nebosuke's page

Irrelevant. Even if you disagree with the FAQ's clarification of the exact point you raise, which would be fair, all that would mean is that a monk would have to use a monk weapon for the off-hand twf attacks rather than an unarmed strike.

Oh, and...2WF and FoB do not stack. A monk can execute one feat or the other but not both in the same Full Attack.

They do, at least in 3.5 RAW, and this is explicitly clarified on the wizards site, though I forget if it is in the FAQ or a sage article, etc.

Edit:
Clarification is in the faq.

The main issue with the changes is that the ability types gained are heavily weighted towards the wizard/sorceror spell as opposed to wild shape for Druids.

While you are correct in that 3.5 polymorph is basically a superset of 3.5 wildshape, and the analogous spells are the same in that respect in R2, the changes have made allowable creature type to be vastly more important in R2.

Since the druid abilities have a creature type selection that is not only very limited, but limited to the weakest type with respect to the changes, the changes have negatively impacted the druid to a great degree, while being a wash for arcane casters because they gain as much as they lose--in some cases they even enjoy a significant boost.

Here is what I mean.

In 3.5, polymorph (and wild shape) gives you the natural armor, physical stats, and extraordinary special attacks of the target form.

In all of these categories, it is fairly easy to find animals that are competitive with other creature of the same hit die, regardless of type. Dire lions are about on par with any 8HD creature, stat-wise, etc., and pack a pretty mean punch with pounce/rake.

In R2, however, you only gain fixed stat adjustments, and then some of a few special abilities. Here is where the problem lies. All of the best special abilities that can be gained by the R2 spells aren't found in plants or animals, but abound in demons, dragons, magical beasts, etc., which are only available to wizards and sorcerers (or, in the case of demons, will be available when the spell chain is written up).

In other words, the changes didn't so much balance shape changing/polymorph as a whole, but radically nerfed its value with respect to certain creature types only. Wizards and sorcerers will just pick better types.

It is much less of an issue given the changes to wild shape--especially in light of the significant increase in power of the other classes (esp. wizard, which is more powerful than the druid in 3.5 to begin with).

Edit: I don't know if you saw it in my post, but I posted the +1 metamagic suggestion on the WotC forums quite a while ago in a thread debating wild shape vs. shapechange from PH2

Do I have the wolf's Abilitiy Scores?

No.

Do I have the Wolf's save bonuses?

No.

Do I have the Wolf's Hit Points?

No.

"your"... does that mean MY or the WOLF'S?

No. It is worded the way it is because not all casters will be humanoids that lack an existing natural armor bonus.

Is this correct?

Yes.

Having thought it over a bit more, I see several mechanical problems with the R2 version of polymorph.

Against this criteria, both systems (3.5 and release 2) worked just fine, but with the 3.5 system, the urging to find a better choice was really strong. The second is to pick the form that is the most powerful. With the 3.5 version, this meant flipping through a horde of books to find the best form possible. With this version, due to the limits of what you can gain, it is quite a bit simpler, and less subjective to find a good form. Its just easier.

Unfortunately, the stated goal of minimizing dumpster diving has not been achieved, and instead has simply shifted the emphasis. I.e., instead of hunting for monsters with killer stats, NA, pounce, etc., players will now hunt for things with interesting breath or poison effects.

E.g., from core alone, the gorgon (60' cone breath weapon that turns anything to stone permanently with mega DCs (wiz 11 can have DC 26 on this easily), or the spider eater (poison secondary damage paralysis for 1d8+5 weeks, also with ridiculous DCs).

Without the HD limitation (though itself not a good mechanic), players will hunt for forms with the greatest number of natural attacks, or attacks with ridiculous base damage for their size. I believe I saw someone mention the 3-headed Sirrush as a prime example of this.

Also, while I can understand the reasoning behind the decision to break the spells into chains to avoid having a single spell be practically a chapter unto itself, I think that this, combined with the current approach to determining effects, is mistaken for 2 reasons in particular.

Firstly, this, probably unintentionally, serves to widen the power gap between wizards and sorcerors. A sorceror either needs to devote 1/5 of his spells known (almost half his level 3+ spell known) to have the full beast shape chain by level 12. Or he can simply wait it out and only get the final spell in a chain to avoid wasting too many spells known--but then gains the abilities much later, and does not have the option of using a lower level spell slot if he wants only a subset of the abilities.

Considering that polymorph has already been broken into 3 chains, with potential for more to cover creature types not addressed by the R2 spells, this quickly becomes extremely limiting to sorcerors while having negligible consequences for a wizard.

Secondly, while the text in any given spell entry itself may be limited by this approach, using monster entries to determine the spell effects in any capacity effectively includes every monster entry by proxy as far as a player is concerned, making the benefits of shorter spell text largely an illusion. Even if a monster does not qualify for use with a spell, a new player who doesn't have creature types memorized will still have to look at the entry to know that.

The only approach that I've seen that has any hope of definitively addressing the problems would be option #3 suggested a bit back by Hogarth. Yes, it has flavor issues, but flavor issues are, at least in my opinion, much more easily managed than inherently problematic mechanical issues and the unintentional consequences that result from trying to manage around them.

While the menagerie concept is cool and consistent with druid fluff, it takes an inordinate amount of time to resolve combat involving that many participants. Also, in such a case, the druid's player would be making the vast majority of decisions that affect the outcome of combat.

With your example of 12 creatures, the druid's player will be making about 80% of a 4-member party's actions in combat and drastically reducing the amount of time available to other players. This wouldn't be at all fun for anyone but the Druid.

A variant like that is only really suitable for a solo campaign.

Also, at higher levels, if you really, really want to go for that Disney effect, you can easily raise a very formidable army of forest friends (who even actually speak!) with repeated castings of awaken. Just imagine, with awaken, you can have bad joke scenes like this:

*A druid comes across a farmer plowing a field with his draft horse*

Druid: Howdy farmer. I've always wondered what animals think of farms. Mind if I ask your horse?
Farmer: Go ahead, but everybody knows horses can't talk.
Druid: *casts awaken on the horse* Howdy horse. What do you think of your lot in life?
Horse: Well, the work's hard, but I do get a share of the oats we plant.
Farmer: Amazing! You know, I always wondered what old Blue thinks about, lying over there in the shade
Druid: *cast awaken on the old hound*
Druid: Hi old Blue, how's it going?
Old Blue: Well, I tracked down a hog yesterday, so I'm lookin' forward to some of the bones.
Farmer: Wow! You sure are somethin' else Mr. Druid!
Druid: Since I'm here, you want to ask any of your other animals, like the sheep over there?
Farmer: No! The sheep lies!!!

It's not so much the fact that they're weaker as it is that the other classes have gotten much stronger.

E.g., wizards and sorcerers now effectively have wild shape through the X shape spells, but that is a lot better, as they are not limited by familiarity.

Druids can access one of several domains (which generally have more useful domain powers now), but they have to give up the animal companion to do so, making it a wash.

Wild shape used to be leveraged to give the Druid considerable punch in melee (even post-errata), but the new way wild shape works with stats means that a Druid won't be viable in physical combat unless you have high base strength, dex, and con (and your AC will be much lower due to lack of real natural armor).

Going off on a tangent, overall, the new X shape spells are a much better concept than 3.5 polymorph and friends, as they are useful utility spells with much better non-combat versatility.

On the other hand, making wild shape into X shape with longer duration but less choices probably means that the wild shape ability should weigh much, much less on the scales of class balance than it appears to.

In the end, the new Druid is far from unplayable, but it seems like it got to the proverbial buffet line after the other classes scarfed down all the good stuff.

Wild shape was changed radically, and is now effectively available to arcane casters (though a druid is additionally limited by familiarity), so the numerous usages per day are not an increase in power or emphasis.

E.g.:

- Shifting no longer heals you as per rest
- You no longer gain the stats of the animal being shifted to

A few additional abilities are available at higher levels (e.g., breath weapons, senses), though they are gained at the point by which magic items or spells that duplicate (or better) those abilities are available.

Druids also have slightly less spells/day beginning at level 7.

The way the 'beast shape' spells work with respect to stats leaves the Druid with 3.5 monk-like MAD, and basically greatly reduces its effectiveness in combat.

Barring any drastic improvements to the spell list, druids are the only class to end up clearly less powerful overall than the 3.5 version, leaving them somewhere towards the lower end of the pack rather than being the D in CoDzilla.