Druid Wild Shapes (for 5E)

[ocelost]

for some reason you have decided to disparage my work on some sort of personal crusade against me.

Sigh. It's a bug report, not personal. As a wizard once said, "I am not trying to rob you, but to help you."

I don't need, nor want you as a user. My conversation with you is now over.

Ouch. Okay. Good luck out there.

[Azimuth]

As another way of verifying wild shape calculations, if you have access to D&D Beyond (considered by WOTC to be an official digital toolset for D&D, eg.: https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questi.../114912#114912), it's possible to create a level 2 druid, add specific wild shape creature options, then D&D Beyond will calculate a new wildshaped stat block for your new form. This is done through the Extras tab (choose 'Manage Extras', then 'Add an Extra', then pick 'Wildshape' from the drop-down menu and choose a creature).

For instance - here's the character sheet for a level 2 druid with WIS 18 belonging to Circle of the Moon, with no proficiency in perception but a +4 skill bonus:

moondruid1.jpg

Here's the Dire Wolf stat block - the Skills section lists skills in which the dire wolf is proficient ("The Skills entry is reserved for monsters that are proficient in one or more skills. For example, a monster that is very perceptive and stealthy might have bonuses to Wisdom (Perception) and Dexterity (Stealth) checks." from https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/mm...ction#Skills):

direwolf.jpg

And here's the D&D Beyond-calculated Dire Wolf wildshape form showing combined skills / proficiencies and a +6 bonus to perception (right-hand side of the image):

moondruid2.jpg

The wildshaped dire wolf stat block shows it has inherited STR, DEX and CON from the dire wolf, kept INT, WIS and CHA from the druid. The skills section shows that the proficiencies of both druid and dire wolf have been merged, but that the dire wolf's perception proficiency bonus of +2 has been added onto the druid's inherited WIS ability modifier of +4, as according to "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. If the creature has any legendary or lair actions, you can’t use them." (https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/phb/classes#WildShape)

In summary, WOTC's official digital toolset, D&D Beyond, matches the calculations presented in post #163, and can be used to verify other wild shape combinations too.

[Minty23185Fresh]

As another way of verifying wild shape calculations, if you have access to D&D Beyond (considered by WOTC to be an official digital toolset for D&D,...

In summary, WOTC's official digital toolset, D&D Beyond, matches the calculations presented in post #163, and can be used to verify other wild shape combinations too.

Thank you Azimuth. Having confirmation of my work by an official third party source allays those residual doubts...

I haven’t explored obtaining D&D Beyond since I have limited financial resources (retired) to devote to this wonderful pastime. It surprises me that ocelost didn’t do this verification. ocelost implied they had access to D&D Beyond.

Again thank you, very much.

[Minty23185Fresh]

A user of the Druid Wild Shapes Implementor Extension (DWSI) PM'ed me with a concern that DWSI had munged their character. I have confirmed that, because of the way the user set up their character, their user defined powers on the Actions tab disappeared. Below I'll present the bug followed by a work-around, that should suffice, until I get this fixed. (The work-around is probably a pretty good practice in general, regardless of DWSI usage.)

The Bug:
In the following screenshot there are three depictions of the Actions tab of the player character. In the left panel, I have added two combat actions to the character, Dodge and Help. Note that they are in the default Power Group, "Powers", as indicated by the "Powers" group title bar and the lack of a specifically enumerated group in the "Group" text box. In the second, middle panel, I have Wild Shaped the PC for the first time to a Wolf. Note how the two combat actions have been absorbed into the "Actions - Wild Shape" group. This occurs because when DWSI programmatically creates a group, prior to renaming it, the default group name is "Powers" (oops). When the PC is reverted, the Wild Shape powers are discarded, as shown in the right-most panel. The absorbed user defined combat actions are discarded with the actual wild shape powers.
Untitled1.png
The Work-Around:
It's probably obvious what the work-around is, but for completeness I'll present it in the screenshot below. Just make sure your user defined powers are in a specifically defined group, that is not named "Powers". As shown in the left panel, as I defined them I placed them in the "Actions" group. When the PC is Wild Shaped for the first time, center panel, my user defined powers remain in their own group, and are not absorbed into the "Actions - Wild Shape" group. So they are not discarded upon revert and depicted in the right panel.
Untitled2.png
As I stated above, putting your user defined powers in a non-default named group might be a good practice to adopt, even outside DWSI. Note that you can do this with spells and such, but that invites all sorts of constant group switching, so just doing it with user defined powers is best. Another thing to note, this only occurs the first time you Wild Shape. After DWSI establishes the "Actions - Wild Shape" group, it looks for the group to drop the beast's actions into, so it doesn't need to create the default group. (Of course if you delete DWSI's special group, you can make DWSI misbehave again.)

[kyleeliason]

Minty - this absolutely amazing. Totally blew my Druid player away. Thanks so much for taking the time to make this.
One question - do you recommend downloading the v11 or v10 version? I see a link buried in the middle of this chain for v11 but you have v10 pinned at the top.

[Minty23185Fresh]

One question - do you recommend downloading the v11 or v10 version? I see a link buried in the middle of this chain for v11 but you have v10 pinned at the top.

v11 is in post 141 (I believe). As I mentioned there it was such a minor change, one line of errant code that output a warning message that wasn’t appropriate, it seemed silly to have everyone update. Especially, since most users would never see the message. I was warning about something that didn’t need a warning....

In actually, it doesn’t matter unless the warning message pops up for you and is either irksome or confusing.

After all that blather, since you know the new one exists and where it is and why it is, I’d use v11.

And Thank you for giving the extension a try.

[ocelost]

Just a quick follow-up for anyone following the skill bonus / proficiency discussion: It turns out the D&D lead rules designer has already addressed this issue:

"The intent is that the druid uses the bonus in the beast's stat block for any proficiency the druid lacks."

It was also published on Sage Advice, along with the "official answer" tag.

[Minty23185Fresh]

A little more information related to post #174. Working with the DWSI user who reported possible scrambling of his character, we’ve come up with nothing else besides the loss of user defined Actions (on the Actions tab) as detailed in #174. To that end here are some recommendations (that have been stated elsewhere in this thread), restated here, as a reminder, for your convenience:
1) Don’t put/leave user defined powers in FG’s default “Powers” group. Put them in an explicitly named group.
2) Once the DWSI “Actions - Wild Shape” power group has been instantiated, even though it may be empty, at times, don’t delete it.
3) Export you character, as a backup, from time to time. (I still do this after every session.)

[Minty23185Fresh]

While working on a Bardic Inspiration Die Implementor extension (BIDI) I noticed an issue with DWSI. I'm documenting it here so that I can repeat the issue when I have time to explore it. An errant message shows up in the chat window as shown in the screenshot below.
screenshot0009.png

Additional details that might help me:

• The priest attacked Ilikan (Guiding Bolt)
• The errant message appears on the damage roll.
• It doesn't matter if I have the localhost clients attached ot not
• It doesn't matter if the "Cutting Words" Effect is in play or not
• It doesn't matter if Ilikan is targeted by the priest or I drag the dice to Ilikan
• It doesn't matter if I use the mace or the Guilding Bolt spell
• It only happens for a damage roll on Ilikan (not for rolls on Arquin or Elmer)
• OK I'm calling shenanigans here!! I shortened Ilikan's name from "Ilikan RockSlinger Thunukalathi" to simply "Ilikan" and the issue disappears! WHAAAT?!?!
• AARGH!! When I changed his name back the issue did not reappear. Ug!

I will investigate further at a later time.

[wmoten20]

Hey just wanted to add a +1 to updating this for unity. A lot of people are adopting fantasy grounds unity with this quarantine coming in full effect. all the in person game are moving to online