2) Wizards don't NEED to learn every spell but so long as Withers, are a thing And just because you don't NEED those spells doesn't mean you aren't trying to collect them or certain ones
Those "Certain ones" can be easily selected when you pick spells for your level up. With Withers allowing you to respec at any time, you can re-assign the ones you pick while leveling. There is no real NEED to farm scrolls at all, you can get all the spells you require and are aiming for easily enough.
The only exception is if you're doing something unconventional, like a 1 level dip into Wizard and scribing up higher level spells (Including ones you don't get scrolls for like Counterspell)... But there's already pushback to this entire notion of Wizard levels not mattering for scribing, let alone further supporting it with bunches of access to learning spells as a Wizard even without the required scrolls.
but you also don't bother to try and get the wizard scrolls to fill out Gales arsenal.
Even if I wanted to, I'm not limited by gold. As I said, I'm not a Loot Goblin, I don't pick up everything, I don't bother with most items. Yet still I can buy every item from every vendor in the game and still be swimming in so much gold that my characters are getting encumbered by the weight of gold alone.
There is very little reason to actually bother with stealing and/or various knicknacks given the plethora of gold the game throws at you constantly.
A vendor would not purchase rotten food unless they operated a vineyard and even then they likely wouldn't because they would already own their own field of them to get them for much cheaper than they could ever purchase them for. Vendors buying EVERYTHING, makes absolutely zero sense.
Vendors will buy anything because they sell anything. As I mentioned before, they're not your personal arms dealers. They will sell to locals. You know? Regular people? People that will have uses for things like a random bucket? A random empty bottle?
Maybe you can argue that some vendors, like A'jak'nir Jeera wouldn't buy everything since not only is she more of a military focused dealer, she explicitly mentions not wanting to buy dirty goods from you... With maybe a couple of other vendors might be more selective of what items they purchase (Like some vendors in the city where they have a specific store - Like Tolna in the Sorcerous Sundries or Fentonson/Fytz in the Stoormshore Armoury) but overall, it's not the biggest of deals. It certainly doesn't impact the games economy (As I've mentioned twice now, I'm not a loot goblin and still have tons of gold)
I have noticed many feats are completely useless in the forms, even tavern brawler only half functions in it without mods.
Most feats work in the forms. At least, the ones that actually are applicable due to being combat related feats.
And as far as scaling with it, I am also thinking of this, after you get the Owlbear form,how much reason do you have to go to the older bear form.
Plenty. Owlbear and regular Bear offer 2 different roles. Regular Bear is a tank, it has a taunt. Owlbear is more of a CC based damage dealer where it focuses on knocking things down while pummeling them.
Similarly, other forms have some benefits to make them useful, like Panther is excellent at initiating combats because it gets infinite uses of permanent invisibility. Deep Rothe is a CC machine able to lock down groups of enemies by charging through them repeatedly. Bear is excellent for those times when your party is in trouble and you need to pull focus away.
It's really only Badger and Spider forms that become useless. Spider is just useless anyway. Badger's only strength is its mobility from Burrow but gets outclassed by Owlbear and Saber-Tooth.
And the entire point of the forms isn't to ignore the stats, you go to the forms to use their ability and benefits.
Yes it is. That's how their design has been in DnD for decades. Since Druid is a primarily caster class, the idea is that you'd normally be focusing on stats like Wisdom. Which would make a core class mechanic in Wild Shaping useless as you'd have rubbish stats in a form. In the same way as if you had to stat into Str/Dex your spell casting would become useless as a result.
So instead of pitting these different aspects of the class against each other, they made it so that when you become an animal, you get the stats of the animal. Which not only helps with character building, but also makes sense (When you completely change your physical form... You gain different physical attributes)
Still, it's not like you cannot influence your forms stats, several feats will provide their stat bonuses to forms. As well as you have things like potions of strength that can set your forms STR to a specific value.
11) Why is the Silvanus statue imbued but the others are not? Is he stronger than the rest? I understand not all idols need to be imbued but it doesn't make sense to have 1 idol that is imbued but having zero equivalents for any other god in a world where there are multiple gods.
His statue is imbued because we find it in the hands of people who actively worship him. The Shar and Selunite idols we find in abandoned ruins. Most logically any idols for other gods that have power, would be in the hands of people who worship said god and thus keep their holy relics close (If they exist at all. Not all gods might even bother to imbue an idol with their power... Heck, Baal, Bane and Myrkul seemingly prefer to imbue people over idols - Hence some story related interactions that I won't spoil as you mentioned in your original post having not made it into Act 2 yet)
