How overpowered would it be for a druid to forsake wildshape for Full BAB.
You could even take away the animal companion and grant bonus feats at every level that would normally increase the number of times/day for wildshape.
This would make for an awesome wilderness fighter that wasnt a ranger. Shillelagh fighter anyone. :-)
on a side note, why do Oracle of Wood not get shillelagh as a 1st level spell? that seems like a given.
well nvm on bonus feat parts cause that would be ever other level. just looked again.
What if you gained team work feats that worked for you and your animal companion.
Maybe Deminished spellcasting like magus.
why not just play a bard or a magues with a different spell list?
As a full caster the druid spell list has too much variety to say that this would be balanced easily. Imho if you want to make a wilderness fighter it would make more sense to start with ranger or barbarian and trade out the things you don't like.
Hmm, I don't know really.
Druid's have full spell progression (at wizard not sorcerer level no less) already, know every single druid spell of their level and can prepare them however they want.
Giving them full BAB as well, just seems alot. The ranger has full BAB but only 3/4 spell progression.
However when you think about it... at 4th level wildshape is +1 attack/damage (from the +2 strength), at 6th a +2 and at 8th a +3 already. It doesn't get too much higher just from the shaping bonus, but you get alot of other goodies in addition to that, depending on your form.
So it may seem overpowered, but I don't think it is. Giving them bonus feats at that rate though would mean they get them like a fighter, and I think that's a bit too much. Half it, at 4th level and every 4 afterwards seems not too terrible though. (monk gets bonus feats like that)
However I'd make a restricted list of feats they're allowed to take, that are somehow nature oriented.
I'd let them keep the AC, it's kind of their thing. Maybe like a ranger at Level-3
But you should compare it to the ranger, if with those changes they're better than the ranger at every level in both melee and spellcasting and feats, then that's not right.
Staff magus with druid spell list would be awesome.
true. I was thinking that the couple things that really help rangers is their combat style feats and FE and FT. those provide large static bonuses. What about letting them keep their AC but gaining teamwork feats that they can use with their AC ever few levels.
I think you could apply diminished spell casting so that the druid gained spells at a sorcerers progression rate.
Rite's Secrets of Tactical Archetypes has a ranger that gets puppies that can get teamwork feats. They ended up giving FE away for it (or rather, Instant Enemy :-)), but they started with a puppy and got a second one later. There are, of course, other balancing factors. I'm the author of the book, but I figured that I'd share how I went about doing something you mentioned.
I would never allow a full BAB, full casting archetype in my games. It puts them at the same playing level as fighters for smashing stuff, and they get 9 levels of spells. This would marginalize the contributions for other members of the group, so it's overpowered.
Agreed with Cheapy, once the druid knows the Shape Change spell it will be quite horrible, better to find something that is a better trade for the wildshape ability.
I could get on board with something like the revelations a battle oracle gets.
now that I'm not on my phone, I'll add a bit more:
...and I instantly forgot what I was going to say.
Oh right! As it is, one of the design changes between 3.5 and PF was that the druid could no longer do it all. Before, they could pump mental attributes and dump physical ones, since wild shape replaced their physical scores. It was a conscious decision to change this to be add to, so that the druid could be a good caster or a good melee type. But not both.
This would, while taking away their most powerful ability, make them good at both, which, as I mentioned, was one of the design decision to not allow.