A ton of great guides here. Going to call attention to Prometheus's and Treant Monk's druid guides along with the Polymorphamory shape shifting guide
Stats- str + con focus. Still don't neglect dex and wis
Race- you lose many racial special abilities so you want a more mundane race like human who's abilities you keep in wild shape form
Feats- want fighter style feats. Power attack, furious focus, etc
Spells- long duration buffs are the name of the game
Items- belt of str, cloak of res, ring of protection, rod of extend spell lesser are all things you want early. Amulet of natural strikes, wisdom headband, wild enchant armor are all things you will ant later on
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So, yes, look at the guides, but keep in mind some of them are a little . . . Agressive in what they recommend, so take everything with a grain of salt.
There are two main Druid 'builds,' the 'mauler' build and the 'caster' build.
Mauler build goes into battle with a a scimitar, shield, and armor and uses spells to buff himself (or his animal companion). You want good strength, con, decent dex and wisdom. Once you hit higher levels you can shapeshift.
Upside is that you can be a literal beast on the battlefield while still having spells to back you up.
Downside is that they can get kind of expensive. You need a ridiculously expensive enchantment on your armor to keep your armor bonus to AC, and you need to buy an amulet to make your natural attacks magical in bear form.
Caster: focus wisdom, there are a lot of nasty Druid spells out there.
Pros: Lots of blasty spells, flame strike, good summons, plus a few healing spells for emergencies.
Downsides, shapeshifing can't really make you better at casting, you will tend to be squishy, though not as much as a sorcerer.
Edit: one thing to make sure of is to NOT forget to pick up handle animal if you are doing a Druid with an animal companion. You NEED that in order it get your animal companion to do things that it normally wouldn't do, like attack 'unnatural' targets or try tricks it doesn't know.
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Few bits of advice that tend to help druid players.
General
- Druid vestments are huge help and lower levels.
- Natural spell is your level 5 feat 90% of the time.
- Casters wildshape into the smallest thing with fly they can and usually have good ac because of it.
Melee
- Amulet of mighty fists is necessary for natural attack melee druids.
- Menacing amulet of might fist for your animal companion.
- Both of you can take outflank.
- Pounce is king for melee forms (tigers typically)
AC
- You can buy barding for your favourite shape until you can afford wild armour.
- Barkskin is very helpful for ac.
- Buy potions of Mage armour at low level
- Resinous Skin though not AC is a good long term buff. It is even better on an animal companion for a caster druid.
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What race were you thinking of playing? It really effects point buy.
For Animal companion pick what is fun but Big Cat, Bear, Gorilla are all the same size game-wise, eventually. Gorillas can make good animal companions as they have reach which, though not exclusive to them, is rare.
Stat stuff:
- 14 Con consider toughness + favoured class bonus
- 14 Wisdom is enough for buff spells for a melee druid. you will need a head band to access level 5 spells.
- I have gotten by with 16 starting strength on a druids. Higher is better but you do want to over do it. This is easier with a class racial bonus. 17+1 at level 4 works well too.
I would stay away from cleave, unless you plan on turning into a T-rex because if you turn into something with pounce then you'll like never be in a position where you'd want to cleave.
Natural spell is good because you get to turn into an animal once for 5 hours. If you want to make use of your buff spells you'll need to be able to cast in animal form, OR decide between buffs being up and animal shape cause you'll run out of buffs and then stop animal to rebuff or stay animal without buffs.
You can take Combat Reflexes at 1st level. If you wildshape into something with reach, you can get more AoOs. If your animal companion trips or bullrushes your opponents, you'll get more AoOs.
Also, if you can get proficiency in a reach weapon (do druids get longspear in PF?), you can also act as a "Reach Cleric" in your spare time. It might be worth going Half-elf instead of human, picking up Exotic Weapon Proficiency fauchard instead of Skill Focus. Maybe get a reach weapon through the trait Heirloom Weapon or something.
Maybe:
1. Combat Reflexes
1. Human Bonus: Toughness (or Half-elf Exotic Weapon Proficiency fauchard)
3. Power Attack
5. Natural Spell
Druids are also quasi-skill monkeys (pun intended). Especially if you go human and use your favored class bonus for Skill Points, you get 6+ skill points per level! Perception, Spellcraft, and Survival are great to have.
Remember that you are going to be using double the normal healing (some for you, some for your pet).
Extend Spell is really great for Druid buffs. Grab a Lesser Rod of Extend Spell when you can. Also a worthy feat. I also like Empowered flame strikes.
The other thing a druid can do is basically be a nature based summoner.
With the proper feat investment the animal companion can get pretty scary (evolved companion, spirits gift). The summoning feats all apply to natures ally, which you can spontaneously cast. And their animal buff spells tend to be more potent than their humanoid analogues (lead blades vs strong jaw, enlarge person vs animal growth)
In a lot of ways the limited summoning of spellcasters and communications difficulties in natures ally make it a strong but defintely toned down option compared to summon monster builds.
Druids are very versatile.
You can build around summoning, or blasting, or tanking, or lots of other options, but you are still pretty good at doing the things you didn't specialize in.
Summoning can be really versatile, too, as some critters have spells or healing you don't have.
In 3.5, I made an elf archer druid, and was pretty good at everything. Not out-shine-the-fighter-at-fighting good, but keep up and really contribute good. I didn't go crazy with my animal companion; I just had a wardog with barding, but she was really good at biting and tripping, had the highest AC in the party, and was pretty mobile (She eventually had Spring Attack and Power Attack, which was nice).
My elf archer druid had Point Blank Shot, Rapid Shot, Natural Spell, Improved Counterspell, Craft Wand, and Empower Spell. It was fun using Rapid Shot with produce flame!!!
Also, druids require a lot of prep work. You want to have the stats all ready for your common summons and common wild shape forms. Also, you want to make a full character sheet for your animal companion, with common buffs and modifiers pre-calculated, like Power Attack.
Depending on your party size, you might want to de-emphasize summoning and limit yourself to an animal companion with just a single attack. But if it's a small party, your summoning and animal companion can really boost the party. If your party has a bard, it can use Inspire Courage on your summoned creatures. If the party has a rogue or slayer or ninja, your animal companion can act as a flank buddy. You can even let your animal companion do the fighting so your druid can do some of the "less glamorous" stuff, like healing, holding a door open or closed, rescuing prisoners, Aiding Another, or setting up a trick that takes more than a round to accomplish. I often counterspelled, which can be a bit passive, so my animal companion got to do the active stuff while my druid waited to do stuff.
For an animal-shaping Druid, the Lion Shaman Archetype is really quite good. You can take the Nobility Domain for access to the very strong Divine Favor combat buff (only as a Domain spell, but there are ways around that), and you get a polymorph ability at level 2. Then when you get Wild Shape at level 6, you can turn into a Dire Lion or Dire Tiger and relentlessly maul stuff - you gain a Wild Shape bonus for those forms as a Lion Shaman. Throw in the Planar Wild Shape feat and you can be a Celestial Dire Tiger... who has holy-magic buffs from Nobility.
For an animal-shaping Druid, the Lion Shaman Archetype is really quite good. You can take the Nobility Domain for access to the very strong Divine Favor combat buff (only as a Domain spell, but there are ways around that), and you get a polymorph ability at level 2. Then when you get Wild Shape at level 6, you can turn into a Dire Lion or Dire Tiger and relentlessly maul stuff - you gain a Wild Shape bonus for those forms as a Lion Shaman. Throw in the Planar Wild Shape feat and you can be a Celestial Dire Tiger... who has holy-magic buffs from Nobility.
Does it still get an animal companion?
For an animal-shaping Druid, the Lion Shaman Archetype is really quite good. You can take the Nobility Domain for access to the very strong Divine Favor combat buff (only as a Domain spell, but there are ways around that), and you get a polymorph ability at level 2. Then when you get Wild Shape at level 6, you can turn into a Dire Lion or Dire Tiger and relentlessly maul stuff - you gain a Wild Shape bonus for those forms as a Lion Shaman. Throw in the Planar Wild Shape feat and you can be a Celestial Dire Tiger... who has holy-magic buffs from Nobility.Does it still get an animal companion?
Not if you take the domain.
I really want an animal companion, so if that doesn't give you one, I'm not interested. but thanks for the suggestion! ^^
A Lion Shaman is free to take a Lion Animal Companion instead of a Domain, so that's not an issue. The Domain is just nice for the bonus spell, but not necessary at all.
Anyways, regardless of what you use, check out the spell Frostbite. Frostbite will add plenty of damage to all natural weapon attacks until it runs out, and it can be used with the Rime Spell Metamagic Feat as well to cause enemies more problems, or used with the Quicken Spell Metamagic Feat to cast without slowing down.
You can use the Magical Lineage and/or Wayang Spellhunter traits to make it easier to use Frostbite with Metamagic as well. So for example, if you have Magical Lineage: Frostbite and Quicken Spell, you can cast Quickened Frostbite as a swift action with a level 4 spell slot. This means you can activate Frostbite as a swift action attack, and then also get Frostbite on all natural attacks afterwards, so you don't have to give up any mauling-time to use it.
When I played a druid, it was because I missed having a dog. So I had a fantasy kick-ass dog!
Over 16 levels, I had 4 or 5 animal companions: Gorsedd, Blue, Betty, Spike, and for one session I "cat sat" a tiger, Midnight, before getting another dog.
So there was some sadness when my animal companions died, but it was fun when they weren't dead.
I've found super-specializing isn't the most fun way to play a druid. They're really versatile. You can pretty much do anything you want as a druid. That said, making a super-specialized build doesn't prevent you from doing something outside the box. Just be careful to avoid "choice paralysis" from having so many options. You can fight (melee, ranged, wildshaped--and into what? Str build, Dex build, Defensive build, mobility build?), cast (blast, buff, battlefield control, debuff, heal, other stuff), summon (but what and how many?), plus other stuff, like scout, counterspell, aid another, etc.
Being a druid is never boring.