Here I am, riding the bus home, wondering: can multiclass druid/rogues sneak attack in wildshape?@JeremyECrawford and/or @ChrisPerkinsDnD, help me out! When you get home, look up the Sneak Attack feature, and you'll see that it requires weapons that beast forms lack.
— Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford) December 15, 2017
So claws and fangs don’t count as weapons then?
No snek attack sneak attacks? Take a look at the feature. It's not about whether something is a weapon. It's the type of weapons: finesse or ranged.
— Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford) December 15, 2017
Except some beasts have melee attacks in their statblocks which clearly operate off of Dexterity rather than Strength.
Wolves, for example, have a Bite that has +4 to hit, and deals 2d4 +2 piercing.
A creature’s bonus to hit is derived from their Proficiency Bonus plus the appropriate attribute modifier. Wolves have two d8 hit dice, which gives them a proficiency bonus of +2.
If a wolf’s Bite used their Strength of 12, you would add a +1 bonus to the +2 proficiency and get a grand total of +3 to hit. But instead, we can tell that the wolf’s Dexterity of 15 is used in place of Strength, adding a +2 bonus to the +2 proficiency, for a grand total of +4 to hit.
The damage of the Bite also follows this pattern. The dice are a fixed value based on the weapon used, but you then modify that damage with the appropriate attribute modifier. If it was Strength, we’d have 2d4 +1 piercing. But it is clearly Dexterity, hence the result of 2d4 +2 piercing.
So although the Wolf’s natural weapon is not specifically spelled out to be a Finesse weapon, it quite obviously is one due to how it operates. Only a Finesse weapon can use Dexterity to determine your bonus to hit and damage.
Perhaps not relevant to 5e, but in previous editions all natural weapons were considered light weapons and therefore finesse weapons.
https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/SRD:Light_Weapon
There doesn’t seem to be anything in the 5e Players’ Handbook that contradicts or confirms this. DM ruling?
Neither light weapons nor dexterity based natural weapons are specifically finesse or ranged weapons. Your dm can always make exceptions.
Apes, for example, have a ranged weapon attack in their stat block that would meet the sneak attack requirements