Combat Druid - Is it possible?


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Sovereign Court

Thinking of making a combat Druid for PFS. How would I build an Aasimar Druid focused on shapeshifting? (Max lvl 11) Would I take the Domain or Animal Companion?

EDIT: Was thinking Aasimar for the Resistances...but I see Planar Wildshape gives that also. If you can suggest another race that would be good I'd love to hear it.


Take the Animal Companion.
I also think there is a feat that allows you to smite things while in whildshape form.

Read this


I am playing a combat druid (oread) in RotRL right now and can only say that up to this level, you will rock. Buffing options for the druid are great, barkskin for instance is awesome. Lower levels you will be squishy until you can afford a dragonhide full plate (grab the proficiency), but bark skin and a wand of mage armor help. Also use favoured class bonus for HP to alleviate some of the squishyness

What point buy are you on? I would definitely recommend Animal companion (cat or ROC) to always have a flanking buddy and an option would be the following feats:

1: Toughness
3: Power Attack
5: Natural Spell (which is the druid 5th level class feature)
7: Heavy Armor Proficiency (if you have 19300 gold for dragonhide wild full plate, otherwise get it later)
9: Planar Wild Shape (resistances, damage reduction and smite once per day?! F%!$ yeah!!!)
11: Powerful Shapes ( if you use grab constrict etc a lot)

Wild speech is a feat option for utility if you wanna speak wild shaped

Forms are: Deinonychus (medium) at 4, Dire Tiger (large) at 6 and you can basically stay with that and use airwalk whenever you have foes in the air. I am using an Alraune (available at 10) for 4 attacks with grab and constrict, but you give up the tigers pounce. Before you have air walk, air elemental form can help.

Hope that helps. But at low levels your animal companion is as strong as any other character in the group and your damage will match or likely even exceed the fighter\barbarian as soon as you can pounce. And that is not counting your companion.

Hope that helps ;-)


Dave_Vader wrote:

I am playing a combat druid (oread) in RotRL right now and can only say that up to this level, you will rock. Buffing options for the druid are great, barkskin for instance is awesome. Lower levels you will be squishy until you can afford a dragonhide full plate (grab the proficiency), but bark skin and a wand of mage armor help. Also use favoured class bonus for HP to alleviate some of the squishyness

What point buy are you on? I would definitely recommend Animal companion (cat or ROC) to always have a flanking buddy and an option would be the following feats:

1: Toughness
3: Power Attack
5: Natural Spell (which is the druid 5th level class feature)
7: Heavy Armor Proficiency (if you have 19300 gold for dragonhide wild full plate, otherwise get it later)
9: Planar Wild Shape (resistances, damage reduction and smite once per day?! F*&+ yeah!!!)
11: Powerful Shapes ( if you use grab constrict etc a lot)

Wild speech is a feat option for utility if you wanna speak wild shaped

Forms are: Deinonychus (medium) at 4, Dire Tiger (large) at 6 and you can basically stay with that and use airwalk whenever you have foes in the air. I am using an Alraune (available at 10) for 4 attacks with grab and constrict, but you give up the tigers pounce. Before you have air walk, air elemental form can help.

Hope that helps. But at low levels your animal companion is as strong as any other character in the group and your damage will match or likely even exceed the fighter\barbarian as soon as you can pounce. And that is not counting your companion.

Hope that helps ;-)

This is good though I would recommend against getting proficiency for the Dragonhide Fullplate, since you should wait until you can get it +1 and Wild to purchase it and then you should be spending your time in Wildshape where the proficiency won't matter (since only the armor bonus is preserved).

Sovereign Court

I'm on a 20pt buy, playing PFS. Ratfolk aren't available, I can choose between human, half-elf, elf, half-orc, halfling, gnome, dwarf, aasimar, tiefling, or tengu. I'm sure if I wanted to cast while shaped I would need Wild Speech to complete the verbal component requirement of a spell.

I've never played a druid so I'm a bit behind the curve on the know-how. Do you stat up like 4-6 pages for typical animals that you wildshape into?

19k gold is SUPER expensive for PFS, I'm probably looking to get that amount at 8 or 9 if not spending it anywhere else and that's close to the end of my career since PFS caps at 11th (retires at 12th).

Would mixing Druid and Monk be a decent option? Like a 1 or 2 dip in Monk? Enlightened Warrior, from Blood of Angels, lets you take Monk levels while maintaining a Neutral or Neutral Good alignment. Aasimar also has Celestial Servant to give the Celestial template to his/her Animal Companion.

Silver Crusade

For PFS you almost can't go wrong with a druid. They're that powerful and easy to build. So the key thing is to build the druid that you think will be most fun.

Tgat said, personally, I really like a fairly versatile druid in PFS. One with decent stats AND decent spell casting. The versatility more than makes up for the slightly diminished power. When your party is all melee types you become a blaster/controller. When they're all spell casters you're the tank. Sometimes you're even the healer. My druid filled all those roles over her career.

I recommend

Power attack
Skill focus - conjuration
Augmented summoning
Natural spell

The extra feat makes human attractive but Aasimar are, of course, the most powerful choice :-).

Note - do NOT spam the field with summons normally, keep that in reserve for when absolutely needed. Your GM and teammates will appreciate restraint

Animal companions are the way to go. Increases your versatility considerably. And its a class feature that can easily be underplayed if you're dominating a game but can be made powerful with buff spells if needed


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Dwarves make amazing combat druids and here are the reasons why

Darkvision

Massive and Easily Augmentable Boost to Saving Throws

massive Dodge bonus against an extremely common mid level creature type

good weapon selection to tide you till you get wildshape and natural spell

speed is irrelvant while transformed, but slow but steady, offers a bonus to using barding

constitution and wisdom bonus, boosting your casting stat, while giving you effectively what amounts to the toughness feat and the resilient trait for free

and celestial servant isn't worth it because a once per day smite and negligible resistances just aren't something that appeals to me, plus you don't have the Lunar Oracle Favored class bonus as a druid. but animal companions are expendable, druids aren't. be a dwarf. 2 monk levels optional.

Sovereign Court

PFS levels 1-7 so far I've very rarely seen anything related to a Giant.

Planar Wildshape gives Celestial template which includes Darkvision. You can get this feat at lvl 5.

I don't mind waiting a few levels. My character just hit lvl 2 so I can rebuild him before playing my next game. I also have a chronicle for a lvl4 module on this character so once he goes from lvl2-4 then he jumps to lvl5.

I believe the Favored Class bonus for Oracle is restricted on Animal Companion due to the massive amount of Cheese players were pulling off having level 15 AC's at 10th level. Also, I'm just not fond of dwarves. Something about them...maybe the way they smell.


You don't need wildspeech to cast spells in animal form - you only need natural spell. This should always be your 5th level feat as a druid. Always.

Don't dip into monk- the WIS to AC is nice but you're losing out on spellcasting progression AND wildshape progression, which together are much more valuable.


A lot of advice I'd consider bad here.

1) Animal companions are not as good as they were before Animal Archive split up a lot of the combat orders into separate tricks. You'll need to push more, which basically costs you 1 skill per level and ~4 point buy. A druid with a domain can dump charisma where the sun doesn't shine (ie. into a dwarf city) and be happy. A druid with a companion can't. At decent point buys like PFS 20 the companion isn't as big a deal and it's a lot of extra management when handle animal rules are enforces (which is supposed to be the case in PFS). You're also splitting your item budget. You can be a perfectly adequate combat druid with neither companion nor domain and the domain adds a lot less hassle.

2) Natural Spell explicitly covers all components including allowing you to use expensive material components that are melded into your body. You don't need Wild Speech except to talk to people.

3) Darkvision is useless. When wildshaped you lose all physical racial traits and abilities except stat bonuses. It's not always clear what is physical and what is cultural, but vision types are clearly on the physical side of the line. A dwarf and human that wildshape into adire tiger both wind up with low light vision and no darkvision. Dwarves make pretty good druids, but it's not because of darkvision. It's because of the stat array, the save bonuses, and orc hewer.


the dodge bonus against giants and the full movement in armor are cultural. and i said 2 levels in monk is optional, didn't say it was optimal. and while giants aren't quite common at levels 1-6, they become really common during 7-10 as well as later levels.


I like Half orc for the floating stat +2, the falchion prof., the favored class bonus and possibly the bite attack.
Str 18 con 14 dex 12 int 10 wis 14 cha 8. If you want a monk dip it Can be done after level 8 it have interesting options but it is not mandatory.

Sovereign Court

So an Aasimar's resistances to acid/cold/electricty would go away when wildshaping....but if I took Planar Wildshape that would give me the celestial (acid/cold/electricty) resistances to whatever animal i wildshape into.

Elf and Gnome seem to have decent favored class bonuses. Would the Gnome's favored class bonus remain when wildshaping? (Would I have 1/fire resistance when wildshaped? Thinking the Unscathed trait would work great with this.)

EDIT: I don't think the weapon proficiencies matter much here. I plan on wildshaping and using natural attacks when fighting and I doubt being an ape with a Falchion is much better than a tiger or bear with natural attacks.


Weapon prof Will be worth somthing when wildshapeing Will be impractical and also until level 6 when Wild shape most of ther time is realistic.
Half orc have the same favored class as elf.
And i Think wildspeach is great not for Casting but for interacting with your group.


Kysune wrote:

So an Aasimar's resistances to acid/cold/electricty would go away when wildshaping....but if I took Planar Wildshape that would give me the celestial (acid/cold/electricty) resistances to whatever animal i wildshape into.

Elf and Gnome seem to have decent favored class bonuses. Would the Gnome's favored class bonus remain when wildshaping? (Would I have 1/fire resistance when wildshaped? Thinking the Unscathed trait would work great with this.)

EDIT: I don't think the weapon proficiencies matter much here. I plan on wildshaping and using natural attacks when fighting and I doubt being an ape with a Falchion is much better than a tiger or bear with natural attacks.

weapon proficiencies are there to tide you till you get wildshape. it takes a long time to get to level 4. and even longer to gain natural spell. so as a druid, you will be expected to wield a weapon for the first 4 levels or so. so generally, the dwarf offers an okay list but really shines through attributes and saving throw bonuses. but yes, the energy resistances would be lost. but while wild shaped, you would still have the cultural boons of dodge bonus against giants, full movement in barding and a bonus to saving throws. the darkvision is also nice at the low levels when you don't have wild shape. but dwarves tend to be less fragile than most druids, even though they have undesirable aesthetics.


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Atarlost wrote:

A lot of advice I'd consider bad here.

1) Animal companions are not as good as they were before Animal Archive split up a lot of the combat orders into separate tricks. You'll need to push more, which basically costs you 1 skill per level and ~4 point buy. A druid with a domain can dump charisma where the sun doesn't shine (ie. into a dwarf city) and be happy. A druid with a companion can't. At decent point buys like PFS 20 the companion isn't as big a deal and it's a lot of extra management when handle animal rules are enforces (which is supposed to be the case in PFS). You're also splitting your item budget. You can be a perfectly adequate combat druid with neither companion nor domain and the domain adds a lot less hassle.

I agree with your other points, by I consider this particular piece of advice absolutely terrible. There's no way a domain is worth it for a combat druid, or pretty much ever except for some specific builds (animal domain + boon companion).

1) You don't need the extra domain slots as you aren't casting in combat most of the time.

2) You don't need handle animal: the bonus tricks cover everything worthwhile ('fight' and 'heel'), take a free action and don't require a handle animal roll. You don't need charisma to take handle animal regardless: the -2 from 7 CHA is irrelevant past the first few levels.

3) Even at 20 point buy the animal companion gives you a meat shield, decent damage and a flanking buddy. Most importantly, it improves action economy.

4) You don't (and shouldn't if handle rules are enforced) need to give your animal companion items. They are replaceable for free between sessions, so if you need to retreat from a fight for some reason - which usually means failing the scenario - and you don't have 'heel', you're better off leaving the animal to die and just replace it with an identical version for free.

Even if the ability only gave you a free summon monster at the start of every turn, it would still be worth it. A companion you actually get to build? Even better. Recommending a domain over a companion would be like recommending a summoner give up his or her eidolon for an extra spell/level. It's so not worth it it is laughable.

Sovereign Court

So just to make sure I understand....the Druid favored class bonus a Gnome would get (+1 to 1 resistance) would go away when wildshaping? That sounds like an error.

Also, the Gnome feat Invoke Primal Instinct seems like a pretty powerful feat. Thoughts?


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Dwarf Blight (!!!) Druid
Str 16, Dex 12, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 18, Cha 5
Steel Soul at level 1 for great saves.
Darkness Domain
+ Conductive Amulet of Mighty Fist
= Your first successfull attack on an opponent will give your whole party blur for a couple of rounds.

Free Blindfight feat doesn't hurt.
Add Spell Storing to the Amulet for spells like poison or blindness.

Starting level 5 enemies adjacent to you must succeed on a Fort save or be sickened. (Your party can just take 20 on the save every morning.)

Get Shadow Conjuration, one of the most versatile wizard spells from your domain.

Summon 1d3 Shadows at level 9+ to rapidly lower the strength of big enemies.

With Natural Spell all of these abilities are completely viable and useable in wildshape.

Sovereign Court

Quit with the Dwarf suggestions lol! Sorry, but I can't stand short pudgy dwarves.... Their look drives me crazy. Other race suggestions plz.

But seriously, how good is "Invoke Primal Instinct"? 30ft bluff check to frighten all or make them consider me harmless seems useful.


The blight druid build also works with every other race. The point of the build is the archetype and domain choice, not the race. ;)

As for the gnome feat: It looks ok. Bluff isn't exactly something I'd invest in as a druid and neither is charisma. The low strength of gnomes will hurt your combat performance. I wouldn't go gnome for a wildshape combat druid.

I'd try to get a race with strength and/or wisdom bonus. Having neither will make it hard to get decent ability scores.

Sovereign Court

Seems like giving up an Animal Companion is a big tradeoff though. AC is a flanking buddy and another source of decent damage, let alone a meat shield.


It sounds like you want to have energy resistance. Energy resistance is not really interesting on a druid. You have spells for that sort of thing.
If you want to be a melee wildshapeing druid and in the category with figthers and barbarians in offensive power you want to have Str as High as you Can so a start of at least 17 is Best. Be a guy with some spells and a falchion until level 6 and from there spend your time not sleeping in some animal form and cast frostbite every time you see a bad guy.
Edit: And yes keep the Animal Companion.


You'll usually not be the only melee guy in the group, so there's plenty of flanking buddies.
With spontaneous Summon Nature's Ally you're never short on meat shields. And expendable ones at that.
You can even Summon Monster as a standard action with shadow conjuration.

An AC is great, especially in the low-mid level range of PFS. However, it's also a big hassle and can be in the way in close quarters. That's why I prefer the summoned "on demand pets". None of the basic druid domains seem overly useful to me, though. Even less so for a melee druid. Hence the Blight druid with the very awesome Darkness domain.

Edit: Just to be clear: For pure optimization, the AC is the way to go. But it's also the "usual" and "boring" way to go. I just thought I'd suggest something diferent for a change. :)


Blave wrote:

You'll usually not be the only melee guy in the group, so there's plenty of flanking buddies.

With spontaneous Summon Nature's Ally you're never short on meat shields. And expendable ones at that.
You can even Summon Monster as a standard action with shadow conjuration.

An AC is great, especially in the low-mid level range of PFS. However, it's also a big hassle and can be in the way in close quarters. That's why I prefer the summoned "on demand pets". None of the basic druid domains seem overly useful to me, though. Even less so for a melee druid. Hence the Blight druid with the very awesome Darkness domain.

Edit: Just to be clear: For pure optimization, the AC is the way to go. But it's also the "usual" and "boring" way to go. I just thought I'd suggest something diferent for a change. :)

The bligth druid have problems in social interactions.

If a normal figth takes 3-4 Rounds then a melee guy that is not swinging by round 2 is not really a melee guy IMOP.


Druids suck at social interactions anyway. Trading is usually done while not adjacent (over a counter or something) or you can just send someone from your party to do your shopping.

I'm not sure why the blight druid wouldn't be swinging by round 2.


Since you want to be a combat heavy druid, may I say the opposite of Blakmane and Dip into Monk?

Spells are nice and all, but a level of monk will give you wis to AC and improved unarmed strike (and probably improved grapple as a bonus feat, very useful for druids).

Or, you could take Two levels of the Master of Many Styles archetype and pick up Dragon Style and Dragon Ferocity for free.

With the right feats (weapon focus (claw) and feral combat training (claw) and the right shape (dire tiger), you can have a wildshape that does Strength and a half damage on 4 claw attacks at full BaB (you also get a bite, but seriously, who's counting at that point?).

With Strong Jaw, you can deal 6d8 + Str and a half damage (thanks to feral combat training making your unarmed strike damage sub for your claw damage).

You don't even lose any WS levels with the Shaping Focus feat!

For wildshaping druids, a few levels of monks makes everything better I feel.

prototype00

Sovereign Court

What is Strong Jaw? Is that a PFS legal feat?


Strong Jaw is a 4th level Druid Spell, (3rd level ranger, The Samsaran can poach it at a lower level with Mystic Past Life), which makes all your natural attacks (and unarmed strike, presumably), deal damage as if they were two sizes larger.

It is probably fair to say that it is the strongest spell in the natural attacking druid's arsenal, too bad the duration is minutes per level, you'll want to cast this in combat.

prototype00

Sovereign Court

Suggestions for traits that a Combat focused Druid should take? I'm thinking Reckless would be good to make Acrobatics a class skill with a +1 bonus. Any other good ones?

Scarab Sages

Kysune wrote:
Suggestions for traits that a Combat focused Druid should take? I'm thinking Reckless would be good to make Acrobatics a class skill with a +1 bonus. Any other good ones?

Beast of the society is almost a given. Show up at the mission briefing as a velociraptor and never have to leave form.

Acrobatics works, since if you get the dragonhide plate armor there's no armor check penalty or anything on it. You can usually rely on mage armor from 4th to 8th or so. Buy a wand and a couple of potions. Save the pots for the rare occasion no one in your party can use a wand.

At 5th you will want natural spell.
At 7th you will want wild speech. Not being able to talk to your party or use wands is a pain.

The only reason not to take an animal companion is if you're worried about stomping the poor scenarios too hard already. They're head, shoulders, hooves and toes above the domain options. If you do so, welcome to the union

Scarab Sages

Atarlost wrote:

A lot of advice I'd consider bad here.

1) You'll need to push more, which basically costs you 1 skill per level and ~4 point buy. A druid with a domain can dump charisma where the sun doesn't shine (ie. into a dwarf city) and be happy. A druid with a companion can't.

Even a dwarven druid can reasonably handle an animal.

Ok, step 1. Have your pet with the right tricks. Pushing an animal is a dc 25. Handling them to do a trick they know is a dc 10. Getting your animal the right trick is effectively a WHOPPING +15 to the check. Even this character, with a 16 charisma, circlet of persuasion, and a trait for +1 handle animal, can't reliably hit a dc 25 at level 8.

Attack, attack, defend, down, heel,seek. (you need attack twice or mr
beaky won't go near undead, ooozes, abberations, and everything else trying to hurt you) Just don't tell it to do combat manuvers. Beating on things is usually more effective anyway. If you have an animal that uses a manuver repeatedly, just spend the point on that manuver.

1 ranks
-3 charisma
+3 trained
+4 because of the link special ability on the animal companion
+2 from the 10 gp training harness from the human section of the advanced race guide.

You can pick up a cracked ioun stone to give you +1 to a charisma based skill like handle animal for 200 gold.

At the start of the day you can set the animal to "defend". That lets mr feathers claw at anyone that attacks you without needing other commands in the beggining of battle. Its not as good as sending him after the caster in the back, but if you miss the attack trick check its better than nothing.


Kysune wrote:

Thinking of making a combat Druid for PFS. How would I build an Aasimar Druid focused on shapeshifting? (Max lvl 11) Would I take the Domain or Animal Companion?

EDIT: Was thinking Aasimar for the Resistances...but I see Planar Wildshape gives that also. If you can suggest another race that would be good I'd love to hear it.

Feather domain every time ..... With boon companion it's the same .... Full animal companion and nifty spells like fly and others


I played a lizardfolk Saurian Shaman and had a blast with him. I stayed with the theme of only wildshaping into dinosaurs and reptiles (hardly an issue), and invested a lot into summoning.

I spent a lot of time in wildshape, usually a velociraptor, deinonychus, megaraptor, or allosaurus, depending on what size I could get away with; the damage output was awesome and the speed was amazing. Vital Strike was a decent buy considering that other forms didn't have more than one attack, anyway.

Totemic Summons lets you put down dinosaurs and reptiles as a standard action. Augment plus superior summoning meant a these guys were tough, and numerous enough to matter. And since Totemic Summons let me summon a dinosaur [with the young template] from the next level up, I could drop an [young] ankylosaurus as a 4th level summons.

On a side note, I took an animal companion [ankylosaurus]. That stun trait on his tail was staggering. It didn't always work, but when it did, it ended the fight.

My party loved me; since I had muleback cords, and the spells ant haul and longstrider, I could travel cross country pretty quickly for my level, carrying the whole party on my back (the animal companion had the gear). If i had chosen a faster animal companion, were would have been even faster.

I will say, however, that once you hit 6th level (and huge animals [dinosaur & reptile] are opened to you, the archetype is at its peak compared to normal druids. At 8th level, you only have Totemic Summons over the normal druids, and you lost a few little extras.


I also like , even as melee druid, to keep str and wis same lvl.
Versatility is the biggest str of Druids .
Consider one of the following path if feats :
Summon :( 2 -3 feats ) :
Especially if you go Saurian or lion arch type.

Grapple ; take. 1 lvl if monk maneuver master. Get free grapple at a round and spend it after you claw and grab ... For 1 round pinning . The extra armor and saves is a Bonus.

Vital strike - behemoth hippo . With strong jaw it's 4d8>>>16 d8 for a single attsck.

Grab trex animal companion , teach it improve natural weapon and vital strike for 6d6+22 attack.


Blave wrote:

Druids suck at social interactions anyway. Trading is usually done while not adjacent (over a counter or something) or you can just send someone from your party to do your shopping.

I'm not sure why the blight druid wouldn't be swinging by round 2.

you suggested summoning. As well it sounded to me like you were talking about using it in combat.

Yes the party Can hug the smelly dwarf till they have puked up breakfast every morning but some May decide not to.


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Why do you Druid can't be a face ?
Mine is great at combat ( I can link te build if you want ) and I took the trait for diplomacy as class skill (with extra +1). With cha of 10 , class skill diplomacy +1 and full ranks - I am great at info gather .
One can take the great glory domain (lion shaman) and gain level bonus to cha skills ( use magic device and diplomacy )


Go full druid and take the AC if you want the most combat effectiveness.

If you buff your animal companion, it could be more powerful than you, and spells such as barkskin last a long time so once you get to an area that will have fighting cast it so you dont have to waste time doing so in combat.

If you are lucky enough to be outside use animal growth on your AC.

Also get AC's with multiple attacks such as tigers. They should do more damage than animals with one big attack.


wraithstrike wrote:

Go full druid and take the AC if you want the most combat effectiveness.

If you buff your animal companion, it could be more powerful than you, and spells such as barkskin last a long time so once you get to an area that will have fighting cast it so you dont have to waste time doing so in combat.

If you are lucky enough to be outside use animal growth on your AC.

Also get AC's with multiple attacks such as tigers. They should do more damage than animals with one big attack.

i disagree. depend on dm.

if a lot of foes got DR - tiger < wolf or trex
if humaoinds world etc, no DR, OR many buffs, more attacks > one attack.

lastly, after lvl 9, with multi attack, the trex is attacking twice for 3d6+22 *2

The Exchange

The whole 1.5x Str bonus to damage on single natural attacks bit can be pretty attractive to certain animal companions, the T-rex 'powerful bite' making that x2 damage even more so, especially if you're buffing the thing's Str and size. Plus... T-rex! :)


Did Someone Say Combat Druid?

This is pretty much something you want to look at...


Heck, yeah, you can make a combat Druid. Have you not heard of the Monktopus?

Dip enough into Monk to get Monastic Legacy, level 3. Take levels in Druid until you can turn into a giant Octopus, 6 levels. Then take Weapon Focus Tentacle, Feral Combat Training Tentacle, and then take 2 levels in Ranger and take Improved Natural Weapon Tentacle. Get Wild Armor or have Octopus Armor made for you that can be donned with a wand of Swift Girding. Do the latter, and get spiked Armor for your Octopus form, because Tentacles give you the Grab Ability, and you can grapple with every Tentacle hit, and if you are wearing armor spikes, you do an extra 1d6 per hit.

Between Monstic Legacy, 4 levels in Monk (the last at level 12), and Improved Natural Attack, You will have 8 attacks/round and do 2d8/hit + 1d6 for the armor spikes.

Now I want to make one!

Sovereign Court

Ok, so I'm going to take a "Wild" stab at building the druid here. So far the vanilla Druid seems the best as most others reduce wild shaping or put it off till later levels.

Human Druid:

Class –Druid
Race – Human

Animal Companion: _______
Traits -
* Reckless
* Beast of the Society
Stats -
Str: 15 + 2 = 17
Dex: 14
Con: 14
Int: 10
Wis: 15
Cha: 7
1) Druid 1: Bab +0, _______ (human), Power Attack (lvl 1), +1 hp
2) Druid 2: Bab +1, +1 hp
3) Druid 3: Bab +2, _______ (lvl 3), +1hp
4) Druid 4: Bab +3, +1 Str, +1hp
5) Monk 1: Bab +3, Natural Spell (lvl 5), Improved Grapple (monk), +1hp
6) Monk 2: Bab +4, Evasion (monk), Dodge OR Combat Reflexes (monk)+1hp
7) Druid 5: Bab +4, Shaping Focus (lvl 7), +1hp
8) Druid 6: Bab +5, +1 Str, +1 hp
9) Druid 7: Bab +6/+1, Powerful Shape (lvl 9), +1 hp
10) Druid 8: Bab +7/+2, +1 hp
11) Druid 9: Bab +7/+2, _______ (lvl 11), +1hp

I didn't see any druid archetypes that seemed better than the vanilla tbh. I'm going to stick with the Animal Companion. Also, was debating between Master of Many Styles for Dragon Style/Ferocity and vanilla Monk but having a hard time figuring out how to put Improved Grapple in without it being at the end of my PFS career. If going vanilla, not sure if Dodge of Combat Reflexes would be better.

Any suggestions/thoughts to improve the build would be great.


There is absolutely no reason to select a druid's race based on weapon proficiencies.

Druids are proficient with scimitars. Scimitars can be wielded two handed. They're a paltry 0.5 damage per hit behind a falchion when wielded two handed. By being a half-orc instead of a human you're trading an extra level 1 feat and a skill point per level for a martial proficiency and not much else since everyone sees the same when wildshaped.

The Exchange

You may want to consider being a half-orc, because then you can access the orc's Druid favoured class bonus of +0.5 to the damage of your animal companion's natural attacks. Clearly if you go that route you want a companion with as many natural attacks as possible - so probably a big cat or dinosaur (if picking from the base list).


Cave Druid 6/Barbarian 1/Fighter 1/Barbarian X

07 Shaping Focus
08 Vital Strike
09 Furious Finish

At 10th level, Wild Shape into a Carnivorous Crystal, use Vital Strike for 112+(1.5*str). Sure you'll be fatigued for two rounds after, but what will still be alive? Casting Strong Jaw on yourself first will boost the damage, but since noone knows how 7d8 scales a conservative estimate is 6d8->8d8->12d8 which means 192+(1.5*str) on a vital strike. If you stay barbarian you'll qualify for Improved Vital Strike at 13th, which is 168+ or 288+ with Strong Jaw.

EDIT: You shouldn't have to worry about speed too much, the barbarian's fast movement and a Longstrider spell should still apply in ooze form.

EDIT 2: Just going Druid 6/Barb X still can qualify for this, but won't be able to take furious finish until level 11

Shadow Lodge

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Is there a such thing as a Non-Combat Druid? Wha. . .???

:P

Scarab Sages

"Devil's Advocate" wrote:

Is there a such thing as a Non-Combat Druid? Wha. . .???

:P

Click the character for a social/wild empathy druid.


My personal favorite druid concept would have to be a Druid with an offensive domain power who takes a single level of Monk to get the unarmed strike and flurry, then takes Dragon Style along with the Domain Strike feat. After casting Rime Metamagic Frostbite and shifting into an elemental, you can inflict an absurdly strong Dragon Style punch that also inflicts the damage and fatigue of Frostbite, the entanglement of Rime Spell, and the effect of your domain power as a swift action.

Sovereign Court

I think I want to stick with the AC and trying not to over complicate my build. Debating between full Druid and Druid with 2lvl dip.


Yeah the Domain Strike is hardly central; its the whole Dragon Style Monk thing that has such crazy synergy with a combat Druid. The strength and power of shapeshifting crosses with Dragon Style unarmed strike, gets buffed like crazy by Druid spells, and then rains down on things with flurry. You aren't wearing armor anyways, so everything Monk gives you is free and easy - when you use flurry, monk even gives you a free point of ab back. And since you're using unarmed strikes, you can pick forms like Air or Earth elementals for their powers without caring about the details of their natural attacks.

Don't get me wrong, its not the be-all and end-all of combat Druids... well it is for me, only because beating foes into oblivion with a whirling elemental of stone or wind is something I can't resist.

Out of curiosity, why 2 level dip or none? Each level of Druid lost is painful, and everything that really matters from Monk - Wisdom armor, Monk's unarmed strike, Improved Unarmed Strike, flurry of blows, a little saves buff, maybe class skills and one shortlist bonus feat - is all from 1. Giving up another Druid level seems like a terrible deal to me.

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