Dungeon Druid advice?

[SilverSun]

When I think of Druids l picture a being who is one with nature. I AIso picture this person in a forest or jungle surrounded by the terrain's natural fauna. My question is, is it possible to make a druid that is adept at underground fighting? I think it would be cool from an rp perspective if I could interact with all the vibrantly colored fungus in the underdark. How would you build something like this? Stat spread, race, feats, traits, possible archetype, skills? Starting out at 4th level.

[ErrantPursuit]

There are a ton of Druid Archetypes.
Look into Cave Druid for starters. There are several more resources out there.

[Unruly]

I'm actually looking into this one myself for a prospective PbP. I'm going primarily for ensuring group survival with extremely limited resources rather than being optimized towards combat though.

So far I'm running Half-Orc(Deep Kin) Cave Druid with the Cave domain. Deep Kin gives me darkvision of 90ft and +1 to Survival while underground. Cave Druid lets me move pretty much unhindered by any natural terrain underground and undetectable by tremorsense. And the Cave domain gives me the ability to grant temporary darkvision 60ft to my allies while also giving me tremorsense at later levels.

As far as skills, it's really going to depend on what you're doing. My guy is trying to be a paragon of survival in an underground prison, and so he's got the basics like Knowledge(Dungeoneering), Knowledge(Nature), Survival, and Perception. Then, because of what I'm trying to have him be RP-wise, I've got Heal, Profession(Herbalist), and Linguistics. Feat-wise, I would think a lot of the same feats you'd pick normally would apply.

The biggest problem that I'm seeing for myself is that a good few druid spells rely on having plants readily available, which in the campaign I'm hoping to play means I'll likely be at a disadvantage in that regard. From what I've gathered during the interest check and recruitment so far, plant life that isn't mushrooms is going to be few and far between. So while something like entangle is usually really handy, if there are no plants nearby then it's useless. But this will actually be my first ever druid, so maybe I'm just not seeing everything that I should be.

[prototype00]

On the subject of oozes, at first I was like, eh, oozes, that's cool I guess. Then I saw this sexy little number...

The Carnivorous Crystal Ooze from beastiary 3.

TL:DR: Its a medium ooze that you can turn into at lvl 10 and has this attack:

+18 (7d8+9/18-20 plus entrap)

Yowza! Strong Jaw that Baby and take improved critical (Slam) and you have a 12d8/15-20 jugger-fist.

Heck, if you take a couple of levels of monk and feral combat training that sucker, you've got literally one of the best attacks in the game.

prototype00

[SilverSun]

Thanks for the advice. Do you think a druid of this nature could also be a legitimate threat in the open fields?

[SilverSun]

Also, what kind of animal companion? Bat seems like the most obvious choice but Bears and some wolves routinely make their dens in caves and I've even heard of apes living in some jungle caves. What creature, other than bat, would synergize well with this concept?

[Vazt]

Cave spider or centipede fit flavor-wise

[SilverSun]

prototype00 wrote:

On the subject of oozes, at first I was like, eh, oozes, that's cool I guess. Then I saw this sexy little number...

The Carnivorous Crystal Ooze from beastiary 3.

TL:DR: Its a medium ooze that you can turn into at lvl 10 and has this attack:

+18 (7d8+9/18-20 plus entrap)

Yowza! Strong Jaw that Baby and take improved critical (Slam) and you have a 12d8/15-20 jugger-fist.

Heck, if you take a couple of levels of monk and feral combat training that sucker, you've got literally one of the best attacks in the game.

prototype00

I've never played a Druid so you'll have to excuse me but what determines the creatures you can turn into with wild shape? Is it just level?

[Unruly]

Cave Druid is the only druid archetype that can shift into oozes using Wild Shape. It's specifically mentioned in the modified description under the archetype. Just like how Mountain Druids are the only ones who can use Wild Shape to turn into giants and Desert Druids are the only ones that can turn into vermin. Other than that, Wild Shape is based on the Beast Shape and Elemental Body spell lines for the most part. Depending on what level your Druid is you'll be basing your Wild Shape on higher or lower levels of those two spells. As you base it on higher levels of the spell you can shift into larger or smaller creatures and gain more special abilities from the creatures you shift into. The Wild Shape description in the PRD is actually pretty easy to understand, so just go read it if you want to completely familiarize yourself with the ability.

For the Cave Druid archetype, you get your Wild Shape two levels later than a regular Druid does and it works at -2 Druid levels. So at level 6 when a Cave Druid gets the ability to Wild Shape, it's as though he was a level 4 regular Druid. Which means your Wild Shape only lasts 4 hours and you can only do it once per day. It also takes the extra 2 levels to gain the improved versions of Wild shape. Cave Druids also exchange being able to shift into plants for the ability to shift into oozes.

And if I'm reading it right, the Cave Druid also loses its capstone ability of being able to Wild Shape at-will. So you're stuck with 8/day at level 20. Though at that point you're hitting 18 hours in a single form, so unless you're planning to change shapes all the time you should be fine.