Shapeshifters, yes, in 4th. I like the Druid in D&D3. In D&D4.. never played, so my apologies, and thank you for the precision.
Druids have always been shapeshifters. The only difference is that with Fourth Edition a shapeshifting category was officially added.
Druids could never really be considered a pet class. They are more or less a cleric of nature with shapeshifting powers.
Sure they have summon spells and an animal companion however what has always set them apart from just being a specialized version of the cleric was their ability to shapeshift. Afterall the cleric has a slew of summon spells as well including many the druid has access to.
One way to look at is is by comparing them to wizards. A Necromancer is still a wizard but is a wizard that specializes in the Arcane Magic School of Necromancy. If it wasn't for shapeshifting that's all a druid would be: a cleric with a specialized set of spells and a few more item limitations. It's the shapeshifting which really defined them as their own class.
Fourth Edition added in Primal Magic and added the Shapeshifting class category but really didn't change the mechanics or fundamental behaviors of druids in major ways. It just made the differences between the druid and cleric clearer.
Huge 2 - New Class, probably Paladin or Druid (or Bard *squee*).
Big 1 - New Race, maybe Gnome or Deva/Aasimar.
Big 2 - Some new PvP system revamping or content like maps or modes.
Big 3 - Foundry update. (probably player focused. Maybe with a Foundry Campaign like the PVP Campaign! I can dream...)
Big 4 - Update to the Refining and/or Artifact system.
Medium - Play Dragonborn for free.
Strange thing - Some kind of new mini-game(s) that you can play with or against other people.
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ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
edited December 2014
Sadly we've been told there will be no Foundry Update. *sad*
Our only hope for the near future is to make it a viable leveling option like PvP and the official campaign is.
Keep telling them how important the Foundry is. If we repeat it enough they'll listen eventually.
And no the whole "you forgot to update the foundry" comment every update don't help AT ALL. He he keeps making those annoying comments knows who he is. Tongue in cheek comments got old long, long ago.
They would never make a requirement that high as it would lock out support classes like DC where the majority of us will never get to 20K... ever nor for some builds is there any reason to go that high other than those who pile on <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> just to inflate GS for GS' sake.
I'm looking down the rode apeice. Right now, 18,000 is solid, but, eventually, with new Artifact Gear and Boons, I can see 25,000 being a fairly normal for End Game content. Like a year or two from now, with a couple of Zones a year added, one or two with each Mod.
'Wen considered the nature of time and understood that the universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew. Therefore, he understood, there is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, he said, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it.' Terry Pratchet The Thief Of Time
Sadly we've been told there will be no Foundry Update. *sad*
Our only hope for the near future is to make it a viable leveling option like PvP and the official campaign is.
Keep telling them how important the Foundry is. If we repeat it enough they'll listen eventually.
And no the whole "you forgot to update the foundry" comment every update don't help AT ALL. He he keeps making those annoying comments knows who he is. Tongue in cheek comments got old long, long ago.
Sadly this is about what I thought would happen to the foundry when I first heard of it. If you put in good rewards to UGC people will make maps to get those rewards as fast as possible. If you make it so the UGC can't be "exploited for gain" then not enough people will play it because they don't get enough of a reward compared to open world. I'm honestly not sure if UGC can work in an mmo with how most/many players go about mmo gaming.
Sadly we've been told there will be no Foundry Update. *sad*
Our only hope for the near future is to make it a viable leveling option like PvP and the official campaign is.
Keep telling them how important the Foundry is. If we repeat it enough they'll listen eventually.
And no the whole "you forgot to update the foundry" comment every update don't help AT ALL. He he keeps making those annoying comments knows who he is. Tongue in cheek comments got old long, long ago.
I do recall during the AMA that the Foundry was being looked at as a possible leveling path.
ROLL TIDE ROLL
Great Weapon Fighter: Because when is today not a good day to die?
PC and PS4 player. Proud Guildmaster for PS4 Team Fencebane. Rank 5 Officer for PC Team Fencebane. Visit us at http://fencebane.shivtr.com
0
ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
Sadly this is about what I thought would happen to the foundry when I first heard of it. If you put in good rewards to UGC people will make maps to get those rewards as fast as possible. If you make it so the UGC can't be "exploited for gain" then not enough people will play it because they don't get enough of a reward compared to open world. I'm honestly not sure if UGC can work in an mmo with how most/many players go about mmo gaming.
It's not complicated if you devote the proper resources to it.
The only problem the foundry has is that it's all inclusive and that ends up like a game designed for everybody: a game designed for everybody is a game designed for nobody.
Players can't be trusted to balance content. But in not trusting players to balance or reward content all authors are forced to create imbalanced and unrewarding content simply because the quality authors have the same limitations imposed on them as the bad and untrustworthy authors.
Imagine if all artists were limited to using contruction paper and crayons instead of oil paints. That's what the foundry is.
But even so we don't need to give oil paints to quality authors, although that would be nice.
It would be incredibly simple to take quality foundry content and make it official content. Take good content and apply finishing touches with the tools the developers have that players don't or even give higher rewards to quests which have either been reviewed by a staff member to not be exploitable.
Look at featured quests, for instance. It's not too much to ask for those quests to be properly rewarded with more desirable loot.
The only problem with the foundry as it is right now is it is completely hands off by the developers. If they worked with the authors they could have far more interesting and more frequent pieces of content added to the game. Other MMO's are catching up and implementing UGC and they are avoiding this pitfall.
I suspect Cryptic will wake up sooner or later....with a hope that they do before the authors go to the MMO's offering UGC tools and developer support...or if not they'll understand why I keep telling them NWN was a horrible game made great by the community. This game is good but it could be great if the foundry authors got half the support they deserve.
And that's all it takes. They don't need the tools. They need the support. Imagine if the developers asked the players to help create quests for a new module so we had fifty unique OFFICIAL quests instead of a dozen FedEx quests. It's not impossible. It just requires proper support.
I do recall during the AMA that the Foundry was being looked at as a possible leveling path.
I noted that...
I wouldn't call that an update. Frankly leveling is the least important aspect of this game. Many players voiced frustrations at how unimportant leveling is. Numerous players have stopped playing simply because they thought the leveling was far too fast for a D&D branded game.
So yeah that news is about a 2/10 on my excitement scale.
Druids have always been shapeshifters. The only difference is that with Fourth Edition a shapeshifting category was officially added.
Druids could never really be considered a pet class. They are more or less a cleric of nature with shapeshifting powers.
Sure they have summon spells and an animal companion however what has always set them apart from just being a specialized version of the cleric was their ability to shapeshift. Afterall the cleric has a slew of summon spells as well including many the druid has access to.
One way to look at is is by comparing them to wizards. A Necromancer is still a wizard but is a wizard that specializes in the Arcane Magic School of Necromancy. If it wasn't for shapeshifting that's all a druid would be: a cleric with a specialized set of spells and a few more item limitations. It's the shapeshifting which really defined them as their own class.
Fourth Edition added in Primal Magic and added the Shapeshifting class category but really didn't change the mechanics or fundamental behaviors of druids in major ways. It just made the differences between the druid and cleric clearer.
A really solid shapeshifting druid would blow everyones mind. I played a nwn mod where druid-shifter could potentially transform into any non-boss or miniboss npc in the game. They were awesome because they were versatile. In that mod, druids gained the ability to shapeshift into a category of npc via acquiring and equipping a bop tome of the same name as that category. Lower levels were like goblinoids and humanoids...went on up to outsiders like pitfiends at much higher levels. That would be great in Neverwinter. Being able to transform into a shock troop devil or thoon hulk would be pretty dam sweet =D
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ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
edited December 2014
That absolutely won't happen.
Feeling like a broken record: the source material is king.
Druids are protectors of the forest. Their creed is to kill anything which is unnatural just as much as a Paladin of Tyr would have a creed to rid the world of all evil. Druids would be at moral odds with undead, magical creations (Gelatinous Cube) or outsiders (demons/devils) and may not take those forms.
The D&D Handbooks say they can turn into a "beast" which is a type of animal. Bears, tigers, wolves, crocodiles, giant eagles...a full list can be found in a player handbook.
However not all animal-like creatures are natural. Worgs, Phase Spiders and Winter Wolves, for instance, are not beasts but monstrosities and druids can not turn into those shapes.
There's a reason why a "mod" was made in order to permit such behavior in NWN: they were not supposed to be able to do what you described.
So I am feeling like a broken record again: consult the source material. What you think is cool will not make it in because there's this wonderful company called Wizards of the Coast that says "just because you think something is cool doesn't mean it should happen" and in most cases they are right.
Paladins wouldn't be best friends with a demon and druids wouldn't shapeshift into their mortal enemies. They may only shift into beasts.
Feeling like a broken record: the source material is king.
Druids are protectors of the forest. Their creed is to kill anything which is unnatural just as much as a Paladin of Tyr would have a creed to rid the world of all evil. Druids would be at moral odds with undead, magical creations (Gelatinous Cube) or outsiders (demons/devils) and may not take those forms.
The D&D Handbooks say they can turn into a "beast" which is a type of animal. Bears, tigers, wolves, crocodiles, giant eagles...a full list can be found in a player handbook.
However not all animal-like creatures are natural. Worgs, Phase Spiders and Winter Wolves, for instance, are not beasts but monstrosities and druids can not turn into those shapes.
There's a reason why a "mod" was made in order to permit such behavior in NWN: they were not supposed to be able to do what you described.
So I am feeling like a broken record again consult the source material. What you think is cool will not make it in because there's this wonderful company called Wizards of the Coast that says "just because you think something is cool doesn't mean it should happen" and in most cases they are right.
Paladins wouldn't be best friends with a demon and druids wouldn't shapeshift into their mortal enemies.
I need to brush up on 4e then because my understanding is that Druids are True Neutral (neutral axis at the very least) which means they see the balance of ALL beings in full expression, and are not just far simpler and less interesting "guardians of nature". I guess I prefer that kind of imaginative game play rather than what I see as the rather narrow and pastiche pigeon holes of pop medieval fantasy. Each to their own and thank god for wotcs open gaming license, though it certainly doesn't apply to such monetizations of the dnd brand as Neverwinter. I stand corrected.
I need to brush up on 4e then because my understanding is that Druids are True Neutral (neutral axis at the very least) which means they see the balance of ALL beings in full expression, and are not just far simpler and less interesting "guardians of nature". I guess I prefer that kind of imaginative game play rather than what I see as the rather narrow and pastiche pigeon holes of pop medieval fantasy. Each to their own and thank god for wotcs open gaming license, though it certainly doesn't apply to such monetizations of the dnd brand as Neverwinter. I stand corrected.
They've always been "guardians of the natural world and balance" IIRC I think in at least some earlier versions they could have elemental wildshapes. This is because things like fire etc are natural and so are their elementals. However Demons, Devils, and the Undead are considered to be outside the natural world and disturbances of balance.
I'm not sure about Druid, I'd like to see more melee classes. Look what we have now: DC, CW, SW, HR - ranged, TR - semi-ranged, GWF, GF - melee. May be Barbarian or Paladin, whatever D&D has to offer.
M6 almost drains your soul given how boring it is. (c) joocycuzzzzzz
I'm not sure about Druid, I'd like to see more melee classes. Look what we have now: DC, CW, SW, HR - ranged, TR - semi-ranged, GWF, GF - melee. May be Barbarian or Paladin, whatever D&D has to offer.
My only problem with that is that Barbs would be very similar to GWF in playstyle and Pallys would be close to GF's. However a Shapeshifting controller class would be suitably unique imo.
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ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
edited December 2014
Yes Druids could take on elemental shapes in older editions. I don't know about Fourth. Let me check Fifth. (I do not have fourth edition books handy)
However they absolutely can not take on the shape of undead, demons, devils.
Additionally what you do at your table is one thing. What an officially licensed product does is another. It has no correlation to monetization. WotC say you can alter the rules at your table all you like (and NWN UGC fell into that category) but NW is an officially licensed product and needs to play to the rules.
For instance I could write all the Star Wars stories I want and do whatever I want in those stories unlicensed as long as I didn't make a single cent off those stories (as that would be illegal). However as soon as I wrote an official story as a licensed author then I would have to play very strictly by Lucasfilm's rules. Just because I decided I didn't want Chewbacca to be crushed by a moon doesn't mean I can change the canon even if that book is being released free of charge.
The Official Rules are the standard and Official Content has to stick to the spirit of those rules. Cryptic can change a lot revolving numbers and tweak things to fit the game better but they can't upend the spirit of those rules. Druids ARE defenders of nature and the natural balance. WotC would NEVER allow any officially licensed material to permit a druid to waver from that creed in such a manner.
Yes Druids could take on elemental shapes in older editions. I don't know about fourth. Let me check fifth.
However they absolutely can not take on the shape of undead, demons, devils.
Additionally what you do at your table is one thing. What an officially licensed product does is another. It has no correlation to monetization. WotC say you can alter the rules at your table all you like (and NWN UGC fell into that category) but NW is an officially licensed product and needs to play to the rules.
For instance I could write all the Star Wars stories I want and do whatever I want in those stories unlicensed as long as I didn't make a single cent off those stories (as that would be illegal). However as soon as I wrote an official story as a licensed author then I would have to play very strictly by Lucasfilm's rules. Just because I decided I didn't want Chewbacca to be crushed by a moon doesn't mean I can change the canon even if that book is being released free of charge.
The Official Rules are the standard and Official Content has to stick to the spirit of those rules. Cryptic can change a lot revolving numbers and tweak things to fit the game better but they can't upend the spirit of those rules. Druids ARE defenders of nature and the natural balance. WotC would NEVER allow any officially licensed material to permit a druid to waver from that creed in such a manner.
Kind of a bad analogy there considering that all those books have been thrown out the window and are no longer canon.
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ambisinisterrMember, Neverwinter ModeratorPosts: 10,462Community Moderator
edited December 2014
Okay in Fifth Edition has druids decide which druid circle type they wish to follow. Think of it as being similar to a paragon path but the entire system has been redesigned in Fifth Edition.
In the PHB1 there are two circle options, The Circle of Land and the Circle of the Moon. Only druids that follow the path of the Circle of the Moon may use their Beast Shape to transform into an Elemental instead of a Beast starting at tenth level.
EDIT - Not sure when/if they decided not to count the extended universe as canon but they still strictly control their storyline. As far as I know most of the Star Wars fans just crinkle their nose at anything not in the movies and consider only the movies to be canon but that is only a fan opinion rather than company stance.
In any case...you can insert anything ranging from Forgotten Realms to Star Trek in there. The licence holders do not ever permit somebody with an official product to release content which does not follow the source material. You can push the lines if you have a case to argue but you can't do drastic changes without permission. Druids turning into any animal would be a drastic change and one which any follower of the game would cry foul about immediately.
Licence holders' top priority is to protect their IP and make sure the products (even free products) that they back are standardized.
The D&D universe is protected by the wizards of the HASBRO coast.D&D 4th ed. was a fail and Pathfinder attacked the wizards. They fought back with 5th ed. which is really good. I'm an old school pen&paper nerd and i am really looking forward to the next (free) days where we start our D&D 5th ed. pen&paper campaign. Sadly pen&paper will become a minor matter more and more. Some people in game asked me why there is a 20-sided die an what such an item would do in a D&D universe. After i told them of pen&paper out there with real dies they said: "Yes, i already played the gateway game." The wizards will never allow a MMO to corrupt the 40 year old legacy so we will get good old Forgotten Realms stuff.
Sadly unprotected by IP are words like "huge" and "big".
I dont really care about the new short campaign, the DPSruid and the overdue PvP sets.
1 totaly strange and unexpected thing...
New setting is Sigil the city of doors. There are doors for 1/5/10 players. When sucessfully finished a new door can be found. When you open a door each player must roll the 20-sided die. The result influences the personal loot table and the type of door. Some doors lead to revised Foundry quests with nice loot like RP gems, very rare limited fashion items and equipment for mounts (saddle, pockets, visuals). Some doors lead to updated T2 dungeons which drop new versions of the old items with (some) random stats which are BoE. Some doors lead to Heroic Encounters which can drop stat reroll cubes for the random items (only useable on bound items), reroll tokens for the d20 roll, recipes for all professions. ...
*woke up*
//Bellistor
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klangeddinMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 882Arc User
edited December 2014
IF the level cap is increased, then one of the huge things are Epic Destinies.
They've always been "guardians of the natural world and balance" IIRC I think in at least some earlier versions they could have elemental wildshapes. This is because things like fire etc are natural and so are their elementals. However Demons, Devils, and the Undead are considered to be outside the natural world and disturbances of balance.
Well that makes sense. The mod I played for so long had an internally consistent mythos/alignment paradigm, but I think it veered pretty well away from standard dnd canon.
Soylent Bacon for everyone!!!!
Druids MAY be useful after all..........
'Wen considered the nature of time and understood that the universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew. Therefore, he understood, there is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, he said, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it.' Terry Pratchet The Thief Of Time
I for one would like to see a level increase. Leveling makes me happy. As to the comments about gearscore; I agree. People put too much of a premium on it. Gearscore doesn't keep some people from standing in red....
Comments
Druids have always been shapeshifters. The only difference is that with Fourth Edition a shapeshifting category was officially added.
Druids could never really be considered a pet class. They are more or less a cleric of nature with shapeshifting powers.
Sure they have summon spells and an animal companion however what has always set them apart from just being a specialized version of the cleric was their ability to shapeshift. Afterall the cleric has a slew of summon spells as well including many the druid has access to.
One way to look at is is by comparing them to wizards. A Necromancer is still a wizard but is a wizard that specializes in the Arcane Magic School of Necromancy. If it wasn't for shapeshifting that's all a druid would be: a cleric with a specialized set of spells and a few more item limitations. It's the shapeshifting which really defined them as their own class.
Fourth Edition added in Primal Magic and added the Shapeshifting class category but really didn't change the mechanics or fundamental behaviors of druids in major ways. It just made the differences between the druid and cleric clearer.
Huge 1 - New module area, obviously.
Huge 2 - New Class, probably Paladin or Druid (or Bard *squee*).
Big 1 - New Race, maybe Gnome or Deva/Aasimar.
Big 2 - Some new PvP system revamping or content like maps or modes.
Big 3 - Foundry update. (probably player focused. Maybe with a Foundry Campaign like the PVP Campaign! I can dream...)
Big 4 - Update to the Refining and/or Artifact system.
Medium - Play Dragonborn for free.
Strange thing - Some kind of new mini-game(s) that you can play with or against other people.
Our only hope for the near future is to make it a viable leveling option like PvP and the official campaign is.
Keep telling them how important the Foundry is. If we repeat it enough they'll listen eventually.
And no the whole "you forgot to update the foundry" comment every update don't help AT ALL. He he keeps making those annoying comments knows who he is. Tongue in cheek comments got old long, long ago.
I'm looking down the rode apeice. Right now, 18,000 is solid, but, eventually, with new Artifact Gear and Boons, I can see 25,000 being a fairly normal for End Game content. Like a year or two from now, with a couple of Zones a year added, one or two with each Mod.
'Wen considered the nature of time and understood that the universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew. Therefore, he understood, there is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, he said, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it.' Terry Pratchet The Thief Of Time
Sadly this is about what I thought would happen to the foundry when I first heard of it. If you put in good rewards to UGC people will make maps to get those rewards as fast as possible. If you make it so the UGC can't be "exploited for gain" then not enough people will play it because they don't get enough of a reward compared to open world. I'm honestly not sure if UGC can work in an mmo with how most/many players go about mmo gaming.
NOT more <expletive deleted> dailies
I do recall during the AMA that the Foundry was being looked at as a possible leveling path.
Great Weapon Fighter: Because when is today not a good day to die?
PC and PS4 player. Proud Guildmaster for PS4 Team Fencebane. Rank 5 Officer for PC Team Fencebane. Visit us at http://fencebane.shivtr.com
It's not complicated if you devote the proper resources to it.
The only problem the foundry has is that it's all inclusive and that ends up like a game designed for everybody: a game designed for everybody is a game designed for nobody.
Players can't be trusted to balance content. But in not trusting players to balance or reward content all authors are forced to create imbalanced and unrewarding content simply because the quality authors have the same limitations imposed on them as the bad and untrustworthy authors.
Imagine if all artists were limited to using contruction paper and crayons instead of oil paints. That's what the foundry is.
But even so we don't need to give oil paints to quality authors, although that would be nice.
It would be incredibly simple to take quality foundry content and make it official content. Take good content and apply finishing touches with the tools the developers have that players don't or even give higher rewards to quests which have either been reviewed by a staff member to not be exploitable.
Look at featured quests, for instance. It's not too much to ask for those quests to be properly rewarded with more desirable loot.
The only problem with the foundry as it is right now is it is completely hands off by the developers. If they worked with the authors they could have far more interesting and more frequent pieces of content added to the game. Other MMO's are catching up and implementing UGC and they are avoiding this pitfall.
I suspect Cryptic will wake up sooner or later....with a hope that they do before the authors go to the MMO's offering UGC tools and developer support...or if not they'll understand why I keep telling them NWN was a horrible game made great by the community. This game is good but it could be great if the foundry authors got half the support they deserve.
And that's all it takes. They don't need the tools. They need the support. Imagine if the developers asked the players to help create quests for a new module so we had fifty unique OFFICIAL quests instead of a dozen FedEx quests. It's not impossible. It just requires proper support.
I noted that...
I wouldn't call that an update. Frankly leveling is the least important aspect of this game. Many players voiced frustrations at how unimportant leveling is. Numerous players have stopped playing simply because they thought the leveling was far too fast for a D&D branded game.
So yeah that news is about a 2/10 on my excitement scale.
This!
My Huge: Improvements in graphic engine so that we can play on highest settings.
A really solid shapeshifting druid would blow everyones mind. I played a nwn mod where druid-shifter could potentially transform into any non-boss or miniboss npc in the game. They were awesome because they were versatile. In that mod, druids gained the ability to shapeshift into a category of npc via acquiring and equipping a bop tome of the same name as that category. Lower levels were like goblinoids and humanoids...went on up to outsiders like pitfiends at much higher levels. That would be great in Neverwinter. Being able to transform into a shock troop devil or thoon hulk would be pretty dam sweet =D
Feeling like a broken record: the source material is king.
Druids are protectors of the forest. Their creed is to kill anything which is unnatural just as much as a Paladin of Tyr would have a creed to rid the world of all evil. Druids would be at moral odds with undead, magical creations (Gelatinous Cube) or outsiders (demons/devils) and may not take those forms.
The D&D Handbooks say they can turn into a "beast" which is a type of animal. Bears, tigers, wolves, crocodiles, giant eagles...a full list can be found in a player handbook.
However not all animal-like creatures are natural. Worgs, Phase Spiders and Winter Wolves, for instance, are not beasts but monstrosities and druids can not turn into those shapes.
There's a reason why a "mod" was made in order to permit such behavior in NWN: they were not supposed to be able to do what you described.
So I am feeling like a broken record again: consult the source material. What you think is cool will not make it in because there's this wonderful company called Wizards of the Coast that says "just because you think something is cool doesn't mean it should happen" and in most cases they are right.
Paladins wouldn't be best friends with a demon and druids wouldn't shapeshift into their mortal enemies. They may only shift into beasts.
I need to brush up on 4e then because my understanding is that Druids are True Neutral (neutral axis at the very least) which means they see the balance of ALL beings in full expression, and are not just far simpler and less interesting "guardians of nature". I guess I prefer that kind of imaginative game play rather than what I see as the rather narrow and pastiche pigeon holes of pop medieval fantasy. Each to their own and thank god for wotcs open gaming license, though it certainly doesn't apply to such monetizations of the dnd brand as Neverwinter. I stand corrected.
Yeah just found a link for it, I am remembering right. http://www.d20srd.org/srd/classes/druid.htm
My only problem with that is that Barbs would be very similar to GWF in playstyle and Pallys would be close to GF's. However a Shapeshifting controller class would be suitably unique imo.
However they absolutely can not take on the shape of undead, demons, devils.
Additionally what you do at your table is one thing. What an officially licensed product does is another. It has no correlation to monetization. WotC say you can alter the rules at your table all you like (and NWN UGC fell into that category) but NW is an officially licensed product and needs to play to the rules.
For instance I could write all the Star Wars stories I want and do whatever I want in those stories unlicensed as long as I didn't make a single cent off those stories (as that would be illegal). However as soon as I wrote an official story as a licensed author then I would have to play very strictly by Lucasfilm's rules. Just because I decided I didn't want Chewbacca to be crushed by a moon doesn't mean I can change the canon even if that book is being released free of charge.
The Official Rules are the standard and Official Content has to stick to the spirit of those rules. Cryptic can change a lot revolving numbers and tweak things to fit the game better but they can't upend the spirit of those rules. Druids ARE defenders of nature and the natural balance. WotC would NEVER allow any officially licensed material to permit a druid to waver from that creed in such a manner.
In the PHB1 there are two circle options, The Circle of Land and the Circle of the Moon. Only druids that follow the path of the Circle of the Moon may use their Beast Shape to transform into an Elemental instead of a Beast starting at tenth level.
EDIT - Not sure when/if they decided not to count the extended universe as canon but they still strictly control their storyline. As far as I know most of the Star Wars fans just crinkle their nose at anything not in the movies and consider only the movies to be canon but that is only a fan opinion rather than company stance.
In any case...you can insert anything ranging from Forgotten Realms to Star Trek in there. The licence holders do not ever permit somebody with an official product to release content which does not follow the source material. You can push the lines if you have a case to argue but you can't do drastic changes without permission. Druids turning into any animal would be a drastic change and one which any follower of the game would cry foul about immediately.
Licence holders' top priority is to protect their IP and make sure the products (even free products) that they back are standardized.
Sadly unprotected by IP are words like "huge" and "big".
I dont really care about the new short campaign, the DPSruid and the overdue PvP sets.
1 totaly strange and unexpected thing...
New setting is Sigil the city of doors. There are doors for 1/5/10 players. When sucessfully finished a new door can be found. When you open a door each player must roll the 20-sided die. The result influences the personal loot table and the type of door. Some doors lead to revised Foundry quests with nice loot like RP gems, very rare limited fashion items and equipment for mounts (saddle, pockets, visuals). Some doors lead to updated T2 dungeons which drop new versions of the old items with (some) random stats which are BoE. Some doors lead to Heroic Encounters which can drop stat reroll cubes for the random items (only useable on bound items), reroll tokens for the d20 roll, recipes for all professions. ...
*woke up*
//Bellistor
Well that makes sense. The mod I played for so long had an internally consistent mythos/alignment paradigm, but I think it veered pretty well away from standard dnd canon.
only thing druids would be good for :P
[ Support Center • Rules & Policies and Guidelines • ARC ToS • Guild Recruitment Guidelines | FR DM Since 1993 ]
[ Support Center • Rules & Policies and Guidelines • ARC ToS • Guild Recruitment Guidelines | FR DM Since 1993 ]
unless they are dwarves with a flat head, then at least you can put your beer there, but dwarf druids are quite rare
[ Support Center • Rules & Policies and Guidelines • ARC ToS • Guild Recruitment Guidelines | FR DM Since 1993 ]
http://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/long_pork
Soylent Bacon for everyone!!!!
Druids MAY be useful after all..........
'Wen considered the nature of time and understood that the universe is, instant by instant, recreated anew. Therefore, he understood, there is in truth no past, only a memory of the past. Blink your eyes, and the world you see next did not exist when you closed them. Therefore, he said, the only appropriate state of the mind is surprise. The only appropriate state of the heart is joy. The sky you see now, you have never seen before. The perfect moment is now. Be glad of it.' Terry Pratchet The Thief Of Time
If you ate a chunk of troll would that chunk try to regenerate in your stomach and would you never need to eat again?