D&D 5E Wild Shape - What beasts have you seen before?

[Rya.Reisender]

So one of my players is now playing a Druid and when he wanted to use Wild Shape, several questions came up:

1. How to establish which beasts the druid has seen before the adventure?
2. There are a bunch of beasts in the PHB, but what about creatures that are only in the MM. Players shouldn't know their stats, right?
3. Do animals that are not in any official book exist in the D&D world at all? How to determine their stats?

I was thinking that the best way to go about this would be to assume only the monsters in the PHB are commonly known to adventurers, whereas all other monsters first need to be encountered in the adventure to be known. And then you learn their abilities by fighting them rather than looking up the MM entry.

How do other DMs handle this?

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

1. Talk it out between player and DM, find things that make sense to have seen, and make sure to include a few that are clearly useful in some way. Basing which animals have been seen by the character on where the character is from and what kind of life they've lived, rather than which book the stats happen to be in.

2. Players knowing the entire Monster Manual is not a problem, so knowing a few beasts that are relevant to their character isn't a problem either. In fact, it's probably a benefit since most groups don't have an extra Monster Manual on hand for the player to use without taking the Monster Manual from the DM, and not leaving it to the DM to look up even more information than already needed.

3. That's up to the group to decide, on both counts. I'd suggest the DM being open to animals other than those listed in the books, but lean towards using something that is in the books and is similar enough with a few tweaks rather than building a new animal entirely from scratch. And when building new animals, use those in the Monster Manual as points of comparison to find whatever it is that feels "right" for the animal in question.

 

[Rya.Reisender]

For me personally, players knowing the entire Monster Manual would be a big problem. I don't want my players to know any monsters stats and I don't really want to go the way of modifying them either. Usually I feel the games are most fun if the players know exactly the same thing as their characters do. Because forcing them to play dumb is not very fun.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

For me personally, players knowing the entire Monster Manual would be a big problem. I don't want my players to know any monsters stats and I don't really want to go the way of modifying them either. Usually I feel the games are most fun if the players know exactly the same thing as their characters do. Because forcing them to play dumb is not very fun.

There is no need to "force" players to play dumb.

Just let them play their character however they want to, and things will work out just fine. Especially because knowing what is in the monster manual doesn't have to change what you want your character to do, and doesn't actually make a challenge easier for the characters to beat.

The idea that knowing the monster manual is a problem is a flawed one, and is directly responsible for me being limited in past groups because I'm the DM, and I have a good memory. Basically the entire group thought that meant I should never play - just always DM, and that's a load of garbage. Plus when I finally did convince them I should be allowed to play, I was then the only player at the table told what I "have to" play, with that being a know-it-all sage sort of character.

And I think it is pretty clear that if a particular thought leads to a conclusion that says "You can't ever play" or "You can't ever play the character of your choice" then that thought needs to be re-thought, and entirely scrapped.

 

[Rya.Reisender]

I see so it's more a personal issue for you.

But I had quite some fun battles that were only like this because players didn't know something about a monster. So there is a lot lost if a player knows something about the monster already.

 

[MechaTarrasque]

When it was just the Monster Manual out there, I was a little annoyed when my players referenced it, but I have gotten in the habit of making tweaks for solo or boss type monsters and using the odd monster from other sources, and it has paid off in that they don't necessarily expect a straight from the MM monster anymore, at least for the non-cannon fodder monsters. Also, if I describe the monsters as "here are 12 orcs" as opposed to "here are 12 tusked humanoid barbarians", they can be (mostly) sure that the MM is common knowledge about what they about to encounter.

As for wild shaping, I ask the druid player(s) if there are particular critters they want to use, and try to have the party encounter them before the druid would be able to wild shape into them (based on CR), with the PHB beasts as freebies.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

So one of my players is now playing a Druid and when he wanted to use Wild Shape, several questions came up:

1. How to establish which beasts the druid has seen before the adventure?

What sort of land is the Druid from? Look at the character's backstory. A Druid from a temperate area is probably going to know wolves, horses, bears, eagles etc, but probably not tigers, crocodiles or giant snakes for example. A Talenta Halfling probably knows Pteranodon, Velociraptor, Deinonychus etc forms, but not horses, dogs or big cats etc.
Get together with the Druid player and make a short list of forms that the Druid knows, with maybe 5 or 6 options covering a variety of bases with stats ready-written out. Let them know other standard forms as well though.
Let the druid spend downtime getting to know new beasts that are in the area that they are in at the moment.

2. There are a bunch of beasts in the PHB, but what about creatures that are only in the MM. Players shouldn't know their stats, right?

There is no difference between knowing the stats of creatures in the MM compared to those in the PHB. A Druid will probably know several forms from the MM.
Players using the out-of-character stats in either the MM or PHB to metagame is to be discouraged. Pulling out the book and looking up stats as soon as they run into an encounter involving specific creatures is pretty much as rude as a player can get though.

3. Do animals that are not in any official book exist in the D&D world at all? How to determine their stats?

Use stats of a similar creature, making adjustments if necessary, or just make them up if they're relevant. Panther stats work for mountain lions lynxs etc. Rabbits can use cat stats with a tweak or two for example. Often Druids may want to know forms in which the combat stats are irrelevant, such as a sparrow for innocuous scouting an suchlike.

Its always the DM's call whether any specific animal exists in the world. Its generally best to assume that every land in the world has a functioning ecology with a lot of normal animals that you would expect to find in a similar habitat on earth. Its generally the more unusual or combat-capable creatures such as Giant versions that will actually require more thought.

I was thinking that the best way to go about this would be to assume only the monsters in the PHB are commonly known to adventurers, whereas all other monsters first need to be encountered in the adventure to be known. And then you learn their abilities by fighting them rather than looking up the MM entry.

"Looking them up in the MM" is how a player learns a creature's abilities, not how a character does.
I personally would suggest going on the basis of the terrain that the Druid came from rather than just going by "Everything in the PHB". You can always ask for an Intelligence (Nature) roll to see whether a character might know a specific fact about a particular creature if you're not sure.

Actually, their Int(Nature) skill bonus might not be a bad starting point as to how many 'special' forms a Druid might know well enough to wildshape into.

 

[Sacrosanct]

Druids are largely people who stay out in the wild of a certain region, who don't really "see the world" until they start adventuring*. So we look at what region the druid comes from, and he or she is allowed to use any beast that comes from that region (according to CR limitations of course). This is any animal, including those not in the MM. Most of the time you can find a similar stat block if you need one. However, a lot of times our druids have used wildshape for out of combat purposes. One of our players used it mostly to change into things like rats and spiders, to get into tight areas and spy and such.



*I've heard some people say, "My druid was a world traveler, going to all the zoos and circuses so he knows every kind of animal in the book." If your DM is cool with that, sure. But I don't allow that because it doesn't follow what a level 1 druid would typically have done.

 

[plisnithus8]

Check out https://media.wizards.com/2016/dnd/downloads/UA_Druid11272016_CAWS.pdf for the Optional Rule: Wild Shape Forms.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

But I had quite some fun battles that were only like this because players didn't know something about a monster. So there is a lot lost if a player knows something about the monster already.

It isn't necessary for the players not to know anything about the stats in the Monster Manual to have those types of encounters. I know, because my group still has battles where in they don't know something about the monsters even though I encourage them to go ahead and read the Monster Manual all they want to.

The key is simple: Don't tell the players "You see a [insert monster name]". Tell them "You see [insert visual description of the monster]". Unless the description is so unique as to entirely give away exactly what the creature is and can do, the players will at best have an inkling that they know what it is, and that is nowhere near a guarantee that they are actually right. Especially given that there are so many monsters that are incredibly similar in appearance (dragons with hues close to another color, such as a black dragon being easily able to be a deep blue or green), and even some that are practically identical (a gas spore and a beholder, for example).

Just the other session, I had a player that was convinced I had described a mummy with no wrappings... but he was wrong. His character was actually facing a wight. Of course, I didn't spoil the discovery for him by telling him he was wrong - he figured it out over the course of the battle.