Color & Druids
Ok, so 4e has a disconnect between the description of what a power does and it's mechanical effect, and universally the description (also called color) carries pretty much no weight. As an example, imagine an attack which is described as leaping high into the air and coming down on your enemy to do some damage. If you were faced with an obstacle
( Read more... )
And it seems to me it is obvious that the design of wildshape is such that it only works the way you want it to work if you add the abilities you want to your character. It isn't a power by itself, but a power you stack other powers on top of to personalize it.
The power is balanced precisely because you can do weird things with it, but you can't do crazy things for free with it.
So, yeah, you CAN turn into a fish who can't swim or breathe water...but WHY would you be so dumb? That's like...well, walking in front of a bus because you can walk, then complaining that you aren't also invulnerable to buses.
And I would note there are "powers" that come with changing shape. For example, the guy in front of you turns into a bear, what do you do? Say, "Hey, it's just a druid, he can't hurt us too bad unless he has wicked powerz", or "Oh, shit, a bear!"
Or if someone is tracking you, you turn yourself into a deer or a bunch of flightless sparrows or pheasants or something, and how do they track you now? How do they know you're a deer or a bunch of birds?
How about turning into a bunch of rats because you can't fit through a drain pipe, but a bunch of rats can?
Or taking all your gear in through the doors of the castle, despite everyone else being strip-searched by the guards, because you are now a dog?
So it isn't entirely color. It's just balanced by not being a free power-up for a character, and the weird case scenarios are just as above: weird because they SHOULD be, because those scenarios would be as insane as walking in front of a bus...you certainly CAN, but there's no benefit, and it's probably stupid, so why would you?
Reply
This is my feeling on it as well.
In our games we have used it to create "werewolf" type characters. For a one-shot I made a shifter druid who was a reformed werewolf who had undergone a ritual to get her shifting under control.
In our regular Sunday night game I added the druid multi-class feat to a shifter cleric of the moon goddess, to represent her getting more in touch with her werewolf heritage by receiving more of the goddess' sometimes dubious blessings (she is also the goddess of lycanthropes and lunacy after all). The DM for this ruled she could use the wildshape to represent human, "Crinos" (to use Werewolf the Apocalypse terminology) and wolf forms.
And in our occasional Tuesday night game I have a human shaman, who in 3e was a 1st level druid (which I was using to represent a sort of wolf-shaman type). When we converted, I wanted her to be a leader character, but also still wanted wildshape, so I took the multi-class druid feat and she pretty much uses it exclusively for wolf form.
So I do use it with a lot of self-imposed limitations on it.
I've used it for a few clever tricks such as changing to wolf shape to spread out the character's weight distribution and help her balance on crumbling stairs and tile roofs, fitting through portcullis bars that were too narrow for a human to fit through, getting rid of the stealth penalty for chainmail, or surprising an enemy by popping back into human shape. I've also used it for pure flavor when making nature checks for hunting or perception checks for tracking.
I like it a lot as it is, though I think I have exhausted my repertoire of wolf-themed characters ;)
(I swear these are not the only kind of characters I play, it just happens that these are the ones that are recently active.)
Reply
Leave a comment