Something always bothers me about these kinds of infiltrations. Wild Shape is a relatively low level spell. And while most NPC’s are essentially level 0 with no magic, it should at least be common knowledge in their world that the spell exists and MANY people have access to it.
So why would the guards not be suspicious of an animal? For that matter, why do the guards not have someone constantly using detect magic? Wild Shape is far from the only magic that can be used for infiltration, seems like common sense to constantly scan for magic around an area you are trying to keep secure. I just feel like too often, DMs treat their NPCs, especially guards, as if they have zero knowledge of magic or the world they live in.
Depends entirely on the situation, really. Like a large castle is going to be relatively incapable of keeping out various wildlife on a massive scale, so a bird or rat running around isn’t really an issue off hand. Maybe keep an eye on it to note any sus behavior, but otherwise animals exist. But if they’re in sensitive areas, then it becomes considerably more alarming. Sure, it could just be a rat, but it also could be a fuckin’ druid in which case killing the bird/rat/bat/whatever on sight might be a reasonable response. This also has the added benefit of allowing for a guard who might be a fan of animals and not want to hurt them, which gives the player an alternate path/chance to take things with.
I miss DMing
I feel like, related to this meme, cats in particular would be a lot more common, and trained to hunt pests. Sure, most people can’t identify one rat from another, but they can identify cats. The cars kill infiltrators (druid or just pests), and they cut their numbers down so new ones are more obvious. They themselves are known to the guards so they know if some new cat appears.
The same is true for dogs, and they could sniff out intruders. They could also be trained to hunt, which could be useful for a different set of pests. I’d imagine, in this world, probably hawks or something would be really common for guard stations too, and people would be used to identifying them. They would have developed tactics to deal with this that aren’t necessarily common or available in our world.
Druids keep their hit points, so it would be a very hard to kill small creature, and it has to be a pretty high level druid able to wildshape into a hummingbird. I don’t think such small animals are available in the current version, a 12th level druid in version 3.5 can wildshape into a tiny animal, but I think a hummingbird would be a size category smaller than a rat, which isn’t available until epic levels (beyond level 20)
Also a 12th level wildshaped druid is more than a match to anything in a castle. They have access to their magic after level 6. Igor would be in trouble
That’s not an argument against it. It doesn’t matter if they suvive. It matters if they’re discovered. If there are no rats/hummingbirds/whatever near your keep, when one shows up you pay attention.
For an example in our world, you don’t need to be able to kill a spy drone to sound the alarm that a spy drone is flying around, because there normally aren’t spy drone hanging about. If similar drones became incredibly common then you wouldn’t know it’s a spy drone or not. If you keep the numbers down, you know it’s an issue when one is there.
The are so few high level casters, people wouldn’t have seen a wildshape infiltration in generations. Maybe it’s on the radar in large cities but not out in that country
There are likely waaay more animals in these wild magical kingdoms than the current world.
There’s probably hundreds of rats and dozens of cats and dogs barking at any one time. A WS user could indeed be lurking in a corner somewhere amidst all that chaos, but as OP’s post shows – they are at constant peril to the animal kingdom.
I think most people would be happy to roll the dice
The technology to disguise a robot as an insect currently exists. Do you give thought and inspection to every fly that passes by?
Magic is rare in most settings.
Which is dumb in a high fantasy setting, imo.
Using low magic is a crutch for the DM in order to control the actions of the PCs.
It is much easier to manage mundane actions than it is to manage actions fueled by wild magic. But they lead to less interesting stories.
I have much more fun DMing a setting like old Netheril. The stuff the PCs can do blow my mind. You just need to be able to fly by the seat of your pants.
Looking at you, Skyrim and Oblivion
TBF druids are fairly rare in the Elder Scrolls.
It was more about the guards behaving like they never heard of magic.
