Tynnanseldom correct, never unsureRegistered Userregular
With the disclaimer that I haven't looked into any of the details of the above, it feels like they could find a middle ground with druid forms by taking a page from Artificer Infusions. As you hit certain thresholds, select N options from the following list to customize your shapeshifted form.
Or we could take it at face value. Being a druid was hard because if you didn't understand the complex mechanics behind picking the over-powered forms, you felt bad. And if you just played by whipping out the most OP forms every time, and not being able to just be what you wanted to be, you felt bad.
To a power-gamer munchkin, it was beautiful.
To your average player, and particularly the personalities (at least in my direct experience) that gravitated towards the Druid, it wasn't as fun as it sounded.
Also, in terms of overall game balance it makes sense. It's perfectly reasonable to put some guardrails in place to make sure encounters don't totally go off the rails.
I don't like characterizing someone enjoying a variety of flavorful options as inherently a power-gamer munchkin. It's only natural to get enjoyment out of solving problems, even easier puzzles like weighing a few common combat forms, and feeling like you make a good choice. Or occasionally making a marginal/bad choice on purpose because it makes things more interesting!
Not every choice comes down to a perfectly optimal thing either. Imagine you're in an ancient dungeon full of thick webs and undead. Do you change into a spider for the web-walking, or do you decide against it because skeletons can't be poisoned by your bite? Or is it better to blissfully choose neither because it doesn't matter at all and all animals are exactly the same?
I mean I'm sure you can see where applying this line of logic elsewhere could result in a much worse game, less rich in options. Maybe there should be fewer classes and subclasses too, so those damn power-gamers don't weigh them all up and choose the strongest option every time?
The current 5E implementation of wildshape also has creature design issues. You make a new beast and you have to ask how druids are going to abuse this.
I mean...yes. That's not a problem, that's just a challenge for the designer. It means you have to think about the game you're making. As a designer you are of course free to sidestep the issue, but you have to be prepared for players to dislike your solution if it means they have fewer fun options.
I'm pretty sure Pathfinder 1E did away with digging through the bestiary for your druid wildshapes and instead introduced several different templates and types of features you could shapeshift into. The big reason beyond balance, was how badly the old 3.5 system constrained monster design.
Pathfinder 1E of course then turned around and threw in all sorts of unbalanced other content without any care, but the original argument around how to handle wildshape and transformation spells still held true.
I was feeling more negative towards this until I remembered prepping a high-level druid and discovering that a mammoth form was by far the optimal choice in most circumstances. This at least allows for easier reskinning. Still, I think a set of traits from existing beasts to choose from to customize a form would be beneficial and I plan to respond to the survey with this suggestion.
Don't you have to see an animal to be able to use that form?
Coincidentally I was reading the rules today for the Animal Companion Ranger from 4e
Your companion options are a number of archetypes with their own stats and abilities, so you pick an animal and then decide whether it's more like a wolf or a cat or a snake or whatever, and the stats level up with your character
Seemed to strike a decent balance between "I hope you have a bookmarked website listing Beasts by CR" of 5e and "eh, turn into whatever, it's just for the Beast keyword powers anyway" of the 4e Druid
Coincidentally I was reading the rules today for the Animal Companion Ranger from 4e
Your companion options are a number of archetypes with their own stats and abilities, so you pick an animal and then decide whether it's more like a wolf or a cat or a snake or whatever, and the stats level up with your character
Seemed to strike a decent balance between "I hope you have a bookmarked website listing Beasts by CR" of 5e and "eh, turn into whatever, it's just for the Beast keyword powers anyway" of the 4e Druid
Back in 4E, I MCed my deva invoker into druid just so I could turn into a rakshasa-looking medium-sized tiger. Being freed from the monster manual has good outcomes.
Back in 3.5E, my Ptolus city druid had a whole binder dedicated to his wild shapes. In that edition you had to be familiar with an animal to turn into it, so basically I had my home mountain genome, city animals, and whatever we encountered while adventuring.
I take it that 5E was more like 3.5E in the respect of each animal being essentially its own character class when wild shaped. I spent a lot of time as a dog for the tripping.
It wasn't a well balanced system. I'm of the opinion that any class feature that requires its own binder is probably too complicated.
My wife played a druid as her first character in 5e. I can totally see why they reworked wildshape as she constantly struggled to get any use out of it. As a circle of the moon druid, her first instinct was to turn into an animal to help out in combat but she never looked online to find the optimal wildshapes that the community has found and instead shifted into what she thought would be deadly creatures and it turns out that there's a wild gulf between wild animals in 5e even ones of the same CR.
I tried to bridge the gap with custom magic items that gave her bonuses in wildshape form but wildshape is pretty ineffective for someone who doesn't do a lot of out of game research.
To go back to the Paladin for a second, I am concerned that letting them smite with ranged weapons will only make the Ranger look even worse in comparison. I really hope the next time the Ranger comes up in the playtest they have something better than "at 10th-level you can downcast the most underwhelming Ranger spell".
I love playing Druids in nearly every game that has them, in large part because of their wildshaping. I kiiiiinda liked scouring for beast statblocks to use, but that was more for the special effects rather than figuring out optimal ac/hp/dps. I'm very much in support of normalizing the stats similar to how they're presented in that document, not only because it means people don't have to do so much math to figure out what to be, but also because it's a lot more fun when you can be what animals you want and not suffer for it if they have bad statblocks.
I don't think sacrificing all of the unique abilities of the various beasts is the way to go either, though. That's super boring, on top of losing all the temp HP. Even PF2e wild shape still gives you some temp HP though it's still primarily your own HP you're using.
Losing out on tiny creatures (forever? until higher levels?) is very lame.
I was feeling more negative towards this until I remembered prepping a high-level druid and discovering that a mammoth form was by far the optimal choice in most circumstances. This at least allows for easier reskinning. Still, I think a set of traits from existing beasts to choose from to customize a form would be beneficial and I plan to respond to the survey with this suggestion.
Don't you have to see an animal to be able to use that form?
Which is the part I dislike the most- oh, so from this paltry choice of CR viable shapes I now have to justify to the DM why my character would have seen anything bigger than a badger? It feels like you're being punished for your DM never throwing beast encounters at you.
I was feeling more negative towards this until I remembered prepping a high-level druid and discovering that a mammoth form was by far the optimal choice in most circumstances. This at least allows for easier reskinning. Still, I think a set of traits from existing beasts to choose from to customize a form would be beneficial and I plan to respond to the survey with this suggestion.
Don't you have to see an animal to be able to use that form?
Which is the part I dislike the most- oh, so from this paltry choice of CR viable shapes I now have to justify to the DM why my character would have seen anything bigger than a badger? It feels like you're being punished for your DM never throwing beast encounters at you.
Druid backstory: zookeeper who studied paleontology
From the design side, they might be keen to no longer have to sanity check every single beast's abilities to see if they'll break the game on the player side.
The tiny beast thing might be a bone to the Rogues? Doesn't matter how good at stealth you are if the Druid can be infinitely better than you at scouting by just turning into an animal the bad guys won't care about if they see it.
I was feeling more negative towards this until I remembered prepping a high-level druid and discovering that a mammoth form was by far the optimal choice in most circumstances. This at least allows for easier reskinning. Still, I think a set of traits from existing beasts to choose from to customize a form would be beneficial and I plan to respond to the survey with this suggestion.
Don't you have to see an animal to be able to use that form?
Which is the part I dislike the most- oh, so from this paltry choice of CR viable shapes I now have to justify to the DM why my character would have seen anything bigger than a badger? It feels like you're being punished for your DM never throwing beast encounters at you.
From what I read in the rules, there's nothing that says a druid has to have seen a particular animal or beast before being able to wildshape into it.
The rules say the druid choses the form, or even a hybrid form of multiple animals that fit the abilities description.
Is that just a common anathema that everyone picked up (like applying critical failures to skill checks)? I know one of my DMs applied that rule to Polymorph, too.
Starting at 2nd level, you can use your action to magically assume the shape of a beast that you have seen before.
Sorry, talking about the playtest material. All I'm reading is that the player can change into a shape that the player has "learned from this feature", with those shapes being land, sea, and sky.
Or worse, having to deal with another player at the table suggest-o-demanding that they use a particular wild shape in combat because Reddit says it's the most optimal, then blaming the druid when things go south because they're bad at wild shape?
Ironically, yes. That's exactly the point. Druid players can be as expressive and creative with their characters, allowing wild shape to not just be mechanical crunch, but something that uniquely identifies their own character. The possibilities are indeed endless.
Or worse, having to deal with another player at the table suggest-o-demanding that they use a particular wild shape in combat because Reddit says it's the most optimal, then blaming the druid when things go south because they're bad at wild shape?
Ironically, yes. That's exactly the point. Druid players can be as expressive and creative with their characters, allowing wild shape to not just be mechanical crunch, but something that uniquely identifies their own character. The possibilities are indeed endless.
Backseaters are going to backseat no matter what, and I honestly expect that same backseater to now criticize a person for using wild shape. The class is definitely designed around it, with 6 or 7 features being tied directly to it, but if you're not a Moon Druid you get to use an action to almost certainly lower your AC, remove most or all of your spellcasting (depending on level), and force yourself into melee where you're a more boring Champion Fighter. Hell your own class capstone and possibly species features don't even appear to work when wildshaped.
And honestly people make bad choices with literally every class, no matter how obvious we find the right moves to be. There are Warlocks who take damage cantrips in place of Eldritch Blast, there are Wizards with access to 3rd level spells out there using their concentration on Witch Bolt. The game can survive non-optimal choices, and at the end of the day at least that player had a choice.
Or worse, having to deal with another player at the table suggest-o-demanding that they use a particular wild shape in combat because Reddit says it's the most optimal, then blaming the druid when things go south because they're bad at wild shape?
Ironically, yes. That's exactly the point. Druid players can be as expressive and creative with their characters, allowing wild shape to not just be mechanical crunch, but something that uniquely identifies their own character. The possibilities are indeed endless.
Backseaters are going to backseat no matter what, and I honestly expect that same backseater to now criticize a person for using wild shape. The class is definitely designed around it, with 6 or 7 features being tied directly to it, but if you're not a Moon Druid you get to use an action to almost certainly lower your AC, remove most or all of your spellcasting (depending on level), and force yourself into melee where you're a more boring Champion Fighter. Hell your own class capstone and possibly species features don't even appear to work when wildshaped.
And honestly people make bad choices with literally every class, no matter how obvious we find the right moves to be. There are Warlocks who take damage cantrips in place of Eldritch Blast, there are Wizards with access to 3rd level spells out there using their concentration on Witch Bolt. The game can survive non-optimal choices, and at the end of the day at least that player had a choice.
I will be very surprised if Eldritch Blast doesn't become a Warlock class feature when it shows up in the playtest. It and its accompanying Eldritch Invocations are one of the biggest reasons to play a Warlock. Ideally Agonizing Blast will also be made a class feature.
Hexmage-PA on
+1
webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
Or worse, having to deal with another player at the table suggest-o-demanding that they use a particular wild shape in combat because Reddit says it's the most optimal, then blaming the druid when things go south because they're bad at wild shape?
Ironically, yes. That's exactly the point. Druid players can be as expressive and creative with their characters, allowing wild shape to not just be mechanical crunch, but something that uniquely identifies their own character. The possibilities are indeed endless.
Yea i can’t speak to the mechanics of the play test, but i much prefer malleable templates that encourage creatively then just a list of a handful of creatures.
Not being tiny until level 11 is something though.
Also, they really should decide what the purpose of the wild shape actually is. It is just a combat vehicle? Then it should be worth using over not being in wild shape (when you have your spells at your disposal). If it's meant to be more of a utility then lackluster combat is fine, but said utility should, again, be worth using, each form should be really good at one thing (and bad at others) so the players have reason to think about their forms.
If it's more flavour (which being a lackluster combat form and little else kind of is) then remove x times per rest / only beast / etc. limits on them entirely, let people be a flumph whenever they want.
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Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
Didn't they remove a ton of utility options in the playtest? Web walk or whatever? Besides being tiny, how much can you no longer do as a druid with wild shape at the level you can do it in 5e?
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webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
Didn't they remove a ton of utility options in the playtest? Web walk or whatever? Besides being tiny, how much can you no longer do as a druid with wild shape at the level you can do it in 5e?
Yea, they need to give the druid some form of maneuvers they can take while wild shaped if they are going to go down the template route.
Didn't they remove a ton of utility options in the playtest? Web walk or whatever? Besides being tiny, how much can you no longer do as a druid with wild shape at the level you can do it in 5e?
There are some fun creatures out there that will let you poison, web, web walk, gain mobility, grapple (Giant Scorpion is pretty cool) amongst other things, but I think my take can be summed up with a pure combat discussion.
Just limited to combat and throwing dice you have differences in forms. A Dire Wolf and Brown Bear have the same CR, but do things differently. The Dire Wolf is faster but less flexible (it has no climb speed), more predicated on teamwork and with its effect on hit can set up later attackers. The Brown Bear shits out attacks and is a good option if you're fighting without assistance as it has a higher chance to hit and does more up front damage. Neither has Dark vision, either!
I think losing that evaluation and tradeoff is limiting to the class. Like, yeah, I can always change into the form I want, but in potentially gaining RP expression I definitely lose mechanical expression.
A duck! on
+2
Powerpuppiesdrinking coffee in themountain cabinRegistered Userregular
Didn't they remove a ton of utility options in the playtest? Web walk or whatever? Besides being tiny, how much can you no longer do as a druid with wild shape at the level you can do it in 5e?
There are some fun creatures out there that will let you poison, web, web walk, gain mobility, grapple (Giant Scorpion is pretty cool) amongst other things, but I think my take can be summed up with a pure combat discussion.
Even just looking at combat you have differences in forms. A Dire Wolf and Brown Bear have the same CR, but do things differently. The Dire Wolf is faster but less flexible (it has no climb speed), more predicated on teamwork and with it's effect on hit can set up later attackers. The Brown Bear shits out attacks and is a good option if you're fighting without assistance as it has a higher chance to hit and does more up front damage. Neither has Dark vision, either!
I think losing that evaluation and tradeoff is limiting to the class. Like, yeah, I can always change into the form I want, but in potentially gaining RP expression definitely I lose mechanical expression.
For me personally the discussion ends with them removing poison web web walk and grapple. Maybe your criticism is sufficient but not necessary. The playtest is really dumb and makes the druid worse as long as it hard removes those abilities.
I'd be fine with decoupling abilities from specific animals if there was a way to web walk and a way to grapple and a way to be a teamwork fighter and a way to be an attack shitter outwr and a way to be an hp sponge. I like the idea of the changes but the execution is dogshit.
Or worse, having to deal with another player at the table suggest-o-demanding that they use a particular wild shape in combat because Reddit says it's the most optimal, then blaming the druid when things go south because they're bad at wild shape?
Ironically, yes. That's exactly the point. Druid players can be as expressive and creative with their characters, allowing wild shape to not just be mechanical crunch, but something that uniquely identifies their own character. The possibilities are indeed endless.
Backseaters are going to backseat no matter what, and I honestly expect that same backseater to now criticize a person for using wild shape. The class is definitely designed around it, with 6 or 7 features being tied directly to it, but if you're not a Moon Druid you get to use an action to almost certainly lower your AC, remove most or all of your spellcasting (depending on level), and force yourself into melee where you're a more boring Champion Fighter. Hell your own class capstone and possibly species features don't even appear to work when wildshaped.
And honestly people make bad choices with literally every class, no matter how obvious we find the right moves to be. There are Warlocks who take damage cantrips in place of Eldritch Blast, there are Wizards with access to 3rd level spells out there using their concentration on Witch Bolt. The game can survive non-optimal choices, and at the end of the day at least that player had a choice.
I will be very surprised if Eldritch Blast doesn't become a Warlock class feature when it shows up in the playtest. It and its accompanying Eldritch Invocations are one of the biggest reasons to play a Warlock. Ideally Agonizing Blast will also be made a class feature.
My current warlock doesn't have eldritch blast, just his pact weapon and booming blade (and the improved pact weapon invocation). He was my first ever character from years back, before I knew anything about character builds and what was good. Thing is, I built him around using the pact weapon and it's working out pretty well so far.
There really need to be balanced templates for a whole bunch of animal abilities. Basically like how WoW does hunter pets.
I really liked the philosophy behind the original WoW Druid shapes (before we got boomkin and tree, whom I know nothing about, nor their current balance overall)- your cat form was your DPS form, and your bear form was your tank form, and specifically each of those was in the ballpark of being as good as other specialised classes at their core role. You were doing Rogue DPS, and you were doing Warrior Tanking... however, you missed out on all the diversity and flexibility that those classes brought alongside just filling those roles.
So many times I've seen people argue that balancing hybrid classes is "well, you make them shit at 5 things, and that adds up to being as strong as 1 regular class" and that's just nonsense, you're never those 5 things at once, so all you are at any point is shit. They need to be individually good at their job, but lack the utility other classes bring, that way your role creates a fun puzzle of "okay, what would be best in this situation?", you remain valuable at that role, but don't take away from other classes.
I also happen to like the idea of easily accessible templates for wild shape, it keeps the accounting down and lowers the need for system mastery. Also if the player wants they can wild shape into weird spider-wolf abominations...
The solution to lack of powers / movement types would be a list they can choose from that expands as they level up. And to keep things interesting, future bestiary's can include a section in the beast's profile of what a druid can take from it and at what level.
Is that just a common anathema that everyone picked up (like applying critical failures to skill checks)? I know one of my DMs applied that rule to Polymorph, too.
I ruled it that you could turn into creatures you hadn't encountered (and they picked a biome to start with that they were familiar with), but if you picked something you hadn't encountered before there would be a chance you ended up like a mummers puppet or one of those baffling medieval illustrations.
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I don't like characterizing someone enjoying a variety of flavorful options as inherently a power-gamer munchkin. It's only natural to get enjoyment out of solving problems, even easier puzzles like weighing a few common combat forms, and feeling like you make a good choice. Or occasionally making a marginal/bad choice on purpose because it makes things more interesting!
Not every choice comes down to a perfectly optimal thing either. Imagine you're in an ancient dungeon full of thick webs and undead. Do you change into a spider for the web-walking, or do you decide against it because skeletons can't be poisoned by your bite? Or is it better to blissfully choose neither because it doesn't matter at all and all animals are exactly the same?
I mean I'm sure you can see where applying this line of logic elsewhere could result in a much worse game, less rich in options. Maybe there should be fewer classes and subclasses too, so those damn power-gamers don't weigh them all up and choose the strongest option every time?
I mean...yes. That's not a problem, that's just a challenge for the designer. It means you have to think about the game you're making. As a designer you are of course free to sidestep the issue, but you have to be prepared for players to dislike your solution if it means they have fewer fun options.
Pathfinder 1E of course then turned around and threw in all sorts of unbalanced other content without any care, but the original argument around how to handle wildshape and transformation spells still held true.
Don't you have to see an animal to be able to use that form?
Your companion options are a number of archetypes with their own stats and abilities, so you pick an animal and then decide whether it's more like a wolf or a cat or a snake or whatever, and the stats level up with your character
Seemed to strike a decent balance between "I hope you have a bookmarked website listing Beasts by CR" of 5e and "eh, turn into whatever, it's just for the Beast keyword powers anyway" of the 4e Druid
Back in 4E, I MCed my deva invoker into druid just so I could turn into a rakshasa-looking medium-sized tiger. Being freed from the monster manual has good outcomes.
I take it that 5E was more like 3.5E in the respect of each animal being essentially its own character class when wild shaped. I spent a lot of time as a dog for the tripping.
It wasn't a well balanced system. I'm of the opinion that any class feature that requires its own binder is probably too complicated.
So I think there's room in there to be creative with your wild shape, while still adhering to simpler mechanics.
I tried to bridge the gap with custom magic items that gave her bonuses in wildshape form but wildshape is pretty ineffective for someone who doesn't do a lot of out of game research.
Same with being able to smite through a mount's attack.
I don't think sacrificing all of the unique abilities of the various beasts is the way to go either, though. That's super boring, on top of losing all the temp HP. Even PF2e wild shape still gives you some temp HP though it's still primarily your own HP you're using.
Losing out on tiny creatures (forever? until higher levels?) is very lame.
Druid backstory: zookeeper who studied paleontology
The tiny beast thing might be a bone to the Rogues? Doesn't matter how good at stealth you are if the Druid can be infinitely better than you at scouting by just turning into an animal the bad guys won't care about if they see it.
From what I read in the rules, there's nothing that says a druid has to have seen a particular animal or beast before being able to wildshape into it.
The rules say the druid choses the form, or even a hybrid form of multiple animals that fit the abilities description.
Starting at 2nd level, you can use your action to magically assume the shape of a beast that you have seen before.
Sorry, talking about the playtest material. All I'm reading is that the player can change into a shape that the player has "learned from this feature", with those shapes being land, sea, and sky.
You can be a panther that has WIS + prof bonus to hit and does 1d8+WIS damage with 60' dark vision.
You could also be a bear that has WIS + prof bonus to hit and does 1d8+WIS damage with 60' dark vision.
Heck, you could even be a Golden Retriever that has WIS + prof bonus to hit and does 1d8+WIS damage with 60' dark vision.
There are endless possibilities!
Or worse, having to deal with another player at the table suggest-o-demanding that they use a particular wild shape in combat because Reddit says it's the most optimal, then blaming the druid when things go south because they're bad at wild shape?
I'll take it.
Edit:
Ironically, yes. That's exactly the point. Druid players can be as expressive and creative with their characters, allowing wild shape to not just be mechanical crunch, but something that uniquely identifies their own character. The possibilities are indeed endless.
Backseaters are going to backseat no matter what, and I honestly expect that same backseater to now criticize a person for using wild shape. The class is definitely designed around it, with 6 or 7 features being tied directly to it, but if you're not a Moon Druid you get to use an action to almost certainly lower your AC, remove most or all of your spellcasting (depending on level), and force yourself into melee where you're a more boring Champion Fighter. Hell your own class capstone and possibly species features don't even appear to work when wildshaped.
And honestly people make bad choices with literally every class, no matter how obvious we find the right moves to be. There are Warlocks who take damage cantrips in place of Eldritch Blast, there are Wizards with access to 3rd level spells out there using their concentration on Witch Bolt. The game can survive non-optimal choices, and at the end of the day at least that player had a choice.
I will be very surprised if Eldritch Blast doesn't become a Warlock class feature when it shows up in the playtest. It and its accompanying Eldritch Invocations are one of the biggest reasons to play a Warlock. Ideally Agonizing Blast will also be made a class feature.
Yea i can’t speak to the mechanics of the play test, but i much prefer malleable templates that encourage creatively then just a list of a handful of creatures.
Not being tiny until level 11 is something though.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
If it's more flavour (which being a lackluster combat form and little else kind of is) then remove x times per rest / only beast / etc. limits on them entirely, let people be a flumph whenever they want.
Yea, they need to give the druid some form of maneuvers they can take while wild shaped if they are going to go down the template route.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
There are some fun creatures out there that will let you poison, web, web walk, gain mobility, grapple (Giant Scorpion is pretty cool) amongst other things, but I think my take can be summed up with a pure combat discussion.
Just limited to combat and throwing dice you have differences in forms. A Dire Wolf and Brown Bear have the same CR, but do things differently. The Dire Wolf is faster but less flexible (it has no climb speed), more predicated on teamwork and with its effect on hit can set up later attackers. The Brown Bear shits out attacks and is a good option if you're fighting without assistance as it has a higher chance to hit and does more up front damage. Neither has Dark vision, either!
I think losing that evaluation and tradeoff is limiting to the class. Like, yeah, I can always change into the form I want, but in potentially gaining RP expression I definitely lose mechanical expression.
For me personally the discussion ends with them removing poison web web walk and grapple. Maybe your criticism is sufficient but not necessary. The playtest is really dumb and makes the druid worse as long as it hard removes those abilities.
I'd be fine with decoupling abilities from specific animals if there was a way to web walk and a way to grapple and a way to be a teamwork fighter and a way to be an attack shitter outwr and a way to be an hp sponge. I like the idea of the changes but the execution is dogshit.
My current warlock doesn't have eldritch blast, just his pact weapon and booming blade (and the improved pact weapon invocation). He was my first ever character from years back, before I knew anything about character builds and what was good. Thing is, I built him around using the pact weapon and it's working out pretty well so far.
So many times I've seen people argue that balancing hybrid classes is "well, you make them shit at 5 things, and that adds up to being as strong as 1 regular class" and that's just nonsense, you're never those 5 things at once, so all you are at any point is shit. They need to be individually good at their job, but lack the utility other classes bring, that way your role creates a fun puzzle of "okay, what would be best in this situation?", you remain valuable at that role, but don't take away from other classes.
The solution to lack of powers / movement types would be a list they can choose from that expands as they level up. And to keep things interesting, future bestiary's can include a section in the beast's profile of what a druid can take from it and at what level.
*free in that the new rules for Unarmed Attack give you the choice of an actual unarmed strike (for 1+str dmg), a grapple or a shove.
I ruled it that you could turn into creatures you hadn't encountered (and they picked a biome to start with that they were familiar with), but if you picked something you hadn't encountered before there would be a chance you ended up like a mummers puppet or one of those baffling medieval illustrations.