Hey, so I've had this idea about an evil druid NPC who uses animals as a spy network and as shock troopers. But I'm having difficulty fleshing her out. I get easily distracted by prestige classes and more often then not i try to make my villains belong to them. There arent too many PrCs that match the pure druids capabilty or progression. So i was wondering if anyone had any tips regarding feats, racial substitution levels, skills, some must have spells,, and the best animal companion..She's gonna be around 13th -15th level...probably closer to 13th, depending on how far my PCs get...
Any suggestions about how to a good villain druid would be great!~
I don't think you even need anything fancy like prestige classes or racial substitution levels. A druid focused on summoning and buffing animals can be a very powerful opponent. Augment summoning comes to mind for me and if she/he ends up high enough level to summon elementals, even better. The druid spell list has a lot of great options and the ability to switch out for summon spells spontaneously is pretty good. Fill them up with good utility/buff/offense spells and make sure there's always an open slot ot switch out for a spontaneous summon.
Don't forget to include the feat "Natural Spell". It alows the druid to caszt spells while in animal form. Also, have the druid be using the services of a ranger that helps her out. Have the ranger specialize in traps and ranged combat.
I built a kick-butt halfling druid who pretty much focused all his "oompf" on the first-level spell Produce Flame.
That spell in particular is great because the Halfling gets a +1 for thrown weapons and there's a thrown version of the spell.
Add the right feats (Metamagic and the throwing feats), the spell's ridiculous distance, the fact that it's a touch attack, all the halfling and druid goodies and he's got a great arsenal just from his first level spell selection.
Now some may say that Produce Flame isn't a thrown weapon, but when I was a player, my DM OK'd it.
Anyway, once we got to a high level, my halfling was bombarding people all the time while keeping higher level spells for druidy fun.
I also loaded him up with darts to further push his thrown ability. If you stick with an avian squad, as suggested above, darts and other throwing attacks would mesh thematically.
You could even poison all those darts too.
Do not let prestige classes et al lure you away from the formidable power that a 'pure' druid can bring to bear. (Although I do personally enjoy the shapeshifter class variant.) A high level druid's animal companion with the Nature's Avatar spell in effect is a truly formidable foe.
And with an emphasis on aerial animals (especially ones that can be employed as recon) with the heavy hitters (under buff spells galore) plus the druid also being able to assume avian form and (with Natural Spell and Eschew Materials) being able to bombard the characters with virtual impunity via weather spells and fire seeds. To seal thier fates with creeping doom ... on top of being virtually inundated with summoned animals (the lower-end ones of which can be animal shaped into, say, T-rexes) ... tack on an upgraded Belt of Battle and it gets all kinds of unpleasant.
Yeah, druids are fun like that. One will probably be my next PC.
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race: human
feats:
1(human) Spell Focus (Conjuration)
1 (druid) Augment Summoning
3 Augment Elemental (from Magic of Eberron...basically another aug summoning for elementals)
6: natural spell
9: Rapid Spell
12: whatever you want
for spells, actually prep some Rapid Metamagic'd Summon Nature's Ally Spells.. being able to move, Summon a Large/Huge Elemental, which are @ +4 to hit, +4 Damage, with +2 HP/HD and 2 Temp HD/HD as a standard action, and potentially use a swift action spell at the same time is key.
All while staying in the form of a bird/bat/something flying with decent speed and maneuverability and a roughly innocuous form.
as far as animal companion...if you're 13th lvl, get a dire bear or megaraptor (dinosaur only if you really like them....the bear's a better combatant). slap barkskin, essence of the raptor, animal growth, greater magic fang, freedom of movement on the 2 of you, and have some mass buff spells prepped.
if you time it right, you'll have a small army of elementals at your command, potentially with +8 str/con, camouflaged, as well as a Huge Dire Bear, who radiates pure mean.
for extra mean fun, give the bear +1 Fullplate Barding.
then, just fly around, healing the bear, dispelling enemy casters, and in general being a pest.
when the party slays the summons (or gets rid of them somehow) and drops the bear, hightail it out of there and come back later to harass them for killing your bear.
-the hamster