Author Topic: Help! Planar Shepherd "native outsider" wild shape clarification  (Read 2962 times)

Offline Ryshin

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Help! Planar Shepherd "native outsider" wild shape clarification
« on: February 06, 2019, 10:07:42 PM »
So planar sheperd wild shape grant me the ability to turn myself into an outsider native of the plane i'm attunned to so my question is, every creature native of that plane regardless of the type is considered an outsider? So for example i chose the elemental plane of cold does that mean that every creature with the cold subtype from dragons (silver, white ecc) to feys or aberrations are to be considered outsiders since they can be native of the elemental plane of cold and in the manual of the planes it states that the plane is to be considered home for every creature with the cold subtype?
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Offline magic9mushroom

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Re: Help! Planar Shepherd "native outsider" wild shape clarification
« Reply #1 on: February 07, 2019, 12:51:14 AM »
No. Outsider is a type. If it's of a type that isn't Outsider, it's not an outsider. If it's of the type Outsider, it's an outsider. What plane something is native to is a separate matter (which is to some degree represented in the rules by the subtypes (native) and (extraplanar)). There are humanoids native to the Astral (githyanki, buommans), and outsiders native to the Material (tieflings, aasimars).

Planar Shepherds can wild-shape into the following things:

1) Anything with the animal type, subject to size/HD restrictions (from Druid, although Planar Shepherd advances it), or
2) from 3rd level on, anything that is all of: a) a magical beast (including templates that change type to magical beast), b) native to the Planar Shepherd plane, c) within size/HD restrictions, or
3) from 9th level on, anything that is all of: a) an elemental or outsider, b) native to the Planar Shepherd plane, c) within size/HD restrictions.

When wild-shaping into an animal or magical beast, you get (Ex) special attacks but not (Ex) special qualities or any (Su)/(Sp) abilities. When wild-shaping into an elemental or outsider, you get all (Ex), (Su) and (Sp) abilities.

You don't get to wildshape into anything native to your chosen plane. If it's not an animal, magical beast, elemental or outsider, you can't wild-shape into it. You also can't wild-shape into templated elementals or outsiders (e.g. picking the Far Realm doesn't allow you to wild-shape into a pseudonatural creature, because that's an outsider), though you can wild-shape into templated magical beasts if they were something else before the template was applied (e.g. picking the Seven Mounting Heavens of Celestia allows an animal or vermin with the celestial template, since that changes their type to magical beast and they're native to that plane).

Side-notes:

a) the Elemental Plane of Cold from Manual of the Planes doesn't exist in the standard D&D setting (Greyhawk). It's in the appendix of variant planes; those don't exist unless your DM builds a custom cosmology including them (excepting the Far Realm, since that's used in other books such as Complete Arcane and Lords of Madness).

b) Planar Shepherd is from an Eberron book, and thus it's up to the DM (more so than usual :P) whether it's legal in a setting that isn't Eberron. If you are using Eberron, you have to pick a plane from Eberron's own cosmology, i.e. one of the following:

Ethereal Plane
Plane of Shadow
Astral Plane
Daanvi, the Perfect Order
Dal Quor, the Region of Dreams
Dolurrh, the Realm of the Dead
Fernia, the Sea of Fire
Irian, the Eternal Day
Kythri, the Churning Chaos
Lamannia, the Twilight Forest
Mabar, the Endless Night
Risia, the Plain of Ice
Shavarath, the Battleground
Syrania, the Azure Sky
Thelanis, the Faerie Court
Xoriat, the Realm of Madness
« Last Edit: February 07, 2019, 12:55:39 AM by magic9mushroom »

Offline Ryshin

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Re: Help! Planar Shepherd "native outsider" wild shape clarification
« Reply #2 on: February 07, 2019, 06:08:17 AM »
We are playing in Faerun and the elemental plane of cold it's been approved by the DM so no problem on that.

this is what's written on the manual of the planes:
"The Elemental Plane of Cold is a paradise for creatures
immune to its frigid temperatures. The plane is home to
its own elemental creatures, as well as cold-dwelling
beings from the Material Plane. In general, such creatures
tend to be carnivores.
Ice paraelementals, sentient bits of the plane itself,
roam the surface of this plane, along with ice mephits
and cold element versions of Material Plane creatures
(see Chapter 9 for the cold element template).
Material Plane creatures that are resistant or immune
to cold also inhabit this plane. They include frost giants,
frost worms, white dragons, winter wolves, cryohydras,
and arctic monsters such as the remorhaz. A large colony
of frost giants has set up a trading post on this plane and
deals regularly with dao here."

So i'm confused, a white dragon can be native of the elemental plane of cold, in that case it's to be considered an outsider, an extraplanar o simply a "native"?

An extraplanar is simply a creature that is in that partcular moment on a plane that isn't his native while an outsider is a creature that is born on a plane other than the material one.

Planar Self: At 10th level, you are a focus for the energies of your chosen plane. You become an outsider native to your chosen plane and gain damage reduction 10/magic. Whenever you are in a manifest zone of your chosen plane, you gain a +1 bonus to your caster level for all divine spells.

The 10th level of planar shepherd makes me an outsider so i believe every creature of the plane i chose is an outsider or CAN be one right? If a white dragon spend enough time on the elemental plane of cold can acquire the outsider trait so it's type will be both dragon and outsider or i'm completely mistaken?
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Offline magic9mushroom

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Re: Help! Planar Shepherd "native outsider" wild shape clarification
« Reply #3 on: February 07, 2019, 07:59:20 AM »
We are playing in Faerun and the elemental plane of cold it's been approved by the DM so no problem on that.

Has the DM approved the import of Planar Shepherd itself?

Quote
this is what's written on the manual of the planes:
"The Elemental Plane of Cold is a paradise for creatures
immune to its frigid temperatures. The plane is home to
its own elemental creatures, as well as cold-dwelling
beings from the Material Plane. In general, such creatures
tend to be carnivores.
Ice paraelementals, sentient bits of the plane itself,
roam the surface of this plane, along with ice mephits
and cold element versions of Material Plane creatures
(see Chapter 9 for the cold element template).
Material Plane creatures that are resistant or immune
to cold also inhabit this plane. They include frost giants,
frost worms, white dragons, winter wolves, cryohydras,
and arctic monsters such as the remorhaz. A large colony
of frost giants has set up a trading post on this plane and
deals regularly with dao here."

So i'm confused, a white dragon can be native of the elemental plane of cold, in that case it's to be considered an outsider, an extraplanar o simply a "native"?

It lists white dragons under "Material Plane creatures". This means that they are native to the Material Plane, and would have the (extraplanar) subtype on the Elemental Plane of Cold. They would not have the (extraplanar) subtype on the Material Plane. They simply happen to be living on the Elemental Plane of Cold at this time.

Quote
An extraplanar is simply a creature that is in that partcular moment on a plane that isn't his native

Correct.

Quote
while an outsider is a creature that is born on a plane other than the material one.

No. An outsider is a creature made out of the essence (as opposed to the material) of another plane (this is straight out of the definition in the Monster Manual). There are natives of Outer Planes that are not outsiders - examples include celestial animals (native to the Upper Planes, magical beasts), inevitables (native to Mechanus, constructs) and githzerai (native to Limbo, humanoids). And then there's the obvious case of elementals, which are as a rule native to the Inner Planes (though there are some outsiders on the Inner Planes too, such as djinn and efreet).

Also, outsiders can be born on the Material Plane; the type examples are half-celestials and half-fiends (plus their lesser cousins aasimars and tieflings), which are native to the Material Plane but have the outsider type.

Think of Outsider as a physical state - the state of being partially or wholly made out of some metaphysical concept (e.g. capital-G Good for angels)*. An Oceanus dragon is native to the Upper Planes, and is always neutral good, but it's not physically made out of goodness the way an angel is. Thus, it's a dragon, not an outsider. A half-celestial dragon, on the other hand, is indeed partially made out of capital-G Good, and is an outsider.

*This ties into one of the key traits of outsiders - they don't have separate souls and bodies.

Quote
Planar Self: At 10th level, you are a focus for the energies of your chosen plane. You become an outsider native to your chosen plane and gain damage reduction 10/magic. Whenever you are in a manifest zone of your chosen plane, you gain a +1 bonus to your caster level for all divine spells.

The 10th level of planar shepherd makes me an outsider so i believe every creature of the plane i chose is an outsider or CAN be one right? If a white dragon spend enough time on the elemental plane of cold can acquire the outsider trait so it's type will be both dragon and outsider or i'm completely mistaken?

Creatures can only have one type (primarily because type controls what sort of HD a monster has; something which was both a construct and an outsider would somehow have to have both d8 and d10 for racial Hit Dice, both full and medium BAB, and both good and poor saves). There are plenty of extraplanar dragons in the Draconomicon, which are listed as Dragon (extraplanar).

There are a bunch of classes and prestige classes that make you an outsider - this isn't necessarily related to attunement to another plane (though it can be). Monk 20, for instance, makes you an outsider, but you're still native to the Material. Planar Shepherd makes you an outsider, and it makes you native to the chosen plane; these are both gained as part of the same ability, but they're mechanically distinct.
« Last Edit: February 07, 2019, 08:31:21 AM by magic9mushroom »

Offline Ryshin

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Re: Help! Planar Shepherd "native outsider" wild shape clarification
« Reply #4 on: February 07, 2019, 08:22:15 AM »
Thank you for the detailed explanation, now i understand the difference.
Yes the DM approved the plane now i have to make him a list of all the suitable non evil (due to background) wild forms and tha's why i was asking about outsiders. Unless i find some good or neutral aligned outsiders that may live in the plane of cold i'll stick to elementals. Got any tips?
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Offline magic9mushroom

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Re: Help! Planar Shepherd "native outsider" wild shape clarification
« Reply #5 on: February 07, 2019, 09:21:13 AM »
Thank you for the detailed explanation, now i understand the difference.
Yes the DM approved the plane now i have to make him a list of all the suitable non evil (due to background) wild forms and tha's why i was asking about outsiders. Unless i find some good or neutral aligned outsiders that may live in the plane of cold i'll stick to elementals. Got any tips?

Ice paraelementals and ice mephits are literally the only things mentioned in the MotP description (apart from creatures with the template Cold Element, which are elementals but aren't specifically allowed by Planar Shepherd). It doesn't even mention Ice Devils. So, uh, if you want a Planar Shepherd elemental or outsider form, pick one of those. If you want a magical beast form, you're SOL. I don't really know what else to say, except that if you want to get some mechanical use out of Planar Shepherd (beyond fully-advancing Druid) you might want to rethink which plane you're attuned to (unless this is already done).

Offline Ryshin

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Re: Help! Planar Shepherd "native outsider" wild shape clarification
« Reply #6 on: February 07, 2019, 10:14:35 AM »
It's a cold themed adventure so the plane is chosen and the druid is the winter warden variation. So a silverbrow human druid with snowcasting, energy substitution cold, draconic aura and the plane of cold maximize spells with cold descriptor so it's gonna be a caster oriented druid still i was hoping to find a nice neutral or good alingned  form to wild shape into beside the immoth
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Offline Endarire

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Re: Help! Planar Shepherd "native outsider" wild shape clarification
« Reply #7 on: March 24, 2019, 06:44:36 PM »
Can you use Planar Shepherd to Wild Shape into another Planar Shepherd10?