Technically you could classify "natural" magic animals as beasts, but the design philosophy seems to be that Beast is used for real-world animals and the dire/giant versions of them.
Tressym was a beast. So was a cranium rat. Even the definition in the dmg includes magical beasts
Technically you could classify "natural" magic animals as beasts, but the design philosophy seems to be that Beast is used for real-world animals and the dire/giant versions of them.
5e seems to use monstrosity as a catch-all -- it includes most magical beasts from 3e, but it also includes a lot of the monstrous humanoids. It's basically "exotic creatures that don't fit in another category". For most creature types knowing the creature's type actually tells you something useful about its behavior, but it's hard to figure out a way where classifying a chimera, medusa, and purple worm together is doing anything useful.
5e isn't very consistent though; some inexplicable creatures are defined as beasts.
What strikes me as the big issue with wildshaping? The time limit. As long as the only purpose of turning into a beast is biting people, it doesn't really make a difference but I can picture quite a few non-combat applications which are absolutely infeasible if you can only stay wildshaped for a couple of hours. For example:
Travel. Even if you can't manage a bird, turn into a deer and run the distance.
Disguise. Turn into a horse and encourage the bandits to steel you. Turn into a cat and spend the night on the tiles, observing. Hide in a herd.
Comfort. Perhaps you'd get a better night's sleep as a cat curled up in front of the fireplace than in the bed on offer (which might contain too much wild life even for a Druid). Or maybe you'd sleep better as a squirrel in the branches of a tree than lying on the ground.
But we don't want Druids to be disproportionate powerful, and we want them to become more versatile as they advance, and before they hit level 20 when their time is probably mostly occupied by administration and teaching.
Now I've been brooding on this, and I have a number of ideas most of which are probably too radical. I don't like the Unearthed Arcanna changes, they also seem to be based on the weapon basis for wild shape. Not that I'm against biting people, but I don't think the whole system of mechanics should rotate around it.
So here's some fairly non-radical suggestions, which don't seem to me to seriously damage game balance..
You can take long or short rests, and sleep in animal form. Sleep doesn't automatically revert your form. Resting time does not count against transformation time limit.
If you are in animal form for any length of time you'll need to eat, drink, and excrete in that form. You start off with the equivalent hydration, blood sugar etc. you had before you transformed. Same when you come back.
In addition to the two transformations at one hour you start off with, you can expend spell slots to transform. The maximum duration of a wild shape depends on the level of the spell slot expended. A first level slot transforms you for up to two hours. A second level slot up to six hours. A third level slot gives you an indefinite transformation.
Technically you could classify "natural" magic animals as beasts, but the design philosophy seems to be that Beast is used for real-world animals and the dire/giant versions of them.
5e seems to use monstrosity as a catch-all -- it includes most magical beasts from 3e, but it also includes a lot of the monstrous humanoids. It's basically "exotic creatures that don't fit in another category". For most creature types knowing the creature's type actually tells you something useful about its behavior, but it's hard to figure out a way where classifying a chimera, medusa, and purple worm together is doing anything useful.
5e isn't very consistent though; some inexplicable creatures are defined as beasts.
Yeah. Inconsistent is right. I think the general definition of beasts is okay, and most of the beasts in the Basic Rules, Player's Handbook, or Monster Manual are appropriately categorized. I would say that the Flying Snake, Stirge are exceptions; they should both probably be monstrosities. But generally we're good.
However there are some adventures and supplements that get things really wrong. Acquisitions Incorporated is a big offender with both the Enormous Tentacle, and Onyx. Neither of these things should be classified as Beasts, and the CR doesn't make much sense for either of them. I don't even think the Tentacle should be a creature.
Onyx details:
Onyx is a Huge, unkillable, cat, with a +7 to hit, 2d10 claw attack and a speed of 400 ft; 200 ft climb. It is CR 0.
OK. Onyx might be a bad example. The stat block is from a rather weird encounter, at any rate. Still, classifying Onyx as a Monstrosity, even if only for this one encounter, might have been helpful and appropriate.
I don't think this points to a flaw with the Wildshape system, though. I just think WOTC needs to take more care assigning creature types in their publications.
An NPC tag would be nice. This tag would let every one know that whatever the creature is, it is unique and not suitable for spells or effects that conjure or reproduce certain kinds of creatures. Generally, I think named creatures should always be excluded from these types of spells and effects, but an NPC tag would also be helpful.
Technically you could classify "natural" magic animals as beasts, but the design philosophy seems to be that Beast is used for real-world animals and the dire/giant versions of them.
5e seems to use monstrosity as a catch-all -- it includes most magical beasts from 3e, but it also includes a lot of the monstrous humanoids. It's basically "exotic creatures that don't fit in another category". For most creature types knowing the creature's type actually tells you something useful about its behavior, but it's hard to figure out a way where classifying a chimera, medusa, and purple worm together is doing anything useful.
5e isn't very consistent though; some inexplicable creatures are defined as beasts.
Yeah. Inconsistent is right. I think the general definition of beasts is okay, and most of the beasts in the Basic Rules, Player's Handbook, or Monster Manual are appropriately categorized. I would say that the Flying Snake, Stirge are exceptions; they should both probably be monstrosities. But generally we're good.
However there are some adventures and supplements that get things really wrong. Acquisitions Incorporated is a big offender with both the Enormous Tentacle, and Onyx. Neither of these things should be classified as Beasts, and the CR doesn't make much sense for either of them. I don't even think the Tentacle should be a creature.
Onyx details:
Onyx is a Huge, unkillable, cat, with a +7 to hit, 2d10 claw attack and a speed of 400 ft; 200 ft climb. It is CR 0.
OK. Onyx might be a bad example. The stat block is from a rather weird encounter, at any rate. Still, classifying Onyx as a Monstrosity, even if only for this one encounter, might have been helpful and appropriate.
I don't think this points to a flaw with the Wildshape system, though. I just think WOTC needs to take more care assigning creature types in their publications.
I disagree. The one change that needs to be added to Wildshape is that "beast beyond those listed in the Player Handbook may be available at DM discretion." Onyx is totally fine as a WS if you consider the context because he's just a regular cat, the statblock reflects that the PCs have been ultra-miniaturized for that encounter. What needs to end in the entire community is assuming anything published anywhere for any setting in any context is automatically available to players in every campaign and in every context.
Hey, wildshape DOESN'T LAST 1 HOUR: "You stay in that form for a number of hours equal to half your Druid level or..."
That's only true up to level 3, both in 2014 and in AU. And it makes sense, as much as you want wildshape it's exhausting, like when you use magic without being cantrips, or use the divine channel. As you level up you get more used to it and can last longer. (8 hours on level 16-17, which lasts a long rest, without being elf they rest in 4 hours.)
I love druids, but in general I don't agree with you and your proposals.
Why would being an animal be more exhausting for a Druid than it would be for an animal born that way? Changing form, in either direction, that should require effort. But I see no reason why a Druid might not, for example, spurn the bed he was expecting to sleep in and curl up as a cat. (The human body seems especially ill-designed for sleeping in.). If you move as an animal, why not be able to rest as one? eat and drink as one? Excrete as one? Why not have a druid that's turned into an animal with his last magical strength have to rest and recover before he can turn back into a person?
If you really change into an animal then that body is as real and physical as the one your were born in, though the mind is inevitably something of a hybrid. There's no reason I know why it would take an effort to hold it's form. At least beyond the basal metabolism that keeps us ticking over in real life.
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Tressym was a beast. So was a cranium rat. Even the definition in the dmg includes magical beasts
Which use to be a specific tag but is no longer.
5e seems to use monstrosity as a catch-all -- it includes most magical beasts from 3e, but it also includes a lot of the monstrous humanoids. It's basically "exotic creatures that don't fit in another category". For most creature types knowing the creature's type actually tells you something useful about its behavior, but it's hard to figure out a way where classifying a chimera, medusa, and purple worm together is doing anything useful.
5e isn't very consistent though; some inexplicable creatures are defined as beasts.
What strikes me as the big issue with wildshaping? The time limit. As long as the only purpose of turning into a beast is biting people, it doesn't really make a difference but I can picture quite a few non-combat applications which are absolutely infeasible if you can only stay wildshaped for a couple of hours. For example:
But we don't want Druids to be disproportionate powerful, and we want them to become more versatile as they advance, and before they hit level 20 when their time is probably mostly occupied by administration and teaching.
Now I've been brooding on this, and I have a number of ideas most of which are probably too radical. I don't like the Unearthed Arcanna changes, they also seem to be based on the weapon basis for wild shape. Not that I'm against biting people, but I don't think the whole system of mechanics should rotate around it.
So here's some fairly non-radical suggestions, which don't seem to me to seriously damage game balance..
Yeah. Inconsistent is right. I think the general definition of beasts is okay, and most of the beasts in the Basic Rules, Player's Handbook, or Monster Manual are appropriately categorized. I would say that the Flying Snake, Stirge are exceptions; they should both probably be monstrosities. But generally we're good.
However there are some adventures and supplements that get things really wrong. Acquisitions Incorporated is a big offender with both the Enormous Tentacle, and Onyx. Neither of these things should be classified as Beasts, and the CR doesn't make much sense for either of them. I don't even think the Tentacle should be a creature.
Onyx details:
Onyx is a Huge, unkillable, cat, with a +7 to hit, 2d10 claw attack and a speed of 400 ft; 200 ft climb. It is CR 0.
OK. Onyx might be a bad example. The stat block is from a rather weird encounter, at any rate. Still, classifying Onyx as a Monstrosity, even if only for this one encounter, might have been helpful and appropriate.
I don't think this points to a flaw with the Wildshape system, though. I just think WOTC needs to take more care assigning creature types in their publications.
An NPC tag would be nice. This tag would let every one know that whatever the creature is, it is unique and not suitable for spells or effects that conjure or reproduce certain kinds of creatures. Generally, I think named creatures should always be excluded from these types of spells and effects, but an NPC tag would also be helpful.
I disagree. The one change that needs to be added to Wildshape is that "beast beyond those listed in the Player Handbook may be available at DM discretion." Onyx is totally fine as a WS if you consider the context because he's just a regular cat, the statblock reflects that the PCs have been ultra-miniaturized for that encounter. What needs to end in the entire community is assuming anything published anywhere for any setting in any context is automatically available to players in every campaign and in every context.
Hey, wildshape DOESN'T LAST 1 HOUR: "You stay in that form for a number of hours equal to half your Druid level or..."
That's only true up to level 3, both in 2014 and in AU. And it makes sense, as much as you want wildshape it's exhausting, like when you use magic without being cantrips, or use the divine channel. As you level up you get more used to it and can last longer. (8 hours on level 16-17, which lasts a long rest, without being elf they rest in 4 hours.)
I love druids, but in general I don't agree with you and your proposals.
Why would being an animal be more exhausting for a Druid than it would be for an animal born that way? Changing form, in either direction, that should require effort. But I see no reason why a Druid might not, for example, spurn the bed he was expecting to sleep in and curl up as a cat. (The human body seems especially ill-designed for sleeping in.). If you move as an animal, why not be able to rest as one? eat and drink as one? Excrete as one? Why not have a druid that's turned into an animal with his last magical strength have to rest and recover before he can turn back into a person?
If you really change into an animal then that body is as real and physical as the one your were born in, though the mind is inevitably something of a hybrid. There's no reason I know why it would take an effort to hold it's form. At least beyond the basal metabolism that keeps us ticking over in real life.