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When you are a druid affected by some kind of ongoing effect (such as being poisoned or burning, or whatever) and you switch to your wild shape - do these effects stay?
Are they + their duration suppressed/halted until you revert back?

I couldn't find anything about this in the druid's description of Wild Shape, but I would imagine that there might be some official ruling about it (since it shouldn't be a too unusual occurrence).

If they are indeed transferred, I would assume that any conditions that are only valid for either the beast or the non-wildshaped-caster would be removed, such as poison when you transform into a poison-immune beast or elemental (if you're a circle of the moon druid at the respective level).

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Any conditions that you suffer remain in effect when you wildshape because wildshape is silent about losing them. For a DnD 5e feature to do something it must say it does it - the rules don’t list the infinite number of things they don’t do for obvious reasons.

Except if your new form is immune to them. If so, they vanish and are gone even when you change again. Jeremy Crawford has confirmed this in this tweet where he states:

In #DnD, the exceptional trumps the general. (No longer being a valid target trumps condition carryover.)

A poisoned moon Druid transforming to an elemental will lose the poisoned condition. Similarly, a sleeping (unconscious) elven Druid in wildshape loses the condition when they revert to their normal form.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ The final example is only true for magical sleep. \$\endgroup\$ – David Coffron Feb 4 '18 at 4:38
  • \$\begingroup\$ @DavidCoffron I don’t think so - elves can’t sleep. \$\endgroup\$ – Dale M Feb 4 '18 at 5:04
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    \$\begingroup\$ They can if they are poisoned by a sprite or something similar. And nothing says they can't sleep just that they needn't \$\endgroup\$ – David Coffron Feb 4 '18 at 5:23
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    \$\begingroup\$ ^ What David said. Not needing to do something is vastly different from being able to do something. For instance, I don't NEED cheesecake, but I'm quite capable of devouring it in massive quantities. \$\endgroup\$ – Lino Frank Ciaralli Feb 7 '18 at 15:47
  • \$\begingroup\$ @DavidCoffron Similarly, afaik elves can be affected by drow poison. \$\endgroup\$ – Ettina Kitten Jan 3 at 18:36

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