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I was reading through the Wild Speech feat, I noticed something:
[...]
When using wild shape to take the form of an animal, you may use speak with animals to communicate with animals of your assumed form. This is a spell-like ability with a caster level equal to your druid level, and you may use it for a number of minutes per day equal to your druid level. These minutes do not have to be consecutive, but must be used in one-minute increments.
Ok sounds cool... except that the vanilla wildshape already allows this:
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.
No timelimit on it, and "general grouping" is most likely more than "animals of your assumed form".
What does that mean, when I take Wild Speech, I suddenly can't talk as well with animals anymore as before?
On a related matter, do you think Wild Speech is worth a feat, or would you say you can get along quite well without it and somehow use sign language or something? Use the paw to write letters in the sand. Morse code tapping. Etc. Eventually I guess I'll have enough Wildshape uses/day that I can just pop out of Wildshape and talk with them if necessary and then go back. In combat all of that might be a problem of course.
(I guess it somehow depends on how meta-gamey the group is and how much OOC talk they let slide, but let's assume "a bit, but not too much")
I think you're reading too much into the RAW. Wild Speech basically allows you to become Aslan, when you wild shape into a lion, etc., etc.
As for usefulness, I didn't take it, and haven't seen much need for it. I'm either in elemental form, and do the "gutteral" elemental speech thing (fun at the table), or I'm RPing Scooby Doo. Fun times.
You basically added vocal cords as a feat, thus losing your standard animal speaking parts. I believe it was intended that you lose the ability to talk to other animals as a matter of course.
I think you're reading too much into the RAW. Wild Speech basically allows you to become Aslan, when you wild shape into a lion, etc., etc.
I know that. That's the first part of the Wild Speech feat. The quoted text in the first post is not the entire feat, it's just the second half.
Why is that included, when Wildshape itself can do it already, but does not say "You lose the ability to normally talk with animals of your assumed form" too?
I think they missed the fact that wildshape already grants that ability.
Its very useful for a druid scouting ahead if the DM doesn't like charades or characters playing lassie.
Because its 3rd party and the editing could have been better is my guess.
At least my spreadsheet says its 3rd party.
Unless Ultimate Magic is 3rd party suddenly, then no, it's not. :)
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Wow. RAW seems to indicate that it DOES replace the normal communicate with animals granted by Wildshape. That's pretty lame since Wild Speech is a pretty weak Feat to begin with. Natural Spell already allows full casting after all and I've never seen a DM have a problem with a shifted druid communicating by scratching messages or whatnot.
I play a druid/barbarian shifter build and I'll admit, I took Wild Speech purely for roleplaying purposes. I just got tired of trying to play that my character couldn't talk. Even though the DM was VERY lenient on allowing my "non-verbal" communication, it was just stretching my believability nearly to the "Lassie" levels. Heh.
Unless Ultimate Magic is 3rd party suddenly, then no, it's not. :)
Doh!
See, I started to say that it was 3rd party, and let that be it, but then I thought "you know, the guy who did the spreadsheet might have messed up."
Then again, there's always the "I could have misread," but I tend to not pay attention to such possibilities. :)