Detailed Druid Feedback

[JoelF847]

Form Control feat name doesn't convey the effect it provides. This extends the duration of wild shape, so name it something like extended form. Form control suggests greater ability to choose or refine the form you turn into, like a higher disguise bonus, or the ability to transform from one form to another multiple times in the duration, like turn to bird, fly somewhere, turn to human manipulate something, then turn to monkey and climb a tree, etc. Or to transform into a creature with a combination of abilities from different animals,

[JoelF847]

Nature Sense - this should also affect magic that turns other creatures into animals or plants, letting the druid know that they are not in fact real animals, etc.

[JoelF847]

Invoke disaster - why does this grant earthquake? It’s STORM order, not disaster order - should be tied to weather effects. Some other order like Earth order could be tied to earthquakes, tremors, volcanoes, etc. This seems to be the only storm order feat which grants a power which is non-weather related. It would make more sense to grant tornado, hurricane, or even blizzard ability.

[RazarTuk]

The metal armor thing is already a weird holdover in general. In AD&D 1e, they couldn't wear metal armor for unexplained reasons and could only wield bludgeoning weapons, because they were a subclass of the cleric and Gygax restricted cleric weapons because of a popular misinterpretation of the Bayeux Tapestry. In AD&D 2e, they still couldn't wear metal armor for unexplained reasons, and had a very restricted set of weapons to choose from, reminiscent of the monk's list. D&D 3e continued the same trend, and Pathfinder inherited that.

This all being to say that there's no reason to restrict druid armor.

[Taenia]

I wonder why Nature skill covers Handle and Train animal but Wild Empathy uses Diplomacy which is neither a signature skill for druids nor does it fit the druid theme in anyway.

Druids are also the only class with fewer trained skills than signature skills.

[Joey Cote]

Noxobar wrote:

Dragorine wrote:

Animal form on 205 call its attacks "unarmed melee attacks" and on page 178 unarmed attacks are counted as simple weapons.

Edit:On page 272 wild claws also count as an unarmed attack.

Then at page 183 for weapon traits we read:

Quote:

Unarmed: An unarmed attack uses your body rather than a manufactured weapon. An unarmed attack isn’t a weapon, though it’s categorized with weapons for weapon tables and weapon groups, and it might have weapon traits.

Note also that all heigh-level form spells use "natural attacks", not "unarmed". The problem is that the term "natural attack" is not defined anywhere.

However, if you read carefully, while claws are said to be unarmed attacks, their traits are written (agile, finesse), not (agile, finesse, unarmed)

This terrible mess definitely need a clarification from the developers. IMO, the difference between fist (or "another part of your body") and claw or specially scaled tail is too big to be both the same "unarmed" category.

I think the wording here is to prevent players from casting magic weapon on a monk or animal companion but allow for some other things.

[Joey Cote]

Am I wrong, or is a wildshaped druid not able to give commands to an animal companion if he picked one up? Also, not being able to cast spells while wildshaped simplifies matters, but also greatly reduces the druid's flexibility in combat.

[swordchucks]

There are a few things I don't like about druids as they are:

1) Wild Shape's tie to Strength is just weird since actual forms don't use Strength (without a magic item, anyway). I personally think the separate pool should die and wild shape forms just be uses of Spell Pool like every other class. Let the Wild Order combine their claws ability with wild shaping by spending an extra spell pool point as one action (and make sure the claws count in wild shape).

2) If clerics are going to have a special healing pool, all druids should get a pool for casting heightened goodberry. This would go a long way toward making druids a viable healer class. Goodberry should also get its healing increased a bit as it's very, very low compared to heal.

3) Not strictly a druid issue, but a lot of the wording about how animal companions work needs to be cleaned up. Do you have to Handle? Etc.

I'm sure there are more, but my limited play experience hasn't shown them to me yet.

[RaidenOmega]

I see a few people saying that they think that wild shape points should just come from spell pool, but there are serious flaws to this. First off, it would literally half the pool for use of points between wild claw and wild shape.

Unless the overall pool was increased this would just be a serious nerf to an order that can't take a nerf.

If anything, make the wild pool, a reflection of spell pool. I think however, that wild shape druids would be better off using another key stat than wisdom, which could allow for wild forms to scale, would take a little power away from other spells (because spell caster is no longer this orders main focus, though they can still do it a little).

Just don't make it charisma. It could be str or con or something. Con would probably be better, as animal forms already have a dictated hit, damage etc. Plus, it takes a stout constitution to withstand such drastic changes to the body in such a short time, thus lorewise it makes sense.

This also eases the argument that "Druids can't be masters of everything!" but also takes care of the "But they would only mediocre at anything," or "But they're really just pure casters" both latter points which I and many others disagree with vehemently, but the first I agree with.

Pure caster druids are pure casters, but wild druids should not be pure casters, and should have limited casting overall. Not so much so that it nerfs the class into oblivion but that it balances it. The type of spells used could/should be specific to what could interest and be best used by a wild druid most, especially the 10th level. Aka, give spells that wild shape druids can use a tag appropriate to their order. It must have the "wild shape order" tag or something. They shouldn't interfere with other "order domains" like storm, animal, or leaf, except where appropriate like Wild order and Animal order obviously have some likeness and would share some spells, etc. There would obviously be some overlap with wild shape druids and all the other orders, but it would be limited.

Some examples from wild druid order spells, not including form spells, could be: 1st heal, summon nature's ally, 2nd Barkskin, Enlarge, 3rd Haste, Remove Disease, 4th Freedom of Movement, Stoneskin, Etc Etc. I think the point has been made. These spells give utility that would also be of interest to a shapeshifter particularly and there are obviously many more.

Examples of spells that wouldn't really go well with a wild druid could be things like Grease, Goblin Pox, Deafness, Glitterdust, Lightning Bolt, Fireball, Etc, etc.

For the spell point vs wild shape point argument, spell Points and Wild Shape points could still be a direct reflection of each other (aka same number of points for both) but two separate numbers as they are now and are now based on the new key stat (such as Con).

The forms definitely need to scale for wild order druids only (with maybe a possible exception or two).

Finally, Wild Claws should become Wild Attack and be usable for wild shape to affect whatever natural weapons the form is using at the time. In the druid's humanoid form, it remains "Claws" and is used as is currently stated.

I'm not going into how to scale the forms. There is a TON of good idea floating around about that already.

[Drumar]

In the playtest I have a storm druid as the main character; Up till 9th level I felt he has a good spot, felt usable and overall quite fine.

However, we now came to the final chapter of the playtest and I am levelling him up to find out: the 10th level feat is quite meh; I hardly spent spell points for animal companion (too expensive on the proper level) so allowing it to become elemental for yet another spellpoint... meh.

Nature sense could be the proper choice; a constant detect magic could have its uses in certain settings. Not sure if the playtest fits that though.

So, those are the options at 10th level... at least there is something to choose... but then 14th level... Three options, all three with a prerequisite I don't meet. SO I can take none of them; even though if I could, I would not... the onle good one, I presume is the dragon shape.

The feats on those levels have to be looked at, they're way too low and situational for their level.

In between I have also played a leaf druid. Overall I had the feeling it was a very weak character. Healing via ingested berries does not really work in combat (out of combat healing is superb though, even more since it has been increased) the familiar was dead in the first round I tried to do something with it. They are way too weak. More plant-y abilities through feats would make this order much more fun to play.

I havent yet played the shifting druid, but looking through the feats and erratae this seems a pretty strong and fun-to-play class... although, as stated elsewhere it would be more fitting to have some (longer-lasting) shapeshifts... (e.g. the druid that flies along with the party, able to stay in shape for (almost) a day; now the shapeshifts seem to lean a bit too much towards their combat-utility. Soon going to find outh through playing though.