As you say, shapeshifting a lot is reasonable. It's a thing the Druid can do and there are no (overt…) restrictions on the move, so adding some is a bad idea and will just take away what makes the Druid the Druid.
But it does have restrictions; they're just not obvious because the move is carefully taking advantage of restrictions that are baked into the rest of the rules. Let's look at them:
The Druid doesn't get to pick their form's moves
Don't ask what the Druid is planning to do! That's giving away one of your means of interacting with the Druid meaningfully. Instead, think about what is archetypal of the form and give it moves for that. An Eagle might have any or all of
- See far and clearly
- Rend with claws
- Fall upon prey with the sun at my back
An elephant might have
- Trumpet deafeningly
- TRAMPLE THEM!
The form doesn't even have to always have the exact same moves list — you can tailor it to the needs of the situation that are obvious to you if you feel like that's following your Agenda and Principles — but by default, give non-fancy “this is just what an eagle does” moves instead of giving the player input.
The archetypal moves say something about the form. It says what it is suited to, and it should be you making that statement. It also emphasises that this is an animal's form, and it's good at doing things that animal is good at, rather than whatever is convenient. Let the Druid use the ability to shapeshift to look for convenience — letting them also help decide the moves they get is letting the Druid double-dip on the move's convenience.
Shapeshifting is powerful, and therefore it is Dangerous
Shapeshifting seems easy — just do the move and it happens! But it only seems easy when it's done successfully, because the Druid did it successfully. Constant, “on demand” access to such a powerful effect is a hallmark of the Druid, but that doesn't mean that it's wise for the Druid to use it like it's going out of style.
Misses are supposed to matter, and the more risky the in-world action, the more extreme events are on a miss. What's more risky than inviting the soul-shattering power of Unbridled Nature into your body to utterly erase your human form and replace it with an animal? Just imagine how that could go wrong. Misses are that going wrong.
I'm going to quote myself from elsewhere to explain this further:
The absolute key to the power of druid shape-shifting is to never, never let them off easy when they roll a miss. The benefits of a hit are huge and awesome, and they should get the full power of the move. But the risks are proportionate to the benefits: when they miss, it should hurt. A lot.
Consider that what they're hoping to do is tap into the unimaginable power of nature to change their body into a new form. Imagine all the (fun!) ways that could go horribly, horribly wrong. Then do those things on a miss.
For example, the last time I had a druid in my game, a shapeshifting fail completely drove the story arc. We'd established (through me asking questions) that the way it worked is by asking a pet spirit of the form to lend the druid its shape, then give back the human form when done. So they had a bunch of fetishes hanging off their belt, one for each form they knew. During a Elephant-form shapechange attempt while hurtling over a deep abyss of unnatural darkness (it made sense at the time!), they rolled a miss — so their Elephant spirit was eaten by the darkness and their fetish fell to ash, but not before the druid became an elephant. As a result, they were stuck in Elephant form because the Elephant spirit wasn't there to give the human form back!
This was the first miss after many successful (and powerful) uses of Shapechange. The druid super-respected the power after that, and used it much more thoughtfully.
They eventually got better, after consulting a nature oracle and entering the Spirit World to rescue Elephant (and their human form) from the Darkness Great Spirit that had eaten it — the latter of which became a major plot element, eventually culminating in an epic campaign-ending where they raised The Silence And The Darkness up to be a new demigod of the Forgotten Realms. That one missed roll snowballed so much of that game, and prompted the improvisational GMing that eventually became the groundwork for the campaign climax. It was great.
So this is the key to Shapechanging: make those misses count, so that the druid never, ever takes the ability for granted and never considers it a completely “safe” thing to attempt.
That quote really states the case strongly, but then it was in response to a GM who was completely at a loss for how to GM for a particular Druid player. But it's a dial that you can turn up and down, tuned for exactly how dangerous the situation is or how carelessly the Druid was shapeshifting. This is the main dial that makes Shapeshifter not a “win button”.
Misses on Shapeshifter don't have to always be cataclysmic, because sometimes something else will be more obviously the best GM move to make. But making even a few misses demonstrate the untamed power that the Druid is allied with and tapping into will make the Druid's player properly appreciate and respect the Shapeshifter move (and Nature) and stop using it like a hammer for every trivial situation.
For your specific situation, I recommend a lighter touch at first, but still a Hard move — definitely lighter than the story above about How Elephant Was Eaten by the Darkness. Based on your Druid's particular shapeshifting idiom, on a miss maybe give them a hybrid shape the first time —
A miss? Oooh. Okay, you start to shift, feeling the power of nature flash through you like lightning to change your body, but then it's gone again, too soon! You're shifted, but into a horrible and horribly ungainly half-human, half-eagle form.
Your new form gives you the moves “Squawk painfully without human words”, “Hop gracelessly across the ground with useless wings”, and “Tear awkwardly with an ill-formed beak”.
The Druid's reaction will almost certainly be to shapeshift again (whether straight away, or after dropping back to human form) as soon as possible, but that's “fine”, in the sense that they can make that choice — with its inherent risk of another miss. That's just one idea for a miss though — once you start thinking of Shapeshifter misses as Golden Opportunities to show a downside of the class or make other interesting Hard moves, you'll start coming up with all kinds of beautiful, situation-tailored GM move results for those misses.
Just by showing them that misses have (like they always should) meaningful consequences in Dungeon World, you'll put a bit of caution into their use of Shapeshifter in an organic, DW-native way.
The short version: it takes time and quiet to trigger
Shouting questions at the Princess in the middle of making (or setting up) some other immediate move doesn't trigger Speak From the Heart, but the reason why is buried in a quirk of the way 3rd-party classes for Dungeon World are commonly written by borrowing wording directly from other Dungeon World classes or other Powered by the Apocalypse games.
Basically, the subtext buried within our common understanding of “comes to you seeking advice” is exactly intended and required by the trigger, and so triggering the move requires having a focused heart-to-heart with the Princess about something that matters. Just moving to stand beside the Princess during a melee and asking whether you should stab Orc One next or slice Orc Two next won't earn a +1 forward for your H&S or XP for the Princess.
A quirk of development history
The move seemed very familiar, so I did some mental digging to figure out what was so familiar about it, and I suddenly realised — it’s almost word-for-word a move from Apocalypse World, the Savvyhead's Oftener Right move.
One of the things often overlooked about Apocalypse World's design is that, integral to its successful move-based design, it has commentary for the MC on each move (including the players'), for how to read and fully understand them all, and execute them well. There are parts of moves that are deliberately up for interpretation, but this commentary exists to ensure that parts of moves aren't interpreted based on mistaken understandings.
The commentary on the Savvyhead's Oftener Right move's trigger is (AW 2e, p. 197, emphasis mine):
“Comes to you for advice” means a whole 2-sided conversation, unhurried and thoughtful, about something relatively significant. Shouting out for advice in the middle of a fight doesn’t count, nor does asking the savvyhead whether to dine upon pigmaggot or screwfish tonight.
And this material from another game matters because the Princess's Speak From the Heart is a functional copy from that game. But being copied from the tried-and-true Savvyhead's move without copying the commentary that ensured it worked correctly has “stranded” it apart from an essential part of the move: the confirmation of what the wording is (too) subtly conveying to the reader of the Princess class. It's open for misunderstanding, and misinterpretation of part of the move that isn't designed to be up for that much interpretation.
So that “unhurried, thoughtful conversation” is what Speak From the Heart's trigger is getting at, and what the move requires for it to not be dysfunctional in exactly the way described in the question. The inherent implication that “Comes to you for advice” carries colloquially, and which has been causing that hesitation, is exactly what the move needs to trigger properly: it has to be in person, unhurried, and thoughtful, just like a real conversation we might decribe as “So-and-so came to me for advice yesterday…”, after the fact.
Yes, this means the move can't be shoehorned into the middle of another conversation, or a fight, or a simple group discussion about whether to go left or right or whether to camp now or later — it’s instead a whole thing/scene/personal moment of its own. Go to the Princess, have a heart-to-heart, and open up about your significant troubles what you need advice with, and you’ll both benefit. And it gives an incentive for planning ahead (because then one might trigger the move by consulting with the Princess), instead of always doing everything by the seat of one's pants in the heat of the moment.
The Princess inspires calm and resolution with many moves, and this move is no different, just more subtle about it than some of the others.
Best Answer
The best way for the GM to handle this is to keep in mind: Don't eff with The Ranger's Animal Companion. Just like you don't break The Fighter's Signature Weapon. ...Unless they really ask for it. Which in this case, The Ranger certainly hasn't.
What's more important, this one attack by The Thief, or the thing that makes The Ranger cool? You can be a fan of both characters and have the Animal Companion get wounded and put out of the fight. But it's not so badly hurt that it can still get away and survive the day. Which is what you did, so that's very cool.
The Animal Companion doesn't have HP because it's not meant to get killed. Really, the only way one should get killed is if The Ranger understands that what he's having it do is going to get it killed. For example, if The dying Wizard needs a healing potion and you have it fly one over to him, but the GM tells you it can do that, but it will definitely get filled with arrows and die if it does, well, then that's your choice. Er... That's not a great example, but it does show what I mean. When you're talking about the Animal Companion dying, the Ranger gets to choose.
Here's a excellent write up about using Animal Companions in Dungeon World. You'll find good examples of ways to use GM moves on the Animal Companion without killing it: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1MCAVL9DzB3EZqbzRb57YQgzZkuhE32x89vvSzVZ8Ke0/edit