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Suggestion : Dread Elemental Shape

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Ken14:
Okay, so, the current incoming Hak pak has numerous new wildshapes and it improves upon the existing ones.

A quick bravo and hurrah for the DM's on that, it looks amazeballs!


Buuuut, I did notice that the Druid's penultimate shapeshifting, Elemental Shape, isn't getting any love. And that's fair, the purview of possible choices ( such as magical beast, colossal beasts, ect) is best left to maybe a future shifter update, if ever.

However, I do feel like a Feat called 'Dread Elemental Shape' can be added fairly easily. The way I envision it:


Dread Elemental Shape:

Requirements : Elemental Shape

Flavor text: You gave tapped (unknowingly or otherwhise) into the 'natural' power of the demiplane of dread. Using up an elemental shape charge, you can shift into a blood, grave, mist or pyre elemental. This lasts for 1 hour/level.



In terms of physical abilities ( STR/DEX/CON/Health/AC/ect), you could probably use the existing templates for greater (or elder elementals!) of the correspondending elemental (Water, Earth, Wind or Fire). Tweaking could of course be done, if it's deemed needed.

Models for the dread elementals already exist ingame, so those could be used easily enough.

of course, a model swap wouldn't be really worth the feat, entirely. So each shape has it's own quirk. Admittedly, I didn't find any correct 3.5 versions of dread elementals, but based on the 5th edition ( link : https://daemonsanddeathrays.wordpress.com/2016/07/06/dread-elementals-corrupted-elementals-for-dd-5th-edition/):

Blood Elemental:
-Vulnerability : 50% Cold
-Increased damage range (4d8 instead of 2d10?)
-Vampiric regen

Grave Elemental:
-Vulnerability : 50% Electricity
-On hit : Slow DC (based on wisdom?) 50% / 2 Rounds
-Additional feat : Improved Knockdown


Mist Elemental:
-Damage Immunity : 50% Electricity
-Additional Feat : Flurry of Blows ( to mimic the onslaught of of dust devils. Other thought was perma-haste, but that'd be too overpowered.)
-On hit : Blindness DC (based on wisdom?) 50% / 2 Rounds ( much like dust devils, again.)


Pyre Elemental:
-Increased damage range ( 2d10 physical + 2d8 fire, mayhaps?)
-Flaming Hide : Inflicts d6 + caster level fire damage on anyone who makes a successful melee attack on the caster.



Any thoughts? Feedback?

EO:
This is a good idea but won't have time to implement it in this hak update.

noah25:
I recommended this a while back and I am a huge supporter of this.

haifisch021:
I think it's a neat concept, but as it is druids are already quite powerful in PvP and I can only see these feats pushing them well within the bounds of "overpowered" for the server's meta. Druids can reach some of the highest (if not *the* highest) Wisdom-based DCs on the server, and giving them blindness and slows on such high DCs with so many hits per round (remember, druids do not even get Elemental Shape until level 16) would make them able to dominate any fight they get into involving melee. This is not even to mention the incredible d6+CL damage per hit, guaranteeing that anybody who can even manage to get a hit in will be taking 17 damage per hit *minimum*. Assuming that a person is swinging 4 times per round (either a 3/4 BAB prog class with haste or simply a full BAB class), that's 68 a turn, which is huge. Given this feat, druids would become an overly-oppressive melee force on the server and I can only see that as being an unhealthy change to the current PvP climate. If I were to make a suggestion, it would be to take the themes of this proposition and retool them in such a way to affect a less contested portion of the server's PvP -- casters. I won't go into too much detail, as it deserves a thread of its own, but even with wizards reeling from the massive two feat loss, wizards, sorcerers, and even other druids are pretty unbeatable in a straight fight (and while it can certainly be argued that these classes, save druid, should be confronted with an element of surprise or immediacy to deny them preparation time, any decent squishy knows to plan their encounters wisely, or at the very least make themselves scarce whenever not looking for a fight).

tl;dr : if you are going to buff an already-strong class, diminish the effect those buffs will have on people on a (relatively) even playing field with said class or else the buffs will just crush those people after they are implemented.

Ken14:
Easy enough to tinker it within balance, I'd say.

Make the DC be based on Wisdom/2, if Druid's wisdom can reach fairly high. That way, we're looking at DC's of 15-17 at max. Still useful if the will/fort save is weak, but not incredibly so against anything with higher saves.


And that's even if the development team goes with status effects, the mists know what they'll come up with!


Something one does need to take into account with druids, however, is that they're neutral agents of nature. They're not supposed to get into PVP grudgefests, unless it involves undead or allies of forces that would see the balance of nature ruined. Or it's in self-defense.

 True, this is my headcanon, so take that with a grain of salt!


Another way to curtail this becoming OP is perhaps to make it so that feat only gives you access to one dread elemental shape? If you want all flavors of dread, you'd need to spend 4 feats, which is one hell of an investment.

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