Dying in Wild Shape

[yonah]

I'm planning a murder mystery where the victim was a druid who got killed while in Wild Shape (if you take excess dmg it affects your normal HP so this works). The question is, I know the damage transfers over but would there be a stab wound????

[ProsecutorGodot]

The way we've played druid at our table, yes, in a roughly equivalent spot to where the animal shape was struck.

The rules aren't clear on that sort of interaction though so it's really your choice.

[Brookshw]

Maybe consider going for fresh/raw scars that look they they shouldn't have been survived (maybe medicine check to know it would have been / was lethal).

[Mellack]

I'm planning a murder mystery where the victim was a druid who got killed while in Wild Shape (if you take excess dmg it affects your normal HP so this works). The question is, I know the damage transfers over but would there be a stab wound????

I would say yes. The only way the druid could have died is to lose both the wild shape hp they had and any druid hp they had. So they had to take at least one point of damage to their normal form. That would leave a wound, and probably a pretty big one. (I tend to the last hit is the deadly one camp.) Honestly I don't think that them being in wild shape when that blow was struck would change anything.

[Ganryu]

I'd say, yes stab wound. I'd say it's so brutal, they still had blade in them as they reverted
Or, failing that, Power word kill and leave a deer carcass. That's a mystery! :D

[Glorthindel]

This could result in a weird wound depending if the offending blade was still in the wound as the Druid reverted form, or if it wasn't, and depending how physically different the Wildshape form is from a human one. For example, a sword wound caused in bear form could shrink to almost stiletto-sized as the bear arm it was inflicted in shrinks to human size if the blade was no longer in the wound, likewise a sword wound in a deers leg could turn into something that looked like it was caused by a scythe as the deers slender leg warps into a much thicker human one.

[Chronos]

You would have a humanoid corpse with sufficient wounds (whether one large or many smaller) to kill a humanoid. Most of the beast form's wounds would not leave marks, but the one that knocked the beast form to zero and overflowed into the humanoid form would.

[Keravath]

Up to you since you are the DM.

However, the way wild shape works, the druid loses the shape as soon as it takes sufficient damage and any excess damage is transferred to the humanoid form. The DM could easily rule that the last damage taken by the wild shape (and which killed the druid by overflow) was still visible on the body.