Please Consider Removing WIS reduction for Druid Shapes

[Steve]

Dear Staff—

Try as I must, I just cannot get over the annoyance to when a Druid PC takes a Form and loses WIS points, they lose memorized spells in the spell book.

I've even tried this for many moons: cast Owl's Insight, gain some extra spell slots in the book—but do not utilize them—take a Form hoping to counter the new Form loss with the earlier gain, then ALWAYS un-shift before resting, yet even then, I always lose 2, 3, 4 spells in my toon's spell book, and I have to manually re-select them...which also means I have to wait for X minutes before I can rest my toon again, and have a complete spell book.

By just removing the negative WIS modifier from all Druid Shapes, it would prevent this problem, no?

As you may know, I play a Svirf druid cavestalker that goes into Vermin form, and by the gods it gets tiring to always double check your spellbook at every rest just to see what spell has been lost.

Also: point me in the right direction, and I would try and code this up for upload to the Server (but I'm a slow pathetic coder, so bear with me! lol).

Cheers.

[ValerieJean]

I presume you have WIS items on then? As changing shape does not actually impact WIS, it 'removes' your items.

[Tsidkenu]

Two short-term, player side solutions:

1. Use /mspells to memorise your 'standard' selection of magic. Every time you unshift and lose spell slots, reslotting them is as simple as a single click of a hotbar button.

2. Memorize your most used buffs as the last slotted spells for the slots you typically lose. This way you've buffed up, shapechanged and the lost spells slots were already used up anyway. Use Tip 1 above to renew them for your next rest.

The issue you describe stems from the fact that when a druid wildshapes, their base race changes to match that of the new form (Animal, Magical Beast, Plant, Elemental or Dragon).

Thus, any racial abilities (eg. Svirf +2 Wisdom) will be lost because their base 'race' changed when they shifted. How you fix that I have no idea.

[Aspect of Sorrow]

He's playing from a mac, and doesn't have the client extender available to him.

[Valefort]

It's the WIS racial modifier that is lost while shapechanging I think, your ugly gnome should also be more charismatic in animal shape !

I made a workaround for the racial modifiers that were lost during bear warrior shapechange but it relies on adding the modifiers to the existing buffs which will fail here because owl's insight already hits the +12 hard cap...

So I'm not entirely sure ... one way could be to make copies of the blueprints of all the shapes, for every mental attribute racial modification and select the good one when shapechanging. Even if it could work that is really time consuming. Was I clear enough ?

[Storm Munin]

Id say the same issue pesters priests and mages while in some sort of beastshape.

[Steve]

I considered what every one offered here, and one thing that occurred to me is that once my Character reached a high enough level and Owl's Insight provides a MASSIVE Wisdom boost, the number of extra spell slots should totally compensate for the shape change loss.

Though I'm considering to argue that shape change shouldn't effect INT/WIS/CHA at all...I guess I'll leave that for another time.

[Valefort]

It doesn't ... when you don't have any racial modifiers on those attributes !

[Steve]

It doesn't ... when you don't have any racial modifiers on those attributes !

But that's the thing, mate: when my Svirf transforms to a spider, does he really gain a negative to his Wisdom (because his racial boost disappears)? That would imply shape change has more than just a body/change effect, it even has a personality change effect!!

I don't know if I can handle that RP requirement!

[dedude]

I thought an owls insight would compensate for the small loss in wisdom from items or subrace during a shapechange/polymorph. Extra spellslot items though are always lost i think.

[Akroma666]

Super annoying!!

I hate losing all my bonus spell slot items too.. makes a caster druid who uses wild shape for RP super annoying.

[aaron22]

sure... lets improve one of the strongest classes on the server.


i hope you know im kidding

[Steve]

Since all items are unequipped when a caster changes form, such as through wild shape or shapechange, using a form-changing ability can be detrimental to spell slots. This is particularly noticeable when a caster has both items that grant bonus spell slots and items that grant a bonus to a casting ability. One way to (partially) offset this loss of spell slots is to cast an ability-enhancing spell before changing shape. For classes that must prepare their spells, the bonus spell slots from the increased casting ability will be the first ones lost when items are unequipped.

Yeah, it can really be a negative to the mechanics behind an RP idea.

[Flasmix]

But that's the thing, mate: when my Svirf transforms to a spider, does he really gain a negative to his Wisdom (because his racial boost disappears)? That would imply shape change has more than just a body/change effect, it even has a personality change effect!!

Well, Dragons get a bonus to Charisma so all Shapeshifted Druids who take Dragon shape should get a massive boost right? I mean, if we lose our natural ability modifiers we should gain the ones from the new race right?

[Steve]

@Flasmix: yes and no! My point being: how much REALLY does the Mind/Brain of the Druid change when shapeshifting? That is where INT/WIS/CHA resides, in my opinion, and if it is the case that a Druid REALLY and FULLY becomes that creature...then what is really the nature/being of becoming an Elemental, or a Treant, and would your PC's consciousness more or less increase/decrease as it gains/loses its default racial modifier?!?

This is a raging philosophical debate of our age!!!