Hummingbirds make for bad spys as they are an hour away from starvation for large parts of their lives.
this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2024
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But it's a magic shapeshifter hummingbird. Do they even need to eat?
Good question, how far do wild shape replicate biologic aspects?
Well, obviously it doesn't mess with your brain otherwise if you turned into a cat you'd probably just spend the rest of the day sleeping and licking your butt.
Maybe you wouldn’t, but IMO that’s half the reason to be a cat.
You’re a fool if you don’t think Sirius Black spent most his time in Azkaban licking his balls.
Polymorph messes with your brain and doesn't make you do that tho
Eh two different spells, one affects the brain the other doesn't. Maybe polymorph makes you poop little round pellets too.
There are stories of druids shifting to wild shape and living among nature for years, so I would assume they need to eat the same way their shifted shape would. It seems unlikely that they could be sustained from the magic of a single spell for that long.
I have always played and DM'd that wildshaped druids can take their normal meal times like the animal would. So if they're crossing a plain the druid could reduce the need for supplies by being a horse and eating grass
Not in D&D. They just need to eat every other day, like anything else that doesn't have enough CON to go longer. I'm not sure how much they need to eat. I'm told there's a table on page 111 of the DMG, but I don't own one.
Loud as hell too! Sounds like god's own hornet when they buzz you.
How does conservation of mass work with wild shape? Is that hummingbird 180 pounds? If so, how does it fly?
There's no conservation of mass. Magic turned them into a bird. Any energy missing from the system went into the magic.
D&D ain't no Brandon Sanderson crunchy magic shit. It's Tolkien "this shit happened cause I magically said so" shit
It goes into the magic and comes back when the spell is over. It's giving magic an interest free loan. Why does it cost spell slots to use this again?
The are two possible answers, depending on the angle you wish to take:
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For the same reason it costs energy to lift something onto a shelf then lower it back down, despite energy being conserved in the lifting and lowering of the object and its final energy state being unchanged. You need to impart external energy to cause change within a system.
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It's a game and some abilities need to cost resources for balance reasons.
Balance.
I like it!
It's magic.
Mystery solved!
There's no conservation of mass, you can wildshape into an elephant, load up with goods to your carrying capacity, then change to a raven and fly back, then back to the elephant to unload.
In 3.5e one of the strongest builds I'd ever seen was a hummingbird wild shape air-domain caster druid with the natural spell feat (I believe that is what it was called). They'd fly around the battlefield in bird form which gave them such insane AC bonuses as to be basically unhittable, then they'd just cast Call Lightning and Ice Storm and destroy the enemies while remaining untouchable. It was honestly insanely OP
Hmm, interesting build. Did the player ever run into trouble with AoE saves? I feel like a Con save with no to-hit roll would be the Achilles heel there
I only played a one-shot with the guy; it was just a fun-run kind of game so I didn't get a chance to see a lot of character, just the one day worth of OP-ness.
The cat leaps for me and I wild shape into a flea which means I'm going to hitch a ride to the kitchens on this mean s.o.b. and hopefully I've got time for a short rest because fuck trying to explore a castle with a ~~walking~~ jumping distance of 8 inches.
A flea is too small for wild shape.
This is a miniature giant space flea.
Well, as long as it's not any smaller than the hummingbird, it's still possible.
A hummingbird is pushing the limits of the wild shape ability, and would actually not be allowed under some versions of the game
Pathfinder too. Hummingbirds would be in the Fine category, while Beast Shape (and by extension, Wild Shape) caps at Diminutive (one category larger.) But if you can apply the giant template for +1 size category...