How exactly do druid archetypes affect wildshape?

[bignumbers]

Hello everyone, I have never played a druid before in my pathfinder gaming career so I am a bit uncertain about just exactly what the archetypes do to wildshape when it says to use plus or minus your druid level for whatever the stipulation is. Does this merely affect the duration you can remain in the shape? Or does it mean that a level 6 serpent saurian could use beast shape 3 while taking a dinosaur form, and only beast shape 1 if anything else?

And Paizo... Why no shaman of elementals >:[

[Weirdo]

It affects available forms, not just duration.

[bignumbers]

I don't think I understand what you mean, does it mean that a level 6 serpent saurian could use beast shape 3 while taking a dinosaur form, and only beast shape 1 if anything else?

[bignumbers]

That should read level 6 saurian shaman...

[Bart Vervaet]

basiccally it boils down to this:

you only start getting wild shape at lvl 6.
If you change into your totem animal your effective druid lvl for wild shape is 8 (so beat shape 3, max 8 hours), if you change into anything else your effective lvl is 4 (so beat shape 1, max 4 hours). Only the number of times you can change per day I'm not sure of, but I assume you can change into your totem animal 3 times per day (as lvl8), anything else 1 time, but I think only 3 times per day total.

hope this helps

[Adamantine Dragon]

Work with your GM on this. The rules around wildshaping for druid shamans are among the most hotly debated rules on these boards.

A "generous" GM might allow you to start wildshaping at level 4 and only have the archetype effects start at level 6. Also, some GMs will allow you to use templates (so you can wildshape into a huge wolf, for example, so that druid shamans other than saurian shamans have that option).

Purely by the RAW Bart has a pretty good summary. As a GM I house rule druid shaman wildshape pretty generously so every druid doesn't end up a saurian shaman.