Planar Wild Shape - aint it too OP?


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion


either i missread that feat, or i dont understand how on earth they alloed it in ?
with 1 feat you gain DR, SR, resistance, smite ?!?!!?

Planar Wild Shape
You can infuse your wild shape with planar strength.

Prerequisites: Wild shape class feature, Knowledge (planes) 5 ranks.

Benefit: When you use wild shape to take the form of an animal, you can expend an additional daily use of your wild shape class feature to add the celestial template or fiendish template to your animal form. (Good druids must use the celestial template, while evil druids must use the fiendish template.) If your form has the celestial template and you score a critical threat against an evil creature while using your form's natural weapons, you gain a +2 bonus on the attack roll to confirm the critical hit. The same bonus applies if your form has the fiendish template and you score a critical threat against a good creature.


Yes, you get all that. You pay for it with an additional use of wildshape though.

At level 10 you get 4 wildshapes for 10 hours each, so with this it's 2 wildshapes and 20 hour total, which is admitably enough to spend the entire day in it.

Before that it's not the case. You give up versitability too, as you can't just switch when needed, you're more or less commited to a form, or risk standing there without wildshape (again that gets mitigated somewhat at higher levels)

Shaman druids get it all 2 levels earlier.

So yes, it's quite powerful. If it's overpowered? I dunno. DR 5 is not really that much.
SR can backfire too. It applies to your own spells and those of allies. You can lower it, but that's a standard action to do. So wizard casts haste and you miss it. You try to heal yourself and doesn't work.


Actually,

Quatar wrote:
You try to heal yourself and doesn't work.

is not the case. SR applies to spells from soures other than yourself.


It is not OP. Now if you had unlimited smite from one use of it then sure, but you can only smite once per use of the feat. SR not a good thing IMHO, and more of a handicap.


It is not OP.


Also, remember that the smite in question is not a paladin's smite, but a simple +CHA to attack and +HD to damage.

There's no double damage against certain targets, there's no AC bonus, and there's no overcoming DR automatically.

I think this feat is pretty well balanced. It's certainly not overpowered.


It is much, much more powerful than your average feat and is a boon to any wildshaper as it has great other benefits and frees up the necessary holy amulet of mighty fists.


It's a good feat, certainly, but I don't see what a holy amulet of mighty fists has to do with it. If you need to overcome DR/good, this feat doesn't help you at all (in PF, celestial creatures don't become good).


Ok, after conflating the rules for DR Magic with DR alignment, I demote this feat to just one single "much" more powerful.


its not DR 5.... its level dependent ...
and getting DR 5-10 fro te whole day ? no feat in the game get you that.
and you forgot resistances.
smite - is just icing

and as for less forms, yes you are right, but in a duangen you normally are in 1 from any how (esepcially if you are wearing a barding...)

i think this feat is alot more than any other in the game.


Yes its good we all agree on that.

It might be better than most other feats too. But the question was is it overpowered. And I think it isn't.

SR: Most dangerous enemies you fight have higher HD than the party, so they'll most likely break through the puny SR most of the time, while your own cleric and wizard have a hard time affecting you with theirs.

Smite is 1/day, not 1/per wildshape or so. Sure it's ok. But Druid most likely doesn't have very good Charisma to start with, so its just a damage bonus. Which is great, I admit, but wildshape druids will already be putting out massive damage anyway, and they still have to hit first.

Sczarni

Eh its a must take feat, but with the limited feats that druids get you will still be missing something else. Its good, but I have no problem with it.


Okay the question I am hoping to find is how to calculate the SR and DR as they are based on CR and I can't find out how that is connected to Character level.


How much Spell Resistance would said druid receive, since it's based on Challenge Rating? (Say, Druid 10)


It's not based on CR. It's based on HD. For most PCs, HD = class levels.

A Druid of level 1-4 would get Resist 5 and no DR.
A Druid of level 5-10 would get Resist 10 and DR 5.
A Druid of level 11+ would get Resist 15 and DR 10.


Where in the RAW that HD = CR for PC's?
Need to be able to show my DM.
I know that HD equals class levels for standard race PC's BUT the celestial and fiendish templates uses CR not HD.
I am not trying to be difficult just looking for RAW to back up my point.


I had no interest at all in it for my druid, it does nothing for elemental forms, and elemental forms are awesome!

Shadow Lodge

Nickego wrote:

Where in the RAW that HD = CR for PC's?

Need to be able to show my DM.
I know that HD equals class levels for standard race PC's BUT the celestial and fiendish templates uses CR not HD.
I am not trying to be difficult just looking for RAW to back up my point.
The RAW is found in the game mastering section of the CRB.
PRD wrote:
A creature that possesses class levels, but does not have any racial Hit Dice, is factored in as a creature with a CR equal to its class levels –1.

Here is the link.

Sorry that it's not favorable to you. :(


Nickego wrote:

Where in the RAW that HD = CR for PC's?

Need to be able to show my DM.
I know that HD equals class levels for standard race PC's BUT the celestial and fiendish templates uses CR not HD.
I am not trying to be difficult just looking for RAW to back up my point.

Nickego: CR is completely irrelevant to the two templates in question.

Both the Celestial template and the Fiendish template use HD to determine their abilities. The tables for resistance and DR specifically say "Hit Dice".

Since some occasionally are confused by this: Be aware that Celestial and Fiendish are NOT the same thing as Half-Celestial and Half-Fiend. See here for the correct templates.


Are wrote:
Nickego wrote:

Where in the RAW that HD = CR for PC's?

Need to be able to show my DM.
I know that HD equals class levels for standard race PC's BUT the celestial and fiendish templates uses CR not HD.
I am not trying to be difficult just looking for RAW to back up my point.

Nickego: CR is completely irrelevant to the two templates in question.

Both the Celestial template and the Fiendish template use HD to determine their abilities. The tables for resistance and DR specifically say "Hit Dice".

Since some occasionally are confused by this: Be aware that Celestial and Fiendish are NOT the same thing as Half-Celestial and Half-Fiend. See here for the correct templates.

However, SR from the celestial/fiendish template is based on CR. From the link above it is class levels -1 +5 so SR is class levels + 4.


That's true; I completely missed the SR portion. That does complicate matters.


The CR of a PC is equal to its class levels (not class level -1) assuming standard PC WBL. NPCs with class levels have CRs equal to class level -1 because they have less WBL (unless they have PC wealth in which case they are CR = class level).


Dosgamer wrote:
The CR of a PC is equal to its class levels (not class level -1) assuming standard PC WBL. NPCs with class levels have CRs equal to class level -1 because they have less WBL (unless they have PC wealth in which case they are CR = class level).

I appreciate the replies.

But there are two different perspectives.
Gignere says class level -1 +5 (net +4)
Dosgamer says CR = CL (unmodified)

I just need to be able to show in the RAW and I haven't been able to find the info you guys used to get these answers.

links would be great or page numbers and book even better.

Sorry if I am being a pain but again my DM likes to read the text to get the context as well as the RAW.

Thanks

Scarab Sages

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From the SRD. NPCs have a CR of level -1 because of their wealth. An NPC with PC equivalent wealth has a CR equal to their class levels. Therefore a PC has a CR equal to class level.

Spoiler:

paizo wrote:
Adding NPCs: Creatures whose Hit Dice are solely a factor of their class levels and not a feature of their race, such as all of the PC races detailed in Races, are factored into combats a little differently than normal monsters or monsters with class levels. A creature that possesses class levels, but does not have any racial Hit Dice, is factored in as a creature with a CR equal to its class levels –1. A creature that only possesses non-player class levels (such as a warrior or adept) is factored in as a creature with a CR equal to its class levels –2. If this reduction would reduce a creature's CR to below 1, its CR drops one step on the following progression for each step below 1 this reduction would make: 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/6, 1/8.
paizo wrote:
NPC Gear Adjustments: You can significantly increase or decrease the power level of an NPC with class levels by adjusting the NPC's gear. The combined value of an NPC's gear is given in Creating NPCs on Table: NPC Gear. A classed NPC encountered with no gear should have his CR reduced by 1 (provided that loss of gear actually hampers the NPC), while a classed NPC that instead has gear equivalent to that of a PC (as listed on Table: Character Wealth by Level) has a CR of 1 higher than his actual CR. Be careful awarding NPCs this extra gear, though—especially at high levels, where you can blow out your entire adventure's treasure budget in one fell swoop!


Nickego wrote:
Dosgamer wrote:
The CR of a PC is equal to its class levels (not class level -1) assuming standard PC WBL. NPCs with class levels have CRs equal to class level -1 because they have less WBL (unless they have PC wealth in which case they are CR = class level).

I appreciate the replies.

But there are two different perspectives.
Gignere says class level -1 +5 (net +4)
Dosgamer says CR = CL (unmodified)

I just need to be able to show in the RAW and I haven't been able to find the info you guys used to get these answers.

links would be great or page numbers and book even better.

Sorry if I am being a pain but again my DM likes to read the text to get the context as well as the RAW.

Thanks

I know this is several years too late, but I have a druid in a pathfinder game and have been going through the same questions.

I want to point out that you missed a rather significant line in the celestial template that applies to SR...

Celestial Creature
Celestial creatures dwell in the higher planes, but can be summoned using spells such as summon monster and planar ally.

A celestial creature's CR increases by +1 only if the base creature has 5 or more HD.

A celestial creature's quick and rebuild rules are the same.
Rebuild Rules

SR The creature gains spell resistance equal to its new CR +5

This means that either your new CR = Class Level +1 (dosgamer's answer) or your CR = Class Level -1 for not having racial HD +1 for having at least 5HD (Gignere's answer with corrected CR)

See Celestial Creature for full text

I have learned it is very important to read the entire template and not just the part under rebuild rules...


When you wild shape with the Planar Wild shape feat, do you get another use of smite or are you only allowed one per day? As the feat states: you apply the template when you wild shape. But since I am the same creature does the smite reset if I used it since my last rest?

Dark Archive

Saecien: feats with a limited number of uses per day (such as stunning fist) are limited by their use per day even if you get them multiple times (such as a Brawler's martial flexibility), so I'd say the same applies here. You get a single smite per day, no matter how many times you can assume the shape of the creature that gets it.

So, you get SR equal to your HD+6 (base CR=HD, template increases CR by 1, SR is 5 higher than this).
You get a single smite per day no matter how many times you wildshape.
You get starting DR of 5

You can also get a druid's vestment to increase your number of wildshapes per day by 1, which allows you to use planar wildshape at level 6 (6 hours planar, 6 hours normal as a backup). 6 hours should be enough for most adventuring days. Note though, you can't take it until you have the wildshape class feature, just like natural spell, which should be a higher priority for you.

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