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This is all pretty theoretical, but I'm wondering if anyone else has considered it.
I'm playing a wildshaping druid, and planning out their progression. It's a primitive campaign, so for flavor reasons I'm going with a Saurian Shaman archetype, and will be focusing on getting to the point where I can turn into an allosaur and chomp enemies.
For feats, I'm going with a fairly generic:
Toughness, Endurance, Natural Spell, Diehard, Weapon Focus: Claw, Weapon Focus: Bite (Up to 11th level)
My question is what to plan for higher levels.
See, wildshape pretty much caps out at 6th level, since at that point I wildshape like an 8th level druid, allowing for huge size, and three uses at 8 hours each, so I can stay in animal form all day if I want. I'll likely stick with Druid up to 11th or 13th level for spell access though, for Ironwood and/or Heal. I'm not positive though, as we do have another druid in the party who will likely be staying full druid.
I'm considering getting levels of Fighter, at least 5 of them, and maybe as many as 8. The improved BAB, armor training, extra feats, and weapon training, as well as Weapon Specialization and possibly Improved Weapon Focus all seem like great options for improving attacks, and having a set of Ironwood Plate Mail Barding for my allosaur form would be a big buff to AC.
Has anyone tried this, or anything similar? I've read Treant's guide, but didn't see any considerations for multiclassing.
For more info on the above, see:
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At 8th level, a druid can also use wild shape to change into a Huge or Diminutive animal, a Medium elemental, or a Small or Medium plant creature. When taking the form of animals, a druid's wild shape now functions as beast shape III. When taking the form of an elemental, the druid's wild shape now functions as elemental body II. When taking the form of a plant creature, the druid's wild shape functions as plant shape I.
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Beast Shape III
This spell functions as beast shape II, except that it also allows you to assume the form of a Diminutive or Huge creature of the animal type. This spell also allows you to take on the form of a Small or Medium creature of the magical beast type. If the form you assume has any of the following abilities, you gain the listed ability: burrow 30 feet, climb 90 feet, fly 90 feet (good maneuverability), swim 90 feet, blindsense 30 feet, darkvision 60 feet, low-light vision, scent, constrict, ferocity, grab, jet, poison, pounce, rake, trample, trip, and web.
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BEHEMOTH HIPPOPOTAMUS ...
N Huge animal
Melee bite +17 (4d8+13/19–20 plus grab)
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Damage dice increase as follows: 1d2, 1d3, 1d4, 1d6, 1d8, 2d6, 3d6, 4d6, 6d6, 8d6, 12d6.
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So, you go from 4d8 to 12d6.
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Vital Strike:
Prerequisites: Base attack bonus +6. (Level 8 for Druid)
Benefit: When you use the attack action, you can make one attack at your highest base attack bonus that deals additional damage. Roll the weapon's damage dice for the attack twice and add the results together before adding bonuses from Strength, weapon abilities (such as flaming), precision based damage, and other damage bonuses. These extra weapon damage dice are not multiplied on a critical hit, but are added to the total.
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Putting it all together.
1: Hippo does 4d8. 1d8 goes to 3d6 for size advancement so 4d8 turns into = 12d6 total.
2: Vital Strike, roll 12d6 twice, then add in bonus(es), or 24d6+ ?
3: 24d6 = 24*3.5 average damage = 84.
According to Paizo, the average HP of a CR 9 monster (You will be level 9 when you can put this all together) is 115. Link . So assuming your other party members can do at least 31 points of damage in a round, most CR 9 monsters will die in one round. CR 7 and under monsters should generally die in one hit, give or take... without needing to Crit.
Whee!
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Cute. And obviously broken.
As entertaining as it is, I'm not looking to make my DM nerf Vital Strike, and the idea of turning into a huge size hippo is shaky rules interpretation at best.
I'm pretty sure that wild shape allows you to turn into animals of various sizes that exist, not various sizes of animals that exist. That's how I'd rule it, anyway.
At the very least, I'd have to encounter a huge hippo at some point, which doesn't seem likely, especially due to the nature of the campaign.
I'd be much more likely to run into, say, a T-rex, and while I considered the Vital Strike route, I decided that I wanted to go with pounces and multiple attacks.
I don't know what the DPR is, and frankly I don't care. No one else in the party is optimizing at all, and I don't want to solo the campaign while they follow along.
Heck, I'm already concerned that I might do that without pulling freaky rules tricks like this.
Looks like I may need to crunch some numbers.
Yeah, not necessarily recommended, just explaining how the trick functions.
But:
1) The Behemoth Hippo is its own entry in the Bestiary, not just something made up. It is CR 10, so you have to make a K. Nature DC 20 ish to know of it so you can wild shape, not too hard by level 9.
In a homebrew the GM can, of course, just say Nope. No such thing in my world. SO pick battles carefully, and don't waste all your karma on day 1. Also, just because it works well does not mean you should use the trick every single combat...
Arizhel's entire post!
... The behemoth hippopotamus's damage dice is already adjusted for it's size. It doesn't get adjusted again. It definitely doesn't get adjusted by that metric, especially because I have no idea where you pulled that from or got the idea to make that up.
Arizhel's entire post!... The behemoth hippopotamus's damage dice is already adjusted for it's size. It doesn't get adjusted again. It definitely doesn't get adjusted by that metric, especially because I have no idea where you pulled that from or got the idea to make that up.
It's not clear from Arizhel's post, but he/she is referring to the spell Strong Jaw, which increases the size increment of any natural attack by two.
The damage dice of the behemoth hippo is a total anomaly. It's a stupid, stupid, animal. Personally, I think it sucks that wildshape has distinct "best" choices like this. It would be cool if there was actually a reason to assume the shape of a dire bear as opposed to a dire tiger, for instance.