Hi all,
A friend of mine is going to be playing a caster druid he was hoping for some help so I told him I would post for him on the Paizo forums. He would like to be mostly a caster but still have a decent Strength score to be able to wild shape into a melee form if needed to lay out some damage when hes not controlling the battlefield in the back line.
These are the main questions he has:
What would you all recommend for a Domain, he doesn't want to blast, he wants to be focused on controlling.
For a 20pt buy how would you allocate his attributes?
He was thinking STR:14, DEX:14, Con:14, Int:9, Wis:16 (18), Cha: 7
Which feats should he take?
Archetype or vanilla?
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Menhir savant is an archetype which is handy for a spellcasting druid - the +1 caster level several times a day is useful, especially at lower levels. Alternately if he'd like to summon stuff as part of controlling the battlefield then one of the animal shaman archetypes is useful for the standard action summons, saurian or lion especially.
For feats, if summoning then augment summoning and its prereq spell focus (conjuration) are essential. Versatile summon nature's ally and/or superior summoning can be useful but are not essential. Natural spell is assumed for a druid. If he wants to occasionally use wild shape in melee then planar wild shape or energized wild shape may be good. Fleeting spell and rime spell are both worth considering to aid battlefield control.
The domain to get varies depending on the archetype - the animal shaman lists change what you can get significantly.
Thank you very much, he's leaning towards Menhir Savant. Which domain would you recommend for that one?
He is also contemplating getting magical lineage with dazing spell (later on) for chain lightning. For aoe control is that a good choice? Aqueous Orb?
take a look at nature fang as well.
it would be a bit different. But good dc and a lot of slayer talents.
Dazing chain lightning with magical lineage takes an 8th level spell slot which is very much an end game thing. He could get spell perfection with chain lightning at that level to about the same effect.
The fire domain with the smoke subdomain has a number of useful spells. They're mostly (pyrotechnics and stinking cloud excepted) reliant on fire damage of course, which is the most frequently resisted/immune energy type. The desert domain is... quirkier, with some non-useful spells, but it doesn't face that problem. Either of those would be good.
Thanks I will let him know. Fire domain, smoke sub seems solid.
I also suggested a Rimed flurry of snowballs followed up by an aqueous orb (dazing rod) would that work? Much faster to get online as opposed to chain lightning and could make aqueous orb his magical lineaged spell? (Persistent spell feat with dazing rod)