Advice For A 12th Level Druid

[Optimistic Cynic]

Hello! I am running my first Pathfinder Druid after many years of Pathfinder play. I have reached 12th level...and honestly am a little underwhelmed with the class progression past this point. Wild Shape, arguably the Druid core ability, has plateaued and I won't get new and interesting things to turn into. The special abilities after 12 are not that impressive in my opinion. Thousand Faces *can* be very useful in some rare situations, but I daresay that not many people play with aging rules, and there are few powers that age you unnaturally, so the Timeless Body ability is sub-par.

Pretty much all you get is spell progression and numerical progression on BABs and Saves and such. Kind of...boring. It seems to me that they should have given the Druid something to be excited about besides spells after Wild Shape stops progression.

So I am wondering how other Druid players deal with leveling past 12 to keep things interesting? Do you stick with it, and concentrate on spellcasting? Multi-class into something? Thanks!

[avr]

By that level spellcasting trumps anything except in specialised builds anyway. If you haven't particularly planned for it concentrating on that will be your default outcome.

One person went into the mammoth rider PrC to avoid changing his concept, which was more about the fighting than the spellcasting. A definite step down in power of course.

[Optimistic Cynic]

avr wrote:

By that level spellcasting trumps anything except in specialised builds anyway. If you haven't particularly planned for it concentrating on that will be your default outcome.

One person went into the mammoth rider PrC to avoid changing his concept, which was more about the fighting than the spellcasting. A definite step down in power of course.

Thanks for the reply! Well, my character is kind of a front line fighter now. He does like distracting enemies with flights of summoned Stirges if that enemy is somewhere he cannot reach, but otherwise it is claw/hoof/horn/bite/slam attacking and taking hits. Nothing against casting spells, and I do cast some alpha strikes if needed. I just find it kind of sad that that is all the Druid can look forward to after 13th level when he gets Thousand Faces.

[avr]

One thing - it's not wild shape, but druids start getting spells to change shape at 13+. Form of the exotic dragon at spell levels 7, 8 & 9, and Shapechange at 9. You wanted more variety in things to change into?

[Anonymous Warrior]

Have you Awakened a Dire Tiger or gained the loyalty of a Liveoak Treant yet?

Have you gotten Quicken Spell so you can buff both these guys and your Animal Companion with Bull/Cat/Bear 2nd lvl. buffs as a swift action yet?

[Grandlounge]

Do you have divine interfearance yet? If not it is a great way to spend some of those spells.

[Trimalchio]

It's true class abilities for druids thin out at high levels, but that's true for most classes and only especially noticable for druids because not how insanely good their class abilities are.

You can look through prestige classes, but it'll generally be under powered to just gaining spell casting levels.

At high levels your main focus will be feat selection, magic items, and spells.