I think it would be an improvement if the Form spells (Pest Form, Animal Form, Insect Form, Dinosaur Form, Aerial Form, Elemental Form, Dragon Form) each referred to Bestiary entries.
You transform into a Large animal battle form. You must have
space to expand or the spell is lost. 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 25 (TAC 22), ignore armor’s check penalty and reduced Speed.
• One or more natural melee attacks, which are the only types of attacks you can use. You’re trained with them. Your attack modifier is +14; your damage bonus is +9. These are Strength based.
• 15 temporary Hit Points while you have the form.
• Low-light vision and scent.
• Athletics bonus of +14 unless your own bonus 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 following options. You gain the attacks, Speeds, and special abilities listed. You can choose the specific type of animal (such as allosaurus instead of tyrannosaurus). This has no effect on size or statistics.
• Ankylosaurus Speed 25 feet; +1 conditional bonus to AC, but not
TAC; tail (backswing, reach 10 feet), Damage 2d6 bludgeoning;
foot, Damage 2d6 bludgeoning.
• Brachiosaurus Speed 25 feet; tail (reach 15 feet), Damage 2d6
bludgeoning; foot (2d8 bludgeoning).
• Deinonychus Speed 40 feet; talon (agile), Damage 2d4 piercing
plus 1 persistent bleed; jaws, Damage 1d10 piercing.
• Stegosaurus Speed 30 feet; tail (reach 10), Damage 2d8 piercing.
• Triceratops Speed 30 feet; horn (2d8 piercing plus 1d6
persistent bleed on a critical hit); foot (2d6 bludgeoning).
• Tyrannosaurus Speed 30 feet; jaws (deadly, reach 10), Damage
1d12 piercing; tail (reach 10), Damage 1d10 bludgeoning.
Heightened (5th) Your battle form is Huge and your attacks have
15-foot reach, or 20 if they started with 15. Your statistics are AC
27 (TAC 24); attack modifier +16; damage bonus +6 and double
damage dice; 20 temporary HP; Athletics +17.
Heightened (7th) Your battle form is Gargantuan and your attacks
have 20-foot reach, or 25 if they started with 15. Your statistics
are AC 33 (TAC 29); attack modifier +23; damage bonus +18 and
double damage dice; 25 temporary HP; Athletics +24.
You transform into a Large animal battle form using it's Bestiary statistics.
• Ankylosaurus
• Brachiosaurus
• Deinonychus
• Stegosaurus
• Triceratops
• Tyrannosaurus
You must have space to expand or the spell is lost. 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.
You gain 15 temporary Hit Points while you have the form and you use your Athletics if it's 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 following options. You gain the attacks, Speeds, and special abilities listed. You can choose the specific type of animal (such as allosaurus instead of tyrannosaurus). This has no effect on size or statistics. When you transform, you use the stats of your chosen form's Bestiary entry.
This has some pretty cool pros:
• This would also make these spells cooler than gaining just a few generic abilities instead getting some cool monster-specific abilities that you'll find in their Bestiary entry.
• The formatting of Bestiary entries are very clear-cut making them much easier to reference while playing than the Form spell entries.
• The spells give you new stats (instead of modifying your own) which is what the Bestiary does already, so the design philosophy is the same in that respect.
• I think this also allows expansions to the spell in the future by simply having an entry in each bestiary that says 'add the following monsters to the following form spells' if expanding the list of creatures you can turn into is something that we would want.
I know there are some challenges to this change, but I think they're worth overcoming:
• We have to have a Bestiary entry for each creature.
• What exactly would heightening the spells do? (Maybe use the dire versions of the creatures or higher age category for the dragons.)
• This means that people who want to use these spells have to own the Bestiary. (Don't summoning spells make you do that already? Besides if there is a PRD-like reasource for 2nd edition this won't be a problem.)
• Stephen Radney-MacFarland was kind enough to speak to this subject and said that one of the potential challenges would be that players would be burdened with having to 'pick the best one' as they were 'shopping' through the Bestiaries. Having the spell list which monsters you can transform into (much like it already does) would solve that I think.
• He also said that the Bestiary monsters weren't designed with players being able to turn into them in mind. But he added that if they were to get feedback that this was the direction to go they would reflect that in the final Bestiary publishing.
Ever since first 1st edition I've always wanted to be able to just use the Bestiary stats, I think that's a lot of people's fantasy to just become the monster and be handed the Bestiary.
In the very least it would be an improvement to the readability and usability of the spell if the stats in the Form spells were formatted like Bestiary entries where they can so it's easier and more efficient to reference in game.
They said on the stream on Friday that they aren't going to do that because monsters aren't built the same way players are.
I'll admit that is one thing I was disappointed about with this iteration (as well as the previous one, but in first edition, we house-ruled it a little and allowed special abilities and racial modifiers to skills after a couple levels). I can understand that the stats are made differently and it would probably be too much to allow druids to become any animal and get its exact stats.
However, when I first opened the new Bestiary to check out the summons, I was thrilled to see how each animal had its own little ability (sometimes multiple) that made it really different. I was disappointed when I then checked out the form spells and found out that we would be some kind of generic cat or whatever other generic form we picked upon transforming.
If they are worried about giving the form spells too many abilities and druids suddenly outclassing everyone in everything (which I can understand), I hope they will at least consider remaking the shapeshifter class in such a way that it picks specific animals and gets the special things about the animal. I know it's a lot of decisions to make, but it makes playing shifters so much more interesting than turning into a cartoon-cat shaped bad rogue with a striped or spotted cosmetic skin or something...
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3.5 had this. It was a disaster. Basically, it means that every monster published has to be balanced against a wild shaping druid. Which just didn't happen. And druids just dumped physical stats because they didn't matter at all.
Pathfinder 1 STILL has the problem, albeit to a lesser extent. Now the game is to find monsters with a huge single attack (Crystal Ooze, Pygmy Hippo) OR one with an insanely large number of natural attacks (preferably with large base damage dice). Some of the best options are CR20 odd bestiary entries. A CR20 having 6 natural attacks all doing 3d6+ damage isn't a problem. A 5th level character with Monstrous Physique or Fey Form IS a major problem.
Personally, my solution would be to modify an idea from Eidolons. Put in a hard limit on BOTH number of attacks AND base damage from an attack based on the character level. That reduces the benefit of cherry picking a particular form.
I think they can keep what they have, they just need to make sure the stats are competitive for there level. They should add your level to Ac and attack bonus, so you don't lag behind on even levels, you'll still lag behind and need to use higher level spell because you don't have the rest of the benefits, but at least they'll be more usable.
They said on the stream on Friday that they aren't going to do that because monsters aren't built the same way players are.
I talked about that in the OP, and quoted him more completely in which he gave a counter to his own statement to boot.
A CR20 having 6 natural attacks all doing 3d6+ damage isn't a problem. A 5th level character with Monstrous Physique or Fey Form IS a major problem.
Wouldn't calling out the specific Bestiary entries as presented in the OP completely negate this problem?