captainkubrik's page

I think this is the best idea so far of working with the current PRPG set up I've seen so far, but what's wrong with shape-changing being a "combat spell"? I know when I play druids, I love bear and dire bear, not only because turning into a bear is cool flavor-wise but because they are good tanks and can grapple, etc. It all comes back to the piddly amount of stat increase you get. I always thought wild-shape was so strong (not factoring in natural spell) was to balance not being able to cast spells and not having a full BAB, and not being able to use your enchanted armor and weapons (assuming you weren't turning into an ape or dire ape ;-) ).

But again, this is a really good idea imo, based on what they've given us.

Thanks. Polymorph, and the rest of this family of spells, suffers from the razor's edge when it comes to balance. I'm not even going to pretend that this short list I've come up with is "balanced" but what it does try to illustrate is a trade-off between simplicity, complexity, theme, and balance between the classes. The current version of the Beast Form, especially in regards to Druids, just seems inadequate and unrepresentative of what could be done mechanically to support the theme of the power.

And while we're talking about half-orcs, why cleric and not druid? It seems to me that they're second favored class would be druid as orcs are more tribal, shamanistic, and otherwise more nature aspected as opposed to being structured by a "church."

Just to throw something out there, why couldn't they allow the caster access to a point pool and assign different benefits of that form a point value?

For argument's sake (and let's just take Beast Shape 1), let's give the caster a point pool of one per two caster levels (once more, just for argument's sake). So initially the 5th level caster would have 2 points to work with.

The caster would have some movement-style buffs they could apply, each worth 1 point:

• 30' burrowing
• 30' swimming
• 30' flying
• +30 land speed

The caster could have some physical attribute buffs they could apply:

• Every +2 to a physical attribute would be worth 1 point.
• Every +2 in AC would be worth 1 point.

The caster could have extraordinary abilities:

• Multiattack is worth 1 point.
• 25' cone breath weapon that does level/2 d6 damage is 3 points
• Natural attack of 1d6+1/level is 1 point

So this caster takes a medium-sized bear form: Spends 1 points on giving himself +2 to strength and 1 point on Natural Attack.

Beast form essentially becomes a toolbox to build the form that I would like to take. What if a 6th level caster wanted to be an eagle! So that's 1 point on 30' flying, 1 point on Natural attack, and 1 point on +2 Dex. Apply the small size before or after this. This way, the mechanics of the spell will support the conceptual form to which the caster is changing.

The benefits of this approach:

• No need to reference the MM
• You can prep common forms you'd like to take beforehand
• There's a way of spontaneously choosing a form without too much overhead
• Additional abilities could be assigned a point value by a DM as needed or disallowed