Hi everyone, a few questions came up for me regarding wild shape:
Firstly I have some issues understanding how skill and saving throw proficiencies work
Your game statistics are replaced by the statistics of the beast, but you retain your alignment, personality, and Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma scores. You also retain all of your skill and saving throw proficiencies, in addition to gaining those of the creature. If the creature has the same proficiency as you and the bonus in its stat block is higher than yours, use the creature’s bonus instead of yours.
As far as I understand the attacks in my wild shape forms are always made at the total bonus in the animal's statblock, no matter how high my normal proficiency bonus is, I use that of the animal.
Let's say my druid normally has STR 10, WIS 16 and is proficient in athletics (so a total +2 to athletics) and not proficient in Perception (so total +3 perception) and now I wild shape into a tiger (Str 17, no proficiency in athletics, but proficiency.)
What are my bonuses in these skills?
• is it +5 Athletics (+2 proficiency +3 Strength) and +5 Perception (+2 proficiency +3 Wisdom)?
• or is it +3 Atletics (the higher choice of the tigers STR without proficiency and my normal form's proficiency without a STR bonus) and +3 Perception (a draw between my normal form's WIS without proficiency and the tiger's Proficiency +1 WIS)?
Also another question is, some animals have skill or attack bonuses that don't make sense.
For example black and brown bewars have 1 less in their attack bonus than would be expected from their STR scores. The brown bear has +4 STR, but both its attacks only have a +5 total attack bonus. Which doesn't make sense because as far as I could see a proficiency bonus of less than +2 is unprecedented anywhere and their perception suggests that they do get +2 proficiency (it's +3 at a wisdom bonus of +1)
Is this a mistake? I couldn't find it corrected in any Errata.
Conversely Panthers, Tigers, Lions and Sabertooth Tigers have a +6 Stealth bonus even though their Proficiency bonus everywhere else cannot be higher than +2 and they all have a DEX bonus of +2.
How does this work in wild shape? Are they just assumed to have a +4 proficiency bonus to stealth, or a an additional +2 bonus of some kind?
Per the PHB, you use your proficiency if it is higher than the animals.
Otherwise you use its.
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I have noticed (as have some other Monster data researchers) that some monsters get a double proficiency bonus. I think it tends to represent the "this creature should be better at X even if his low ability scores and proficiency don't reflect that".
I would say that you use whatever proficiency that your character has, and when it comes to natural attacks, I would consider the character proficient in them, but not so much skills, necessarily. I imagine that this could be a good Sage Advice column on the intricacies of shapechanging.
The black bear in question sounds like maybe a typo of sorts. Maybe bring it up to the D&D team.
Per the PHB, you use your proficiency if it is higher than the animals.
Otherwise you use its.
Yes that's what it says, but does it mean i use the proficiency bonus of the creature or do i use the creature's full skill bonus independently of my own ability bonus?
Or conversely if i'm using my normal proficiency bonus or my normal form's full skill bonus independently of the animal's ability bonus.
You use whichever is better.
5E tries really hard to be really easy. 99% of the time, this means you don't have to do a lot of math.
Just a little bit of math.
:-P
If you look at other shapechangers, there is very little change in the math from form to form.
For example, for yuan-ti, all the base stats are the same when in yuan-ti form or giant snake form, except for attack types and damage.
For another example, the wereboar has all the same stats in its 3 forms, except its AC is lower by 1 in humanoid form. Even its manufactured weapon damage and natural weapon damage are the same! :-P
You use whichever is better.
Again; better total skill bonus or better proficiency bonus?
Whichever is better.
Usually the total will be better.
Ah okay, now I get it. Thanks.
Cool. Coolcoolcool.
:-)