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Yes, certain prestige classes in 3.5 allow more than one animal companion. IIRC, Complete Adventurer actually includes a feat that allows a similar situation (as previously described) to the Beastmaster by allowing multiple companions, but I may be mistaken.

Why may I be mistaken when I could walk across the room and search the book for clarification? Answer: I'm lazy and I'm drunk.

But don't multi-class in anything that doesn't advance your wildshape and spellcasting.

Along these lines, I reaffirm my suggestion for the Daggerspell Shaper prestige class. You give up only one level of spellcasting ability (a mere formality at epic levels) and gain the ability to use magic weapons while in wild shape, while progressing further in wild shape, a great bonus. You also pick up a few extra nice little abilities. If you have access to Complete Adventurer, you want this class; it is THE way to be a strong combat druid.

OOh, this is interesting. Sounds like some interesting player dynamics you have. Do tell more.

I just picked up a copy of Complete Adventurer and it has a few useful things for druids (and everybody else too, actually). The two that come to mind first are beastskin armor and the Daggerspell Shaper prestige class; conveniently enough, both of these specifically augment combat abilities while using Wild Shape. Beastskin, which is a special armor quality equivalent to a +2 bonus, makes the armor shift in shape with you so that you're still wearing it in your wild shape form; you are still proficient with it and all bonuses and check penalties still apply as normal. The daggerspell shaper prestige class has a few requirements, namely two weapon fighting and weapon focus (dagger), but allows you several benefits: you can cast spells as normal if wielding a dagger in each hand, your wild shape abilities continue to improve (including times per day), and beginning at second level any magic qualities on your daggers apply to your corresponding claws in wild shape form (assuming you were wielding them when you shifted). You also improve your casting abilities as normal, except for at first level, and later pick up a few extra little tricks to mix magic and your daggers (or claws).

Last night I think I created a new running gag. My character, a Warmage, just recently (ie, last night's session) came into the services of a Kobold warlock cohort. He's loyal, he makes a decent addition to combat, and he's not actually stupid, but he is a bit umm, twitchy. For some reason Kobold + warlock came out to equal one strange little dude (at least in my head when I was coming up with his personality), so he acts a lot like a sixth grader on a wicked sugar high. Anytime we cleared out a dungeon room and started looking for loot, he'd immediately invoke his detect magic ability. The first time he found something (a scroll), he got excited and pointed, yelling "Magicky!" Players chuckled, quickly getting used to the mannerisms of this character (for other reasons from the same scroll, the cleric has been paranoid about explosive runes). It wasn't long until, if I forgot to point out that he was detecting magic in such a situation, somebody would say "Hey, aren't you looking for magicky?" He even did a little happy dance (which I felt obliged to demonstrate myself) upon his greatest discovery of "magicky-ness," a Rod of Wonder...upon learning what such an item was capable of, the rogue player first gave a sigh of relief that only "detect thoughts" occurred when he tested it by pointing at her, then proceeded to yell at the DM (her boyfriend) "You dip****! Did you give that thing to the crazy Kobold on purpose?!? You did, didn't you?" He did, so at least we know who to blame for the inevitable magicky chaos.

I finally got around to buying Complete Adventurer today and, upon closer perusal, I actually like the Ninja over the Scout. The Scout is still cool, but the Ninja is really cool. I'm already working a Ninja NPC in as one of the villains in a campaign I recently started writing.

I'm also going to use several prestige classes from this book for other villains (I haven't worked on much more than concept before today, and hadn't gotten around to specifics on the villains, good thing I waited!). I figured that for a change of pace I'd write less of a dungeon crawl and more of a political/mystery/intrigue campaign, and instead of a single villain have a "party" of four or five villains working things behind the scenes (trying to start a war between two kingdoms). Some of these classes allow for that kind of stuff but doesn't sacrifice combat ability (woe to the PC that isn't on their toes when the Ghost-Faced Killer villain is nearby!). I think that the Master of Many Forms villain I'm drawing up should throw them for a real loop...I wonder how many times they'll meet him before figuring out it's been the same person (or pidgeon)?

I think of prestige classes more of an extension of the character's style. Like I had a character that was a halfling fighter who, obviously, wasn't particularly fond of getting up close and personal with opponents that were capable of picking him up and tossing him over their shoulders (or many nastier things one can do to somebody a fraction of their size). At least if I was a halfling I know I wouldn't wasnt to start attacking an ogre at the shins. So I picked up the master thrower prestige class and a couple of returning light hhhhhammers as soon as I could. I later added flaming and shocking features to the hammers (one each), further amplifying the damage. This character's backstory was that he had been a pirate for some time, so he already wore light armor and focused on quickness rather than brute force (though he'd often "assist" our rogue in opening locked doors with his hammers, often setting off traps in the rogue's face-then again he didn't really like the rogue). That prestige class worked quite well for the character I already had.

Another way of thinking about prestige classes is not as an easy way out to playing a character but a focus on which to build a character. Remember that the fun of a roleplaying game is to act out things (in your imagination) that you think would be cool to do. Some of the things that prestige classes enable characters to do are, quite honestly, really cool. While any member of a particular prestige class has pretty much the same abilities, that doesn't mean they go about them the same way; this is where personal style and roleplaying comes in. Everybody that reads a prestige class description comes away with a slightly different idea of what a member of such a class is like, and I think that prestige classes are a great way to help newer players develop their roleplaying abilities.

A note on such classes, I spent a while yesterday making a Warlock. It took a while because I was on a big caffeine trip and easily distracted, but I got it done. So now my human lesbian warmage has a paranoid kobold warlock for a cohort. He should prove an interesting way to bring out some personality traits in the warmage that the other players haven't done enough good roleplaying to notice (one new player, two bad roleplayers, me and the DM).

I've been the unofficial official colorful character person for my group ever since I, mostly by accident, made a certain evoker character of mine insane by being drunk the first time I played him (and the DM's numerous unsuccessful attempts to "straighten him out" were amusing as well: crazy wizard + high ego intelligent Holy Avenger = crazy paladin with magic missiles). Others of note are the bad tempered drow Hexblade, the halfling fighter/master thrower with a pirate background and who's idea of solving any problem involved throwing hammers at it, a flighty and foul mouthed stripper bard, and a particularly vindictive cleric of Wee Jas who would withold healing spells from PCs who were "useless jackasses."

Not that I don't take the character seriously; I spend hours of cumulative time thinking out their personalities, how they'd react to certain situations, etc (usually when driving, mowing grass, or anything else noncerebral). When I'm done, the character is very well defined in my head and when it's game time they sort of take on lives of their own. I've learned that getting into character like this is actually good practice for stage acting (I've been fairly active in the college theater in the past few years).

On the other hand, how hard can it really be totie a string to a tree, post, etc, run it across a path, doorway, etc, around another tree or post, and attatch the end to the trigure of a well secured crossbow? The only real safety precaution necessary is to not load the bolt into the crossbow until after the tripline is set, then don't kick the string. I can see a DC 5 or even 10 check to make sure you get proper tension, aim the crossbow correctly, etc, but that's easy enough for an intelligent character to do without ranks. Now rigging op a concealed ax-like pendulum to swing down from the ceiling when a concealed pressure pad it stepped on, yeah that would be a lot harder andd take a while. Still, a decent trapmaker with the assistance of a good mason or carpenter (or the trapmaker having ranks in the appropriate craft as well as trapmaking) should be able to pull that off in a day or two, faster with more hands on the job.

This has yet to come up in one of my games but if it did then I'd make ad hoc DCs for simple traps at least (like the crossbow thing). A pit trap? It's a well disguised hole in the ground, for Pete's sake. Wedging a few pointy sticks in the bottom shouldn't be too hard either. The only thing I'd require a skill check for would be making the cover hard to notice, and I'd be likely to add synergy bonuses for ranks in Hide and/or Disguise (either the trapmaker or his/her rogue buddy that lends a hand). Maybe a constitution check if you're trying to dig the hole in a hurry.

And unlike, say, the Hexblade and Assasin, the Wu Jen's ENTIRE spell list is found in the Complete Arcane.

You are not correct, sir. Many of the new books have new assassin spells.

They offer new core classes, but they do not offer the same level of comprehensive support for them, which, IMHO, is horsepucky. Once you create a "CORE" class, you have to treat it as if it were a core class.

I'm not correct? Take a look at Complete Arcane, the Wu Jen spell list occupies four and a half pages, starting on 91 and ending on 95 (I have the book handy because I was just making a character with it). That list looks pretty comprehensive to me. Any books published before CA won't have any Wu Jen spells listed because, oficially at least, the Wu Jen did not exist when those books were made. You can't "support" something before it exists. Complete Arcane is also a fairly recent release.

And what, precisely, did I say to suggest that few or no books do not include new Assasin spells? I recall mentioning specifically that such information *is* present, when I said "There is no need for a sidebar in that book listing spells from other sourcebooks for that class, like there are for the Hexblade and Assasin, because they're all on that list." The Assasin has a specific section in the spells chapter of CA, for example, and the Hexblade has a small sidebar on page 94.

As to other "new" core classes, most don't really need updating; only spellcasting classes really need such attention and even they only need it when new spells are introduced that can be added to their spell lists. They seem to be doing that with the Hexblade, at least, and I've personally not seen any missed opportunities where such information would be relevant but is not present.

Please give me an example of one publication which should, but does not, include a class specific update, such as (but not limited to) additions to a spell list. Keep in mind that it would be silly to expect an update on the Favored Soul, a divine class, in a book like Complete Arcane or such; there is no new information truly relevant to that class in that book.

In one campaign I was running at college, a player's roommate wanted to try her hand at D&D. Aside from myself, only two other players in the group were thoroughly familiar with the rules, so one of them, Dave, had her play his character while he coached her so I could continue to straighten things out for the other two novice players we had. The new player decided she like the game and Dave said she could just keep his old character, a fighter, if he could make a new character. I agreed and the next week the party met up with his new character, a half-Drow sorceror.

Several PCs didn't trust the guy with dark skin and pointy ears, so they made sense motive checks agianst his affirmation that he was indeed on this island to assist the Ke'Blar elves in somehow lifting the embargos that the Evil Midget Empire had placed on their cookie exports (the campaign idea came to me one night while I was drinking, and it was filled with lame jokes). He was telling the truth and most of the PCs were satisfied of this. That is except for our groups second fighter, a less than completely stable elven Lasher. She rolled a 1. In my group the DM, usually myself or Dave, often chooses to enforce a house rule that any natural roll of 1 for anything automatically fails spectacularly; the nature of this blazing blunder is entirely at the DM's discretion. In this case I was behind on some notes preparing for the next planned encounter and handling no less than four sheets of notes while the party roleplayed played the the meeting with little need for supervision until the Sense Motive checks, so the best ridiculous thing I could come up with from the top of my head was "You think he's lying and that he's really an evil whale in disguise who wants to somehow destroy this island for more swimming room." The player, whom I do believe was either drinking, heavily medicated, or both, did a great job of actually looking at Dave really suspiciouslyducking behind another player, pointing and yelling "He's a whale!"

Now any time a NPC or occasionally a newly introduced PC seems in the slightest way suspicious somebody invariably yells, accusingly, "He's a whale!"

Really, it was funny at the time.

I think that the Scout looks pretty cool also, but I usually prefer to play magic users of some type or another and I haven't gotten around to buying Complete Adventurer yet. If I were to make a non-magic using character, I'd probably go with a Scout though because I like the combination of speed and finesse along with some good old beating.

Yeah, in my experiences with I've never seen a truly impressive Druid combatant. They're more of a support class. I could suggest a few things, though I don't know how many you've already considered yourself.

The Druid doesn't have access to very strong weapons, so find ways to enhance damage. One way to do this is to add an "elemental" bonus tou your weapons (flaming, frost, shocking, etc). This can be particularly useful with a keened scimitar; at epic level it should be easy to have something like a +5 keen flaming burst aberration bane scimitar. Take the improved critical feat and you threaten a critical hit on a natural roll of 12 or higher. Damage dealt would be 1d6 slashing + 1d6 fire + strength mod + 5 normally, and 2d6 slashing + 1d6 fire + 1d10 fire + (2 X strength mod) + 10 on a critical. A added in aberration bane since it would make sense for a druid, and also adds +2 to attack and damage (+4 damage on a crit) and +2d6 damage to any hit against an aberration. Quite a few epic level monsters are aberrations, as well as more than a few old favorites that can be boosted by character levels (Mind Flayers being a great example). You could drop the Bane ability or a few points of basic enhancement bonus to make the weapon cheaper if you wanted to. For a ranged weapon you could get a sling with the flaming/frost/etc ability; not as damaging but you could buy several with low enhancement bonuses (+2 or +3) and different other abilities (use the flaming one for cold subtype opponents, different bane abilities, etc). Most DMs would likely let you use multiple slings per round if you have them preloaded and folded to be easily pulled from a pocket (might require quickdraw, maybe not such a good idea).

I'm not particularly familiar with druid spells, I'm an arcane player myself, but I'm sure there are at least a handful of high level ones capable of doing quite a bit of damage or somehow hindering or handicapping opponents, as long as you pick the right spell for the right time.

Also of note is your Wild Shape ability. There should be numerous ways to make that effective. One such way is to look into the Nature's Warrior prestige class, found in Complete Warrior. It allows for a few nice little enhancements to a Druid's combat abilities in wild shape form.

I hope that helps.

The site doesn't necessarily think poorly of gamers, they're just reporting that the Israeli military does. I want to know if the IDF applies the same "detached from reality" label to people who write fiction in their spare time, or watch a lot of movies. What about people who do community theater? They're pretending to be somebody else, aren't they?

I happen to personally know several gamers in the military, and they seem pretty grounded to me. Heck, one of them was a full time recruiter for years until he requested a transfer back to his old infantry unit upon reenlistment. Another I helped teach the game to (I was DM for his first game) and he was more than eager to learn it, having been a long time DragonLance reader.

The conclusions narrow minded people jump to about so many things, RPGs and RPG players included, really disappoint me. In general these are people who's definition of "reality" is just what they want, not what the world is acually like. In my experience, such opinions are often shared by people who notably cringe away from me in public just because I'm a big guy wearing a wallet chain and a black trenchcoat. Like I'm going to pull guns out of my coat and start blasting away at any moment. Gimme a break. Who's really detached from reality here?

Furthermore, NONE OF THE BOOKS list which spells in those books are actually Wu Jen spells also.

The Wu Jen spell list is in many ways similar to the Wizard/Sorceror spell list, with some extra spells and lacking other W/S spells. And unlike, say, the Hexblade and Assasin, the Wu Jen's ENTIRE spell list is found in the Complete Arcane. There is no need for a sidebar in that book listing spells from other sourcebooks for that class, like there are for the Hexblade and Assasin, because they're all on that list. I haven't purchased any other sourcebooks since CA (though the Complete Adventurer is at the top of my list) but I would imagine that any such publications do/will include such a sidebar if they have any spells for the Wu Jen to use. As far as taboos, they nedn't be "crippling." They're mostly roleplaying restrictions, tohugh some mechanic related things can be easily placed in. Examples off the top of my head are that the character can't wear anything blue, speak their own name, eat fish, lie, touch frogs, wield a bladed weapon, ride a black horse, or travel in a covered wagon. A creative roleplayer can easily come up with taboos that don't "cripple" the character but still have an impact on their behavior in the game.

As to the Warlock being overly complex, I say you should take the five minutes to read over the invocation rules an extra time or two. In function they are nearly identical to spells, the only real difference being that a Warlock knows fewer invocations than most spellcasters know spells but they have no limit on how many they can use per day. They are, by definition, spell like abilities that can be used at will. They have the same mechanics as spells: duration, range, # of targets, saving throws, etc. Even the formula for save DCs versus an invocation is barely different than that of spells.

And Sorceror a useless class? It's a different version of the Wizard, trading spell selection for being able to cast a smaller number of spells more often and with increased versatility (no preparation). Which a player chooses is personal style and preference.

I really like the Hexblade and Warmage, but my favorite has to be the Warlock. Ever since I first started playing D&D I've loved arcanist classes, but would go nuts because, particularly at low levels, I'd quickly run out of spells. A backup to this was carrying a ranged weapon, but I've never been a great fan of crossbows, spending a feat for bow proficiency isn't a good option for a spellcaster, and I eventually get tired of always playing elves. Also, even at higher levels, if a powerful monster decides to take out the wizard first then I'm in deep doo doo. The Warlock is a great alternative. I get magical ranged attacks and other magical abilities that supplement my personal style (sneaky, snarky, and -whenever possible- just plain mean). I don't get many such abilities but I can use them freely without them running out, and I can wear at least light armor. Frikkin sweet.

In no particular order...

Retrievers: I only used one of these in a campaign and it only survived for about three rounds of combat, but damn if the snarky little rogue didn't come close to becoming a crispy critter from the flaming ray, with the cleric and a fighter caught in the blast.

Kobolds: Whenever I need a swarm of squishable bad guys, either as low level adversaries or minions to tougher enemies, it's hard to go wrong with Kobolds. I'm considering making a Kobold Warlock as my next personal character, though.

Dragons: So many rolls they can fill, from allies to enemies, one shot appearances and recurring characters. Since I own the Draconomicon I easily have access to plenty of information on making them really really cool.

Mephits: I've always found mephits to be really darn cool. Due to their generally neutral alignments it is easy to write them in as troublemakers, mere distractions, potential allies, or even victims. One of my favorite characters has a tempermental Ice Mephit familiar (improved familiar feat), Valan, who doesn't say much but frequently makes rude gestures and spews ice shards at her master's party members (maybe not the best idea for a mephit to tick off a level 12 fighter, but her master is a mystic theurge who provides plenty of magical support and often threatens to withold healing spells if you don't leave her alone).

Midgets: I know that midgets aren't a "monster" but they always will be to my group after the now infamous "Midget Campaign." The whole thing started one night when I got drunk and smacked my head on a doorway. The result was an hour-long rant about a midget conspiracy against tall people (I'm 6'4") and how this conspiracy dates back to ancient times and the once feared Evil Midget Empire. I was in rare form that night; my friend Kat literally fell off of her chair laughing several times and suggested I write a campaign about the evil midgets. So I did. Their frontline (low level) warriors would charge PCs en masse, attempting to take out their kneecaps with clubs; these peons were slaughtered in droves while their more competent superiors cast spells, fire ranged weapons, or sneak in for flanking attacks. They lived on the island of Munchkinland, their capital city was Oz, and the PCs were aided by the Ke'Blar, a race of midget elves who couldn't export their yummie cookies due to midget embargos.