Arcane strike worth it for a wildshape druid?

[Umbranus]

With racial SLAs allowing arcane strike, would it be worth taking for a wildshape melee druid?
It is best for PCs who don't have other things to do with their swift actions. But how many of those has the druid? And does he have the feat to spare?

What do you think?

[Javaed]

So I just reread the feat, and it looks like it will scale with you as you level. In that case it's a pretty good way to add some extra damage, especially if you wildshape into a beast with a high number of attacks.

[Atarlost]

It depends.

If you're going for lots of attacks with pounce and possibly planning on being a quickwood it might be worth it. If you're going for improved natural attack bite and vital strike it's not.

Remember, you don't have many feats and there are a lot of good wildshape feats.

Then there's the race issue. Apart from possibly some variant tiefling or aasimar heritages none of the good combat druid races have arcane SLAs and there's an argument to be made that aligned outsider derived abilities should default to divine rather than arcane.

[Imbicatus]

Atarlost wrote:

Then there's the race issue. Apart from possibly some variant tiefling or aasimar heritages none of the good combat druid races have arcane SLAs and there's an argument to be made that aligned outsider derived abilities should default to divine rather than arcane.

Half-elf with drow magic alternate racial trait would do nicely.

[ArmouredMonk13]

Gnome with 11 charisma would be not terrible.

[BYC]

Where's the ruling that racial SLAs are a pre-req for arcane strike? I checked some of the FAQs and didn't see them.

[Xethik]

The requirement is arcane spell casting level, not just any spell. So, the idea is to gain a good(ish) spellcaster level for Arcane spells on non-Arcane spellcasters.
Good examples are racial spell-like abilities (scale with character level), Rogue talent Minor Magic (scales with Rogue level), and some domains out there.

[lemeres]

Here is the link: Spell-Like Abilities, Casting, and Prerequisites

An Onispawn tiefling looks like it would work out, since it gives bonuses to strength and wisdom, plus it has alter-self as its SLA, which can be rather nice. Oddly, none of the aasimar variants put their bonuses into both strength and wisdom (although archon and garuda blooded do both have bonuses in other physical stats)

There are...other options though. There are a couple of traits that grant SLA's, and they scale with your caster level (or stay at level 1 if you can't use magic).

[Atarlost]

ArmouredMonk13 wrote:

Gnome with 11 charisma would be not terrible.

Gnome would be terrible. Gnomes have a strength penalty and a small PC being polymorphed doesn't get the strength bonus for the small to medium size transition.

[Umbranus]

I thought about Duergar.
While they have no str bonus they get a bonus to two important stats, con and wis and has some really other benefits.
But at the moment it's just a thought experiment, so I havn't got any build planned. I'm not even sure if I prefare a melee or a caster druid. But I like arcane strike and wanted to know if there is a reason it's bad for a druid.

Like a inquisitor who can use his swift actions to activate or change his judgements. So he would benefit less from arcane strike.