Summoning as a standard action is just too good to pass up, IMO. It just makes everything better - allows effective battlefield control, extra round of attacks, and no chance of losing your spell. Plus, placing dinosaurs on the battlemap can be a huge challenge - by the second round of combat, there might not even be anywhere to put that Huge dinosaur. Better to get it down early.
I would also take Improved Initiative over Scribe Scrolls, for all of the above reason - the faster you can get the dinos on the board, the better they are.
Saurian for me, it will be substantially better for the first part of your career and IMO still better later because of the standard action summoning.
Your feats do not include spell focus conjuration which you need to qualify for augment summoning, but I am assuming you have accounted for this just did not mention it. I would personally drop scribe scroll, you are best in melee or using standard action summons and generally better in wildshaped form making scroll use problematic. Planar wildshape is indeed great.
Its a tough call on power attacks vs improved init, but I think power attack edges it for me. You can take a trait to get +2 Init, so I think power attack has the edge for me, especially since your best defence is killing ASAP.
What kind of campaign is it? The Menhir Savant gets some great, at-will detection abilities. Being able to "Go, go, Godzilla!" is great for combat-heavy campaigns and not so great for intrigue/investigation style.
We've also got a portal/leyline network in our game world that few can access and limited teleportation. The Menhir Savant plays into that pretty well, giving both ability to use that network and sweet roleplaying/plot hooks.
With saurian you won't wild shape till 6th level, but I disagree with the 'slow wild shape progress'.
At 6th, you count as 8th for dinos, so you already have all the available dinosaur shapes.
You won't even miss the others so lacking regular animals, plants, and elemental shapes for levels won't seem like a problem.
I would recomend wild speech.
It lets you talk in dino form, so you won't have to use up your uses of wildshape turning back into a human to talk to your party or give scouting reports.
Totemic Summons (Su): At 5th level, a saurian shaman may cast summon nature's ally as a standard action when summoning reptiles and dinosaurs, and these summoned creatures gain temporary hit points equal to her druid level. This ability otherwise functions as the dragon shaman's totemic summons ability.
Totemic Summons (Su): At 5th level, a dragon shaman may cast summon nature's ally as a standard action when summoning lizards, and summoned lizards gain temporary hit points equal to her druid level. She can apply the young template to any lizard to reduce the level of the summoning spell required by one. She can also increase the level of summoning required by one in order to apply either the advanced or the giant template, or increase it by two to apply both the advanced and giant templates. This ability replaces a thousand faces.
While plant forms and elemental forms are pretty nice, I have difficulty not taking a form that planar wildshape works on. Flippable DR Evil/Good 10, and elemental resistance 15 is pretty hard to pass up.
prototype00
You'll have these:
Allosaurus for when you need a T-Rex substitute
Huge animal
Speed 50 ft.
Melee bite +14 (2d6+8/19–20 plus grab), 2 claws +14 (1d8+8)
Space 15 ft.; Reach 15 ft.
Special Attacks pounce, rake (2 talons +14, 1d8+8)
A huge, swift hunter, the allosaurus measures 30 feet in length and weighs 10,000 pounds.
Deinonychus medium, 4 attacks and pounce
Medium animal
Speed 60 ft.
Melee 2 talons +5 (1d8+2),bite +5 (1d6+2), foreclaws +0 (1d4+1)
Special Attacks pounce
Elasmosaurus for swim and reach- also works well with vital strike with strong jaw
Huge animal
Speed 20 ft., swim 50 ft.
Melee bite +13 (2d8+12)
Space 15 ft.; Reach 20 ft.
Compsognathus for stealth and scouting, with a minor poison that's based upon your level-see polymorph rules
Tiny animal Speed 40 ft., swim 20 ft.
Melee bite +1 (1d3–1 plus poison)
Space 2-1/2 ft.; Reach 0 ft.
Poison (Ex) Bite—injury; save Fort DC 12; frequency 1/round for 4 rounds; effect 1d2 Str; cure 1 save.
Also, past 8th (when you count as 10th for wild shape), this feat can get you into a fast and combat worthy wild shape as a swift action (Dienonychus).
Quick Wild Shape
You sacrifice power for speed in changing form.
Prerequisites: Wild shape class feature, caster level 8th.
Benefit: You can wild shape as a move action or a swift action. However, you are limited to forms available to a druid two levels lower when changing form as a move action, or four levels lower as a swift action.
So your round is standard action summon, quick wild shape, and still move.
Menhir Savant is the best druid archetype, take it always.
You get to at will detect like 1/4 the bestiary (and like 90% of the stuff you couldn't actually see normally). You get +1 CL a lot of times per day. You get a whole lot of free teleportation spells. You get to go ethereal and scout a room before going in. And you lose almost nothing for all of this!
Saurian is better at summoning, but...SNA is plainly weaker than SM in PF anyway, so druid is not a good class to make a summoner out of. I think Menhir Savant can easily be the better melee class, between un-nerfed wild shape and longer buffs (+1 CL), even the ethereal can be leveraged for an advantage with the right weapon / amulet of mighty fist property. Menhir's just better all around, and supplements some areas druids are normally lacking in (late teleportation access, planar detection and travel, etc...)
For companion vs. domain.... why choose? Take Feather (Animal) to get a bunch of flight magic and nice perception bonus and then take Boon Companion feat to make your animal full progression. Long term, you basically get a domain for the price of a feat.
I guess it depends how useful you find detect spells, not very and annoying is my answer for the most part, mostly because of DM response. Personally I think its no contest saurian shaman wins, a caster level up can be purchased, summoning a trex as a standard action is priceless. True Summon Natures ally is not as strong as Summon Monster but its still amazing and the templates forms make it more so.
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Menhirs will be better scout, rp and caster.
Heck, the roleplaying can be good with either. It just seems to fit the campaign world and situations our groups tend to find themselves in a little better.
I've got a saurian shaman gestalt with drunken qinggong monk levels that I'd love to play, too.
"Open the door, get on the floor, watch out for the drunken allosaur!"
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I feel bad I got here late, because this will be a reiteration of something already said.
Would you consider:
"Add Fly to your list of class skills. In addition, whenever you cast a spell that grants you a fly speed, your maneuverability increases by one step (up to perfect).
Replacement Power: The following granted power replaces the speak with animals power of the Animal domain.
Eyes of the Hawk (Ex): You gain a racial bonus on Perception checks equal to 1/2 your cleric level (minimum +1). In addition, if you can act during a surprise round, you receive a +2 racial bonus on your Initiative check.
Replacement Domain Spells: 2nd—feather fall, 3rd—fly, 6th—mass fly."
to be worth a Feat? If so, take Menhir, Feather Domain, and Boon Companion.
Personally, I think it is a no brainer, but that is just me. The lack of SLAs for SNA make me just shrug it off. If you ant to be a summoner type, druids are just not up to par simply because their summoned creatures are not up to par.
The feather domain is indeed awesome and with many DMs the Saurian Shaman can take it, many dinosaurs had feathers and apparently not just the raptor body typed branch. Interesting guardian article online called Feathered Everything. Of course you should check that with your GM.
Having played a saurian shaman at 5th through 11th level my impression was that my summons blew the clerics out of the water, I recall young ankylosaur's being particularly amazing.
Honestly would you rather have +1 caster level over standard action summons? That extra caster level does very little except power up blasting which is a poor choice, and make buffs last incrementally longer. Yes summoning dinosaurs is not always the way to go, but there are few foes who can ignore a trex up in there grill and of course nothing prevents you using full round summons.
Honestly you will not be weak either way.
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And I may, Dm roles as written, Saurian get wildnshape at lvl 4 but at 6 it's 4/8 progress.
Just so long as he knows that there is an FAQ to the contrary.
Just so long as he knows that there is an FAQ to the contrary.And I may, Dm roles as written, Saurian get wildnshape at lvl 4 but at 6 it's 4/8 progress.
UCK that is terrible.