Druidic Wildshapes

Any tips on the best way to use the Wildshape feature and implement the different shapes? I'm an absolute noob to roll20

The absolute easiest way to handle this, IMO, without resorting to scripts, is to just pull the beast out of the compendium. Keep the druid character on the board, but off to the side. give the player control over the beast token, and have them use the beast for beast related things (attacks, hp, ac, and so forth), and the druid token for things that don't change (wis/cha.int abiltiy checks, etc.) Keep it simple.

Rollable Table Tokens are the classic way if you want to use a single token approach. Often having separate characters in the journal which each represent the different forms of the druid can be useful.  You can have the token of the animal form represent the druid character still, so shift-double click and token actions still work, but have it have it's own set HP on the token (not linked).  Players can then drag out their new form on their own.

The methods mentioned by Keith and Aaron are definitely the easy way to handle Wild Shape, and certainly is how I started out doing so. However I would advise caution on the number of additional character sheets you add to the game to facilitate this. In my experience if you add too many it does slow the game down considerably. Not really much of an issue if you only give the Druid sheets for a select few forms they prefer to use, but I prefer to give my Druids access to anything they could turn into. I'm currently making use of existing API scripts to make my own solution using handouts instead of sheets, but alas it's not quite finished yet due to the amount of extra work involved setting it up.

And of course, you could compromise on both the approaches above.  Have Rollable Table Tokens and character sheets for the most common forms, and if they do anything different pull a token out of the compendium on the fly.  Each time you pull a beast out, it will add a character sheet so you can modify it with the hybrid stats after the session, and add another entry to the Rollable Table - you've just expanded the 'regular' beasts the druid can use.

theonetrueduddy said: The methods mentioned by Keith and Aaron are definitely the easy way to handle Wild Shape, and certainly is how I started out doing so. However I would advise caution on the number of additional character sheets you add to the game to facilitate this. In my experience if you add too many it does slow the game down considerably. CaffeineZen, I don't know if you use the Monster Manual, but if so, you can always pull a beast out and delete it after the wild shape ends, to prevent character sheet buildup. You can do that with the regular SRD compendium as well, but without handy pre-set token images.

Considering the beast straight out of the manual isn't exactly the same a the Wild Shape stats (retaining Int, Wis, Cha scores, etc.), neither Keith's and Aaron's methods are 100% "by the rules." What I did was had my player choose a few diverse beasts they would want to use and created character sheets for each that the player has control of. They also have Abilities that reference each other (like using a spell slot to heal via Combat Wild Shape). My player then just deletes his token and drags the Wild Shape custom beast onto the VTT where the old token was. It's not automated but fast and easy.