Legendary+ Form Focus for druid's Elemental Shape

[simpetar]

My wishful thinking brazenly put on forums. Stuff written here follows the standard shapeshifting rules.

All huge elemental forms (acquired at druid level 16) have Rank 6. All elder elemental forms (acquired at druid 20) have Rank 7.

Air Elemental (loosely inspired by eolians)
- Air Elementals can levitate.
- Air Elementals receive (15 + druid level + LLs)% concealment.
- Air Elementals are immune to Great Thunderclap starting at LFFE1.
- [2 EP] Silence - as the spell (requires LFFE1).
- [3 EP] Gust of Wind - as the spell (requires LFFE1).
- [1 EP per round - aura] Eye of the Storm - as per the spell Storm Tower, but it is centered on and moves around with the caster (requires LFFE1).
- [10 EP] Storm of Vengeance - as the spell (requires LFFE1).

Earth Elemental
- Earth Elementals can passwall.
- Earth Elementals immune to petrification and critical hits.
- Weapon buffs on the druid's base weapon shift over to enhance Earth Elementals.
- With LFFE1 Earth Elementals get an additional attack per round.
- Trample - Earth Elementals receive Knockdown feat with LFFE1. This upgrades to Improved Knockdown at LFFE2, Legendary Knockdown at LFFE3, and Paragon Knockdown at PFFE.
- [1 EP per round - aura] Diamond Form - Earth Elemental receives additional (foci * 4)% immunity to bludgeoning, piercing and slashing damage (requires LFFE1).

Fire Elemental
- Fire Elementals can firewalk.
- Fire Elementals are immune the effects of continual contagion and other supernatural diseases.
- Weapon buffs on the druid's base weapon shift over to enhance Fire Elementals.
- With LFFE1 Fire Elementals get an additional attack per round.
- Fire Elemental attacks inflict the victim with stacking 5% vulnerability to fire damage, up to (5 + (foci * 5))% (requires LFFE1).
- If the druid's base weapon has fire damage on it, shifting into Fire Elemental will add (1 + foci) dice fire buff (requires LFFE1).
- [1 EP] Combust - as the spell (requires LFFE1).

Water Elemental
- Water Elementals can breathe under water.
- Water Elementals are immune to Drown spell.
- [3 EP per round - aura] Purifying Waters - similar to Healing Circle: provides nearby allies regeneration of ((Animal Empathy / 3) * foci) Hitpoints every round, until canceled (requires LFFE1).
- [5 EP] Drown - as the spell (requires LFFE1, becomes AoE with LFFE3).
- [8 EP] Polar Ray - as the spell (requires LFFE1).
- [30 EP] Cleansing Touch - simultaneously casts Remove Disease, Remove Curse, Break Enchantment, Remove Blindness/Deafness, and closes festering wounds to a target (requires LFFE1).

[jelricle]

Doesn’t elder water elemental form already have drown (like air has whirlwind)?

[simpetar]

Jan 17, 2022 17:17:19 GMT jelricle said:

Doesn’t elder water elemental form already have drown (like air has whirlwind)?

You are probably referring to the limited use abilities that summoned elementals get. Druid Elemental Shape gets no such abilities, limited or otherwise. Only Fire Elemental shape gets tiny amount of fire damage on hit.

[chirality]

Jan 16, 2022 21:33:42 GMT simpetar said:

Air Elemental (loosely inspired by eolians)

Air elemental, loosely inspired by eolian? Why? Shouldn't it be directly inspired by air elementals? Eolian could just be its own shape; speaking of which, if the idea is to make elemental foci a serious build option, there should probably be a 5th form, to follow the existing pattern. Maybe omnimental at rank 8?

Silence and gust: if there's no DC penalty or caveat for instakilling, this seems strong, but shifting to a gustbot that works like casted might kind of knock xDD niche, which is one of the few classes that shifter doesn't already knock anyway. Otherwise, tightrope between "is it good enough to incentivize focusing" vs "is it op"--not sure.

Tclap imm seems aimed at limbo2, but I'd be curious if shifting to a shape for the immunity would either prove reliable/useful enough to skip it on gear, or whether it would be largely ignored by players who have already spent half a decade acquiring tclap imm on gear anyway. If it's not for shifting into that shape to tank, then it's more of an incidental fluff like the fire contagion imm, I guess.

Not sure if earth needs both stone imm and crit imm. Stone imm is quite strong, although, the comment @ tclap imm can be applied here. I assume the goal is to make earth tanky (in combo with the imm% toggle) but other than "earth should be a tuff tank because it's earth" I'm not sure why other elements should be crittable but not earth. I'd give to all or give to none, or perhaps another approach could be give the good 'ol % Critical Reduction feat rather than pure crit imm.

KD is kind of iffy. Earth kind of seems like a bbod. Brainstorming offensive options is hard because other foci/shapes already kind of cover the things that easily come to mind for an earth elemental (like petrify onhit). Maybe fissure? I think this would match well with water's polar ray and since it's not a niche instakill, there would be less of a need to carefully balance it vs counterpart spells/abilities.

Fire is interesting with the inflict that would serve as a useful tool for shifters that didn't go humanoid (fire is very strong, so the inflict would do work), but obviously can't compete with lash or lizard directly. Not sure about the abuse potential of a (non-humanoid/non-shittertank) DC shifter that could use inflict fire and then use heavy fire burst damage from other forms.

Contagion/disease imm is fair, but given water's clutch cure, not sure you'd bother using fire to "tank" contagion since you could just fix it anyway with water instead. Seems kind of fluffy, but fine.

Regarding water and the cleansing touch: seems a bit strong to me. I like the theme and style of water elementals healing with water, but at the same time it seems vaguely threatening to other classes to have a super healbot that does all their special status repairs with one shot. Nothing about shifter or elemental form really shouts out having quite an extensive mastery over that kind of support. Some, sure, especially water, but from a balance standpoint I dunno, seems a bit much.

I think divvying this one up between a couple skills (or, as above, perhaps between a couple different elemental forms might be more appropriate--for instance, maybe fire could get the contagion/disease cure, air break ench, earth curse, and water blind/deaf and fester[btw, might as well just have it function as a real Heal anyway at that point--if it can fix a fester, no point in stopping at not healing to full hp anyway--the differential isn't enough to make a real caster heal much better anyway in terms of picking/planning party/build]).

Drown, eh. Repeat gust/silence/superheal thing. Also, might as well just let fire do implode or the dreaded detonate, tbh, at that rate. Perhaps the gust, drown, silence could be implemented as single-target, to encourage singular, vulnerable focused threat dispatching without allowing for insta-ing a group of trash; if so, maybe just give a plode and/or disint/detonate option as well.

Great writeup and cool concepts. I don't know if there was a specific implementation-related reason that elemental forms were never expanded, nor if shifter shape expansion in general is even still on the table (a post by Funky seemed to indicate a hard no on changing existing forms, but not sure about the stance on creating more forms/introducing elemental as a new focus group). If it's possible, it would definitely be cool. I think shifters have so much customization and so many tricks in their giant bag, and have so many different viable build options as it is, that they don't necessarily "deserve" more new stuff, but that's no reason to avoid it.

I think balancing the addition of a new focus at this point in the game will be very difficult. It might be somewhat akin to introducing a new school of magic: how to make elemental focus viable but not overpowered? Tough task. Definitely a great project.

[Deleted]

A lot of the same thoughts as Chirality. Would swapping forms for the various immunities apply them instantly? For example the contagion? You don’t have to cover it because you just swap forms?

I don’t think making any of the abilities like silence or drown AOE fits. Make them nice DC and single target only. Otherwise you cross into too many other backyards for a class that already does everything. This would just continue to build on that.

An incredible set of ideas and work up though. I don’t think the fifth form is needed regardless of decisions made.

[chainlink]

And of course the attendant increased vulnerabilities to their opposing elements.....................you get nothing for free

[simpetar]

Jan 18, 2022 14:40:40 GMT @prepared said:

A lot of the same thoughts as Chirality. Would swapping forms for the various immunities apply them instantly? For example the contagion? You don’t have to cover it because you just swap forms?

The idea was that if you have a disease waiting to pop (advespas, slaads, moliation vines, etc.) it would get cured upon shifting. A continual disease would either get cured, or have its effects suppressed while in the shape. Should have probably clarified that

I don’t think making any of the abilities like silence or drown AOE fits. Make them nice DC and single target only. Otherwise you cross into too many other backyards for a class that already does everything. This would just continue to build on that.

Much of this concept is based on the fact that once you commit a druid to shifting, you give up vast majority of spellcasting:

1. You cannot cast regular spells while shifted at all, only buffs will stay.
2. All spell slots from gear are lost, they don't carry over (and I believe the same applies to slots from +wisdom on gear).

In other words: only a handful of buffs stay. Also, unlike shifters, druids can't pick from wide array of forms to fit multiple scenarios. (Druids currently can only pick Dragon Shape and its form foci, but if they do, they will be incredibly inefficient.) These are the reasons why I slightly overshot these forms' power. This is also why I don't see AoE drown as OP - regular druids start AoE drowning as soon as level 42, and it's what they are largely expected to do anyway, so no conflict of interest here

[simpetar]

Jan 18, 2022 1:54:55 GMT chirality said:

Air elemental, loosely inspired by eolian? Why? Shouldn't it be directly inspired by air elementals?

Simply because air elementals in general DnD are somewhat lacking and/or impractical in HG. Their core mechanic (Whirlwind) is KD with pushback. KD is a no-brainer, forced movement does exist in HG (GI grappling and crushing grenades), but more fluff than anything else. Gust - while it exists in 1000 and 1 different forms and shapes - does roughly that and has some other features too. If you have other ideas, don't be shy

Eolian could just be its own shape; speaking of which, if the idea is to make elemental foci a serious build option, there should probably be a 5th form, to follow the existing pattern. Maybe omnimental at rank 8?

Can't really comment on a need of a 5th element shape, other than "let's make the 4 work first and then see"

Silence and gust: if there's no DC penalty or caveat for instakilling, this seems strong, but shifting to a gustbot that works like casted might kind of knock xDD niche, which is one of the few classes that shifter doesn't already knock anyway. Otherwise, tightrope between "is it good enough to incentivize focusing" vs "is it op"--not sure.

I intentionally went for stronger forms for the reasons already stated, but doubt that (essentially unlimited) Gust falls into the category of OP. It's a niche spell and plenty other classes do it more elegantly for whatever purpose (most recently the bugged BFMs - that one IS very overpowered, due to a line in the code that should not be there).

Tclap imm seems aimed at limbo2, but I'd be curious if shifting to a shape for the immunity would either prove reliable/useful enough to skip it on gear, or whether it would be largely ignored by players who have already spent half a decade acquiring tclap imm on gear anyway. If it's not for shifting into that shape to tank, then it's more of an incidental fluff like the fire contagion imm, I guess.

Yes, correct. For the same reason that TClap immunity made an appearance on quite a few set items recently. It is a "flavor of the 3 days", and I'm sure there will be a new "best" and appropriate immunity for Air Elementals in the coming 3 days.

Not sure if earth needs both stone imm and crit imm. Stone imm is quite strong, although, the comment @ tclap imm can be applied here. I assume the goal is to make earth tanky (in combo with the imm% toggle) but other than "earth should be a tuff tank because it's earth" I'm not sure why other elements should be crittable but not earth. I'd give to all or give to none, or perhaps another approach could be give the good 'ol % Critical Reduction feat rather than pure crit imm.

Two other powerful shifty tanky forms already have full crit imm (and also handful of other immunities): Risen Lord and Demonflesh Golem. Given that these two and Earth Elemental have similar stats, it didn't feel too wild. Parry is already a druid skill (and while shifted, you don't suffer armor check penalty), so mere % Critical Reduction would be redundant at best. When I was researching the current state of the forms, I was really expecting Earth Elementals to be crit immune. They aren't. In fact, NONE of the current elemental forms have ANY immunities (damage or condition or spell).

KD is kind of iffy. Earth kind of seems like a bbod. Brainstorming offensive options is hard because other foci/shapes already kind of cover the things that easily come to mind for an earth elemental (like petrify onhit). Maybe fissure? I think this would match well with water's polar ray and since it's not a niche instakill, there would be less of a need to carefully balance it vs counterpart spells/abilities.

KD line is anything but iffy, as soon as you take a look at AB values tank forms are capable of reaching: we are talking 110-115 if you are conservative, or more if you really commit to high AB (at a cost, ofc). Stoning on hit is definitely a strong option. I also considered giving them various earth-y spells to cast with various level of usefulness (EQ, Fissure, Imprisonment, RG), but when you examine other tank forms, they are for the most part geared to do just that: hitting stuff and enduring. Still a possibility though.

Fire is interesting with the inflict that would serve as a useful tool for shifters that didn't go humanoid (fire is very strong, so the inflict would do work), but obviously can't compete with lash or lizard directly. Not sure about the abuse potential of a (non-humanoid/non-shittertank) DC shifter that could use inflict fire and then use heavy fire burst damage from other forms.

Shifterlash caps inflictions at 15% as of December 2020. I aimed these suggestions at changes to druids: you need 16 levels of druid to even get access to basic Elemental Shape, lvl 20 for Improved Elemental Shape, and lvl 26 for unlimited usage. While it wasn't the goal, you could unlock some interesting combinations with taking shifter levels (say, inflict with Fire Elemental and then spam Azer explosions). "Abuse of potential" has been taking place from day 1 of HG and it's not going anywhere

Contagion/disease imm is fair, but given water's clutch cure, not sure you'd bother using fire to "tank" contagion since you could just fix it anyway with water instead. Seems kind of fluffy, but fine.

Yeah, fluff. Also considered immunities to something more scary, like Meteor Swarm (limbo again, I know) and/or Bombardment. Same for giving the form some spells, namely Detonate and Firestorm, but it's the same problem as with Earth Elemental - tank forms should stick to tanking (question mark).

Regarding water and the cleansing touch: seems a bit strong to me. I like the theme and style of water elementals healing with water, but at the same time it seems vaguely threatening to other classes to have a super healbot that does all their special status repairs with one shot. Nothing about shifter or elemental form really shouts out having quite an extensive mastery over that kind of support. Some, sure, especially water, but from a balance standpoint I dunno, seems a bit much.

That's why I put an exorbitant EP cost on it

I think divvying this one up between a couple skills (or, as above, perhaps between a couple different elemental forms might be more appropriate--for instance, maybe fire could get the contagion/disease cure, air break ench, earth curse, and water blind/deaf and fester[btw, might as well just have it function as a real Heal anyway at that point--if it can fix a fester, no point in stopping at not healing to full hp anyway--the differential isn't enough to make a real caster heal much better anyway in terms of picking/planning party/build]).

Open to suggestions! At the end of the day, all 4 elementals would benefit from the same Form Focus - so the player would have to be more on their toes, but it's a sound approach.

Drown, eh. Repeat gust/silence/superheal thing. Also, might as well just let fire do implode or the dreaded detonate, tbh, at that rate. Perhaps the gust, drown, silence could be implemented as single-target, to encourage singular, vulnerable focused threat dispatching without allowing for insta-ing a group of trash; if so, maybe just give a plode and/or disint/detonate option as well.

Noted Just don't put all eggs into one elemental - if we end up having a build that can plode AND drown AND disint AND tank AND heal, other cores might feel cheated.

Great writeup and cool concepts. I don't know if there was a specific implementation-related reason that elemental forms were never expanded, nor if shifter shape expansion in general is even still on the table (a post by Funky seemed to indicate a hard no on changing existing forms, but not sure about the stance on creating more forms/introducing elemental as a new focus group). If it's possible, it would definitely be cool. I think shifters have so much customization and so many tricks in their giant bag, and have so many different viable build options as it is, that they don't necessarily "deserve" more new stuff, but that's no reason to avoid it.

I think balancing the addition of a new focus at this point in the game will be very difficult. It might be somewhat akin to introducing a new school of magic: how to make elemental focus viable but not overpowered? Tough task. Definitely a great project.

Thanks

[chirality]

Even though you clearly noted the druid level : elemental wildshape relationship (16 & 20), my brain still kind of glossed it over.

It wasn't until I was both trying to sketch out a hypothetical build (to compare/contrast form foci value) and read the line about "once you commit a druid to shifting" that I realized this isn't really a standard shifter, at all.

It seems like this concept is almost more like a quasiclass, than just "expanding elemental form focus to add +1 'school' for shifters," as I was pretty much basing most of my earlier post on.

Very interesting. I suppose the idea is that the theoretical build would pretty much have drd20 and therefore be actually a druid, not a shifter at all. So it's really kind of like a druid that shifts, not a shifter that has the standard 10 druid levels: it would be druid CC and might have access (depending on build?) to druid epics.

In this case, it would resemble in some ways a wizard-CC AA (odd hybrid that banks on epic access), and in other ways other hybrid caster quasis that deviate quite a bit from the base spellcaster class but are intended to serve as the offclass in terms of role (battlecleric/stormlord, BK, etc--but it's a shifter instead of a tank).

Therefore, much of my earlier comments likely either don't apply very well or would need some serious thought to determine how applicable using a standard shifter yardstick is to balancing a hybrid shifter quasi that is more of a druid with elemental wildshape that works like standard advanced shifter mechanics.

I wonder if a streamlined approach might be to just frame the entire thing as a quasi (or at least modelled as one on an abstraction level, like BC or stormlord that aren't technically "quasis" but we visualize them as such from a balance/theme perspective).

[simpetar]

Jan 18, 2022 15:21:10 GMT chainlink said:

And of course the attendant increased vulnerabilities to their opposing elements.....................you get nothing for free

Yeah, that makes sense! When you do "!list imm" while shifted, there is no additional immunity or vulnerability - damage, condition, or spell. I was caught off-guard by that a bit too.

[jelricle]

Jan 17, 2022 21:13:00 GMT simpetar said:

Jan 17, 2022 17:17:19 GMT jelricle said:

Doesn’t elder water elemental form already have drown (like air has whirlwind)?

You are probably referring to the limited use abilities that summoned elementals get. Druid Elemental Shape gets no such abilities, limited or otherwise. Only Fire Elemental shape gets tiny amount of fire damage on hit.

I just tested elemental shape.  At 16, the druid gets elemental shape feat.  The Water elemental form has a "Pulse (drown)" ability, (although it costs half your hit points, so, as is, I cannot imagine ever using it)

Air elemental form has whirlwind (No HP cost, and unimpressive damage. does knock down with weak DC)

[simpetar]

Jan 20, 2022 3:04:27 GMT jelricle said:

Jan 17, 2022 21:13:00 GMT simpetar said:

You are probably referring to the limited use abilities that summoned elementals get. Druid Elemental Shape gets no such abilities, limited or otherwise. Only Fire Elemental shape gets tiny amount of fire damage on hit.

I just tested elemental shape.  At 16, the druid gets elemental shape feat.  The Water elemental form has a "Pulse (drown)" ability, (although it costs half your hit points, so, as is, I cannot imagine ever using it)

Air elemental form has whirlwind (No HP cost, and unimpressive damage. does knock down with weak DC)

Oh, thanks for the heads up, I must have been looking in the wrong places. Will keep an eye out, in case I missed some more.