Once again "The form chosen must be that of an animal the druid is familiar with. For example, a druid who has never been outside a temperate forest could not become a polar bear."~PH3.5 Page 37
It's not fluff, it's literally how the class works.
Oh wait a minute -- I think I finally see what's going on here. Let me see if I can aggregate this thing ....
While, yes, you could use your know(nature) skill to
identify a creature (as well as various things about it), that doesn't mean that you are "familiar" with it.
And, yes, we can get a decent idea of what "familiar" is supposed to mean from the example -- in this case it would suggest that the creature should be terrain-appropriate to the character's home. I mean, seriously, when you have to start contriving silly excuses of how your 1st-level, 20-year-old character is actually an established world traveler (because the DM actually
does know
everywhere you've been since then), then you're just doing an end-run around the basic assumptions of the rules.
Additionally, I would put forth that "fluff" and "crunch" are not necessarily mutually exclusive. in the case of the whole WS thing -- while it
is a fluff issue, it is actually there for a rules reason. Rules influence how the game is played. When something specific like WS form restrictions are put in, it's intended to give you a frame of reference on what some of the basic assumptions are.
Oh, and as to the know(nature) check: if you lived all your life in a specific terrain type, then the check for anything
within that terrain type would indeed be "really easy", or possible even "basic". The further away you get from that terrain type (i.e., the bigger the differences between 2 given terrain types), the harder that check is gonna be (based on the likelihood of encountering a given creature in a given terrain type).
Yes, I realize that most of this may be RAI; but trying to interpret RAW without a solid nod towards RAI is just silly.
So what do you count as familiar? They need to be married or something? The druid needs to raise a few dozen of those animals and open a zoo for them?
Familiar=Actually seen the thing in the fur, scale, feather
Also, what the crap does your signature say, cause it looks Finnish
Yeah, pretty much. on both counts.
as to the first -- see above.
as to the second -- I believe that would be his native language.