When I use wild shape to change into lets say a huge animal, do I get just the bonuses/penalties listed on Beast Shape III? What about the additional bonuses/penalties from being Huge size eg CMD/CMB penalties, stealth penalties, Str bonuses etc?
As I understand it, you only get the bonuses and penalties listed in Beast Shape, as well as adjustements to CMB/CMD for the size of the creature, but no size bonuses or penalties to anything else, these are already factored into Beast Shape. If your druid is a wimpy human, he'll make a wimpy bear.
Dabbler's understanding of the way it works matches mine.
correct.
Please note that if you start from a size other than medium or small you must adjust to one of those two sizes and then apply the spell. This is covered in the polymorph section of the magic chapter.
lots of changes that found polymorph to be broken also went into the new mechanics of wild shape....
The point was to fix "broken" things...I am not sure wildshape was broken, but "those people" probably wanted consistency between polymorph and wild shape....
If by "those people" you mean the designers and developers then yes they did want consistency.
Wild shape was just as broken as any other polymorph effect for all of the same reasons the polymorphs were broken.
I thought that would be the case. Thanks guys, especially for your quick response!