Animal Lord template wild shape

[Nyaa]

SEO-friendly title because the most relevant google result is this.

Animal Lord.
Change Shape.

I have two questions.
1) Is whole Change Shape, including "animal lord's body instantaneously changes as appropriate", a polymorph effect?
2) Can Animal Lord wildshape at all? If so, would he keep his regular ability scores from that template (maximum between base creature and base animal, +4), and apply wildshape bonuses as normal?

[Nyaa]

Bump?

[Byakko]

1) I believe you've answered your own question. Change Shape from Universal Monster Rules: "This ability functions as a polymorph spell, the type of which is listed in the creature’s description".

2) As the template is applied to a humanoid, it'd be reasonable to take that form as its natural unaltered form. Any use of the animal's qualities would constitute use of Change Shape, and thus conflict with being Wild Shaped.
However, as the ability score modifications are a constant and permanent change, I'd be inclined to say it's not the Animal Lord using a feature of the animal via its Change Shape, and thus, the new scores would carry over while Wild Shaped. It's all kind of murky though.

[zerion69]

Truly a very good question... I'm also looking for an answer to !

Thematically, animal lord RP clearly matches with "nature" classes such as druid, ranger, barbarian ... And with druid comes the great wildshape ability.

If it stacks, that would get physical stats +4 to +10 over original form stats.

If it doesn't, stats would go standard as not having this template.

Question is quite hard to answer. Technically, I'd say Animal Lord's Change Shape and Druid's Wildshape are polymorph effects and can't stack (ie. in effect at the same time)...

... BUT abilites update from template applies to Animal Lord original AND special animal forms so I'd say, if you wildshape from your original form to an animal form, you would stack template and wildshape bonuses... to very high stats.

Am I reading this wrong ?