Advanced Wild Shape for Old School Essentials

 Wild Shape is a mechanic which by my first available reference was first introduced to Dungeons & Dragons in Advanced D&D 2nd Edition, released in 1989. Then, it was referred to as Shapechange, only gained at 7th level, and allowing a Druid to transform into a mammal, bird, and reptile once per day each. This mechanic was pretty much directly imported into Old School Essentials' Advanced Fantasy Expansion rules, created by Gavin Norman. I like the way this ability is implemented in both systems, it sort of embodies the old school design process of limited character power, but also a greater power scale from first level to the highest levels (that being 15th, at least for some classes, in OSE). In modern 5th and 5ther editions D&D, Wild Shape is a core mechanic which manifests at 2nd level! That's a far cry in power scaling from the B/X days-- Wild Shaping is now a core druid mechanic and for some players, that may the only reason they choose Druid (there's something to be said there about how modern Druid spellcasting options are not super desirable when compared to the blaster caster wizards and sorcerers played so often these days). 

But now I've set out to create a variant Wild Shape mechanic for OSE. Why? Because one of those Druid players who plays a Druid because they like Wild Shape is at my table. They're playing a wild shape character right now, in my current 5E game! But... I am hoping to convert this current 5E game into a future Old School Essentials game, for reasons I will probably spend some time talking about in another lengthy post, to be written on another day. What I don't want to do is steal my Druid player's awesome wild shape away from the, because that's seemingly what they're most interested in doing in-game. So, here are some prototype mechanics for wild shaping more commonly in OSE.

Ability Removals:

A character using the advanced wild shape mechanics removes two druid mechanics from their repertoire: their Fire & Electrical Resistance trait, and their Shapechange trait.  

The New Mechanic:

Wild Shape. A Druid can expend one of their prepared spells to transform into a standard beast (such as a mammal, bird, or reptile) once per day. They can only transform into a creature of a number of hit dice equal to twice the level of the spell expended. They assume all the statistics of that creature. When they drop to zero hit points in that creature's form, they return to their standard form with half the hit points they had when they transformed. 

Wow, that was simple, wasn't it? Makes wild shape have more of a cost while retaining its power and scaling, I think. Let me know what you think. We'll see how this works out in my game. I may still just have the character use the standard OSE druid, and come up with a creative story reason for their wild shape to be removed until they reach level 7, but that's something I'll mull over in another post.

Ta ta for now.