Druid for Dummies

[joeyfixit]

I'm currently playing my first Druid, for PFS. PFS rules isn't what I'm here for.

People talk about the Wild Shape feature like it's the bees knees. To me it's always seemed underwhelming, at least at first, because of how limiting the description for Beast Shape I is.

For example, I read somewhere that since there's no rule about reverting to your normal shape when you go unconscious, so you could presumably sleep underwater as a fish. Nowhere in the spell description does it say that you gain the ability to breathe water by becoming a fish.

Am I being too literal?

The Elemental forms and the expanded suite of abilities at level six are, admittedly, intriguing but also a lot more work. Is it customary when playing a Druid to cart a bunch of Bestiaries along to a game, or to have memorized the thing?

[joeyfixit]

Bump.

[Noctani]

joeyfixit wrote:

I'm currently playing my first Druid, for PFS. PFS rules isn't what I'm here for.

People talk about the Wild Shape feature like it's the bees knees. To me it's always seemed underwhelming, at least at first, because of how limiting the description for Beast Shape I is.

For example, I read somewhere that since there's no rule about reverting to your normal shape when you go unconscious, so you could presumably sleep underwater as a fish. Nowhere in the spell description does it say that you gain the ability to breathe water by becoming a fish.

Am I being too literal?

The Elemental forms and the expanded suite of abilities at level six are, admittedly, intriguing but also a lot more work. Is it customary when playing a Druid to cart a bunch of Bestiaries along to a game, or to have memorized the thing?

I don't even know why you posted? You said you weren't here for rules but you say no where in the spell description does it say that you gain the ability to breathe water by becoming a fish. Well, you're partially right, but what a spell is and doesn't isn't just in the description you have to look at the entire thing. Read under polymorph and in the spell section of the core rule book and you'll have more answers.

The primary ability attraction for druids is wildshape. For some people it's the resistances, DR, or Fast healing, the scouting ability by turning into something so small barely anyone makes a perception check against you, turning into a wild animal of strength, how about flying 480 ft. in six seconds (a round), or what about turning into something with dark vision so you can see.

It's good manners to have a quick stat block of your top 6 wild shapes. Don't stop the game cold looking into what you want to turn in to.

If your new to druids know that armor can often be an issue at low levels so take a level dip or two in monk or create armor for one or two of your other shapes.

[Flutter]

joeyfixit wrote:

I'm currently playing my first Druid, for PFS. PFS rules isn't what I'm here for.

People talk about the Wild Shape feature like it's the bees knees. To me it's always seemed underwhelming, at least at first, because of how limiting the description for Beast Shape I is.

For example, I read somewhere that since there's no rule about reverting to your normal shape when you go unconscious, so you could presumably sleep underwater as a fish. Nowhere in the spell description does it say that you gain the ability to breathe water by becoming a fish.

Am I being too literal?

The spell description doesn't have it, but if you look at the description under polymorph in The magic chapter you'll see

If the form grants a swim or burrow speed, you maintain the ability to breathe if you are swimming or burrowing.

Which brings up the perfectly sensible ability to turn into a fish and breathe water. It also brings up the really weird corner case of turning into a rat to breathe water.

Quote:

The Elemental forms and the expanded suite of abilities at level six are, admittedly, intriguing but also a lot more work. Is it customary when playing a Druid to cart a bunch of Bestiaries along to a game, or to have memorized the thing?

Usually you have 1 or two prefered forms : a velocirpator or kitty form for pouncing things, and an earth elemental for bashing things reaaaly hard in one shot.

Wild shape has a lot of benefits:

Power: strait bonuses to damage are nothing to be scoffed at

Duration/action economy. You can put on a velociraptor suit for breakfast and still be in it for dinner. You don't need to waste an action buffing up, you just attack from round 1 and keep going

Versatility: Invisible opponent? Be a bat, find them, and farie fire them. Mobile combat? Get pounce. Got someone with huge dr? Break out a big bite hippo or T rex. Got webbed? Turn into a fire elemental. Gas cloud ruining your day? Turn into an air elemental and blow it away. Pirates on your bounty? WHiirrrrl pooooool. Got a caster? Turn into something with grab and constrict to give him a hug.

Mobility: i cannot stress this enough. The move or damage dichotomy KILLS melee damage. They're not getting more than one attack. You can get 4.

And welcome back.

[Umbranus]

I think there are wild shape card generators somewhat like the spell card generators. At least I remember having seen a link to one somewhere. So you could print out your 5 or so favourite forms.

With wild speech (to still be able to talk to the party) and the beast of the society trait you can have flight for a whole work day starting level 4 by turning into an eagle. I don't think that's weak.
Even without any traits or feats to boost it the ability to fly or swim or climb, use scent or lowlight vision isn't something to sneeze at.

[Bob Bob Bob]

Once you have Natural Spell, possibly Wild Speech if you care about talking to your party, there's no reason not to spend your entire time in Wild Shape unless your race grants you something really special. Small and Medium beast forms are a free stat boost and natural armor. Large+ or Tiny- beast shapes do have stat penalties but you can just choose not to use those forms. That's just the raw numbers, not the special movement modes/abilities you can pick up too. Elemental forms are even better with no downside to stats, free reach if you want to go big, and movement modes/special abilities. Plus immunity to crits, sneak attack, and bleed at higher levels.

[joeyfixit]

Umbranus wrote:

I think there are wild shape card generators somewhat like the spell card generators. At least I remember having seen a link to one somewhere. So you could print out your 5 or so favourite forms.

With wild speech (to still be able to talk to the party) and the beast of the society trait you can have flight for a whole work day starting level 4 by turning into an eagle. I don't think that's weak.
Even without any traits or feats to boost it the ability to fly or swim or climb, use scent or lowlight vision isn't something to sneeze at.

That's an interesting trait; I hadn't known about it. I already took Animal Friendship and Born Rider, since the PC is an Ape-Rider who wants to make the most of Mounted Combat.

[joeyfixit]

Noctani wrote:

joeyfixit wrote:

I'm currently playing my first Druid, for PFS. PFS rules isn't what I'm here for.

People talk about the Wild Shape feature like it's the bees knees. To me it's always seemed underwhelming, at least at first, because of how limiting the description for Beast Shape I is.

For example, I read somewhere that since there's no rule about reverting to your normal shape when you go unconscious, so you could presumably sleep underwater as a fish. Nowhere in the spell description does it say that you gain the ability to breathe water by becoming a fish.

Am I being too literal?

The Elemental forms and the expanded suite of abilities at level six are, admittedly, intriguing but also a lot more work. Is it customary when playing a Druid to cart a bunch of Bestiaries along to a game, or to have memorized the thing?

I don't even know why you posted? You said you weren't here for rules but you say no where in the spell description does it say that you gain the ability to breathe water by becoming a fish.

I said I wasn't here for PFS rules because I didn't want the fact that I'm running a PFS character to bump me into the PFS zone on the messageboard.

Basically I'm asking for people to sell me on the awesomeness of Wildshape, because I've never played a druid and as I think about it I've never actually sat at a table with a Druid PC (who made it to level 4).

So I'm wondering what the big deal is and why Wildshape is lauded as this awesome thing. At higher levels it seems baller (but so are a lot of class abilities), but at level 4 it strikes me as meh.

But I'm probably wrong, never having seen them in action!

[Eltacolibre]

wild shape is mostly awesome because of one big advantage druids have other spellcasters, Natural spell. This feat allows you to cast spells while looking like a dog, a bird or even a bear. On top of it, while wild shaping druids count as animals, which means that they can benefits from a lot of their animal based spells.

For melee druids wild shape as in druids who have high physical stats, just make them great combatants.

as a sidenote, It should be noted that in 3.5 before the polymorph school pathfinder nerfs, you would literally just get the stats of the animals...which made druids way too good. A druid transforming into a strength 25 Polar bear? yeah pretty much.

Edit: ACG introduced Animal Soul feat, which makes druids quite potent from level 1 as counting as an animal before wild shape, can cover a lot of early weakness of melee druids.

[Atarlost]

There are a few things going on for melee druids:

Natural attacks don't suffer iterative penalties. This lets you actually hit things as a medium BAB character.

Pounce at level 6.

Medium Earth and Air elementals can use normal adventurer equipment (just remember to stay in a light load ass an air elemental so you can fly).

Huge forms have 15' reach. The Dire Hyena, the elementals, and any bipedal plant forms have 10' reach at large. If you get proficiency in a reach weapon and a large or huge instance of that weapon elementals other than possibly fire can get 20' reach at large or 30' reach at huge. There's also the quickwood with 60' reach on its secondary attacks (take multiattack to reduce the penalty to -2).

Flight at level 4.

Standard attack builds are possible. Flyby Attack works with vital strike because screw groundlings. Also consider the dwarven non-adjacent cleaving feats. Orc Hewer works on cloud giants when you yourself are huge.

For casters it's pretty much about pretending to be a familiar and exploiting that size bonus to AC and dexterity. Also, nobody notices the pigeon until Suddenly Contagion! There need to be more modules about terrorist druids. So much potential.

[joeyfixit]

Polymorph said wrote:

In addition to these benefits, you gain any of the natural attacks of the base creature, including proficiency in those attacks.

Here's what I was looking for.

[joeyfixit]

And

Polymorph wrote:

Your base speed changes to match that of the form you assume.

[Hawktitan]

If you are looking for wildshape for physical enchantment you look for fast creatures with lots of natural attacks, usually some form of cat or raptor.

If you are mostly a caster then you use it for utility. Need to see in darkness? Get a form that has darkvision. Invisible foe? Get scent to sniff them out, backed up by a faerie fire spell after. Just want to not be hit? Chill in a small form for an AC bump.

[Noctani]

joeyfixit wrote:

Noctani wrote:

joeyfixit wrote:

I'm currently playing my first Druid, for PFS. PFS rules isn't what I'm here for.

People talk about the Wild Shape feature like it's the bees knees. To me it's always seemed underwhelming, at least at first, because of how limiting the description for Beast Shape I is.

For example, I read somewhere that since there's no rule about reverting to your normal shape when you go unconscious, so you could presumably sleep underwater as a fish. Nowhere in the spell description does it say that you gain the ability to breathe water by becoming a fish.

Am I being too literal?

The Elemental forms and the expanded suite of abilities at level six are, admittedly, intriguing but also a lot more work. Is it customary when playing a Druid to cart a bunch of Bestiaries along to a game, or to have memorized the thing?

I don't even know why you posted? You said you weren't here for rules but you say no where in the spell description does it say that you gain the ability to breathe water by becoming a fish.

I said I wasn't here for PFS rules because I didn't want the fact that I'm running a PFS character to bump me into the PFS zone on the messageboard.

Basically I'm asking for people to sell me on the awesomeness of Wildshape, because I've never played a druid and as I think about it I've never actually sat at a table with a Druid PC (who made it to level 4).

So I'm wondering what the big deal is and why Wildshape is lauded as this awesome thing. At higher levels it seems baller (but so are a lot of class abilities), but at level 4 it strikes me as meh.

But I'm probably wrong, never having seen them in action!

Wild Shape is actually weak at late levels where summoning monsters because much more powerful.

Few characters in the game can get 4-5 attacks at level 4 if you turn into a raptor. If your DM isn't keen on dinosaurs or they aren't in your world a wolverine has 2 1d6 claw attacks and a 1d4 bite at level 4 is probably second best for damage. A druid with 16 STR boosted up to 18 and at level 4 by your size bonus and you can get a +2 belt of strength to make it 20 STR. If you're not interested in the damage take something with climb, swim speed, is flying needed because casters don't have it available reliably until the next level and it doesn't last as long. If you need dark vision you can turn into something that does. Does your DM have some sort of time limit mission? Take flight. Do you need to track something? Druids have a great survival check, when you boost that by scent to get you a +8 to tracking...

Keep in mind limitations in armor. You need to have a few combat forms because you'll need them to be barded. If you have +2 dex +6 armor +2 natural armor that's (Wolverine) 20AC Claw +8 1d6+5 1d6+5 1d4+5.

If you take a trait that gives you stealth your sneak is pretty good as well, although you'll probably be scouting unarmored. You can easily have a +13 at level 4 by turning into a small creature. If you are scouting out humanoids they may not do anything to you if your a dog or bird, because even if they notice your character they have to see through your disguise. Most NPCs don't even get a check unless it's their job or perhaps if your check was so bad you didn't imitate that type of animal very well.

At level 6 you get dire tiger pounce mode and your elemental shapes. Although some of your most powerful shapes are plants. By the time you get to level seven there are feats and spells that will increase one of your attacks by 3 damage die total.

I'm currently playing in rise of the rune lords where I play two characters. One is an oracle with the nature mystery who took animal friends her stats are 10 10 16 14 10 20 -------- 24 point buy(she is pure support) My other is a druid who has an animal companion and they both benefit from +5 saving throws when within 30ft. of her because I chose the new feat. Druids already have good saves to the ones that matter most fort and will. Now he is just a tank for most saves. If those types of things don't make you raise your eyebrow I don't know what to say.

Did I mention you still have spells and an animal companion?