Since I don't think this was adequately explored before, here's the question:
What is the nature warden for?
It's that popular, huh? :P
Since I don't think this was adequately explored before, here's the question:
What is the nature warden for?
Nature Warden seems to me like it fills the same roles a ranger might fill, only with more druidic flavor and less "hunter" flavor. Seems heavy on the companion/terrain stuff, which I think are probably under-represented builds for rangers... But I'm no expert.
This is just my guess. I am not overwhelmed by the prestige class, but then again, I don't like the favored terrain mechanic. To each his own.
EDIT: Ninja'd! I am so slow!
The problem with the companion/terrain focus is that it doesn't do it much better than a pure ranger and loses amazing amounts of good stuff for that.
Unfortunately, as much as the class would like to do that, it appears not to accomplish its goal in the slightest. I agree. It's NPC all the way.
Huh. I'm trying to work something out now. How can you get more than one animal companion? It looks like by druid rules classes with animal companion stack and you just advance the one companion. Even with beastmaster ranger, it's under one animal companion ability and would not advance multiply under nature warden.
What is the nature warden for?
Looking at the class features (Companion Bond grants an empathic link and at 5th level the same favored terrain bonuses, Natural Empathy grants favored terrain bonuses and expands the creatures affected by Wild Empathy, Wild Stride improves mobilty of character and companion, Animal Speech gives speak with animals at will in favored terrain, Silverclaw grants the companion and any summoned creature DR/silver and natural attacks count as silver, Companion Walk lets the character share travel spells with the companion, Ironpaw grants DR/cold iron and natural attacks count as cold iron (does not stack with Silverclaw), and Companion Soul gives a scrying link with the companion and other benefits), it's mostly a PrC for characters who want to focus on their "pets" (animal companion and summoned creatures). The character will take a hit on spell progression (3 levels from the PrC, plus any others from multiclassing if applicable), though.
It might be worthwhile for animal shaman druids who are limited when it comes to Wild Shape, anyway. A Druid (Animal Shaman) 6/Horizon Walker 1 (to pick up Favored Terrain)/Nature Warden X would probably be the best way to go about it; they can change into Huge or Dimunutive versions of their totem animal as if using beast shape III (already the best animal form abilities) at Druid 6 and can summon weaker or stronger versions of their totem animals with summon nature's ally (not to mention only taking a standard action and the summoned totem animals gaining additional hp) at Druid 5.
As others have mentioned, it can also be a good choice when the campaign will stay in a certain area. This allows the character to be strong in specific terrains and/or a specific 1 sq mi area. However, this aspect is probably more useful to NPCs in a typical world-/plane-spanning campaign.
Maybe the Nature Warden is an attempt at turning a ranger or druid into a divine version of the Summoner base class.
Druid 6/Horizon Walker 1/Nature Warden. Focus on your pet and ranged combat with back-up divine casting, does alright in Kingmaker where you can set your home base on your keep.
its only good for canon foder
Insert into Canon bubble jet and press form feed?
