Wildshape and speaking


Rules Questions

Liberty's Edge

Is there any way for a wildshaped druid to speak? Not sure if anything is going to be added in advanced players guide.

Dark Archive

Shar Tahl wrote:
Is there any way for a wildshaped druid to speak? Not sure if anything is going to be added in advanced players guide.

nothing official that i know of. altho if wildshaped into a parrot they may have an argument that they can do it


As far as I know they can only speak if the form they polymorph into can speak. So for most of the druid list that is a no, but I think elemental and treant would allow speach. Wizards could speak in dragon form, giant form, etc.


Wild Shape specifically states:

Quote:

A druid loses her ability to speak while in animal

form because she is limited to the sounds that a normal,
untrained animal can make, but she can communicate
normally with other animals of the same general
grouping as her new form. (The normal sound a wild
parrot makes is a squawk, so changing to this form does
not permit speech.)


Maybe some form of telepathy? Or using the gnome racial and spell, speak with animals. ;)


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

I think it would be cool if a druid had such a spell that would let them. I would make it min/level though. I don't like the flavor of druids spending all day in WS in the first place and this would just make it worse.


Elementals can talk, so I'd expect that druids wildshaped into elementals are able to talk too. Other than that you're out of luck unless you have access to some 3.5 or homebrew stuff. I wouldn't be surprised if the APG ends up having a feat or item for this though.

If you do have access to non-Pathfinder sources there's a speaking wildshape feat in 3.5. There was also an amulet in a 3.5 adventure which let you speak in wildshape for about 4,500gp. Some DMs also allow the Pearl of Speech to grant its speech ability even in wildshape. It is only 600gp and can be found in the Magic Item Compendium on page 118.

Liberty's Edge

We had this come up in my game. Obviously, Elementals have the ability to speak, but according the the Pathfinder Bestiary ... they only speak their native language.

If a druid wildshapes into an elemental ... is he limited to the elemental's native language? or because the form is capable of speech, does the druid then get to speak whatever languages he knows??

Scarab Sages

I'd say that, since the form is capable of speech as defined in the linguistics section, the form can use any languages that character knows.


IIRC, the first level of Master of Many Forms allow the wildshaper to speak.

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