So I've just gotten my Druid to 15th level, which is great, but over the past several levels I have begun to notice a significant issue with druid spells... many of them rely on Poison, Electricity, and poison, especially the high-level funtimes like Creeping Doom and the other swarm spells. People on the boards seem to love these spells, but the fact is, by the time you are at a level where you can cast it, it unusual for the target of your spells to not be immune to poison, fire, electricity, or acid, rendering a surprising amount of spells utterly impotent. IMHO, a 15th level character SHOULD be facing off against extraplanar issues, which takes Creeping Doom from being "OMG teh AWESOME" to a minor annoyance.
Is this just the way of things, or have I once again missed something?
Granted, I can still turn into an elder elemental and squish many many things, so perhaps I'm just b$~#~ing....
I think it depends on the campaign. Not every enemy will be immune to poison, but in, say, Serpent's Skull, they all are.
Wall of Thorns is, in fact, awesome.... I had not considered how it synergizes with Fire Seeds. Still, Fire is the first type of damage that things become immune to...
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Yes it does have the fire damage type issue I'll admit, but it also gets to ignore spell resistance and doesn't allow for saving throws. That's a pretty huge thing with higher level play if you've got access to some energy substitution abilities from feats or magic items. Even better if you have an archer built character to hand the acorns to.
Plus you've got the summon dire tigers/Animal Growth option there too. You've got some pretty powerful spells at your disposal. :)
Um. Siege of Trees is pretty awesome. At 13th level, you can create four light catapults that last for 13 hours. They effectively always hit with 4d6 damage to a square and never run out of ammunition. You can crush towns!
You can summon a treant (Changestaff), fire and frost giants! Or multiple Dire Tigers with pounce or Huge Elementals! Or summon a squad of cyclops that will always threat once!
cheers
I haven't actually played my druid at such high levels, but I have looked through the spell options, and my general feeling after reviewing the high level druid spell list is that druids are probably the most versatile spellcaster for low and mid-level spellcasting, but they really fall behind wizards and clerics for the highest level spells.
Luckily I almost never play at that level.
You won't necessarily be able to blast everything. But now that you have 8th level spells you have a lot of flexibility.
Euphoric Tranquility is an awesome spell vs. creatures with minds to take a single target out of battle (and maybe get some useful info!)
Finger of Death is difficult to be immune to, and is guaranteed damage if you can pen SR.
Wall of Stone is one of the best battlefield control spells.
Make sure you prepare spells with different elements - Fire Storm, Stormbolts, Heal (for undead), Touch of Slime, etc.
Use Fire Strike! Fire Strike pretty much always does damage, although if they're dodgy and have fire resistance it may not be as much as you like.
Btw, how are you turning into an elder elemental? Wild Shape caps out at huge elemental.
When I built a high-level druid, I picked the following spells (which I thought were all pretty decent):
Level 7: Heal, Quickened Sleet Storm, True Seeing, Fire Storm, Wind Walk
Level 8: Reverse Gravity, Sunburst, Quickened Flame Strike, Finger of Death, Whirlwind
Elder elementals are, technically, huge... a bit of a cheddary loophole, I admit, but still. Summoning is definitely a HUGE advantage to the Druid's versatility, even if they are full round casting, I guess that only really hurts the first round.
Food for thought, thanks.
It doesn't matter whether you call it an elder elemental or not. You only gain the abilities listed in Elemental Body IV. You technically don't even reference the elder or greater elemental stat blocks at all (except maybe for a quick reference to see what a huge creature gets, etc).
Edit: OK, I see where the "loophole" is. It's the whirlwind/vortex stats and the overall dimensions of the elemental. For instance, a greater/elder elemental is larger than a Huge elemental, but not large enough to increase the size category. In this case, the context of the word "Huge" is the TYPE of the elemental, not simply the size. It doesn't make sense to go from Large elemental stats to Elder elemental stats.
Edit: OK, I see where the "loophole" is. It's the whirlwind/vortex stats and the overall dimensions of the elemental.
And slam damage, more importantly.