Does seeing a picture or painting of a beast allow a druid to Wild Shape into it?

Question

What are the limits on "seeing" a beast in order to Wild Shape into it? Would a picture, painting, sculpture, or accurate description of the creature pass as "seeing" the creature?

Answer 1

Technically, no.

(But it would probably be reasonable to allow it in many cases. Ask your DM.)

The Druid's Wild Shape ability states:

Starting at 2nd level, you can use your action to magically assume the shape of a beast that you have seen before.

The text states that you must have seen the beast, not a picture of the beast.

However, given the simplistic nature of the rule in the context of nuanced gameplay, it is very reasonable to argue that a Druid could intuit some basic information about a creature from a picture and that Wild Shape could therefore be used after seeing a picture or painting of the original creature.

After all, Wild Shape is mostly concerned with the physical attributes of the creature and Beasts have fairly straightforward, non-magical abilities. Crag Cats' spell resistance/reflection come to mind as an example of an exception that would preclude using a simple image for Wild Shape. The DM has final say in how flexible the rule can be interpreted.

Answer 2

The idea behind having seen it, it seems to me, is that the druid has a clear idea of the shapes, textures, dimensions and behaviour of the creature. Especially as a druid, you are attuned to the interpretation of fauna.
Based solely on a picture, some things (especially movement) could be wrongly interpreted.

Including a penalty on certain checks to account for possible mistakes of the Wild Shape could be an agreeable compromise, however.

I would rule out 'reading a description', though, simply because 'seeing' is used explicitly and exclusively in the ruleset.