How many level thirteen spell slots does your caster really have?
Considering it is spell perfection'd off a 3rd level spell, between 30-34.
I am now convinced you have never seen a decent druid played or even a bad one whose read through the Polymorphamory.
Druids even in wild-shape are not as good on the front line as fighters. Natural attacks and natural armour cannot match proficiency and high movement in proper armour and weapons like Lucerne Hammer or Greataxe.
Your recent wall of text convinces me that Scavion is correct. I wish I could play a Druid in your next campaign.
I don't feel like wasting a large amount of time arguing, so here's a summary breakdown.
Me+my animal>partty fighter
I would only own barding, specifically a Dragonskin Breastplate barding. At the level 6+ I have little reason not to be in Dire Tiger form.
Natural spell feat
Barkskin (oh look, I have better AC than a Fighter as soon as this hits +4)
Pounce
My animal companion is either a wolf or big cat, thus durable, good damage+utility or great damage, and another frontliner. I'll give them mithral chain barding.
Lots of feat support for Druids wildshape and animal companions.
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Wildshape doesn't come at all till level 4 and even then only a single 4 hour stretch of the day.
You can become something like a Wolf which is medium but not a Dire Wolf or Winter Wolf which are Large Creatures. Wild Shape is "any small or Medium animal" which is under the animals list, not monsters or elemental till even higher levels. You of course cannot use any melee weapons, you can use the Wolf's natural attack which is only 1d4 with the Trip ability.
1d4 + Strength with trip is a far cry from 1d12 + 1.5*STR plus Reach plus masterwork plus magical weapon qualities.
Look at deinonychus stats and his 5 attacks. and picture that druid with starting 16-18 STR. At lvl 6, you get pounce.
Other than that your stats are the same except the minor +2 Strength bonus and others as in Beast Shape I that Wild-Shape is explicit is what is to be followed. HP, BAB, Saves, feats, none of these change. You lose way more than you gain.
Druid has a good will save while fighter only has fortitude. Druid built as a melee beast will have comparable stats to fighters (high Str&Con and middling Wis). And will have a flanking buddy-damage sponge in his animal companion. Fighter will have couple of point of attack higher, but damage is comparable even at low levels because the druid will have a high base str and be using the same two handed weapon as the fighter. Fighter AC will be a few points higher, but druid will have barkskin when he needs it, evening that out. And guess what fighter doesn't have? Cure spells. Remove spells. Entangle.
As it stops you speaking it stops spells with verbal components. And nowhere does it say you can keep your armour when you transform, armour for humanoids is explicitly stated to only work for humanoids, not animals, you'd have to change into Barding. Still you have the limit of no metal. Also you're passing up Fighter's armour training.
Natural spell & wild armor.
Even at much higher levels what you CANNOT just copy the Dire Tiger's stats into your character stats. You get the Dire Tiger's natural attacks and only the stat changes in Beast Shape I/II/III etc and that is it. If GM allows copy-pasta of Dire Tiger then that is a problem with GM's not with Druid.
You do get pounce. And grab. And rake.
Now I know how this game is played. When I criticise others for people short of facts I get snark like "ohh, holds up mirror" when I go into a lot of detail I'm castigated for "20 pages about how sky isn't blue".
You are critiqued because you come of as attacking everyone for being stupid and not getting it. You make it seem you are the only one who has seen the light, and we others don't get it. Unfortunately, you just probably haven't seen a druid or a battle cleric or battle oracle played competently. Or god forbid a chained summoner.
When many people on forum keep telling you you are wrong you should try to build things they are suggesting and see what these things do. look up a couple of guides.
RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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Stunt Double, I would be happy to give thorough replies to every single point from your long post, just as soon as you choose to present them in a manner that doesn't involve treating me like dirt. If instead you choose to keep behaving the way you've chosen to thus far, I can spend my time better elsewhere.
Choose.
Please, tell me exactly where and how I treated you like dirt and I will immediately amend it and you will get any apology you deserve.
I'm not here to cause trouble, I am here to find solutions.
It's only going to be "trouble" to someone who has a particular agenda about how casters must be seen rather than finding solutions.
It is not treating you like dirt to say that scrying rules are being abused.
The rare occasion I directly address you as a person:
"But how can you dismiss archers? I mean you bring them up then forget it."
How is this treating you like dirt? It's not even sarcastic. Do you find it condescending?
Did you just forget that you wrote the following things?
Ohh but I know what people are going to be complaining about next, ... please I can't stand this any more.
...
But no, some people have to ruin it with crazy Luddite ideas.
Some people have to complain with negative weasel words...
...
Are we really going to be so petty...
And that's to say nothing of all the "yelling", where you unnecessarily end your questions with multiple exclamation marks.
I find it greatly discouraging that you could write all those things, and then even when your manner is brought to your attention, you still can't see it, to the point that you would honestly think that line about archers could be what I'm talking about.
I would highly recommend that you recruit someone you trust (such as a close friend) to have a very frank discussion with you about the way you handle disagreements and see if they can help you sort things out. Best of luck to you. :)
Necromental said it pretty much verbatim how I wanted to.
So in your opinion, martials are better combatants than casters because caster make them magical weapon and armor, and then put spells in their magical weapons and armor?
And seriously, if you think that a fighter's stand-still-full-attack is better than druid's dire-tiger-pounce-full-attack, you still have a lot to see in PF.
You cannot simply copy-pasta Dire Tiger's stats onto your character sheet. You get the listed abilities of Beast Shape II which are not all encompassing. And you lose your armour unless you have non-metallic tiger barding. Ironwood from level 11 doesn't actually let you get metallic medium armours.
Yet you still don't even have reach! Such a pounce can be stopped by CR3 warriors with braced longspears! Now you're taking 2d8 +3*STR damage. Reach is so important not just for depth but breadth, able to cover such a wide area. The pounce grab and rake is great for focusing on destroying one guy but isn't good at dealing with larger groups of medium threats.
You know what's way more effective than pouncing? A Fighter working with a Wizard, the fighter on a floating disk moved into position to full attack. Can even be moved over difficult terrain. No charging AC penalty.
You're still not factoring spell delivery. You have all the problems of being a non-humanoid, forbidden from speaking makes for terrible Role Play unless you start burning through uses of wild shape per day just to say a few key words of dialogue.
Also, what are you going to do before level 6? How are you going to do for the first quarter of the game? You've got to start good and continue.
Almost all replied in my second post, up on this page
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Wildshape doesn't come at all till level 4 and even then only a single 4 hour stretch of the day.
Okay. Sure. But by 6th, he can do it twice for 6 hours each...totaling 12 hours a day. That's enough to walk around in animal form all adventuring day.
And at 4th or less, the Fighter has very slight advantages over the Druid. He has +1 BAB, possibly +2 damage from Weapon Specialization, and maybe a better weapon and armor. That's...not a super huge advantage compared to spell-casting and an animal companion (the latter of which ads more damage on average than the Fighters advantages).
At 5th, the Fighter pulls ahead a bit compared to the human form Druid with his Weapon Training and another point of BAB, though it's still doubtful that makes up for lacking the animal companion. But then 6th comes along and the Druid is running around with Pounce and the Fighter starts crying.
You can become something like a Wolf which is medium but not a Dire Wolf or Winter Wolf which are Large Creatures. Wild Shape is "any small or Medium animal" which is under the animals list, not monsters or elemental till even higher levels. You of course cannot use any melee weapons, you can use the Wolf's natural attack which is only 1d4 with the Trip ability.
As mentioned, deinonychus is a medium animal. It has four attacks, three of them primary.
1d4 + Strength with trip is a far cry from 1d12 + 1.
1.5*STR plus Reach plus masterwork plus magical weapon qualities.
As a Deinonychus, assuming 18 starting Strength (20 with Wild Shape) and power attack, you're doing 2d8+1d6+21 if all three of your primary attacks hit with your Power Attack on. Your secondary, while less likely to hit, adds 1d4+3. Your attack bonus on the primary attacks is +7.
So...that's 33.5 or 39 damage. And that's not counting what his animal companion does.
The Fighter, meanwhile, also has Str 18, and with Power Attack, Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization, and a masterwork weapon has +8 to hit, and does 1d12+14, or 20.5 damage.
So the Druid is giving up -1 attack for +13 damage. That seems worth it. Now, his AoO are weaker, and the Fighter has better AC...but both those advantages will be gone in a few levels, while the Druids just keep getting better.
Other than that your stats are the same except the minor +2 Strength bonus and others as in Beast Shape I that Wild-Shape is explicit is what is to be followed. HP, BAB, Saves, feats, none of these change. You lose way more than you gain.
You lose some AC most days. That's a rather temporary and overcome-able problem, though. If anyone in the party has Mage Armor, spend 1000 gp on a Pearl of Power, and now so do you. That plus the Natural Armor bonuses you get will do you just fine for quite a while.
And later, the Wild enchantment solves this problem entirely.
As it stops you speaking it stops spells with verbal components. And nowhere does it say you can keep your armour when you transform, armour for humanoids is explicitly stated to only work for humanoids, not animals, you'd have to change into Barding. Still you have the limit of no metal. Also you're passing up Fighter's armour training.
Mage Armor and Wild Armor sorta don't require these hoops being leapt through. And what does Armor Training actually do? It increases your movement to 30 feet and lets you use your full Dex mod in armor. Being a Tiger makes you faster than that, and Wild Armor has no max Dex while you're in animal form (nor, obviously does Mage Armor). So...you couldn't really make use of Armor Training even if you had it.
As to verbal components, have you just not heard of the Natural Spell Feat? Because every Druid ever takes it, and it solves the casting problem.
Even at much higher levels what you CANNOT just copy the Dire Tiger's stats into your character stats. You get the Dire Tiger's natural attacks and only the stat changes in Beast Shape I/II/III etc and that is it. If GM allows copy-pasta of Dire Tiger then that is a problem with GM's not with Druid.
Totally true. Not super relevant when you've built your Druid with Str 18 and put all your level up points and items there, though.
I mean...a 10th level character on 20 point-buy can pretty readily have Str 25, Dex 14 and Con 16 (Str 17, Dex 14, Con 14, level up points in Str, Belt of Physical Perfection +2, Wild Shape modifiers) while in tiger form. those aren't quite as high as a real Dire Tiger, but who cares? You have Str 25 and are a pouncing death machine.
And what can fighters do on the front lines from Level 8? Especially considering all their capability up till this point.
In the very early levels, a Fighter is maybe a little better than a Druid in combat. But that's gone by level 6, and even at level 1, a Druid + Animal Companion is probably better than him.
Now I know how this game is played. When I criticise others for people short of facts I get snark like "ohh, holds up mirror" when I go into a lot of detail I'm castigated for "20 pages about how sky isn't blue".
Yeah, people have been a little hostile. That sucks and I'm sorry.
That said...have you ever played a Druid in Pathfinder or seen it done? Because you're certainly just not seeing some fundamental building blocks that make Druids work.
Contributor
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Giant lake octopus Oh and just in case the argument comes forward druids do not get aquatic subtype when wildshaping(or any other for that matter)
bite +12 (2d6+8 plus poison), 8 tentacles +7 (1d6+4 plus grab)
Just want to point out - I don't think this is legal, as it's a templated creature (from an AP volume, specifically).
Can you wild shape into templated creatures? I don't think druid changes that.
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Just want to point out - I don't think this is legal, as it's a templated creature (from an AP volume, specifically).
Can you wild shape into templated creatures? I don't think druid changes that.
You cannot. That said...you can turn into the un-templated version and that has very similar stats.
EDIT: Ninja'd. Ah, well.
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Yet you still don't even have reach! Such a pounce can be stopped by CR3 warriors with braced longspears! Now you're taking 2d8 +3*STR damage. Reach is so important not just for depth but breadth, able to cover such a wide area. The pounce grab and rake is great for focusing on destroying one guy but isn't good at dealing with larger groups of medium threats.
Than you do something else? Like maybe cast a few of those spells you get as a druid that are really good at screwing up clustered formations of low save warriors?? With the natural spell feat you took automatically at 5th like every other druid??
It sounds less like the fighter is good then you are bad at druid.
I'm not here to cause trouble, I am here to find solutions.
Were that the case, you might start at the very first post, and read the thread before spewing walls of text. Most of your tired old arguments have been addressed ad nauseum, and you keep recycling them as if repetition can substitute for fact.
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ThEn you do something else? Like maybe cast a few of those spells you get as a druid that are really good at screwing up clustered formations of low save warriors?? With the natural spell feat you took automatically at 5th like every other druid??
It sounds less like the fighter is good thAn you are bad at druid.
Fixed it for you.
What? I never have the chance to type "Fixed it for you" and actually fix something instead of just using it to say "your argument is terrible".
XD
Uh... Natural Spell is just a regular feat. There's nothing Mythic about it.
I will let others reply to your other points because... Well... It's too much text and I don't feel like doing it.
1)"The form chosen must be that of an animal the druid is familiar with." how is a lv4 Druid familiar with likely long extinct dinosaurs?
2)What actually stops fighters having animal "cohorts"? They are listed price and details of what they are trained in.
3)They don't even get a Longspear so how is it the same weapons?
Dinosaurs arent extinct in Golarion...and knowledge nature can cover familiarity with the subject.
Fighters can buy combat trained but they wont be anywhere near as tough or intelligent as the druid companion.
...Druids can use Longspears. Why wouldnt they be able to?
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If a druid can pounce and you're saying that the wizard should float the fighter in to full attack position. You're saying that the wizard should spend his entire turn enabling the fighter to do the fighter's job. While the druid is able to do it's full attack on it's own allowing the wizard to do something else useful to end the fight. again, fighter and wizard is losing to 2 casters.
Alex, how do you propose your fighter actually kill anything? Sounds like he has really low strength and possibly using a one handed weapon.
You don't need Wild Speech to cast spells while Wild Shaped (Natural Spell covers verbal components as well). It's just useful so you can communicate more easily.
And even a mute Wild Shaped Druid still has more overall utility than your average Fighter, who has no spells, no skill points and no good reason to invest in Int or Cha.
Listen, Alex, you build a fighter at lvl 1 and lvl lets say 8. I'll make a comparable druid. 20 pt buy, 2 traits, all Paizo books allowed. Standard wealth, allowing 25% increase for crafting feats. And, I'm not the guy who plays druids or knows them in detail. I make battle oracles :D
It's simpler than this back and forth with no data.
I'll give you a couple of points. One, druids are not fun for me either. I also like playing as a person not an animal. But that has no bearing on what a class can or cannot do. Two, at lower levels fighter is going to have an edge in combat statistics. But not a great one. While the druid is going to have loads of utility and problem solutions more than him.
Your line about fighter having someone else cast healing on them is perfect example of what we see as disparity. And if you don't see the usefulness of pounce/natural attacks then I really don't have anything more to say that will convince you.
Like I said, you probably haven't seen anyone play a druid or a battle cleric/oracle with some skill (especially druid if you didn't know about Natural Spell at all). And, I get it. Fighter used to be my favorite class for years (I played since 3,0), and I didn't accept his shortcomings. Until I played a campaign couple a years ago where I was an inquisitor. And friend was a druid. It changed my whole perception of the game.
And another point, yes disparity is lessened at low lvls. If you constantly play levels 1-6 (your exclamation point at 6! kinda suggests that), have players that play as a team, you're not going to see much of it. But it exists even there.
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Wild speech
Armor Scroll down to barding.AC: 10(base)+6(dragonhide breatplate)+0(dex normal dex is 12)+4(natural armor)+2(favored class bonus to NA)
So 22 AC before any magical items or spells.
In comparison fighter requires full plate, heavy shield and 12 dex to equal that.Anyway, 2 feat taxes just to cast your smaller selection of druid spells but not actually use spell storing weapons. Don't have humanoid hand to drink a potion. Can't throw weapons.
What do you recommend is the Druid feat line-up?
Also, this is Large, where is the size penalty to AC? And size penalty to hit as well.
Fighter probably isn't going to go for full-plate but Breastplate + Armoured Kilt as an option, which importantly allows (Thanks to Armour Training) a DexMod of +5, plus a buckler we're at AC23. A fighter has both Armour slot and Buckler to put abilities and enhancements into, Druid has only the Barding, so there's going to be something of a difference in where magical AC boosts go but all else equal. You also cannot have anything like Living Steel armour, obviously. It's inherently metal.
And until we get to Level 8 Druid is going to be a problem on intense dungeon crawls, you can chain Keep Watch scrolls to keep everyone else active but you're going to be done after 12 hours in the danger zone. Even if you can keep them awake and alert they can't be in fighting fit state till they have had rest equivalent and meditated.
This is what I keep finding, Druid is only so great only if you write off the first quarter to first third of the game. And it's obvious to me that it's critical that Druid STAYS in wildshape on adventures except for the small 1 hour meditation window due to how painfully slow Barding is to put on. You can Wildshape into as a standard action...
My druid can fly as early as level 4.
#C/MD
My druid can cast Climbing Beanstalk (one of my favorite spells in the game!) to totally invalidate the need for climbing for the entire group.
#C/MD
My druid can heal allies for free, and use wands of cure light wounds without Use Magic Device.
#C/MD
My druid never has to run out of water in the desert.
#C/MD
My druid never has to worry about harsh climates.
#C/MD
My druid can swim without requiring swim checks, in any gear in most situations.
#C/MD
Most of what I just mentioned is easily available at 1st level.
#C/MD
The druid doesn't have to be better than the fighter in combat. He doesn't even need to be the fighter's EQUAL in combat. All he has to do is be good enough, and between a combat druid's personal prowess (which is exceptional) and the added prowess of an animal companion (which is decent), he's MORE than good enough for most encounters. Also, he has a full spell list.
This is the heart of the C/MD, as you keep being told. It ISN'T ABOUT COMBAT. It's never been about combat. Everyone knows that martials are good at combat. It's about the fact that my first level druid can last without water indefinitely. It's about the fact that I don't even need a decent climb skill to invalidate a challenge before the group. It's about the fact that I have TONS of options for doing things most martials have no hope of accomplishing, all because I have magic.
The C/MD isn't about someone having more fun than someone else. I have fun playing martial characters, and I have fun playing spellcasters. It's about the VAST power that a resource like spellcasting grants for non-combat challenges, and how much the martial equivalent (skills) pale in comparison.
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You do realize hitting with an AoO doesnt stop someones movement right?
What Davor just said. Combat is a tiny portion of the issue.
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Regardless of how unrepresentative PC vs PC is, even if a Tiger Wildshape Druid did charge a Fighter... what if the fighter has a reach weapon?
The fighter does some damage to the druid and gets flat out mauled.
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If you really want to see, go ahead and post a full fighter build and see what druid can do in comparison.
I can guess from experience how that will come out:
1. For everything the druid does, we get "You shouldn't do that!" or "The DM shouldn't allow that!"
2. You respond, "Let's just look at what the rules actually say."
3. He answers, "A DM who doesn't use common sense is a bad DM!" and then goes into accusations about MMORPGs.
4. If you somehow divert that, you're still "not a team player" because you use the casters' potential instead of gentlemanly using them solely to boost the martial guys' fragile egos and try to make them look good.