Melee druids are only marginable viable in Pathfinder. As melee you will be significantly weaker than a warrior of same level. Maybe you like the flavor, but eventually you will notice that the wildshape physical stat bonuses are lackluster and don't stack with stat-enhancing spells and items and you pump out not even half the damage the fighter does.
Summoning however is strong as ever, so I'd suggest you let your animal companion and summoned animals do the fighting for you and you stay in the background doing your minor healing and buff spells.
Summoning feats will then be handy. And a cheap magic item (Ring of the beast, not sure which book it is from) that enables you to summon a critter on the lvl X list by casting a lvl X-1 spell slot: i.e. 1d3 direwolves out of a lvl 3 spell)
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Hi all.
A game I'm playing has a distinct lack of healing powers, and since my fighter died from the said lack of healing, I'm taking druid now. I'm aiming for a melee wildshape druid with a minor on healing. Except I don't know what feats to take. Natural Spell and combat casting is a no brainer, but that's all I got. Any core only suggestions?
Stats are 14str, 12dex, 14con, 10int, 18wis, 8cha. The stats might change though.
Thanks.
Well, here are some feats (obviously from the 3.5 books...) that you may be interested in:
Bestial Charge (Comp Champ, p 56): Let's you do some tactical things while charging in wild shape form, such as Pounce, and charging in a zig-zag.
Blindsense (Comp Adv, p 114): expend a wildshape to get blindsense for 1 min / HD.
Dragon Wild Shape (Dracomicon, p 105): Let's you take small and medium dragon shapes, and keep all extraordinary and supernatural abilities (excluding spellcasting).
Exalted Wild Shape (Book of Exalted Deeds, p 42): Lets you take the shape of blink dog, giant eagle, giant owl, pegasus, or unicorn.
Fast Wild Shape (Comp Divine, p 81): Wildshape as a move action.
Powerful Wild Shape (Race of Stone, p 143): As a standard action, you can spend one of your uses of wild shape to assume a powerfully built version of a creature you can normally wild shape into. While in this form, you retain the benefits of your powerful build racial ability and are considered one size category larger than normal for many effects (see the goliath racial traits on page 56 for details on powerful build).
Primevil Wildshape (Frostburn, p 49): When you assume a wild shape form, you can opt to cause the shape assumed to be a primeval form of the creature that existed in the ancient past during a vast ice age. Doing so grants the new form a +2 racial bonus to Strength, a +2 bonus to its natural armor, and resistance to cold 10. A primeval wild shape has a much shorter duration than normal, since the enhanced qualities of the new shape drain your supernatural energies much more quickly. A primeval wild shape has a duration of 1 round per druid level (or per level of the class that granted you the wild shape ability) instead of the normal 1 hour per druid level.
Swift Wild Shape (Comp Champ, p 62...Requires Fast Wild shape): Can wildshape as a swift action.
Those are the best ones I found doing a brief search in my feat database....
And dont forget "extra wild shape" (Complete Divine p81).
In the beta the bonuses didn't stack, so maybe they changed it ;-)
The fast wildshape feats are indeed a must imho. You don't want to waste a standard action (basically your whole turn) shifting.
Wow, a feat database.
Ya, I have well over 100 books, close to about 150, between electronic copies and hard copies I have purchased over the years. It was too confusing as to "where did I read this?" so, since I am a web programmer by profession, I made a website and database behind it.
I currently have well over 3000 feats in it, all searchable by about 40 different ways. If anyone is interested in access, contact me directly (belphan@yahoo.com) and I can hook you up.
Shalandar
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Just thought I'd pop my head in here and offer a few additional suggestions. I saw a few good ones, but I'm surprised nobody mentioned these:
Knowledge Devotion from the Complete Champion allows you to make knowledge checks vs. your enemies as a free action and gain an insight bonus to attacks and damage. If your check is 15 or less, you gain +1, and it scales all the way up to +5 with a check of 36+. You're sitting on 4+int skill points a level, so you can definitely spare a few for what is essentially Inspire Courage at the cost of a knowledge check.
Intuitive Strike from the Book of Exalted Deeds lets you use your wisdom modifier in place of your strength modifier on all attack rolls with simple and natural weapons. This will let you keep your Wisdom as high as possible and rely on your wildshapes to boost your damage. You have to be neutral good, though, which may be a downside.
Magic of the Land from Races of the Wild is a great feat for druids who want to pick up the healing slack. Make a Knowledge: Nature check and you get to heal every recipient of the spell 2*spell level hit points. Basically, every time you choose to buff the party you can tack on some healing, and when you heal you can add some additional healing. The only issue is that it doesn't work on aligned spells or necromancy. Still, pretty rad.
Hi all.
A game I'm playing has a distinct lack of healing powers, and since my fighter died from the said lack of healing, I'm taking druid now. I'm aiming for a melee wildshape druid with a minor on healing. Except I don't know what feats to take. Natural Spell and combat casting is a no brainer, but that's all I got. Any core only suggestions?
Stats are 14str, 12dex, 14con, 10int, 18wis, 8cha. The stats might change though.
Thanks.
Low level druid, can wield a greatsword called shillelagh. Power attack is nice. So is power attack, and.. power attack. See if your DM will let you do arcane strike(divine strike, no reason wizards should have all the fun) You're right, enhancement bonuses stack with size bonuses. Also some situations it might be better to be an eagle with 12 STR than a badger with 18 STR..*cough entangle cough*
Half-orcs get falchion so half-orc druid gish has a nice martial weapon to start.. then again you can use shillelagh. Once you hit 3, extended produce flames is fun if you're not fighting SR monsters. If you're using grappler forms, improved grapple might be a good option. Since you are proficient and do lethal damage in your natural attacks DM might let you skip the improved unarmed pre-req... what else. You can use fast forms + longstrider to abuse the heck out of spring attack.And finally, if you use this please tell me because I so want to play this character. monk/druid for flurry of blows, shapechange into a monkey, use nunchaku and dazzling display.
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And finally, if you use this please tell me because I so want to play this character. monk/druid for flurry of blows, shapechange into a monkey, use nunchaku and dazzling display.Ninja monkeys remind me of that kim possible villain. I had to dig to find longstrider. I might be able to pull the fast wildshape feats, but I doubt my dm will allow shifter feats for a druid. Unless there's a druid version of it somewhere.
I can always take grapple by shifting to animals that have grab and rake. Like the tiger in the preview. Grab also gives +4 to start and maintain a grapple, which is almost like the greater grapple feat.
Power attack makes me think. It could work, but I won't be getting the benefits of full bab for it. Same for vital strike. I think I glanced at a thread involving a huge-sized greatclub, shillelagh and a huge earth elemental before. Still, extra damage is hard to pass up.
I could always focus on shifted special abilities. Just waiting for the rules on the rest of the abilities beast shape grants. Trample, for instance.
More featsMagic of the Land looks good. Will run that by the dm. As for the rest, well while wisdom to attack is always good, theoretically, the difference between strength and wisdom to attack will be low. Assuming I keep using Large magical beasts, Huge plants and earth elementals. Okay fine, I might consider it.
Knowledge Devotion is..tempting. Very tempting.
Yah.. by shapechange I meant wildshape. You can also wear armor as a primate, but that doesn't help if you're a monk/druid, probably hurts. If you're going straight druid though, you can have some nice armor, a shield, use shillelagh on a club or flame blade and give some hurt if you like melee.
Also druids just rule at summoning. You can prep a bunch of spells you'll probably never use, but if you need it, you NEED it. Drop them for summons. Then keep a few pearls of power to pull back the key ones if you need them later in the day. Or you could just buy scrolls, but so can a rogue so that's no fun.
Check out these "official 3.5" feats:
- Animal Devotion (Complete Champion): a thematically-appropriate, scalable (with your character level), and versatile (you choose the effect between Strength, Speed, Fly, or Poison) power-up, although it's once per day (and lasts one minute). For instance, at character level 12, the increases are +6 Strength, +20 land speed, Overland Flight with fly speed +10, or a natural bite attack dealing 1d3 Con (DC 16+Cha). For the Strength bonus only, I rate this as equivalent to (or even better than) the Rage gained by a 1-level barbarian dip. If you have both, you could get +10 Str for a few rounds.
- Great and Small (Complete Champion): spend a WS use to either Enlarge or Reduce your base form.
- Oaken Resilience (Complete Divine): spend a WS to gain plant-related immunities for 10 minutes.
Be sure to search for the various "druid handbook" out there. Also, some less official handbooks have interesting ideas as well (not only feats), although you have to check with you GM (thus, YMMV). For instance, an ability defined in Mongoose's "Quintessential Druids" allows a Monk/Druid to stack the monk's unarmed strike damage to the natural attack.
Holy freaking threadomancy!