Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Skie May 23, 2015 0:36:35	Can a druid shift into a small spider? It is a beast, after all.  and related: By doing so, he turns into a super scout - no-one really pays attention to a small spider. And it can scout a whole dungeon/castle, sneak past almost any defences (using small gaps and holes, after all no-one builds air-tight castles). Coupled with speed 20 - that's a super scout! So how limited are its senses then?    It's not really game breaking, since it can't do much as a spider, except for scouting, but still, perhaps you guys wouldn't allow this for a reason?
#2 Captain_Kobold May 23, 2015 1:58:18	Bear in mind that the Tiny Spider in the MM is still a really big spider: large tarantula-sized. Unless they are really common and ignored in the region, its still very noticable. Note also that many creatures would still attack it because they hate all life/they're hungry/spiders are icky.   Turning into a garden-spider sized spider is technically possible if the DM OKs it, but it will probably have a much lower speed/stats and senses. Scouting an entire castle might take weeks.
#3 Kentus May 23, 2015 15:56:59	Skie wrote:
#4 Skie May 24, 2015 1:30:18	Yeah, but such a spider, with "pass without trace" cast before transforming is almost impossible to detect!
#5 Captain_Kobold May 24, 2015 2:22:59	Anything with Pass without Trace affecting it is hard to detect; thats the point of the spell.   It only lasts for an hour though. For a spider small enough to (for example) crawl through keyholes, that isn't too much scouting. Doesn't seem gamebreaking to me. Gaseous form is a spell as well.
#6 Skie May 24, 2015 8:32:51	Yeah, I know and I don't worry about gamebreaking. Just wondering about the size of the MM spider (thanks for clarification) and how much can a very small, as you said, garden spider, perceive around it.
#7 Grazel May 24, 2015 16:19:51	As a spider they probably wouldn't detect much due to limited visual range and skewed perspective on scale. They could note creatures and other large features but likely couldn't do things like read battle plans even if rolled out flat on a table.   My players have a forest gnome druid who has used spider form before, but only to try to talk to some giant spiders they knew was in a room above. It didn't go too well so they just never went into that room and therefore I left it veiled on the map since as a spider he couldn't make out enough details about the room to reliably "map" it. The party was fine with that decision.   I did catch him on one of his shapehsifting forays when he went gecko to get around some obstacle as a lurking otyugh knew he was a druid in animal form so still tentacled him which caught the whole party by surprise. You'd think they were jumped by Lolth the way they reacted, including a whole lot of "set it all on fire!" That was before they even knew what they were fighting beyond a tentacle grabbing their little tree-hugger friend from the muck. Of course I had some fun by having the otyugh send a menancing telepathic chuckle to all of them as he grabbed the gnome.
#8 Sword_of_Spirit May 24, 2015 20:03:08	Transforming into small invertebrates is better than invisibility in my opinion.   As a DM, if a player turns into a gnat or an itsy-bitsy spider and starts scouting out a place I wouldn't even give people perception checks to notice them unless they are flying through some sort of high-tech "clean room" that doesn't even exist in my D&D settings. The same applies to my NPCs. The thing is, most of the time really small creatures will go completely unnoticed, and most of the rest of the time they are going to be ignored. The only reason PCs wouldn't ignore them is if you give them a reason not to.   If you randomly say: "A mouse scurries out of a hole in the wall," then you can expect, "I examine the mouse for anything unusual." Don't make such statements only when the mouse happens to be a disguised NPC. It's a dead giveaway. Either don't make them at all, or better yet, make them occasionally just for setting a scene.   That's what I tend to do in order that my players don't feel they have been treated unfairly. For instance, in one adventure in the woods I described birds flying around and chirping and such. Then I didn't particularly point out that one of them happened to be the enemy druid, and they never found out. If someone really wanted to see if any of the birds seemed unusual, I'd give them a difficult check, but other than that, I like the stealthing capabilities of proper transformations.
#9 Barky May 25, 2015 5:21:49	Remember a typical dungeon doesn't just have standard monsters, it also has an ecosystem. There are normal rats, bats, centipedes, and other things that may not even matter to a party of adventures, but may be a terrible threat to a spider. Make a "tiny encounter table" of threats vs the shape-shifted druid. Yes, they may not be true threats, but they can cost resources or risk exposing the druid for what he is.
#10 AndyDay May 25, 2015 6:21:11	I agree with Sword of Spirit. This (and Pass without Trace) unfortunately had the side effect of making the Druid the stealthiest member of the party. Sorry rogue. Oh he's also the tankiest. Sorry barbarian. And once he summons 8 blood hawks, he also does the most damage. Sorry... All you DPS wannabes.    I am coming to hate Druids.
#11 Sword_of_Spirit May 25, 2015 12:14:18	Barky wrote:
(Reply to #9) Mechatarrasque	Barky wrote:
#13 Skie May 26, 2015 2:37:38	Good point! But again, with really good stealth rolls these threats disappear as well.