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Greetings!
I'm currently a lvl 5 druid in our campaign and I have the role of healer. Most of my healing has been done with wands of cure [X] wounds.
I do have a conundrum: how can I use wands in wild shape? It seems that using wands to heal inadvertently restricts me to my normal form.
Is there a way around this within the confines of the Paizo rules or do I have to consider making a new feat with my GM (his suggestion).
Cheers!
Grab wild speech and try to use forms with fingers.
There's also the bit about "all of your gear melds into your new form."
By RAW, you'd have to pop out of wild shape, in order to use a wand, even if you did have wild speech.
Personally, if you had wild speech, to be able to speak the wand's activation word(s), I'd allow it.
If your dm is that much a ruleminder drop wand, change into bear, pick up wand, cast spell, give dm odd look.
If your dm is that much a ruleminder drop wand, change into bear, pick up wand, cast spell, give dm odd look.
Well, bears don't actually have fingers, they have paws. You'd do better as a raccoon, but besides being picky about the animal form you chose, this is the time-honored way to avoid the "melds into form" rule for wildshaping.
They look like they could pick something up with their claws using both paws. Ehh. I don't know. Slight of paw check?
They look like they could pick something up with their claws using both paws. Ehh. I don't know. Slight of paw check?
Druids in bear form running around with a cure light wounds wand in battle would seem to me to be a pretty poor action economy management approach. But then again I don't like healing at all during combat, much less using a d8+1 magic device that heals an average of 5.5 hit points per round.
Most encounters boil down to doing more damage to the other party than they do to you, I'd think a druid wild shaped into a bear should be able to dish out more than 5.5 damage per round, as well as absorbing some of the damage the party is taking so in the end a bear attacking the enemy is probably a better tactical approach than a bear using a CLW wand. Typically I would do the healing after the fight is over. If there is an emergency heal needed, your natural CLW would heal an average of 9.5 damage, which is more likely to keep a party member from dying anyway.
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Well for the benefit of future druids with this problem, I determined wild speech solves the problem but not in the way I thought it would. Wild Speech allows for verbal components of spells but Natural Spell also allows verbal and somatic components. I couldn't see the advantage.
The main barrier to me using a wand while in wildshape (for the record mostly in eagle form these days) seemed to be using the item. I was wondering, can a shapeshifted animal actually initiate the cast from the wand. Well it turns out Wild Speech does solve this.
From wild speech: "...This allows you to ....and activate spell completion and spell trigger items".
That was the big one. So now, can I actually manipulate the wand properly to use it? It seems I found the answer in the most no-brainer spot, the core rulebook.
From wands: "Wands use the spell trigger activation method..." and "To activate a wand, a character must hold it in hand (or whatever passes for a hand, for nonhumanoid creatures) and point it in the general direction of the target or area. A wand may be used while grappling or while swallowed whole."
In conclusion, I have to wait until level 6 for the feat. I can then grip it in any fashion, point it in the general direction and use it with wildspeech. Should I be unable to grip it, I can just swallow the thing whole once in a capable form. LOL.
Jak is right as well, I have to drop it before shifting to avoid the meld. That portion, however, could be subject to interpretation (to drop or not to drop).
It is important to note this ruleminding was not DM initiated, I, as a PC, don't like going around the core ruleset if there is a way to do it within them.
Thanks all!
Huh. You know, i thought there was a requirement to speak with a wand, but there isn't.
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Activation: Wands use the spell trigger activation method, so casting a spell from a wand is usually a standard action that doesn't provoke attacks of opportunity. (If the spell being cast has a longer casting time than 1 action, however, it takes that long to cast the spell from a wand.) To activate a wand, a character must hold it in hand (or whatever passes for a hand, for nonhumanoid creatures) and point it in the general direction of the target or area. A wand may be used while grappling or while swallowed whole.
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A bear can certainly hold a stick well enough to point in the general direction of something. Can anyone find something that requires a word to be spoken to use a wand?
Using a wand when swallowed whole doesn't mean you can swallow the wand and use it. It means if you have it in your hand when YOU are swallowed whole, then you can use it inside the gut of the swallowing creature.
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Using a wand when swallowed whole doesn't mean you can swallow the wand and use it. It means if you have it in your hand when YOU are swallowed whole, then you can use it inside the gut of the swallowing creature.
Bwahaha! Well, I dare say that the grammar of that sentence is misleading. "A wand may be used while grappling or while swallowed whole." Once could reasonably interpret that sentence as: a wand that has been swallowed whole may be used; they don't mention "while the PC has been swallowed whole". They do, however, imply a PC with the verb grappling. I don't see that as far fetched. Still, nice catch. I will hold it with my beastly nose-hairs if I have to.
Actually, a Polymorphic Pouch solves a lot of the 'drop the item before you Wild Shape' problem. It is a bag of holding that stays un-merged when you polymorph.
Spell Trigger: Spell trigger activation is similar to spell completion, but it's even simpler. No gestures or spell finishing is needed, just a special knowledge of spellcasting that an appropriate character would know, and a single word that must be spoken.
So, yes you need to speak.
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You can use the spell weapon wand. Unfortunately, it is not a druid spell but it is a level 1 bard, cleric, inquisitor, or magus spell. The spell puts a wand into a weapon and you can use it or the weapon. When in wild shape form a paw/claw is a weapon. So you would just need to add one level of the above classes to get one minute of the spell. You could also put another wand in the other paw/claw and depending on the class, say magus, you can then do arcane spells and have a magic missle wand. If you want to put the wand in before wild shaping or if you GM says you paws/claws are not weapons, add a level of monk. The level would give you unarmed strike, your hands are weapons, +1d6 dmg while unarmed even with claws, and (if you are wearing no armor) you add your wisdom bonus to you AC and CMD even against touch attacks or flat-footed but not when immobilized or helpless. With the feat weapon finesse, you can use dex mod instead of str mod on attack rolls with light weapons (which hands/claws are).
One trick is to wildshape as a Dire Ape (level 6 iirc), a good combat form (10' reach is the real selling point) and use wands when needed with wild speech. I would argue that the Dire Ape form would also allow you to use a longspear, allowing you to threaten opponents 15' away!