New to Druids


Advice


I am currently making a new druid character (draconic druid archetype to be exact for backstory reasons). I've never made a druid before, and I was wondering if any of you fine gentlepeople would have any advice for me. Feats, spells, weapons, anything. Personally, I was thinking quarterstaff or scythe as a weapon. And I was thinking of doing a fire theme too.


Druid is a very versatile class. The question needed to go forward is what do you see your druid doing? Carving through the foes of the forest with your scythe, hugging all the animals, turning into a pouncy furry ball of death and shredding your foes, blasting people apart with the fury of wind and fire?

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

Create a full character sheet for your animal companion, each of your wildshape forms, and all of the common allies you plan on summoning frequently.

Druids are extremely versatile. You probably want to plan 3 or 4 main ways of fighting: summoning, battlefield control, blasting, melee, ranged, wildshaping, etc.

You will also be good at lots of fun things out of combat: scouting, tracking, Perception checks (especially if elven or half-elven!), some Knowledge checks, mobility stuff (parkour, Ride, teleporting/transporting via plants, earth-gliding, etc.), obviously dealing with animals, etc.


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A nice guide for all your druid needs (does not include Draconic druid sadly).


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Feats for different focus builds:
Wildshape
Wild Speech
Natural Spell
Powerful Shape
Planar Wild Shape
Quick Wild Shape
Vital Strike
-Winter's Strike
-Faerie's Strike
-Grasping Strike

Summoning
Spell Focus: Conjuration
Augment Summoning
Versatile Summon Nature's Ally
Moonlight Summons
Sunlight Summons
Starlight Summons
*Summon Guardian Spirit
Summon Plant Ally
Putrid Summons
Nimble Natural Summons
Superior Summoning
Ferocious Summoning (Half-Orc)

Animal Companion
Evolved Companion
Totem Beast
Spirit's Gift
Celestial Companion (Aasimar)
Vampiric Companion (Dhampir, Vampire)
Monstrous Companion

I'm sure there are more I missed. Hopefully some of these are useful to your concept.


Bignorsewolf, I was planning on the blasting people apart with wind and fire, and shredding them in dragon form. Carving with melee is something that I would do if I can't do either as a more secondary form of attack.

Thank you very much SmiloDan. I would not have thought about having multiple character sheets for that, and that would probably save a LOT of time doing math in game.
3 or 4 ways of fighting too. Got it. I'm thinking Blasting, Wildshape, and melee.

That is incredibly useful WagnerSika. I'm going to need to take a close look at that.

Tyrant Lizard King, those feats are great! Thank you!

RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32

Druids have a lot of moving parts. I'm usually really proud to fit any character on 1 sheet of looseleaf--when I play a druid, it's a whole sheaf of pages. I stat out my AC, my WS forms, and especially my summoned beasties, especially if I took feats that alter them, like Augment Summoning.


One thing on wildshaped forms, with the exception of what attacks you get and things like movement, all forms of the same size have the same stats. The AC will be the same for example, and your bonus to hit for primary and secondary stats will be the same. Because of that, you probably don't need a full sheet for each form, at most a page for each size, with some specifics like attacks and movement for likely forms you would take for that size. Generally I find I can actually get all the forms I am likely to use onto a single page without too much difficulty, listing each size in a limited statblock that only shows the things that will change from by base character sheet and then a few forms for each size with their attacks and other notes.

Otherwise, druid really has a couple pretty good options, either a wildshaped melee attacker that mostly uses spells for buffs and support or a caster that mostly uses wildshape for mobility. While any druid can do both to an extent, deciding which you wish to specialize in right off that bat will make you a more effective character. The big difference is how much to prioritize strength and how much to prioritize wisdom. Melee druids want to be strong for damage, and don't plan on casting many spelss that their opponents will need to save against, so STR is much more important than WIS. Caster druids are the opposite, possibly even dumping STR and certainly not having it be higher than their WIS score. Both methods can be effective and fun to play. Splitting the difference is possible as well, having both options and being able to perform a variety of roles. This can certainly be fun, but mechanically it won't be as effective at either job as a specialist will.


Additional question.
Are there any suggestions as to what element I should maybe focus on as a draconic druid? I was thinking fire or electricity to be honest, but I'm still familiarizing myself with the spells.

The Exchange

Even it looks cool i wouldn't take fire.

I prefer acid but you can't cover all enemys and immunitys.


Acid/Lighting are mechanically the best elements. Thematically pick whatever you want. I would give the edge to fire over cold due to there being more monsters that take double damage from fire than cold


Question- you said you wanted to carve up with a scythe and be fire focused, but then you go with dragon form. Sadly, druids usually have to abandon weapons as they focus more on turning into various, natural attack wielding beasties. ....unless....

You go down two paths:
1. Elemental forms. This is an option for the standard druid. Elementals can have humanoid shapes, and they are allowed to use manufactured weapons when in that form (their subtype gives weapon proficiencies when they have that shape- good evidence for hands). This can be messy, since your weapons do not scale up with you (so you pretty much need a large or huge sized weapon to grab after turning).... but it works. Admittedly, fire elemental form sucks (it is dex based, and thus has to compete with air elemental; earth is simple str based).
2. Goliath druid. This archetype lets you take on the forms of giants. This is a more refined version of above- your weapons and armor scale up with you, since you are turning into a humanoid. While there are mechanical favorites (trolls with regen), your stats do not vary with which giant you pick- ergo, you can go with a fire giant.

The real advantage of these two approaches is that you are a 'tall' template creature and probably have a big whacky 2 handed weapon- thus, you have fantastic reach and great hits for AoOs.


I've played three druids.

One was water-element focused (Dark Sun, so the details do not really apply for Golorian.)

Another was a dwarf metallurgist focused on the earth element ("Dag of the Dirt.") He quickly became a party favorite due to his penchant for dust baths, strict avoidance of water, and I invested nothing in Animal Handling - "Err, um... Dag ain't so good with critters, I ain't THAT kind of druid, ya see..." Later nickname became "Dag Face-Eater" after a crit that was scored attacking while Wild-Shaped into a Giant Dragonfly.

The third is a Ratfolk Urban Druid who is a narcissist and preens over his soft fur (Love Domain... self-love that is.) He is the party crafter in the AP Hell's Rebels, and quite a character.

Absolutely need to have spells early on are Magic Stone and Longstrider. Magic Stone made up the difference BIG TIME in sling damage from a small creature (the ratfolk), and both the ratfolk and dwarf benefit greatly from Longstrider.


can't usually longstrider someone else (but there's a few ways around that)


Actually, since I first made this post, I found out about staves and how they can be used as quarterstaffs. So now I'm focusing on that rather than scythes. And I have enough str to do so (I rolled high with everything)

Grand Lodge

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WagnerSika wrote:
A nice guide for all your druid needs (does not include Draconic druid sadly).

Give his man a beer for his excellent taste on guides =D

I'm going to work a build for Draconic archetype


Oh, and my friend brought up another point that I actually can't find the answer to. When in beast form, do you gain the feats of said beast?


Sadbackstory.exe wrote:
Oh, and my friend brought up another point that I actually can't find the answer to. When in beast form, do you gain the feats of said beast?

No. You keep your own feats.

To see what you get and lose, you need the druid chart (to see which version of beast shape you're using) , the beast shape or elemental body spell (to see what benefits you get, and most importantly, the polymorph subschool in the magic chapter, which tells you at least half of how a polymorph effect works.

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