I've tried to interpret the RAW on druid shape-shifting, but I would appreciate a little extra clarity on it for certain scenarios. For example, if a druid character is at half, or low hit points, and they shape-shift into a dire wolf, is the animal they have turned into at the same health (or percentile) of health that they were as their humanoid self? And likewise, when they return from animal form back to humanoid, do they return to the health they were at at the start, or do they bring back damage they took while in animal form?
Unless I'm misunderstanding things, there isn't a lot of clarity on this, and I'm not sure if one of my players gets a 'bonus health bar' by changing into an animal.
When wild shaping, Druids start in their animal form at full health, regardless of their HP in their original form. When the wild shape ends they revert back to their original form with the HP they had when they changed. If the wild shape ended due to the animal dropping to 0 HP, only the “extra” damage leftover from the attack that dropped them to 0 carries over.
so, Druid at 10/30 hp, turns into animal with 15/15 hp (full health), takes 10 damage (5/15 animal), takes 10 damage (0/15 animal, wild shape ends, Druid takes the 5 leftover damage and reverts to their original form at 5/30 HP). Hopefully that makes sense
Icon nailed it. Wild Shape is essentially an entire extra "HP bar".
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
Also, this is unclear in the PHB but was clarified in the SAC: if an effect triggers automatic death on dropping a creature to 0 hitpoints (like the disintegrate spell or a beholders death ray), that doesn’t apply if the wild shape is brought to 0 hp; it only applies if the druids original form is also brought to 0hp (via leftover damage)
so a 10/30 hp Druid wild shaped into a 15/15 animal takes 20 damage with that kind of trigger effect, the animal goes to 0/15, the Druid returns to original form and goes to 5/30, but they don’t die.
However if that same Druid took 25 damage instead of 20, then they would go to 0/30 upon returning to their original form and then would die/turn to ash per the trigger effect
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
I've tried to interpret the RAW on druid shape-shifting, but I would appreciate a little extra clarity on it for certain scenarios. For example, if a druid character is at half, or low hit points, and they shape-shift into a dire wolf, is the animal they have turned into at the same health (or percentile) of health that they were as their humanoid self? And likewise, when they return from animal form back to humanoid, do they return to the health they were at at the start, or do they bring back damage they took while in animal form?
Unless I'm misunderstanding things, there isn't a lot of clarity on this, and I'm not sure if one of my players gets a 'bonus health bar' by changing into an animal.
When wild shaping, Druids start in their animal form at full health, regardless of their HP in their original form. When the wild shape ends they revert back to their original form with the HP they had when they changed. If the wild shape ended due to the animal dropping to 0 HP, only the “extra” damage leftover from the attack that dropped them to 0 carries over.
so, Druid at 10/30 hp, turns into animal with 15/15 hp (full health), takes 10 damage (5/15 animal), takes 10 damage (0/15 animal, wild shape ends, Druid takes the 5 leftover damage and reverts to their original form at 5/30 HP). Hopefully that makes sense
That is a really clear explanation, thanks for the example!
Icon nailed it. Wild Shape is essentially an entire extra "HP bar".
You don't know what fear is until you've witnessed a drunk bird divebombing you while carrying a screaming Kobold throwing fire anywhere and everywhere.
Also, this is unclear in the PHB but was clarified in the SAC: if an effect triggers automatic death on dropping a creature to 0 hitpoints (like the disintegrate spell or a beholders death ray), that doesn’t apply if the wild shape is brought to 0 hp; it only applies if the druids original form is also brought to 0hp (via leftover damage)
so a 10/30 hp Druid wild shaped into a 15/15 animal takes 20 damage with that kind of trigger effect, the animal goes to 0/15, the Druid returns to original form and goes to 5/30, but they don’t die.
However if that same Druid took 25 damage instead of 20, then they would go to 0/30 upon returning to their original form and then would die/turn to ash per the trigger effect