Animal Form Abilities should not be blocked by rage

[Failedlegend]

Hey so I thought it would be a great idea both mechanically and flavorfully to add some Barbarian into my Dwarven Druid/Fighter (and later take FotW ED) . I just liked the the idea of a raging Bear Barbarian...a Bearbarian if you will...or is it Barbearian?

Anyways after throwing it into Lvl 7 vet status to test a few things (I plan on playing from Lvl 1 to learn the class) I learned that rage blocks the use of the animal form abilities...is this a bug or WAI, If it's WAI I can understand not being able to use actual spells like vigor or splinterbolt but why can't I use Rend, Relentless Onslaught, Pack Presence, Roar, Shred...basically any of the abilities that require you be in Bear form (or Wolf for that matter)

These should are be changed to abilities that get granted based on druid level (each at the same level as the"spell" would be available) and just be active abilities a-la cleave, stunning blow, etc. with it being categorized under the relevant form like this:

-Wild Shape
+Bear/Direbear

click bear

-Bear(Lvl 2 or 5)/Dire Bear (Lvl 8 or 11)
Maul (Granted at Druid Lvl 1)
Roar (Granted at Druid Lvl 3)
Pack Presence (Granted at Druid Lvl 3)
Shred (Granted at Druid Lvl 5)
Rising Fury (Granted at Druid Lvl 7)
Animal Growth (Granted at Druid Lvl 9)
Pack Aptitude (Granted at Druid Lvl 9)
Tenacious Pack (Granted at Druid Lvl 11)
Relentless Onslaught (Granted at Druid Lvl 13)
Unstoppable (Granted at Druid Lvl 15)
??? (Granted at Druid Lvl 17)

Same with wolf but you get the idea (fire/water elly don't count as they cast actual spells)

Alternatively if they insist on keeping them as "spells" than just class them as a new spells school either "Innate Attack" or like "Wolf School" and " Bear School" and change their coding or the coding of any rage affect to allow these "spells". I prefer the former though as this is likely to cause some bugs and it doesn't make sense for these abilities to be "spells"

Side note: Whos genius idea was it to class these as spells in the first place their clearly NOT spells. Theres no reason that my Bear shouldn't be able to tear someones face off because he's in an Anti-Magic cone.

[bigolbear]

totaly agree, they shouldnt be spells.

Infact failed legend ive been thinking about this my self - and as per previoius threads it seems we think on similar lines

heres my 'version'.

Each wild shape(and in future polymorph forms) to gain a set of abilities based on the characters casterlvl or BAB or character lvl.

so for example bear form would gain:
maul, shred, rising fury, relentless onslaught, unstopable.


now for how my vision differes from yours. - HOTBARS!.

each character would gain a X feats, probably 10. these feats would be called:
shapeshift ability 1 thru shapeshift abiltiy 10.

these feats can be dragged to a players hot bar and by default would do nothing at all, however when the player assumes an alternate shapeshifted form they would auto fill in (the same way monk finishing move does).

This is a better implementation because some one who speciaises in taking on multiple forms could hotkey these abilites and slot them on hot bars far easier.

so when in bear form hotkey 1 may do a shread manouver, but in wolf form it may do baiting bite and in fire ele form it may do a fireball.

If treated as feats rather than spells they would work in antimagic.

[Failedlegend]

So something like this?

________________________________________________
======|==Bear==|===Wolf===|=Water Elly|=Fire Elly==|
---------------------------------------------------------------------
==#1==|=Maul==|=Takedown=|=Merfolk's :P|Produce Flame|
---------------------------------------------------------------------
==#2==|=Roar==|=Pack Pres==|=Creep Cold|=Fire Sphere=|
---------------------------------------------------------------------
==#3==|==etc==|==etc.===|===etc.==|====etc.====|
---------------------------------------------------------------------

So their context sensitive to whatever form your in...right?


Sidenote: It does kind of suck for spellcasters that they don't get their elly forms until much later I'd like to see "Lesser" elly forms like animal forms get.

Edit: Dammit why does this forum hate my spacebar...it looked nice before it gets posted

[Habreno]

Insofar as the spacebar goes, it's a feature of the forums which inhibits some ASCII art and general spamminess.

Sadly, though, it can bite in the rear. This is one of those times.

[Failedlegend]

I didn't have much play time back when druids were on Lama, I can;t have been the first person to call foul on these things being spells...even just for the fact that they "steal" spell slots. What were the dev responses on it...I can't find much but my search-fu might just fail

[LordRavnos]

What is even worse atm, you can no longer use these "spells" in public. I used to be able to use em to take down a target dummy faster, then one day( around u16 iirc) all of a sudden, nope, can not cast this in public. So that sucked and made the dummy unnecessarily hard to kill. But yeah, they should not be spells even if they consume blue bar, just makes no sense. Heck I still dont understand why I cant maul your face off because I ran out of magic juice

[Failedlegend]

What is even worse atm, you can no longer use these "spells" in public. I used to be able to use em to take down a target dummy faster, then one day( around u16 iirc) all of a sudden, nope, can not cast this in public. So that sucked and made the dummy unnecessarily hard to kill. But yeah, they should not be spells even if they consume blue bar, just makes no sense. Heck I still dont understand why I cant maul your face off because I ran out of magic juice

Goodberry also does not work in public which makes it useless since it disappears upon logout and can only be used in a tavern. So you have to enter a dungeon, make a bunch of them THAN go to the tavern...its so dumb.

I wish we could get some dev insight about the above issues are they WAI, an oversight no one thought of or just bugs to be fixed "soon"

Short Version:

- Animal form Abilties being blocked by rage (IOW why can't an angry raging bear roar...if anything it would cool/make sense to see bear form get some sort of extra bonus when raged)

- Animal form abilities not working in public places...why? I can cleave, intimidate, diplomacy, bluff,etc all in town why can;t I roar

- Goodberry...cannot use in public places...which includes taverns...but can only be used in taverns?

[Coyopa]

Goodberry also does not work in public which makes it useless since it disappears upon logout and can only be used in a tavern. So you have to enter a dungeon, make a bunch of them THAN go to the tavern...its so dumb.

- Goodberry...cannot use in public places...which includes taverns...but can only be used in taverns?

An alternative is to make them upon entering your first quest or wilderness area. Then, you've got them for if you get killed. Took a little training on my part to remember this, but certainly saves a lot of time over your method.

[Failedlegend]

An alternative is to make them upon entering your first quest or wilderness area. Then, you've got them for if you get killed. Took a little training on my part to remember this, but certainly saves a lot of time over your method.

It's still a pointless PITA...mind you the main issue is animal form abilities being spells...its limits a bunch of combos that should work fine and makes no sense

[Karavek]

It's still a pointless PITA...mind you the main issue is animal form abilities being spells...its limits a bunch of combos that should work fine and makes no sense

You do know that it could all be for balance reasons right? Druid is already a powerful class and the forms could easily push it into OP if they had greater flexibility.

[CMPetro]

An alternative is to make them upon entering your first quest or wilderness area. Then, you've got them for if you get killed. Took a little training on my part to remember this, but certainly saves a lot of time over your method.

If Turbine really wanted to make them useful...
Have the goodberries creatable anywhere, usable in quests and tradeable(maybe).
Have them disappear on login like conjured bolts.
Effect: Grants a bonus(type TBD) to health recovered when using a shrine (or in a tavern works as is).
Maybe add's the Druid's caster level, when the berries are created, to the users heal/repair skill when calculating their health recovery from shrining. Or maybe just add a flat amount of recovery based on some formula like 1 point for every 2 Druid Caster levels. Either way it would go up as the character levels to keep it relevant and not be overly powerful.

[Failedlegend]

If Turbine really wanted to make them useful...
Have the goodberries creatable anywhere, usable in quests and tradeable(maybe).
Have them disappear on login like conjured bolts.
Effect: Grants a bonus(type TBD) to health recovered when using a shrine (or in a tavern works as is).
Maybe add's the Druid's caster level, when the berries are created, to the users heal/repair skill when calculating their health recovery from shrining. Or maybe just add a flat amount of recovery based on some formula like 1 point for every 2 Druid Caster levels. Either way it would go up as the character levels to keep it relevant and not be overly powerful.

I'm not to picky as long as they make it do something even mildly useful w/o being a giant PITA

[ZeebaNeighba]

I remember a dev saying Flame Blade should work in public...when I last played my druid about 2 weeks ago, it didn't work

[Karavek]

actually I believe it was the 3E OH that had a PRC called something like the bear rager. It required you to have the wild shape ability, and gave you rage abilities similar to a barby. When you raged youd automatically assume the form of a bear for the duration of the rage.

Frankly Id love to see them get rid of frenzy berserker from the barbs and give them something like this. Make them less kamikaze mana sponges and more visually interesting during their rage time.

[goodspeed]

hey! Quit hogging the lines and let me trip out to.