Druids, Wild Shape, and magical equipment

[mstieler]

May I get some help understanding how the various Shape spells function with magical equipment?
I understand that the statistics granted by the various Form spells cannot be altered outside of wearing Druid Vestments (AC, TAC, Attack Bonus, Damage Bonus, and from what I understand, bonus weapon damage dice and weapon property runes). However, what about the save bonuses for magical armor, or armor property runes that either don't require an activation, or are activated before going into Form? What about magic items that have an always-on effect that doesn't require activation (or in addition to an effect that requires activation)?

• Instance 1: wearing a +2 Fire Resistant Hide Armor, then casting Animal Form. Would you retain the +2 bonus to your saves, the +5 Fire Resistance, both, or neither?
  
• Instance 2: wearing a +4 Antimagic Hide Armor, then casting Animal Form. Would you retain the +4 bonus to your saves, the +1 bonus to your saves vs. magic, both, or neither? As it has a Reaction activation, that would not be usable per the Form spells.
  
• Instance 3: wearing Boots of Bounding, then activating Animal Form. Would you keep the +5 speed bonus, the +2 Athletics bonus, both, or neither as Animal Form specifies a speed for each form?
  
• Instance 4: wearing Gorget of the Primal Roar, then activating Animal Form. The item specifies
  Quote:

  When you’re in a non-humanoid form via a polymorph effect, you can activate the gorget to unleash a bestial roar, attempting a single Intimidation check compared to the Will DCs of enemies within 30 feet to impose the effects below. You can do this only once per polymorph. You can provide this Command Activation without the need for language.

  Does this override the "Your gear is absorbed into you; the constant abilities of your gear still function, but you can’t activate it." portion of Animal Form? If it does not, do you still gain the +3 Intimidate bonus?

I was unable to find anything with search, so I'm hoping clarification can be made.

[Dante Doom]

Anything that is Constant still functions: bonus dice damage from handwraps or property runes, bonus skills, saves (if they are conditional or circumstance)

Things that need an Activation shouldn't matter, item bonus don't affect you to, unless using Druid Vestment

[mstieler]

I was under the impression Handwraps did not work, for either the increased damage die nor for property runes.

[Dante Doom]

It's a little messy now... Think could be read both ways

I'll try to explain why I think would...

1) Let me use Animal Form as example

Animal Form:

ANIMAL FORM
SPELL
3
Polymorph
Transmutation
Casting ActionSomatic Casting, ActionVerbal Casting
Duration 1 minute or until dismissed
You transform into a Medium animal battle form. You count as an animal in addition to your normal traits. Your gear is absorbed into you; the constant abilities of your gear still function, but you can’t activate it. When you transform, you gain the following:

AC 22 (TAC 20), ignore armor’s check penalty and reduced Speed.
• One or more unarmed melee attacks, which are the only types of attacks you can use. You’re trained with them. Your attack modifier is +10 and your damage bonus is +5. These are Strength based (for the purpose of enfeebled, for example).
10 temporary Hit Points while you have the form.
Low-light vision.
Athletics bonus of +11 unless your own is higher.

These special statistics can be adjusted only by penalties, circumstance bonuses, and conditional bonuses. Your battle form prevents casting spells, speaking, or using most actions with the manipulate trait that require hands. (The GM decides if there’s doubt.) You can dismiss the spell with a concentrate action.

If you prepare this spell, choose from the options below. You gain the attacks, Speeds, and special abilities listed. You can choose the specific type of animal (such as lion or snow leopard for cat). This has no effect on size or statistics.

Ape Speed 25 feet, climb Speed 20 feet; scent; fist, Damage 2d6 bludgeoning
Bear Speed 25 feet; scent; jaws, Damage 2d8 piercing; claw (agile), Damage 1d8 slashing.
Bull Speed 30 feet; scent; horn, Damage 2d8 piercing.
Canine Speed 40 feet; scent; jaws, Damage 2d8 piercing.
Cat Speed 40 feet; scent; jaws, Damage 2d6 piercing; claw (agile), Damage 1d10 slashing.
Deer Speed 45 feet; scent; antler, Damage 2d6 piercing.
Frog Speed 25 feet, swim, Speed 25 feet; scent; jaws, Damage 2d6 bludgeoning; tongue (reach 15 feet), Damage 2d4 bludgeoning.
Shark swim Speed 35 feet; scent; jaws, Damage 2d8 piercing.
Snake Speed 20 feet, climb Speed 20 feet, swim Speed 20 feet; scent; fangs, Damage 2d4 piercing plus 1d6 poison.
Heightened (4th)Your battle form is Large and your attacks have 10-foot reach. You must have enough space to expand or the spell is lost. Your statistics are AC 25 (TAC 22); attack modifier +14; damage bonus +9; 15 temporary HP; Athletics +14.

These statics clearly refer for ATK, AC, DMG modifier, so damage dice is out of the statics

Next, refer to what an +1 weapon or handwraps gives:

Potency Rune:

You can etch a weapon potency rune on a weapon of the quality listed under the individual entry for the type of rune. Runes of +2 weapon potency or stronger require the weapon to already have the listed weaker rune, and etching the new rune increases the existing potency rune to the new value.
A weapon potency rune grants two offensive benefits. The weapon’s wielder gains an item bonus to attack rolls with the weapon equal to the potency value. For instance, an expert dagger with a +2 weapon potency rune would grant a +2 item bonus to attack rolls with the dagger.
Second, on a successful attack roll, the weapon deals an additional number of weapon damage dice equal to the potency value. For example, a hit with the +2 dagger described above would deal 3d4 damage instead of 1d4 damage.

As you can see, the plus dice damage is not refered as an item bonus as the attack. So it leads me to believe that this sould be a constant effect.

And finally about Property Runes

It's easy to justify that they should count in Wild Shape

Property Runes, pg 372:

Property runes add special abilities to armor or a weapon in addition to any potency rune the item has. If a suit of armor or a weapon has multiple runes of the same type, only the highest-level rune applies. For instance, a weapon with a standard corrosive rune and a greater corrosive rune applies only the greater corrosive rune’s effects.
While most properties are constant abilities, some have
special abilities that must be activated. These follow the
rules for activating magic items on page 376.

So by exclusion, if you don't need to activate, it should count in your form.

So making an example:

1) A druid uses his wild pool and cast Animal Form (will not make it Heightned just to make it easier) to transform in to a Bear

2) She has a +1 corrosive Handwraps

So in final:

AC: as spell
Saves: as his owns, since is not from statistics, counting any Item Bonus he has
ATK: as spell, her +1 handwraps grants a +1 to attack, but this statistic can't get benefit from Item Bonus
Damage: Spell: Jaws 2d8 + 1d8 (Handwraps) + 1d6 acid

[pauljathome]

I think that pretty much none of these items work.

Your line of logic is way too convoluted for my tastes. I think the simple interpretation of "These special statistics can be adjusted only by penalties, circumstance bonuses, and conditional bonuses." is that they can only be adjusted by penalties, circumstance bonuses and conditional bonuses. The Potency Rune doesn't give you them, it doesn't work. Done.

[mstieler]

pauljathome wrote:

I think that pretty much none of these items work.

Your line of logic is way too convoluted for my tastes. I think the simple interpretation of "These special statistics can be adjusted only by penalties, circumstance bonuses, and conditional bonuses." is that they can only be adjusted by penalties, circumstance bonuses and conditional bonuses. The Potency Rune doesn't give you them, it doesn't work. Done.

Not sure if you were replying on my initial post or to Dante's; my instances all involve things that don't affect the special statistics granted by the Form spells. I am 100% on board with nothing being able to adjust your AC, TAC, ACP, Speed, attack bonuses, damage bonuses, or additional damage dice; possibly even senses. Any Athletics (or Acrobatics or other skill bonuses granted by some of the other Form spells) would not be adjusted by magic items, though if those magic items made your personal bonus higher, you could use that as stated in the spell.

The Form spells don't modify saves. Most form spells don't modify resistances or weaknesses (Pest form having Weakness to Physical, Fire & Water forms from Elemental Form having resistances & weaknesses). Gorget of the Primal Roar seems like it's meant to be used in form, which sounds like it would be a case of "specific trumps general".

I just feel there's more clarification that could be made as to what all can be granted. Looking at Druid's Vestments, it appears that is the intended way to boost AC, Attack Bonuses, and Skill bonuses for the Form spells, but nothing in that is said about saves, speed, or anything else. There appears to be no way to increase the damage dice or damage bonuses of the attacks past their highest Heighten version (6th for Aerial, 5th for Animal, 7th for Dinosaur, 8th for Dragon which doesn't even double the damage dice, 7th for Elemental, 5th for Insect, and 4th for Pest).

[pauljathome]

Sorry, I was unclear. I was responding to Dante's post

I totally agree that you get the save bonuses from your armour. Without that you're just toast.

Gorget's Roar pretty obviously is intended to override the normal limitations

Druids Vestments are really weird. They seem to be an admission by Paizo that Wild Shaping is essentially far too weak, that you wild shape into forms that are WEAKER than your normal form. I mostly think that wild shape IS too weak, but having a L10 magic item make you less weak really doesn't seem like the optimal solution :-).

Wild shape needs work.

In Doomsday Dawn (Part 5) I revamped my druid to use weapons (and Spell points via Paladin multiclass :-)). I kept track of how much more effective he was in human form than he would have been wild shaped. Short answer - did more damage, took less damage, hugely more flexible.

So, at the moment, the basic answer to magic items and wild shape is
"Who cares? Don't Wild Shape. Its a trap". At least at levels higher than 5.

[Cyouni]

pauljathome wrote:

Druids Vestments are really weird. They seem to be an admission by Paizo that Wild Shaping is essentially far too weak, that you wild shape into forms that are WEAKER than your normal form. I mostly think that wild shape IS too weak, but having a L10 magic item make you less weak really doesn't seem like the optimal solution :-).

Wild shape needs work.

In Doomsday Dawn (Part 5) I revamped my druid to use weapons (and Spell points via Paladin multiclass :-)). I kept track of how much more effective he was in human form than he would have been wild shaped. Short answer - did more damage, took less damage, hugely more flexible.

So, at the moment, the basic answer to magic items and wild shape is
"Who cares? Don't Wild Shape. Its a trap". At least at levels higher than 5.

Er...are you sure about that? I'm putting together the numbers on my player's druid at level 9 to see what's going on. He wants to make heavy use of Aerial Form.

AC: 26/23 to 28/26. Improvement of +2/+3.
His attack mod with a +2 scimitar would be +15, 3d6+4 slashing (avg 14.5). Aerial Form gives +15, 2d8+8 slashing (avg 17), and talon (agile) +15, 1d10+8 slashing (avg 13.5). Even the talon is doing decently in comparison.
Athletics: +9 to +18.
Speed: 25 ft to 60 ft fly

For murdering something on the ground, he's prepared heightened Dinosaur Form. Let's look at that.

Huge Tyrannosaurus:
AC: 26/23 to 27/24. Worse improvement here.
Attack: +15 (3d6+4, forceful, sweep) to +16 (2d12+6, reach 15 ft.). Averages 14.5 to 19.
Athletics: +9 to +17

So far he's looking pretty good on that, unless he wants to cast other spells. It still compares decently to the +3 scimitar that can get early-accessed in, especially if he picks a ground-battle form like Canine.

[pauljathome]

I liked my druid at lowish levels and only started to really see issues at L10 and L12.

But lets run the math. If you're going my route, you clearly optimize for being a weapon user.

I'm a believer in the "Nothing matters as much as AC, you maximize for it" school of thought. Str, Dex are both 18. Wis is 18.

So, at level 9 the druid has Dex 18 (+4), Hide Armor (+0/+3), +2 Armor for an AC of +25/+28. With a shield as a possibility if he wants more.

And he is using an actually decent weapon, of course. Blow a general feat if required. So, if you don't want the shield and want to max out damage you'd be doing 3d12 + 4. Or if you want a shield you'd be at 3d8+4. In my case I went Glaive for the reach and other cool benefits (plus, paladin of Shelyn).

Attack is +15 (9 + 4 + 2)

So, I'm doing at least as much damage with at least as high an AC (depending on my choices). I fit into the dungeon (size is almost always a DISADVANTAGE now, and not an advantage). And I can actually cast spells in combat or use my heals. And all of that is without taking a round to shift into battle form.

I have Air Walk if I need to fly (which, admittedly, takes me the same round to cast as shifting into aerial form does). And air walk is far superior to flight in the current system

I'm putting all my stats into Dex, Str and Wis (and some Con) but with the new math that is fine. Who needs Cha and Int?

Obviously, some rules changes MAY change this (in particular, Cha may end up being actually important which will mean the physical stats would be lower). The above only applies for current 1.5 characters.

But bottom line is that Wild Shape is just not very good. You get some flexibility in exchange for less damage or AC (depending on choices). But you lose spellcasting!!!!!. That latter loss is absolutely huge. And will get bigger as spells gradually get unnerfed