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I'm playing a Moon Druid for our campaign but we haven't encountered any beasts that i can use for my wild shape ability (only because we have been fighting imps, demons, and displacer beasts in a castle dungeon and haven't escaped yet).

I wanted to know if druids know of any animals to transform into prior to seeing them in the wild? considering that you get the ability at lv2, you would think that the druid could at least turn into something?

doppelgreener
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Zealix_Alpha
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    Related, also related, and your last question is really a separate question. – Miniman Feb 26 '15 at 23:35
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    Welcome to Role-playing Games! I've removed your last question about wild-shaping into demons. It's unrelated to the rest, and should be asked separately in its own questions. You can still retrieve its content in your revision history, which you can access by clicking the 'edited X time ago' link at the bottom center of your post. – doppelgreener Feb 27 '15 at 00:06
  • Are you saying that your druid has literally lived in this castle his whole life? (I'm not being sarcastic; I was in a similar adventure once.) – Shawn V. Wilson Jan 07 '19 at 05:54

1 Answers1

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Yes, but the game doesn't tell you which. As long as your Druid isn't a newborn baby, they've likely seen some beasts in their life (especially during and after their Druid training!), and therefore can Wild Shape into those beasts.

Your background is probably the best guide to what creatures you've likely seen, as your background will imply a region that's familiar to you. Any beast common to the region in which you grew up and trained is a beast you've likely seen many times, and uncommon ones are likely to have been seen once or twice too.

This is all between you and your DM, of course, because the game doesn't rigidly define a list or rigidly define a way to create one. You're two reasonable people who enjoy playing games together though, so I'm sure you'll figure out an enjoyable, reasonable set of beasts that you can agree makes sense for a nature-loving outdoorsy person to have ever seen in their life.

SevenSidedDie
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    To further, the list of creatures would be affected by the type of druid, especially if land based. Most druids would be familiar with the hart and hind (deer), racoons, weasels, squirrels, wolves, coyotes, bear, and various birds as well. Various land type druids will be familiar with additional creatures such as Coastal would be familiar with crabs and fish, plains would be familiar with a larger variety of rodents like rabbits, ground hogs and porcupines, swamp druids would be familiar with more reptiles and other fish. the list goes on, but a druid certainly must have seen some animals – Escoce Mar 03 '15 at 16:39