Skulls and Shackles Druid Advice


Advice


So my friends and I recently beat Rise of the Runelords (finally! was second attempt) and we've decided the next one we're doing is Skulls and Shakles.
After talking it out as a group, the class I've decided to go with is an Aquatic Elf, Mooncaller Druid, with the Water sub Oceans domains.

The idea, before anyone worries, is the Mooncaller part is more about venerating the moon's sway over the tides, and the GM is alright with this.

What I'm wondering is if anyone has any advice for feats/spells for the druid. One thought I'd had was having the feat that makes your wild shape treated as one size larger for the purposes of abilities and using water elementals, thus having larger whirlpools.

I know this is fairly broad of a question to ask, and I am sorry for that. I'm a little nervous playing in a almost fully water setting, since I've not done that much and our last few battles involving water things kind of nearly killed us.

Thank you in advance for any advice you can give, and I'll try to answer any questions I can when I get back from work.

Also, do please avoid giving spoilers if you can (not that people do, but room mate mentioned it and now I'm paranoid. lol)

Character stats (post race)

Spoiler:

Str: 12
Dex: 17
Con: 15
Int: 18
Wis: 17
Cha: 14


Although there are some underwater activities, Skull and Shackles is a 'we are pirates on a ship campaign' not 'explore the world under the sea'. The party having some ability to function underwater is important, but don't build you character on it.


Dave Justus wrote:
Although there are some underwater activities, Skull and Shackles is a 'we are pirates on a ship campaign' not 'explore the world under the sea'. The party having some ability to function underwater is important, but don't build you character on it.

Noted. I didn't want to focus too hard on underwater combat. The idea with the elementals was to go for making large enough whirlpools to mess with the ships.

The Water(ocean) was something I'd been considering, and when I looked at the player's companion for the campaign it was actually suggested so it seemed a nice fit.

Since most of it is going to be combat on, in, or involving boats (I'd presume) are there any spells people would suggest? I already know Warp Wood is one but not sure about anything else especially helpful.


I wouldn't go dex based. Most of your good wilsdhape forms get strength bonuses and dex penalties. Including the large and huge water elementals, though calling those good forms even in naval warfare is a stretch.

Actually, I don't think there are any good +dex forms other than air elementals. Medium animals are +strength and there aren't small versions of the good ones. Going any smaller than small for bigger stat bonuses than +2 deprives you of reach, forcing to share your opponent's square. The smallest pouncers are the deinonychus and leopard and can fit in normal ship and building corridors and are medium +strength forms.

Going large on the other hand gets you the big aquatic creatures and the big birds and pterasaurs that can carry people and the big water elementals and for combat on land the big earth elementals. Even air elementals give strength as well as dex once you get to large.

If you're stuck with that stat array the only way to go is dervish dance with no wildshaping until you get air elementals and get yourself a large and then huge scimitar for outdoor fighting.


1. Don't go Dex-based, not needed.

2. I had a lot of fun preparing a Nature Fang Druid for Skulls + Shackles, using Besmara's favored combat style for feinting and such.

3. I swear by the Water (Rivers) Subdomain for this campaign.


Alright, so a few people have said don't worry too much about dex (even my GM). So I took a second look at my grid (yay grids!) and came up with a bit more Str in the build.

Str 16
Dex 15
Con 15
Int 17
Wis 17
Cha 14

Again, this is post race (+2 Dex and Int, -2 Con [in case yall forgot])

Secret Wizard wrote:
I had a lot of fun preparing a Nature Fang Druid for Skulls + Shackles, using Besmara's favored combat style for feinting and such.

I actually hadn't considered this. I will have to take a look at the class and figure if that might fit better.


I think you'll find it pretty hard to go wrong with a druid in S&S. You could take an archetype that nerfs wildshape and not be great or even out right bad if you took that human only archetype that ditches wildshape completely or an urban druid with a bad domain choice, but wildshape and the druid spell list are really good for being a pirate and it's hard to lock yourself out of being effective. Especially when your low stat is 14 and your high is 17.

Natural Spell is pretty much a must. Wild Speech is probably important as well. Those are your level 5 and 7 feats (7 and 9 for shamans).

I'm partial to storm druid for the spontaneous casting from a generally useful domain. I'd suggest cloud because weather gets control weather later and then storm when you get your second domain because control weather twice would be redundant. The ability to see through fog is very good. I hope it doesn't qualify as a spoiler to say that weather happens at sea. The tempest druid is similar but offers the aquatic domain as an additional option. Wind is better to spontaneous cast from for a pirate, though.

Basically, every minor, forgettable, little druid ability gets replaced with something that a seafaring druid will use by both the storm and tempest archetypes. If you're not wedded to mooncaller you should consider them.


Actually, if possible, get that Int down to a 14 (still plenty, believe me) and try and get STR/CON even higher.

You also want to get Dex to a 16+ since if you plan on getting big later, Combat reflexes gives you a lot of play. I recommend Giant Squid as soon as you can get there,

:
our Druid in RotRL absolutely Wrecked an entire front of giants with that and airwalk during the defense of Sandpoint.


TGMaxMaxer wrote:
Actually, if possible, get that Int down to a 14 (still plenty, believe me) and try and get STR/CON even higher.

Saddly, that's as high or low as I can get my stats. The grid looked as follows.

Spoiler:

16 15 17
17 13 12
12 12 14

I could trash the int more, but would actually have to take my bonus roll (a 10) and put it in just to make my int bad.

I do like the idea of a squid druid (literally focus on them) but I'm not sure if I want to do that for this particular group. We've already got one person going in a direction that made me think they wanted to use water spells mostly. Another is doing a Buccaneer (arctype) while the last is a "f#@# everything in the water" rogue. (he really hates the water).

What I'm trying to do at this point, is decide if I want to do a blaster caster druid, or go with a more melee feel on the druid. Either with Wild Shape or the Nature Fang and focus on high damage through those.


O create water
Dr 1Advanced Scurvy ,Hydraulic Push,Read Weather,
Dr2 Aboleth's Lung,Eagle Eye,


Ok, first of all sorry that I accidently hit post while typing.

So in looking for Advanced Scurvy, it seems that spell is from the Skulls and Shackles setting. While I might be able to get it eventually, my DM is pretty strict on origins of things.

The same would apply to Aboleth's Lung

Nice idea though :D

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