to do this, I can’t say, but it might have been to prevent some animal choices being objectively “better” than others, so that the druid can’t zip around as some obscure bird with a 120ft fly speed all day.

[Palanan]

Thanks for the detailed response, I appreciate it. Apparently I've been playing PF druids incorrectly when it comes to wild shape.

Because those changes are just...wonky, for want of a better word. I understand how the rules work now, but this approach just doesn't make sense.

[Psyren]

I understand how the rules work now, but this approach just doesn't make sense.

It makes perfect sense, though I can totally understand why some people might not like the result. Pathfinder shapeshifting had two goals, which they largely succeeded at:

1) Make it simpler - no need to worry if a given shapeshifting effect is a polymorph effect or a change shape effect or an alternate form effect - In PF, the polymorph subschool now covers all of it, and adjudicates everything from wildshaping druids to transmuting wizards to lycanthropes and vampires. Not that those three categories of effect were all that different anyway, but they had just enough differences between them that they sent you to the appendix reading every bullet to make sure you applied it correctly.

2) Future-proofing the design - this to me was the bigger one, so I'll elaborate in the spoiler:

The problem (well, one of the problems) with 3.5 wild shape and polymorph is that they're based on just three things:

- creature type (usually animal, with some additions at higher level)
- size
- hit dice

If your chosen form met the parameters of the spell for these three things, you could become that thing. This got you the physical stats, natural armor, extraordinary special attacks, movement modes, natural attacks, and even some racial bonuses of the thing. There are some small differences between wild shape and polymorph but these cover the bulk of the similarities.

This means that a 3.5 designer, all throughout the game's run, had to be cautious whenever they were creating a new monster, and extra cautious when that monster was an animal or plant. Because while HD and size certainly can correlate to how powerful an animal or plant is, they are far from the only factors that ultimately determine that. The end result is that the druid player can book dive to end up with some forms that are far more powerful than what many (any) other classes are doing at the level they gain access to them, like Fleshraker, or Desmodu Hunting Bat, or Ironmaw etc. And that's on top of the other balance issue - that the druid is just as effective with all these forms regardless of its own physical stats (because those stats are replaced by those of the form entirely), and therefore can focus on its mental stats, compounding the power of being able to continue casting spells while shapeshifted even further.

In PF - because shapeshifting augments your physical stats rather than replacing them, your stats matter, and in most games you can't focus on your mental stats to the exclusion of your physical ones and be equally effective at both. And because the abilities you gain from a given polymorph spell are both prescribed and benchmarked to that spell level, designers are free to create monsters without worrying that they'll make something that unbalances a shapeshifter by accident. The spells are designed in such a way that even if the designers make a monster that can give the druid access to every ability the spell offers, it's still not so overpowered that the level of that spell no longer makes sense. For example, Beast Shape 2 gives climb 60 feet, fly 60 feet (good maneuverability), swim 60 feet, darkvision 60 feet, low-light vision, scent, grab, pounce, and trip - even if you got a form with every single one of these abilities, it wouldn't be too powerful for a 4th-level spell or a 6th-level druid to use them.

Another approach to this that improved upon the 3.5 version to be very successful was the 5e version of Wild Shape. 5e did keep the full stat overwrite from 3.5 instead of PF's augment approach, but they were clever enough to make two major changes to this system - (1) the forms you can turn into are benchmarked to CR (a much more consistent measure of power than size and hit dice, especially in 5e), and (2) Natural Spell is no longer obtainable until you're nearly at the class' capstone, making it functionally not exist for most games except the most high-powered ones where you'd want your druid cutting loose anyway. Lastly, Wild Shape only remains useful for one type of druid, the Moon Druid, past low levels - and this druid trades off some of its magical effectiveness to be able to use Wild Shape at full strength.

TL;DR - PF nerfed polymorph and wild shape for good reason. I don't think their version is perfect - for one, they forgot a whole bunch of useful creature types that were accessible in the previous versions of these spells, only some of which got added to the game later - but it resulted in a lot more sound design throughout the game's run, and made it considerably harder for a druid (or any other shapeshifter) to simply walk all over the martials in their party while also being primary casters.

[Kurald Galain]

I understand how the rules work now, but this approach just doesn't make sense.
It prevents you from making a character with, say, str 7; dex 7; con 7; int 14; wis 18; cha 14; and then overriding your tanked physical scores with the animal's, to end up with much higher total ability scores than the rest of the group.

[StragaSevera]

I think the Pathfinder approach works better even in the roleplay sense.
You are changing shape. Your muscles stretch and become the bear's muscles, your lungs change form and become the bear's lungs. But they are still your muscles and lungs - so if you had an asthma, reducing your Constitution, the bear will still have asthma and will not be as good in running as a naturally born bear.
Also, there is an aspect of learning how to use your new muscles and bones - so a naturally born bird will fly faster than you, because you need to conciously manage wing movements, and a bird learned all of this when it was a baby.
You do not become an animal. Your body just changes shape to an animal's shape.

[Selion]

I’ve played druids extensively in 3.5, but much less so in Pathfinder, and now that I’m looking at the rules for wild shape I’m unclear on several points.

1. What stats and skills carry over in wild shape? In 3.5 it was clearly spelled out, with the wildshaped druid gaining the animal’s physical stats but retaining the druid’s mental stats. I assume this is still the case, but I can't find the pertinent rules text. And for skills shared with the animal (e.g. Perception) does the druid use his own skill modifiers, or the animal’s?

2. What magic items continue to function while in wild shape? I’m not sure where to find the rules text on this.

3. The bonuses from Small shape—are these added onto the animal’s base values for Dex and AC?

4. What’s this about being limited to a 30’ fly speed? That’s less than half the fly speed of a standard eagle, and I’m not sure why that limitation is there.

I think wild shaping is one of the few things which isn't a straight improvement in respect to d&d 3.5.
Rules are now simpler and less abusable (in 3.5 as a druid you could forget about physical stats because they were substituted wild shaping) but they lost a lot of flavor:
a turtle and a squid have now the same natural armor as long as they share the same size