Druid Wild Shape question

[Asmo]

Core rule book says" The form chosen must be that of an animal with which the druid is familiar"
How is this handled ingame? How does the druid know what animals he or she is familiar with? A druid from the far north wants to Wild Shape into a monkey that she´s never seen?

Asmo

[Shar Tahl]

You can use a knowledge nature check, with a DC based on how common the animal is where the druid id from or has been.

[anthoncan]

Asmo wrote:

Core rule book says" The form chosen must be that of an animal with which the druid is familiar"

How is this handled ingame? How does the druid know what animals he or she is familiar with? A druid from the far north wants to Wild Shape into a monkey that she´s never seen?

Asmo

This is where your GM really comes into play. If you want to wild shape into an unfamiliar creature for it's abilities that is what is known as metagaming and the GM needs to handle that.All in all it should be a cooperative game choice . It is a great ability used correctly

[johnlocke90]

Here is what you do: Develop your character's backstory around being familiar with whatever animals you want to play as(IE, you were raised in a jungle, plains, etc). Alternately, you make your character really old(like 100) and say you spend the last 90 years of your life exploring the world and visiting every type of animal.

[Asmo]

What everybody is trying to say is that this isn´t covered in the rules, and is a dm call?

Asmo

[LazarX]

Asmo wrote:

What everybody is trying to say is that this isn´t covered in the rules, and is a dm call?

Asmo

For the most part, yes.

[Quatar]

Well there's the part with making a knowledge check. Setting that DC is part of the GM's job of course.
If the druids backstory incorperates this aspect already (aka the druid made it clear from the start she wants to shift into an ape) you might not even need that.

Did the player in question say "even though my druid never saw an ape, she wants to be one now"? In that case it's a bit problematic, as it seems clearly metagame motivated.

Otherwise there are lots of reasons how a druid could have seen one of them.
- been wandering the world
- seen one in a circus
- at the druid circle someone had an ape companion or the druids regularly wildshape into the exotic forms they know to teach each other

[thejeff]

Summon one, so you know what it's like.

More importantly, the druid and GM should talk before it comes up to figure out how it's going to be handled. There's no hard rule covering it and it doesn't really make a lot of difference, unless there's an expectation clash when it comes up.