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Besides increasing the character’s Wisdom score, is there any way to increase the DC of Wild Shape special abilities? I assume Spell Focus (Transmutation) would not work because Wild Shape isn’t a spell – How about Ability Focus (Wild Shape)? What about Ability Focus (Trample) or (Poison)?
Is Wild Shape meant to top out around 10-12th level?
Thanks
Besides increasing the character’s Wisdom score, is there any way to increase the DC of Wild Shape special abilities? I assume Spell Focus (Transmutation) would not work because Wild Shape isn’t a spell – How about Ability Focus (Wild Shape)? What about Ability Focus (Trample) or (Poison)?
A lot of this sounds like it's up to your DM and may not be legal. I know that in PF society you can't take ability focus unless your archetype/whatever specifically allows it.
Is Wild Shape meant to top out around 10-12th level?
Basically, yes. It makes wildshape druids incredibly awesome for adventure paths, since most cap out between 14 and 16. It also means that a wild shape druid just sort of flounders after 12+ since they never really get any better, and higher level spells don't do much to increase their combat ability. It's a rough life, but they shine for a long time.
You could instead go for one of the archetypes that stretches out Wildshape or adds new options. I'm a big fan of the Mountain druid, personally. It applies a -2 penalty to wild shape which sucks, but at 12th and 16th you gain access to Giant Shape I and II- and you can do some tricky stuff with those.
For example, at 16th level if you started with a 16 in STR and put all your level-up bumps into it, as well as have a +6 STR item (not unusual) you can do some serious skirmish damage in giant form. Using a normal quarterstaff enchanted with a quickened Shillelagh (5th level), you can use improved vital strike and power attack to deliver a solid 12d6+32 (74 average) damage as a standard action- with all your gear and vocal abilities intact.
AFAIK increasing WIS is the only way to affect Abilities gained via Wild Shape.
(or increasing Caster Stat in case of Polymorph spells)
Which definitely is kind of wierd, since it flies in the face of the 'new PRPG Polymorph paradigm' where you want to focus on physical stats if you want a strong Polymorph/Wildshape form, but those don't affect the DCs of any abilities gained, even when those abilities are clearly purely physical in nature (e.g. STR-based DCs).
Re: Ability Focus, etc, since you don't have the ability all the time, I don't think you would qualify per RAW.
I think the dcs are still based on the same stats so a con based poisin dc would scale based on your con unless i missed something
The DC for any of these abilities equals your DC for the polymorph spell used to change you into that form.
Unfortunately the ability to use isn't set by wild shape in its text -- in general (please note not specific) spell like abilities default to charisma:
For creatures with spell-like abilities, a designated caster level defines how difficult it is to dispel their spell-like effects and to define any level-dependent variables (such as range and duration) the abilities might have. The creature’s caster level never affects which spell-like abilities the creature has; sometimes the given caster level is lower than the level a spellcasting character would need to cast the spell of the same name. If no caster level is specified, the caster level is equal to the creature’s Hit Dice. The saving throw (if any) against a spell-like ability is 10 + the level of the spell the ability resembles or duplicates + the creature’s Charisma modifier.
However Wild shape is a supernatural ability.
Unfortunately (again!) in none of the places that supernatural abilities are explained do we receive a default:
Here
Here
Here
Or even here under standard actions.
So what's this mean? We don't have anything that specifically ties the supernatural ability wild shape to a specific stat. We would if it was a spell like ability.
Personally I think there is a strong case for wisdom and for charisma both, however I'm not willing to argue either -- so ask your GM.
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Besides increasing the character’s Wisdom score, is there any way to increase the DC of Wild Shape special abilities? I assume Spell Focus (Transmutation) would not work because Wild Shape isn’t a spell – How about Ability Focus (Wild Shape)? What about Ability Focus (Trample) or (Poison)?A lot of this sounds like it's up to your DM and may not be legal. I know that in PF society you can't take ability focus unless your archetype/whatever specifically allows it.
Is Wild Shape meant to top out around 10-12th level?Basically, yes. It makes wildshape druids incredibly awesome for adventure paths, since most cap out between 14 and 16. It also means that a wild shape druid just sort of flounders after 12+ since they never really get any better, and higher level spells don't do much to increase their combat ability. It's a rough life, but they shine for a long time.
You could instead go for one of the archetypes that stretches out Wildshape or adds new options. I'm a big fan of the Mountain druid, personally. It applies a -2 penalty to wild shape which sucks, but at 12th and 16th you gain access to Giant Shape I and II- and you can do some tricky stuff with those.
For example, at 16th level if you started with a 16 in STR and put all your level-up bumps into it, as well as have a +6 STR item (not unusual) you can do some serious skirmish damage in giant form. Using a normal quarterstaff enchanted with a quickened Shillelagh (5th level), you can use improved vital strike and power attack to deliver a solid 12d6+32 (74 average) damage as a standard action- with all your gear and vocal abilities intact.
I kind of like the beaststrike club, strong jaw, and planer shape myself