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Dragon Con is coming up, this is as good a time as any to jump in right? I humbly submit this character for review in the hopes it is not torn completely apart.
David the Druid (human)
Str 14
Dex 14
Con 12
Int 12
Wis 18 (+2 from race)
Cha 07
Traits -
Grand Lodge - Loyalty - +1 against enchantments
Combat - Reactionary - +2 to initiative
Skills - Knowledge Nature, Spellcraft, Perception, Profession Brewer (for day job rolls?), Survival. Room for one more here from favored class
Feats - Front runners are Dodge and Combat Casting. Spell Focus Conjuration looking towards Augment Summoning is another idea.
Nature's Bond - Air Domain or an animal?
Equipment:
Scimitar, Hide Armor, Heavy Wood Shield, Sling with 20 bullets
2x Alchemist Fire
1x Potion Cure Light Wounds
Water skin
bedroll
canvas, 2 sq yd (looking at a "how to mak a blindfold" post last night, it suggested canvas)
flint & steel
hemp rope 2x 50 ft
chalk, 3 pc
Backpack
Grapling Hook
Holly & mistltoe
Spell Component pouch
Crobar
Bottle
Rations, 5 days
2x Torch
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Total 145.83 GP spent
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Is your Profession for flavor and RP, or just to make Day Job rolls? If you want a Day Job just for the extra gold, I'd suggest spending 2pp and getting a Hunting Lodge to use Survival for your Day Job instead. Skill points are worth a lot more than pocket change, generally.
Is that from the PFS Field Guide? I see the Year of the Demon guide saying "Certain Vanities (Pathfinder Society Field Guide 60) allow you to further modify your Day Job rolls, or even let you use skill ranks from other, more specialized skills like Heal or Sleight of Hand as Day Job rolls."
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Yes, that's from the Field Guide.
What type of druid are you trying to do here? Front line fighter? Caster focused? It's probably best to pick one or the other and specialize.
I actually just recently started my own thread looking for advice on my first druid PC. It might be worth comparing notes.
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Yes, that's from the Field Guide.
What type of druid are you trying to do here? Front line fighter? Caster focused? It's probably best to pick one or the other and specialize.
Okay, then I can trade in an alchemist fire for the vanity and pick up another useful skill.
As to caster or front liner, I'm stuck in a mind set of not knowing who I'm playing with so I'm trying to account for too many things. I could trade Str and melee for Con and HP, or I could boost Cha and dump Str instead to cover charisma skills. I don't think these scores are particularly bad though, since I would need to steal 7 points away from ther abilities to get Wisdom up to 20. I think the focus here will eventually be casting first though.
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IMO, there are two ways to approach any character concept in PFS. You can make a generalist that has an answer for anything and everything, and can fill in for gaps a party may lack, or you can make a more specialized character that excels at a smaller list of roles typically associated with that concept.
A specialist Druid might take the Plant Domain, max out Knowledge (Nature/Geography) and Survival, and memorize Druid-only spells like Faerie Fire, Entangle, and Spike Stones. You could take languages such as Sylvan, Treant, and the Elemental Languages. You could focus on feats and items that augment things Druids are usually known to do. Druids can do a lot of things that other classes can't.
A generalist Druid might grab an Animal Companion to help out with combat, take a trait to make Diplomacy a class skill, level dip into Monk for some combat maneuvers, and carry around a Haversack full of scrolls and alchemical items. In PFS, you never know who your party might be made up of, so being prepared for anything is sound advice.
But, above all else, make a character you'll enjoy playing. Whether that involves roleplaying or rollplaying, just be sure you like doing it. And toss in some survivability, too. Season 5 might be rough.
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Either take the animal companion out right, or take the animal domain and get your critter back at 5th level and take boon companion. They add way too much versatility and power to be made up for by a mere domain. Even a +2 to hit flanking buddy can be incredibly useful if you plan on being in melee alot.
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Nah, dump cha like a bad habbit, you'll be fine.
At first level you have
1 rank in handle animal
-2 from your "i was raised by wolves... they brought me back to the farmhouse" charisma.
+3 from charisma being a trained skill
+4 from your link with the critter
+2 from a 10 gp training harness
For a total of +8. At the start of the dungeon take 10 to set your animal to defend, that way it will at least attack SOMETHING in the unlikely event you roll a 1 to tell it to attack a specific target.
You can try getting a handle animal up to the point you can make a DC 25 handle animal check reliably... OR you can up the critters int to 3 or 4 and give it a lot of tricks to drop the DC by 15. Charisma is only a point or 3 at any reasonable expenditure. Dropping the DC by teaching the critter the right tricks is far more effective.
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I'm also looking at making a druid and was wondering if the animal companion starts with some tricks ?
I just thought as we ourself are trained from the start of lvl 1, I thought it made good sense the ac also had learnt some tricks, so it doesn't feel like the animal is something i just met before the start.
Never mind i had overlooked in the society faq list
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I'm also looking at making a druid and was wondering if the animal companion starts with some tricks ?
I just thought as we ourself are trained from the start of lvl 1, I thought it made good sense the ac also had learnt some tricks, so it doesn't feel like the animal is something i just met before the start.
The first time a character with levels in druid, ranger, or any other class that grants an animal companion gains an animal companion, the animal enters play knowing its maximum number of tricks as dictated by the animal companion's Intelligence and the character's effective druid level -The FAQ
So most druid critters will start off with 7 tricks (3x 2 int= 6+1 bonus) If you take
Attack
Attack (a second time so it will attack unnatural creatures)
Defend
Down
Heel
Seek (mostly because its the only "go over there" trick for a critter)
Flank (if you have the animal archive, which i highly recommend for any pet using class)
you should cover 95% of what you want a critter to do. "fetch" and combat maneuver: trip make up the short list for more bonus tricks or tricks to teach the critter if you up their int (which i highly recommend doing asap)
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As to caster or front liner, I'm stuck in a mind set of not knowing who I'm playing with so I'm trying to account for too many things. I could trade Str and melee for Con and HP, or I could boost Cha and dump Str instead to cover charisma skills. I don't think these scores are particularly bad though, since I would need to steal 7 points away from ther abilities to get Wisdom up to 20. I think the focus here will eventually be casting first though.
If you try to do everything, you won't be good enough at any of it to be useful. I learned that the hard way when I was new and made my first cleric character.
When I say to specialize some, I don't mean to the exclusion of everything else. But pick one thing you want to be your specialty in combat, and make sure you're good at it. Then, pick a backup plan for when you can't do that specialty, and be pretty good at that. Do the same with non-combat. That way, you'll have something you can do in most situations.
For a druid, the three main possibilities for a primary plan in combat are fight on the front line, focus primarily on casting, or just focus on the animal on the front line, while the humanoid companion cowers in the back buffing the beast and tapping people with a wand of Cure Light Wounds. Your backup plan for something you can do to be useful in combat is having stuff like alchemist's fire for when normal front line combat doesn't work (swarms), a ranged weapon against flyers, and/or being a backup healer with a wand of Cure Light.
As stated in my druid thread, I'm focusing on casting with my druid. Taenia gives a good example above about how to focus on front line fighting with a druid. But if you try to focus on both, you won't have enough spells, stat points, or standard actions to go around, so it's best to pick which one you're specializing in, then build the PC around that. That's the mistake I made with my first cleric. I didn't invest enough wisdom to be a really good spellcaster or enough feats to be really good at weapon combat, so now I'm mediocre at both at mid-high levels.
Out of combat, most druids specialize in knowledge (nature) and survival, to be the party tracker and nature expert. That's just a no brainer - if you don't want to focus on those two skills, don't be a druid. Again, being a backup healer is another non-combat role. Or you can pick other skills you want to be good at. As mentioned in my other druid thread, I was considering avoiding the typical druid charisma dump and taking a trait to get diplomacy as a class skill, so I can be a pretty good party face. Not as good as a bard or other charisma based caster normally would be, but good enough as a backup role out of combat.
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Don't forget to bring a Bestiary, a tablet with the Bestiary pdf on, or prints from a Bestiary pdf with your watermark on it.
GMs aren't supposed to allow you to use summoned creatures without it, even if you have the stats written or printed from a 3rd party source (and, no the PRD or d20PFSRD aren't legal either).
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Especially if you play a Shaman. Summoning creatures with the Young/Giant/Advanced templates requires some prep work, and a premade chart, to make combats run smoothly. I don't often bring my Bestiarys (1 for summoning, 3 for my AC) to my regular gaming spot, but I probably should to PacifiCon this weekend.
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Lots of good ideas here. It's always fun to find out what the internet thinks.
From this I think casting and animal companion are going to be the path to take. I don't think I can justify a full caster that isn't able to cast 9th level spells. True, I could always multiclass and not be a full caster, but I'll leave that for later. 18 is plenty early on.
The animal companion in combat will be the other focus. Good ol' wolf. Let it be the damage dealer while I hang back. That said, I don't think the str<->cha switch is going to completely happen.
I'm going to need some more PDFs for this though. I already grabbed the PFS Field Guide. Animal tricks sound like I need more than the core rulebook. Beyond that, I think I see myself bringing a backpack of books.
The Kn Nature and Survival skills being "If you are a druid you will have these skills" are the same reason I was wondering about Handle Animal. Semi-Obviously Survival and Knowledge Nature come up more often than Handle Animal does, but a druid is still one of only a couple of classes that would be expected to have it, and just because I've never been in a game where it came up doens't mean it won't in PFS.
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It comes up if you're handling your critter. I think i've seen it in one chase scene, and prominantly in one scenario. If you have a critter, get it at least up to +11 with said critter (so you can command them when they're injured) if you don't have a critter, throw a rank in there for the +3 and fuggetaboutit.
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After some flipping through the Avanced Race Guide...
Human Alternate Trait - trade my feat for "Eye for Talent - +2 to sense motive and +2 to one of your animal companion's ability scores". Thinking about that and a wolf. The Lv1 feat goes to Spell Focus Conjurtion for Augmented Summoning at level 3.
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After some flipping through the Avanced Race Guide...
Human Alternate Trait - trade my feat for "Eye for Talent - +2 to sense motive and +2 to one of your animal companion's ability scores". Thinking about that and a wolf. The Lv1 feat goes to Spell Focus Conjurtion for Augmented Summoning at level 3.
I definitely got a lot of mileage out of that on my velociraptor.
A feat for +1 hit and damage to your pet is pretty good
or you can up its int by 2 and get another 6 tricks known, and you can get it any feat it can do before level 5
up its con and its effectively getting toughness for your pet (toughness comes highly recommended anyway)
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Str 14
Dex 14
Con 12
Int 12
Wis 18 (+2 from race)
Cha 07
Is not bad.
Personally, I go for something like this:
Str 14
Dex 14
Con 12
Int 13
Wis 16 (+2 from race)
Cha 10
Survival is a better skill than brewer and with the 2PP investment Hunting Lodge is great. And handle animal.
If you get your INT to 14 at lvl. 4, you can also add a Social Skill. Why? Everything requires social skill, you always want to use either bluff, diplomacy or intimidate. If your Cha is at 7, you will often find that you are missing out on half the fun because your Cha has a -2 modifier.
But its only my 2 cp and your initial build looks plenty good. Also, I would advise that you can get your main stat +2, with a headband of Wis for 4,000gp, so you aren't ever really forced into starting it super high, at the expense of other stats.
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Also, you're talking about wanting 9th level spells eventually, but PFS just doesn't go that far. Normal Society scenarios only go as high as level 11. There are "seeker" scenarios and modules you can play at 12+, but it's relatively rare. So when planning a PFS PC, I find it's best to just assume you're only going to level 11. Maybe have a vague plan in the back of your head for 12+, but don't base the whole PC on those choices.