Since you never ever lose feats when you change shape, naturally you'll want to invest in the "extra wildshape" feat so that you can pick up: Power Attack, Cleave, Great Cleave (large earth or water elemental), Dodge, Improved Initiative, Mobiity, Spring Attack, Weapon Finesse (large fire elemental), Combat Reflexes, Flyby Attack (large air elemental) as quickly as possible. Druidic Elemental Wildshape is an exception to the normal rules of polymorphing in that you gain all the Extraordinary, Supernatural, and Spell-like Abilities and all the feats. Those are the only ones that give racial feats from what I recall.Īctualy no. Regarding my original post (and the quote of yours), I assume the feat acquisition you are talking about is just for the Air and Fire elementals. OTOH, if you shapechange into a Fire Giant, and then polymorph any object into an iron golem, you keep the heavy armor proficiency.
This means that if you shapechange into a Fire Giant (gaining heavy armor proficiency for some reason), and then take a free action to transform into an iron golem, you lose the heavy armor proficiency. Unlike other form changing, it replaces itself. Shapechange can trigger a new form at any time the spell is active as a free action. The Druid Alter Self can only be turned on when you are in your normal form, but it stays on after you transform into another form (for example, by the change enacted by the ability itself). Note that the list of abilities you get and the list of abilities you keep are totally different, and can be massively exploited (note that weapon proficiencies always accumulate, while vision always goes away for some reason). Every ability granted by every previous level of form changing is still in effect unless a subsequent round of form changing would remove it. Your "form" is that of the most recent transformation. Does all this layering get kiboshed when a Druid wildshapes into a Plant (at 12th level) and tries to use A Thousand Faces? Or does the ability to wildshape into a freakin' bi-pedal Vine Horror *and then* layer Alter Self/Changeshape remain legal and therefore somehow abuseable?
If this is all legal (which I believe you, Frank), what kind of insane cheese can you work with this layering effect, from a combinatorial standpoint and using Skip's recent Polymorph musings at the WotC web-site?ģ. Just how exactly do the mechanics for "layering" Alter Self, Wildshape, & the Shapechange spell work regarding sequence of activation?Ģ.
The Druid's A Thousand Faces ability now allows me to *Alter Self* at will.ġ. Now, this is truely amazing to me, since I just rolled up a 13th level Human Druid character who will be playing a campaign that will go Epic.
Upon Wildshaping into an Elemental he gets all the feats, and then he can Shapechange into some kind of real creature like a Marilith for actual combat. Frank Trollman wrote.and it's why the Druid can turn into an animal, then buff herself, then turn into an elemental creature and keep all the buffs.