Animals

[Kangleton]

Okay, the menacing chicken was a different story.

And Sean... we're over.

[Lothoir]

On the subject of detecting shapeshifters, would Detect Magic find something 'funny' about a polymorphed person? I would think so, because wild shape is a supernatural effect, so it should light up as magical. And while in PnP wildshaping causes all worn items to be nonfunctional while one is wildshaped, this isn't the case with NWN2, so would you also be able to detect they had magical items protecting them?

And of course, detecting magic on every animal would be as bad as casting Truesight only when animals with names show up, but as the spell is a 60 ft cone, there's a good chance that when using it on another PC or item or whatever you would also ping the wildshaped person.

[sharringtonm]

I actually brought this up in a private thread.

Their are two ways to detect a shapeshifter. Passive and agressive. Passive is what it is. Aggressive tends to need a reason to be used aka suspicion of shapeshifter.

Passive:
Dragon Sight (you know its not a real bunny, but you don't know what it is)
True Sight (You see the man for the bunny)
BlindSense (NOT BlindFighting or Blindsight, will tell you something is not correct with the bunny)
A survival check if an animal acts strangely (why do people always go with spot? Spot sees the rabbit, survival is what recognizes its acting funny. Use Spot when they;ve disguised themselves, not when their shifted into a new form alltogether)

Aggressive:
Discern Shapeshifter (Obvious)
Detect Magic (Yes this will show the items merged with the person, though the wildshape itself does not have an aura)
Detect Evil/Good (True Animals are true neutral, although MOST druids are too)

Weapons vs Shapeshifters tend to do more damage.
And of course.. theres the ol' Kill it and see if it becomes a person. (I do not recommend this method as it leads to Treants and such beating you senseless in revenge for killing a druid.)

[Machiavelli]

/agree s-dizzle

Sean knows of what he speaks!

[Silas North]

I think spot is often chosen because it is often used to notice peculiar actions even when you are not necessarily looking for them. Pickpocketing for example and it is used to resist feints as well I believe.

Still, survival does make more sense. At the very least, someone with high survival is more likely to notice odd activity from an animal, while someone with high spot and low survival probably would not think the animal was doing anything that odd.

Now someone with high survival AND spot....