Wild Shape Qs + How to jazzup a fighter...

[DeShurland]

As per title;

I am DM'ing Tomb of Annihilation. Question on Wild Shape - I have a Moon Druid who wants to spend as much time as possible in wild shape. Is a homebrewed ring of 0CR wild shape going to screw the game? my thinking is that they can be a 'cat' once per day for as long as possible. at lvl 4, i will add a water creature and 8, a flying creature. the caveat is that it is only for 0cr creature. If they pick 'cat' that is it for the day, no changing into anything else within said ring. They want to change, it has to be with a proper wild shape. It lets them be a creature but 0cr means no/limited combat. Also, will become less relevant once we reach Chult, "why is there a tabby cat walking around the jungle?!"

I also have two fighters, any ideas on how to make it more interesting for them would be greatly appreciated, the obvious in my mind is magic weapons/or just better weapons. (fighters hit and more damage dice when hitting a creature is nice) they seem to both be duel wielding, so at level 5, they will run into the extra attack issue, so a ring of extra bonus action? or something like double proficiency in a skill so they stay relevant.

With all of the material around, there seems to be plenty for magic users, but fighters less so, apart from obvious amulets of health, magic armour etc.

[Rara1212]

Using normal Wildshape, if they become a small animal they can take a short rest in animal form(as it lasts 2h at lvl 4) while one of the other players carries them. I've done similar things with Wildshaping into bearform, taking a 1h rest before starting a fight. Then I get bearform + 2 other wildshapes

[LumenPlacidum]

Amulets of health and magic armor are exactly how to make life dull for an in-combat type of character. Things that up hit points and armor class prevent dramatic things from happening (ala, the fighter goes down while protecting the back-liners). To make their lives interesting, you need to give them more options. They are already a high-damage class and they already probably have the best AC in the group. My recommendation is to give them some ability to do oddball things out of combat and to give them items that allow them to touch other roles in-combat.

For example, The Briar Shield is a magic item that is a shield. Its exterior surface is that of a twisted spiral of thorny vines. It grants three powers:

The vines can be made to wind out and wrap around a stationary object, providing a solid anchor.
The wearer may spend a reaction when an attack misses them to force the attacker to make a DC 11 Strength saving throw or be restrained until they can spend an action to pull themselves free with a DC 11 Strength check.
When the wearer takes the Attack action to attack more than once, each attack after the first serves to distract the foe as vines from the shield entangle their foe. Any creature hit by two or more of the attacks from your Attack action must make a DC 11 Strength saving throw or be restrained by the shield until they spend an action to succeed on a DC 11 Strength check.


The design: The ability to gain a solid anchor by having the shield extend vine tendrils is a non-combat ability (although the subsequent two points kind of make it a combat ability). It might come up and it might not, but when it does, the wearer of the shield will feel awesome for using a "useless" ability to good effect. The reaction is the primary ability of the item, usable by anyone who can wear shields, to good effect. The DC is customizable, but low. It's going to happen, and based on the number of times that foes typically miss heavy armor characters, it will happen more often than you might initially think. It grants a great condition to support a melee fighter, and is pretty unlikely to work against "important" foes, but it feels awesome to just stop foes in their tracks because they had the gumption to attack you. The third ability is the one that makes the item "specific" to a fighter. It actually... doesn't, of course. Anyone with Extra Attack could use the shield's ability, but eventually, fighters will be the ones who will use the ability best by virtue of getting more attacks than others. Also, Beast totem barbarians, I guess. It lets the fighter dip slightly into battlefield control, and lets them weigh some tactical decisions. I want to damage the enemy caster, but we really need to prevent the enemy rogue from just moving around and dealing massive damage to our soft characters. Is it better to try to restrain the rogue or to deal solid damage to the caster? Decisions are what make a class interesting. It's just that a fighter's decisions are less about how to spend their resources and more about what would be the best choice in the moment, since so little of what they do is resource-limited. Making items that are better for a fighter than anyone else isn't too hard, especially if you know the subclasses that the players are going to choose. Scaling based on number of attacks is better for fighters at 11th level and beyond. Scaling based on having many good ability scores is better for fighters because they just get more ASIs. Giving uses for reactions and for bonus actions is pretty good for fighters because they don't actually get a lot of uses for these actions built-in (subclass dependent!).

Re-wildshape. Your CR-0 wildshape item sounds perfectly good. Do that. Be sure to enforce the difficulty communicating with the party in beast form.

[Aett_Thorn]

I also have two fighters, any ideas on how to make it more interesting for them would be greatly appreciated, the obvious in my mind is magic weapons/or just better weapons. (fighters hit and more damage dice when hitting a creature is nice) they seem to both be duel wielding, so at level 5, they will run into the extra attack issue, so a ring of extra bonus action? or something like double proficiency in a skill so they stay relevant.

With all of the material around, there seems to be plenty for magic users, but fighters less so, apart from obvious amulets of health, magic armour etc.

For fighters that I've run, I've come across two problems (for me) long term:

1) My action is basically "I attack" and the choice is basically only who to attack

2) Outside of combat, I have very few mechanics to help me differentiate myself. Background can help a bit here, but most fighters need a bit more RP oomph behind them to really get them to stand out.


So my suggestion here is not to give them items that make them attack better or just give them more damage on an attack, since they're likely going to get those items anyways (magic weapons are decently available from what I saw going through ToA). But give them a few things that allow them to differentiate themselves outside of combat, or something else to do as an option inside of combat other than attack. Things like Hats of Disguise or a Bag of Tricks. Things like that that give them fun options.