Shifters and Animal Empathy

[tomaan]

Somebody mentioned this last night:

Animal Empathy
- For spells cast while shifted, Shifters use Animal Empathy instead of Lore for damage bonuses. In addition, most Shifter abilities can receive up to a 100% damage bonus from the Animal Empathy skill.

what, exactly, are "most shifter abilities"? does that have any impact on armed forms or is just spells and spell-like abilities?

[Deleted]

Spells and spell like abilities.

[simpetar]

Spells and abilities that deal elemental damage (or partial elemental damage), such as dragon breath, beholder cold ray, azer fire beam etc. Physical (e.g. manticore spikes), exotic (beholder negative ray) or esoteric (mindflayer stun cone) don't get the bonus. Rakshasa ice storm gets the cold part buffed, bludgeoning part is unaffected. Direct attacks are unaffected by AE, not even bonuses added from forms (like dragon claws).

[thomascovenant]

Is the animal empathy also lvl up the pen like for banshee form wail of banshee and other special spells of other forms or it's just add more dmg ?

[simpetar]

Only damage, like lore. For real spells that shifters cast (all of rak abilities, igms from drider, baelnorn positive strike and sunburst, etc) you need spell penetration, most likely from the book. Shifter banshee wail is not treated as spell, but an ability and it ignores SR.