Does Planar Wild Shape's smite ability persist after changing forms?


Rules Questions


This came up in our Kingmaker game the other night and wanted to get clarification. Our druid has the Planar Wild Shape feat, which reads like this:

Planar Wild Shape:

You can infuse your wild shape with planar strength.

Prerequisites: Wild shape class feature, Knowledge (planes) 5 ranks.
Benefit: When you use wild shape to take the form of an animal, you can expend an additional daily use of your wild shape class feature to add the celestial template or fiendish template to your animal form. (Good druids must use the celestial template, while evil druids must use the fiendish template.) If your form has the celestial template and you score a critical threat against an evil creature while using your form's natural weapons, you gain a +2 bonus on the attack roll to confirm the critical hit. The same bonus applies if your form has the fiendish template and you score a critical threat against a good creature.

The celestial template gained from this ability gives the following:

Smite Evil:
1/day as a swift action (adds Cha bonus to attack rolls and damage bonus equal to HD against evil foes; smite persists until target is dead or the celestial creature rests).

During a fight against assassins, our druid wild-shaped into a Celestial Dire Tiger and declared Smite against their leader. While the leader was still alive, the druid shifted back into humanoid form and attacked him again. After shifting back, does the Smite persist (since it says until the target is dead, etc.) or is it an ability that is only inclusive to being Celestial that disappears once that form is gone? We ruled the former, but I'd like other thoughts on it since its bound to come up again.

So, if you have a celestial/fiendish template, smite something, then change back, does the smite ability persist?


Bump.
Also, is this really that hard to form a definitive opinion on?

Shadow Lodge

Yes, it is. There was quite some confusion over whether spells end when the target is no longer a valid target. It's a similar issue.

I'd lean towards the smite sticking, myself, but I wouldn't bet on it.


Thanks for the response!

The Exchange Owner - D20 Hobbies

Ask your GM.

In my game it would continue to be smitten.

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