Storm Druid Archetype and Lightning Subdomain


Advice


I've been working on a level 8 character to hop in an adventure path after my last character died (RIP, Mimic). I'm settled on an elf druid with the storm druid archetype, which essentially lets the druid spontaneously cast his domain spells instead of Summon Nature's Ally. The archetype specifically calls out what domains and subdomains are allowed for the class - Air and Weather domains with the Cloud, Storms, and Wind subdomains. While looking at the Air domain online I noticed the Divine Anthology added a Lightning subdomain, which grants access to the Lightning Bolt spell as a 3rd level domain spell.

I asked my DM if he'd houserule I can take that subdomain, and he thought it was fine. I don't want to take advantage of him and do something borked, though. If I used the Lightning subdomain I would make a blasting druid that focused on Lightning Bolt and metamagic feats that would make it stronger. I'd still have a wide variety of control spells to spontaneously cast as well, and at level 9 I'd take the Storms subdomain. Otherwise, I'd take Storms to start, and at 9 I'd also pick up the Air domain.

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TL;DR: Is being able to spontaneously cast Lightning Bolt as a druid with the storm druid archetype too good, or am I overvaluing the spell?


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You are overvaluing the spell as it is a line effect with a reflex save. Blasters are hard to do. Most DM's would actually promote this as you would be more of a flavor mage and if you made it a signature spell, etc, that would be cool in my eyes. Not only that it promotes people to read new books (which I promote). I always prefer flavor meeting mechanics most of the time. Sure it is powerful, but you are doing nothing that a sorcerer can't do. With your wild shape, assume primarily avian forms. Remember, down is also a direction. Become the thunderbird! If you want to weaken yourself, play an elf. None of the stat boosts are beneficial for a druid's spells, but it is beneficial to it's skill ranks, AC, and your reflex save. :)


Oliver Veyrac wrote:
You are overvaluing the spell as it is a line effect with a reflex save. Blasters are hard to do. Most DM's would actually promote this as you would be more of a flavor mage and if you made it a signature spell, etc, that would be cool in my eyes. Not only that it promotes people to read new books (which I promote). I always prefer flavor meeting mechanics most of the time. Sure it is powerful, but you are doing nothing that a sorcerer can't do. With your wild shape, assume primarily avian forms. Remember, down is also a direction. Become the thunderbird! If you want to weaken yourself, play an elf. None of the stat boosts are beneficial for a druid's spells, but it is beneficial to it's skill ranks, AC, and your reflex save. :)

Yeah, I rolled elf knowing that the stats didn't work in my favor, but we're playing 20 point buy and elf fit my idea for the character better. Thanks for the feedback!


I do love the idea though :) And you are very welcome.

Grand Lodge

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Honestly, roll Dwarf with a warhammer in combination with the Blessed Hammer feat + Shocking Grasp + standard Magnus tricks. :-)

I've been waiting for the Lightning Subdomain for a very long time in order to fulfil this build.


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Well the Storm Druid Archetype is THE Druid Caster. You lose your animal companion. Thats a major loss for an Druid. Youre already stated you know youre gaining the ability to freely use domain spells at-will.

The problem is youre not getting a great deal from domains or from the archetype. Most of the domain spells a Druid can take are already Druid spells so youre not getting much.

I think you would get more use out of having an Animal Companion. You can still specialize is casting. Just think of your mountain lion or bear as a bodyguard.

Lightning bolt is a decent spell, but its worse than Fireball and its usefulness is limited. Druid isnt meant to be a blaster. You dont have a wide variety of attack spells like a Wizard would have. Instead its about the variety of having a 15bab melee, tier 9 spellcasting, wild shape, and an animal companion all together.

Silver Crusade Contributor

Note that the linked feat requires worship of Torag, which may make the Lightning subdomain more difficult to access. d20pfsrd is an unreliable source for anything with a deity-specific requirement.

If this doesn't apply because you're not playing in Golarion, please disregard. ^_^


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I don't think you're at any risk of being OP with this combination. It can certainly be effective, but by no means game-breaking (though you may want to consider avoiding Dazing spell metamagic -- it *can* be cheesy when spammed).

Have fun with the character -- I like the concept a lot!


ChaosTicket wrote:

Well the Storm Druid Archetype is THE Druid Caster. You lose your animal companion. Thats a major loss for an Druid. Youre already stated you know youre gaining the ability to freely use domain spells at-will.

The problem is youre not getting a great deal from domains or from the archetype. Most of the domain spells a Druid can take are already Druid spells so youre not getting much.

I think you would get more use out of having an Animal Companion. You can still specialize is casting. Just think of your mountain lion or bear as a bodyguard.

Lightning bolt is a decent spell, but its worse than Fireball and its usefulness is limited. Druid isnt meant to be a blaster. You dont have a wide variety of attack spells like a Wizard would have. Instead its about the variety of having a 15bab melee, tier 9 spellcasting, wild shape, and an animal companion all together.

Story-wise, the character I have in mind had an animal companion at one point, but it was killed in an altercation within the last two months by some evil aberrations. In grief, my druid turned to the power of the storms for vindication and to remove the rest of the aberrations from his forest.

I totally get that it might be better to have an animal companion or even spontaneous Summon Nature's Ally spells, but we've got two melee party members and a guy that's summoning already and I don't feel like gunking up the melee fights any more. Plus, I've been taken by the flavor of this concept and I'd have a hard time changing anything now, even though my decisions might not be "optimal".

Cheers, though! Thanks for the advice!


The Steel Refrain wrote:

I don't think you're at any risk of being OP with this combination. It can certainly be effective, but by no means game-breaking (though you may want to consider avoiding Dazing spell metamagic -- it *can* be cheesy when spammed).

Have fun with the character -- I like the concept a lot!

Thanks for the tip! I'm very excited to give it a go! I'm one of those guys that does voices for his characters, and I've been working super hard on a gravely, thunderous voice for this guy - think like Bane from Dark Knight Returns, but lower and more rumbly. Just the flavor of the archetype and my backstory together has me giddy with excitement! Our group isn't meeting again until November 2nd, which just feels like an eternity to me right now!


I thought of a story for an animal companion. Current animal companion is offspring of deceased one. It grows out "my name is Mr Fluffy. You killed my father. Prepare to die"

Honestly Druid domains are not very good. Cleric can choose from some awesome ones like the Luck Domain which gives you double d20s on every roll(easy hits and crits especially on full attacks).

Storm Druid is pretty vanilla. If youve already chosen Domains over Animal Companion than youve already given up on the one reason not to pick that archetype. Other Archetypes actually work with the Animal Companion with little loss but gaining nothing for spells.


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Note that I think you need the Apocrypha trait to select Lightning, unless your GM is explicitly letting you skip it.

Silver Crusade Contributor

Saethori wrote:
Note that I think you need the Apocrypha trait to select Lightning, unless your GM is explicitly letting you skip it.

This is also true. ^_^


Saethori wrote:
Note that I think you need the Apocrypha trait to select Lightning, unless your GM is explicitly letting you skip it.

Yep, I took that. Thanks!


Wait there is a trait to retcon new subdomains in. Isnt that what FAQs are for?

Paizo Employee Pathfinder Society Lead Developer

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ChaosTicket wrote:
Wait there is a trait to retcon new subdomains in. Isnt that what FAQs are for?

This isn't about retconning anything, ChaosTicket. It's a new Subdomain published in Player Companion: Divine Anthology. Rather than adding new subdomains that are always accessible, it requires a user to take a trait that opens access to the option. Each deity's published subdomains have not changes; this allows someone to take an apocryphal interpretation of the deity's vision and express it in a way that's not entirely against the deity's methods.


ChaosTicket wrote:
Wait there is a trait to retcon new subdomains in. Isnt that what FAQs are for?

They aren't being retconned, per se. They're just being added, but they aren't added to the list of available subdomains by default. To qualify for a given apocryphal subdomain (what the new subdomains are called) a PC must take the Acolyte of Apocrypha faith trait.

As far as I can tell, no FAQ is needed to add more domains/subdomains in general. They simply gave these subdomains a small buy-in price.


Oliver Veyrac wrote:
You are overvaluing the spell as it is a line effect with a reflex save. Blasters are hard to do. Most DM's would actually promote this as you would be more of a flavor mage and if you made it a signature spell, etc, that would be cool in my eyes. Not only that it promotes people to read new books (which I promote). I always prefer flavor meeting mechanics most of the time. Sure it is powerful, but you are doing nothing that a sorcerer can't do. With your wild shape, assume primarily avian forms. Remember, down is also a direction. Become the thunderbird! If you want to weaken yourself, play an elf. None of the stat boosts are beneficial for a druid's spells, but it is beneficial to it's skill ranks, AC, and your reflex save. :)

I don't see any problems with an elf druid. They don't take a penalty to wisdom, they've got a caster friendly racial ability, and start off being proficient in bows, so they've got a nice ranged option for the beginning levels with that dex bonus. And having low-light vision always available for those forest nights is rather handy.


ChaosTicket wrote:
Cleric can choose from some awesome ones like the Luck Domain which gives you double d20s on every roll(easy hits and crits especially on full attacks).

Luck domain does not do that, for the record. It allows you to touch a target as a standard action, for the following round the target may roll 2d20 and take the better result. 3+Wis mod/per day. Then, at 8th level, you may reroll a d20 roll as an immediate action before the results are found out for every six levels of cleric you have.

Not to derail, but I'd rather clarify this for anyone keeping score.


Drahliana Moonrunner wrote:
I don't see any problems with an elf druid. They don't take a penalty to wisdom, they've got a caster friendly racial ability, and start off being proficient in bows, so they've got a nice ranged option for the beginning levels with that dex bonus. And having low-light vision always available for those forest nights is rather handy.

Yeah, compared to human I don't get the extra skill points, the bonus feat, or the flexible attribute bonus. Of those things, Elven Magic makes up for the loss of the feat (since it's essentially the spell penetration feat except I can still take spell penetration), and the Int bonus makes up for the missing skill point. I do miss the flexible attribute bonus and I don't like the Con penalty, but with 20 point buy neither of those things were much of an issue for me. The other racials are mostly gravy as an 8th level wisdom-based caster with perception as a class skill.


I've always wanted to make a storm druid that had Djinn Style feat tree (the only of the styles that per RAW can give a little boost to all electricity damage). That style synergizes well with wildshape attacks also with the elemental fist pre-req. I think you'll need feral combat training to make full use of Djinn Spin though while wildshaped to have one of the size huge dinosaur forms use a pimped out tail slap for it or something (which adds to an already heavy feat load) but it sounds very fun and thematic to me. :) You can still get an animal companion with feats like "animal ally" if you are really interested in having both.


John Compton wrote:
ChaosTicket wrote:
Wait there is a trait to retcon new subdomains in. Isnt that what FAQs are for?
This isn't about retconning anything, ChaosTicket. It's a new Subdomain published in Player Companion: Divine Anthology. Rather than adding new subdomains that are always accessible, it requires a user to take a trait that opens access to the option. Each deity's published subdomains have not changes; this allows someone to take an apocryphal interpretation of the deity's vision and express it in a way that's not entirely against the deity's methods.

Personally I thought it was kinda goofy to add an extra requirement onto subdomains that aren't even really any better than regular domains.


swoosh wrote:
John Compton wrote:
ChaosTicket wrote:
Wait there is a trait to retcon new subdomains in. Isnt that what FAQs are for?
This isn't about retconning anything, ChaosTicket. It's a new Subdomain published in Player Companion: Divine Anthology. Rather than adding new subdomains that are always accessible, it requires a user to take a trait that opens access to the option. Each deity's published subdomains have not changes; this allows someone to take an apocryphal interpretation of the deity's vision and express it in a way that's not entirely against the deity's methods.
Personally I thought it was kinda goofy to add an extra requirement onto subdomains that aren't even really any better than regular domains.

I generally agree, at least for many of the new subdomains. If the flavour suits the diety being chosen, I'd be inclined to handwave/houserule away the trait pre-requisite as a DM.

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