Untamed Form Druid vs Barbarian

[Bluemagetim]

One of my players is a Druid starting with leaf order will later take Order explorer for Untamed order to change shapes into battle forms.

Another of my players is starting as a barbarian animal- bear and wants to dedicate into Druid and Untamed Order to wild shape into animal forms.

Animal battle shapes come online at level 3 soonest right? Druid with order explorer at level 2 will have untamed form and insect forms at level 2 and then animal forms at level 3?
The barbarian can dedicate at level 2 but will need to wait till level 4 to get the untamed form feat and be able change into insect and animal forms but will have both at that level?

So the barbarian is getting the same abilities but a level later. Will the druid end up feeling like when it comes to wildshaping into animal forms at those early levels the barbarian is just better in those forms at fighting? But the Druid is getting it sooner and will have many more form options later that the barbarian might not be able to get like dragon forms?

[Finoan]

Yes, the Barbarian can take Druid Dedication at level 2, and Order Spell at level 4. At that point, they will be casting Untamed Form as a rank 2 spell because it is a focus spell and those heighten based on character level. Rank 2 Untamed Form will be able to use the forms in Animal Form.

What may or may not work is adding Rage damage to the Polymorph battle form stats. Polymorph trait only allows changing the stats due to circumstance bonuses, status bonuses, and penalties. Rage damage is none of those. Some GMs allow it anyway.

What doesn't work is casting Untamed Form after using Rage without also having and using Moment of Clarity.

There is also Animal Rage available at level 8 that would do similar to the Untamed Form, but is designed to work with Animal Barbarians and Rage.

As for how the Druid is going to feel about the Barbarian being better at fighting while in an animal form, that is something that those two players are going to have to figure out.

[Bluemagetim]

Thanks Finoan.

The Druid may have some DnD expectations so I need to explain things up front. The other players are completely new to TTRPGs

[Gortle]

Finoan wrote:

What may or may not work is adding Rage damage to the Polymorph battle form stats. Polymorph trait only allows changing the stats due to circumstance bonuses, status bonuses, and penalties. Rage damage is none of those. Some GMs allow it anyway.

The problem being the boundary of what is a damage roll. It is not well defined. Is extra damage part of the damage roll, or is it just additional. Does it matter if the additional damage is of a different type? Because that inteacts with the damage procedure differently.

We don't have definitions, just loose text that doesn't quite line up.

[Atalius]

Gortle wrote:

Finoan wrote:

What may or may not work is adding Rage damage to the Polymorph battle form stats. Polymorph trait only allows changing the stats due to circumstance bonuses, status bonuses, and penalties. Rage damage is none of those. Some GMs allow it anyway.

The problem being the boundary of what is a damage roll. It is not well defined. Is extra damage part of the damage roll, or is it just additional. Does it matter if the additional damage is of a different type? Because that inteacts with the damage procedure differently.

We don't have definitions, just loose text that doesn't quite line up.

Indeed the man speaks truth. At my table I tend to ignore my GM and just think to myself "how would Gortle play this" and that has rarely ever failed.

[Guntermench]

Finoan wrote:

What may or may not work is adding Rage damage to the Polymorph battle form stats. Polymorph trait only allows changing the stats due to circumstance bonuses, status bonuses, and penalties. Rage damage is none of those. Some GMs allow it anyway.

If we go with Dragon Transformation being correct, which we probably should, and that damage is called a statistic everywhere it can be found then Rage damage isn't added to any battle forms except Dragon specifically when you have the Dragon Transformation feat, as additional damage isn't a circumstance or status bonus.

[Red Griffyn]

Bluemagetim wrote:

One of my players is a Druid starting with leaf order will later take Order explorer for Untamed order to change shapes into battle forms.

Another of my players is starting as a barbarian animal- bear and wants to dedicate into Druid and Untamed Order to wild shape into animal forms.

Animal battle shapes come online at level 3 soonest right? Druid with order explorer at level 2 will have untamed form and insect forms at level 2 and then animal forms at level 3?
The barbarian can dedicate at level 2 but will need to wait till level 4 to get the untamed form feat and be able change into insect and animal forms but will have both at that level?

So the barbarian is getting the same abilities but a level later. Will the druid end up feeling like when it comes to wildshaping into animal forms at those early levels the barbarian is just better in those forms at fighting? But the Druid is getting it sooner and will have many more form options later that the barbarian might not be able to get like dragon forms?

Here is some DPR calcs/differentials for a generic non-scaling martial class vs. druid using wildshape battle forms. See COL D of the two DPR tabs (one allows damage property runes at L8, and one doesn't).

It essentially looks like even levels will feel bad vs. barbarian and odd levels will be on par up to L10. Then the druid can pull away if you let them add damage property runes to their strikes at L8, L10, and L16.

You can look at it two ways. It feels like in early even levels that the barbarian is eating the druid's lunch, but at the same time it is actually actively nerfing itself. A barbarian that gets it's rage bonus will be better off than the comparable wildshaped barbarian. Beyond the issue that battleforms likely don't benefit from rage due to the wording of battleform spells, I don't think you'll be able to have a morph effect from the animal instinct rage that isn't overridden by the polymorph effect of the battleform. At higher levels (L11+) the druid will likely typically outpace the barbarian wildshapes anyways because it is stuck with the animal wildshape until L16 and can't access the better scaling feats/shapes available to the druid.

Because of the two issues around rage and more specifically morph/polymorph overriding from animal instinct, your barbarian can do much better as a baseline fighter that is another +2 above the barbarian to hit, which means it gets that +2 status bonus at all levels (except L5,unless you let him pick 'unarmed strikes' as a weapon group -> otherwise you need free archetype and a L6 martial artist dedication to keep your unarmed strikes at max proficiency). You still run into the L11+ issue of the animal wildshape not scaling, but the wild morph focus spell can be picked up at L10ish, which can give you claws/bites that do 1d6/1D8 + 2D6 persistent claws that scales to +4D6 persistent damage on a hit (not critical hit). The persistent damage is also different so you could have two reliable sources of 2D6/4D6 persistent damage for two very accurate strikes.

[gesalt]

Fighter won't get +2 to hit because battleform attacks aren't in any weapon groups for fighter's bonus to key off of (unless this changed in remaster and I missed it). Monk is the big martial for eating druid's lunch because of flurry iirc.

[Bluemagetim]

Thank you this is very helpful.

[Red Griffyn]

gesalt wrote:

Fighter won't get +2 to hit because battleform attacks aren't in any weapon groups for fighter's bonus to key off of (unless this changed in remaster and I missed it). Monk is the big martial for eating druid's lunch because of flurry iirc.

Hence the martial artist dedication being required. It is one of the few archetype (e.g., archer, mauler, etc.) that scales with your best weapon proficiency (in this case scaling all unarmed attacks independant of group).

With Free Archetype that could be:

L2 Druid Dedication
L4 Wildshape Feat
L4 Wild Morph Focus Spell or basic spell casting
L6 Martial Artist

So you only lose it at L5.

Otherwise I think most GMs would just let it work anyways (its silly they don't have a standard 'brawling' group anyways).

You can also avoid the issue via Free Archetype if the GM waives the exit requirement for the archetypes and lets you go into martial artist at L4.

The martial artist archetype doesn't have a ton of stuff going for it in this case though. L6 follow-up strike is sort of like a better version of the fighter L1 exacting strike feat. The L8 grievous blow is going to cause a whole bunch of table variation because 'weapon dice' for a battle form isn't well defined. Otherwise its a long dry spell until L14 for path of iron (which is great), but means a long time to meet exit requirements. At that point you're probably better being a Human/Half Elf so you can go monk at L9 and grab flurry of blows at L10.