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"not enough options" is pretty much the game's mantra unfortunately. Paizo is very reluctant to publish much for anyone.
That said I do have to agree that the druid in general feels kind of dated design wise. It's not a bad class, but the things that make it appealing are very passive and incidental
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I'm honestly more perplexed that we have essentially three different variations of plant druid but we still don't have anything resembling a Winter/Tundra Druid or a Desert Druid.
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I would only enjoy new druid types if they were competitive with storm, animal, and untamed form.
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20 out of 100 druid feats are wild shape feats, I think its probably the most fleshed out kind of druid there currently is. idk if adding more options for that playstyle is a good idea.It’s a pretty solid class with a lot of options. Not sure it needs much love
What I’d really like to see is a shifter. One possibility for this would be a Druid who really concentrated on wild shape, presumably losing considerable spell casting power in turn
You're probably quite right. I just love that particular playstyle :-) :-)
Shifter should definitely be its own class. With Constitution as its KAS.
Ah, don't worry about an accuracy stat because you will just use battle form accuracy instead?
I was more thinking thematically actually. The Shifter is putting their body under serious stress.Shifter should definitely be its own class. With Constitution as its KAS.Ah, don't worry about an accuracy stat because you will just use battle form accuracy instead?
"Martial with a non-accuracy stat" can work just fine, but "martial with a non-accuracy stat that doesn't help with any skills" is the worst of both worlds.
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Shifter should definitely be its own class. With Constitution as its KAS.Ah, don't worry about an accuracy stat because you will just use battle form accuracy instead?
To be viable any shifter has to have normal martial proficiency and use its wild shapes for damage and cool effects. The battle form accuracy is just not good enough.
Balancing the shifter with both the druid/animist in one direction and the monk/fighter/barbarian in the other isn't going to be at all trivial. Likely one of the reasons we haven't seen one yet.
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"Martial with a non-accuracy stat" can work just fine, but "martial with a non-accuracy stat that doesn't help with any skills" is the worst of both worlds.I was more thinking thematically actually. The Shifter is putting their body under serious stress.Shifter should definitely be its own class. With Constitution as its KAS.Ah, don't worry about an accuracy stat because you will just use battle form accuracy instead?
Kineticist is seen by many as a Martial with some spell-like abilities. It also has CON as KAS.
Kineticist is seen by many as a Martial with some spell-like abilities. It also has CON as KAS."Martial with a non-accuracy stat" can work just fine, but "martial with a non-accuracy stat that doesn't help with any skills" is the worst of both worlds.I was more thinking thematically actually. The Shifter is putting their body under serious stress.Shifter should definitely be its own class. With Constitution as its KAS.Ah, don't worry about an accuracy stat because you will just use battle form accuracy instead?
Yeah, that's part of my point. The playtest resulted in Kineticist getting Con as its accuracy stat and getting skill gate so that it at least has an opportunity to not be behind on all its skills. (I also personally find that the basic kinesis and a utility impulse help take the place of skills a little.)
I think it would be more difficult to justify using Con for accuracy on Shifter. They're going up and swinging limbs at things to hit them, which is pretty solidly Str or Dex territory.
You also have the issue of Shifter not really being able to justify heavy armor, and medium seems iffy. So Dex is probably going to be pretty important. We are heading into Monk problem territory, since Dex being important means Str/Dex or low damage. Adding on Con as KAS seems rough.
It's solvable with very un-PF2 stat substitutions. Con to AC, for example. You can also have the Shifter use some sort of fixed stat while polymorphed, like some standard AC. But it's a lot of work that a more boring Str or Dex primary with 10 HP just avoids.
Don't get me wrong - I think it would be interesting for Shifter to find a way to make Con work for it. I just really don't like the vision I get of a class so heavily locked into combat stats that I can't even consider a Deception-focused shapeshifter, with its features going to make Con work.
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It's solvable with very un-PF2 stat substitutions. Con to AC, for example. You can also have the Shifter use some sort of fixed stat while polymorphed, like some standard AC. But it's a lot of work that a more boring Str or Dex primary with 10 HP just avoids.
The SF2 Soldier gets quite a few things based off its Con. So maybe (MAYBE) Paizo is starting to loosen that particular restriction.
Or, of course, maybe not. Different games, different teams, different balance points. Etc.
Same game though.
And there's stuff like DaS giving you Int to Strikes, Commanders have a feat that gives you int to medicine.
The whole battle form mechanic at its core essentially lets you bypass normal expectations for strength by giving you fixed attack modifiers. I can't think of any subsystem better to maybe play around with substitutions than a system already designed to let you bypass stats.
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The whole battle form mechanic at its core essentially lets you bypass normal expectations for strength by giving you fixed attack modifiers. I can't think of any subsystem better to maybe play around with substitutions than a system already designed to let you bypass stats.
This is only partially the case.
Complicating things is the fact that you CAN use your own stats if they are better. While this is only rarely of any use for a druid it is of significant more use (at lower levels) for martials who have archetyped into druid.
So there are at least 3 balance points. The druid has gone as all in as possible on Str, the druid who ignores or dumps Str, and the martial with the druid dedication.
Further complicating things is the lack of clarity on how exactly wild shape works in terms of what bonuses apply when wild shaped. Depending on the assumptions you make wild shape via druid archetype can be quite powerful right now.
The druid already establishes that "shapechanging isn't especially hard on your body" so I don't think there's a reason to make Con the KAS for a shifter class- if the Druid can change into a sparrow and a hippo and a t. rex without any inherent stress on their body, the class whose thing is "shapeshifting" should be able to do it too.
If anything, you would give it a STR/DEX KAS and some limit based on CON, like how a Monk's Ki Spells have a Wis based DC.
Personally, IMO a PF2e shifter class should be a non-spell martial, with either Str or Dex KAS, that can essentially choose something like the one of the animal instincts for attacks and other benefits like movement types (possibly from an increasing pool of animal types); switching between them each combat or even round to round.
You could also possibly make a ranger class archetype or non-class archetype that gains untamed form, untamed shift, and access to the various druid "form"/"shape" feats; although this feels a bit restrictive to me.
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I'm honestly more perplexed that we have essentially three different variations of plant druid but we still don't have anything resembling a Winter/Tundra Druid or a Desert Druid.
I would only enjoy new druid types if they were competitive with storm, animal, and untamed form.
Therefore, we need a Winter Order and a Desert Order for druids that are competitive with Storm, Animal, and Untamed Orders. This is a challenge.
I have made six druid NPCs for my Strength of Thousands campaign, since the Magaambya Academy teaches arcane and primal magic. I gave student Haibram Thodja from Kindled Magic Storm Order due to his love of flying, new student Menolly Animal Order due to her roc animal companion, Mkosa from [b]War of Immortals[/url] and new student Marjilla Lee Wave Order because both were from port city Bloodcove, Thema the groundskeeper of the Leshy Gardens in Kindled Magic Leaf Order for a leshy familiar, and teacher Nhyira Leaf Order with Woodcraft instead of Leshy Familiar because Secrets of the Temple-City did not mention a familiar. Mkosa later added Storm Order via Order Explorer, because he is an experiment intended to be as powerful as a player character.
Cultivation and Spore Order did not seem distinct enough from the original Leaf Order. Flame and Stone Order did not have enough flavor to catch my interest. Untamed Order had too much flavor for a mere fellow-student NPC.
The Desert and Winter Orders not only compete with the existing orders for flavor, but they would also strongly compete with each other. Desert druids would be from a hot desert wilderness of sand and rock. Winter druids would be from a cold arctic wilderness of snow and ice. An Order feat to resist their environments is so obvious that I have to go with that, but I figured out how to vary it for the Desert Order.
The skill granted by the order is minor, because a druid is trained in Nature, their order's skill, and 2+INT other skills, so any two desired skills are always within the character's grasp. Nevertheless, the order's skill helps define the order. The current skills used by orders are Acrobatics (Flame, Storm), Athletics (Animal), Crafting (Cultivation, Stone), Diplomacy (Leaf), Intimidation (Spore, Untamed), and Medicine (Wave). The unclaimed skill Survival seems obvious for a druid associated with a harsh environment, so let's give that to the Winter Druid. I would have liked to give the Desert Order an unclaimed skill, too, but the remaining skills don't fit well: Arcana, Deception, Lore, Occultism, Performance, Religion, Society, Stealth, and Thievery. Let's train the Desert Druid in Medicine, because I am giving the class a camel animal companion and not giving the class an order spell that heals.
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Desert Order
You travel the desert, perhaps a hot sandy desert or maybe a cold polar desert, and revere the beauty of the life that thrives in that dry environment.
Order Skill Medicine
Druid Feat Animal Companion; however, your companion must have the mount special ability. In addition, while you are mounted on or adjacent to your companion, you gain any special ability it has to ignore the harmful effects of mild, severe, and extreme cold or heat, like a bacallia or camel can.
Druid Spells 1st Miniature Oasis; 8th-level feat Dust Storm
Anathema Do not allow animals to be overworked or needlessly harmed nor the struggle of plants and animals in a harsh environment. (This doesn’t prevent you from defending yourself or harvesting them for survival.)
Miniature Oasis [two-actions] Focus 1
Uncommon Druid Focus Manipulate Plant Water
Range 60 feet; Targets 5-foot-radius burst
Duration 10 minutes
You create a patch of grass with a tiny pond in the center. The area becomes difficult terrain. The temperature in the area stays at 80 degrees Fahrenheit. The water is safe and grass-eating herbivores can eat the plants. You can Dismiss the spell.
Heightened (3rd) The area increases to a 10-foot-radius burst and the pond fills the central four squares with still water. Fruit-bearing plants provide 2 meals for people.
Heightened (6th) The area increases to a 20-foot-radius burst and the duration increases to 12 hours. The fruit-bearing plants provide seven meals. You may add a wooden cabin or stable 20 feet on each side and 10 feet high to one corner. This cabin has the structure trait and the same restrictions as magic items that create structures. The interior contains 3 cots or stalls and may be lit with a small magical light. The door can be barred from the inside with DC 28 to Force Open. The corner of the central pond overlapped by the cabin becomes a private bathing area or a water trough. You can conjure at most three 6th-rank Miniature Oasises at the same time.
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Winter Order
You embrace the winter season in a land where snow falls on the ground for a good portion of the year.
Order Skill Survival
Druid Feat Cold Endurance
Druid Spell 1st Snow Shelter; 6th-level feat Snowball Bombardment; 12th-level feat Flying Reindeer
Anathema Prevent any person or creature , such as bears, bees, and squirrels, from planting, harvesting, fattening, and storing food in accord with the seasons. (This doesn’t prevent you from defending yourself if viewed as seasonal food.)
Cold Endurance Feat 1
Druid
Prerequisite Winter Order
You treat natural cold temperature effects of your environment as one step less severe (treat incredible cold as extreme cold, treat extreme cold as severe cold, treat severe cold as mild cold). This reduction in severity is cumulative with any equipment (such as cold-weather gear), spells (such as environmental endurance), feats (such as Environmental Guide), or shelter (such as an igloo).
Snow Shelter Focus 1
Druid
Uncommon Cold Druid Focus Water
Range 30 feet; Targets 15-foot burst
Duration 1 minute
You shape snow as you will. The snow in the area reforms into walls and tunnels up to 10 feet high, and the spell conjures more snow if necessary. The walls can arch into a 10-foot wide vault roof but the snow is not strong enough to support a flat roof or wider roof. In waist-deep snow you can create a hidden tunnel for crawling with no visible clues from above. The snow is structurally weak (Hardness 0, HP 0) and can be knocked aside by Striding through it, but it will block wind and line of sight. The spell prevents the snow from melting but after its duration the snow is subject to the weather.
Heightened +1 The snow firms up and gains +2 Hardness and +2 HP. A creature embedded in it would be immobilized, but can avoid that with a Reflex save against your spell DC or break free afterwards with Force Open against DC equal to 10 plus the Hardness.
Mystic Snowball [one-action] Focus 3
Uncommon Cold Druid Manipulate Water
Based on Snowball, World Guide pg. 112, and Stone Lance, Rage of Elements pg. 61
Duration 1 minute
Requirement You have a free hand.
You conjure a magically chilled ball of dense snow. A snowball appears in your free hand and you may immediately make a ranged Strike with it, Interact to hand it to an adjacent ally, or keep it. The snowball is a magical consumable thrown martial splash weapon with +1 item bonus to attack rolls, range increment 30 feet, and deals 4d6 cold damage and 6 cold splash damage. On a hit, the target takes a -10 foot status penalty to its Speeds until the end of its next turn. On a critical hit, the target is immobilized until the end of its next turn. You gain expert proficiency in snowballs and immunity to their splash damage. The snowball evaporates when the duration ends.
Heightened +1 The weapon damage increases by 2d6. The item bonus to attack rolls increases by +1 at 5th, 7th, and 9th ranks. The splash damage may be changed to acid, electricity, fire, or spirit when you conjure the snowball.
Flying Reindeer Focus 6
Uncommon Concentrate Druid Manipulate
Based on Marvelous Mount, Player Core pg. 342
Cast 1 minute
Range 10 feet; Duration 1 hour
You conjure a large sleight pulled by a team of eight flying reindeer. The reindeer are your minions with your AC and saves and will avoid combat. The sleigh can hold four passengers comfortably and up to 150 bulk of cargo, and can move at Speed 80 feet and fly Speed 80 feet. You can telekinetically load adjacent cargo as you cast the spell. Other creatures can crowd into the cargo section, but they become fatigued after 1 minute and need 10 minutes outside the sleight to recover. Everything in the sleigh is subject to a Gentle Landing spell if they leave in midair. If any reindeer is attacked or damaged, then they will break out of their harnesses and flee, which reduces the sleigh's speed by 10 feet. Zero reindeer means the sleigh gently falls via Gentle Landing.
Heightened +1 The sleigh can hold two more passengers, and its Speeds increase by 20 feet.
Oops, I forgot to put a casting time on the Snow Shelter order spell for the Winter Druid. It should be the default two actions.
I said that my goal was to design Winter Order and a Desert Order for druids competitive with Storm, Animal, and Untamed Orders. Let me explain my design decisions.
Desert Order gains a camel animal companion. Some players may select a horse or other mount instead, forgoing the protection from desert heat. The animal companion is such a flavorful feat that it deserves more than one order and makes Desert Order competitive with Animal Order. The desert druid can take Mature Companion as a 4th-level feat, Instinctive Support as a 6th-level feat, and Dust Storm (from the Dust domain) as an 8th-level feat to take full advantage of their order. The imagery for the order is that no-one really travels a desert alone; instead, they ride and join a caravan. The Miniature Oasis spell is also desert imagery that helps keep the caravan's mounts alive. In combat Miniature Oasis can create difficult terrain.
Winter Order might belong to a set of Spring Order, Summer Order, and Autumn Order. The 1st-level order feat and order spell are devoted to surviving winter weather, so they are not particularly exciting or powerful, but are necessary to the theme. However, when Snow Shelter reaches 2nd rank, it becomes a battlefield control spell. I hope this gives Winter Order its own special flavor. For the 3rd-rank order feat I revived the legacy Snowball spell for its snow flavor, but made it a weapon rather than a spell attack in case the druid wanted to hand the snowball to a fighter friend. It also takes only one action so that the druid can have an extremely efficient action economy. Flying Reindeer has Santa Claus imagery, but that imagery is strongly based on winter. I hope this class is competitive because its order spells offer winter themes that are not standard primal spells.
Not to detail the topic, but yeah we need more options for all classes (core classes a little less so, tbh, since they tend to get little bits and pieces in various books more often than non core classes). I wish there was something we could do to convince paizo to have a 'class expansion book' but I'm sure they have reasons not to make it.
One of the thing that make druid feel like it doesn't have that much choice is that a lot of the feats are order based, making them unavailable for druid of other orders, or (for animal and wild order) mandatory in order to keep your order special feature "on level", so in the end, you end up not feeling like you have that much choice.
Of all the orders, I feel like plant is the only one that feel really good to build, due to a good number of unique feat that aren't mandatory but offer more option and playstyle. The class could certainly benefit from more feats for the other orders to get them on par with plant order (and it's suborders), even if there isn't any fixing the "mandatory feats" issue for the animal and untamed orders at this point.
I'm all for the seasonal and location specific order, because even if I sorta understand Paizo for stepping away from them since they are a fair bit more specific and slot into fewer adventure than the elemental or plant/animal/untamed ones, there is a lot of flavor in them and they could make for some really interesting playstyle. But I think fleshing out what we already have (beyond plant order, which is already pretty well rounded, even if I won't complain if it get more) is a bit more important.
But beyond more feat orders, I think more neutral "available to all" options could also do a lot to make druid feel more interesting and unique. Right now, the only "neutral" options are the basic spellcaster package, which is fine but unexciting, the "druid feature from PF1 we ported onto PF2 but put as feat instead of part of the class chassis" (like the ability to replace any spell by summon spell, the timeless body, the poison resistance, etc), which feel like flavor tax more than anything, and only a handfull of feats that feel interesting and unique in a way that can shape your playstyle, like the menhir feat or the "stealth druid" feats from dark archive. Having more of the last kind of feat would go a long way to make druid more exciting to build.
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One of the thing that make druid feel like it doesn't have that much choice is that a lot of the feats are order based, making them unavailable for druid of other orders, or (for animal and wild order) mandatory in order to keep your order special feature "on level", so in the end, you end up not feeling like you have that much choice.
A druid can very easily take the good feats in the two orders of their choice. They can even dabble in most sets of 3 orders and get much of what those orders offer.
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For me I wish orders had more substance to them. Wild Order can be build defining, and some of them have good focus spells, but otherwise there's a lot of very ancillary material that imo leaves the druid feeling kind of sauceless compared to other casters. Like the druid is so tepid this druid thread is mostly about a hypothetical other class people would rather play instead.
Not bad per se, but also like... they're a three slot caster and that's the end of the sentence. Their best nonspell features are being wisdom based and having a pretty good statline, which is strong in its own right but also doesn't have a very high gamefeel necessarily compared to other caster gimmicks.
Like maybe the best feature of the druid right now is that the only other prepared primal caster is the witch, which is basically worse at everything in exchange for a dodgy cantrip.
One of the thing that make druid feel like it doesn't have that much choice is that a lot of the feats are order based, making them unavailable for druid of other orders, or (for animal and wild order) mandatory in order to keep your order special feature "on level", so in the end, you end up not feeling like you have that much choice.
...
I'm all for the seasonal and location specific order, because even if I sorta understand Paizo for stepping away from them since they are a fair bit more specific and slot into fewer adventure than the elemental or plant/animal/untamed ones, there is a lot of flavor in them and they could make for some really interesting playstyle. But I think fleshing out what we already have (beyond plant order, which is already pretty well rounded, even if I won't complain if it get more) is a bit more important.
I constructed Desert Order and Winter Order as a theoretical exercise, to see whether these orders that TheFinish suggested could feel significantly different in playstyle from existing orders. I think I succeeded and could manage more of them. The Desert Order, and similar ecosystems such as Plains Order, Rainforest Order, Sea Order, and Tundra (Winter) Order, have great setting potential, since the druids are usually envisioned as temperate forest dwellers. But they are less suitable for player characters, because adventuring in the wrong terrain could make the character feel like a fish out of water. What good is Cold Endurance in a Mwangi Expanse campaign?
Furthermore, creating a full set of seasonal or location orders and their feats would increase the problem the Scarablob described in their first paragraph: too many druid feats locked behind an Order requirement.
But beyond more feat orders, I think more neutral "available to all" options could also do a lot to make druid feel more interesting and unique. Right now, the only "neutral" options are the basic spellcaster package, which is fine but unexciting, the "druid feature from PF1 we ported onto PF2 but put as feat instead of part of the class chassis" (like the ability to replace any spell by summon spell, the timeless body, the poison resistance, etc), which feel like flavor tax more than anything, and only a handfull of feats that feel interesting and unique in a way that can shape your playstyle, like the menhir feat or the "stealth druid" feats from dark archive. Having more of the last kind of feat would go a long way to make druid more exciting to build.
We have a good selection of so-called neutral feats.
Non-Order Druid Feats, ignoring legacy feats and Order Explorer
1st: Animal Empathy, Plant Empathy, Reach Spell, Verdant Weapon, Widen Spell
2nd: Call of the Wild, Poison Resistance
4th: Cryptic Spell, Elemental Spell
6th: Current Spell, Intensified Element Stance, Misty Transformation, Steady Spellcasting, Toppling Transformation
8th: Can't You See?, Deimatic Display, Eerie Environs, Eerie Traces, Fey Caller, Forgotten Presence, Raise Menhir
10th: Eerie Proclamation, Healing Transformation, Overwhelming Energy, Pristine Weapon
12th: Defensive Dismissal, Explosive Metamorphisis, Necromantic Deflection, Primal Focus, Primal Summons, Wandering Oasis
14th: Cleansing Transformation, Sow Spell, Timeless Nature, Towering Transformation
16th: Effortless Concentration
18th: Primal Aegis
20th: Hierophant's Power, Ley Line Conduit, Verdant Presence
But these feats do not particularly define a playstyle, except that the basic spellcaster package can enhance the druid as a primary spellcaster and the Eerie feats from Dark Archives (Remastered) are spooky. Flavorful playstyle is left for the orders.
In the druid design, flavor comes from order-based feats, much like the rogue rackets tell whether your rogue is a agile thief or a lying scoundrel. But the rogues build upon skills, of which they get plenty, while the druid feats are more restricted. The druid needs more mix-and-match order-based feats like Advanced Elemental Spell, which treats Flame Order, Stone Order, Storm Order, and Wave Order as a family of elemental orders. Cultivation Order, says, "The cultivation order is a variant of the leaf order. If you have the cultivation order, you count as a member of the leaf order, and you qualify for leaf order feats," and Spore Order has similar text, grouping them into a family of three plant-based orders. Families of related orders that share feats could help reduce the restrictiveness of order-based feats.
Yeah, it is a class where a lot of the features are just kind of being a primal caster and having solid defenses compared to most casters.
I have not seen many druids in my Pathfinder campaigns. The theme of the druid as protector of the forests does not sound like a strong adventurer. (The cleric as a temple-trained healer sounds even worse, but adventuring parties warmly welcome healers.) In my PF1 Rise of the Runelords campaign, one player temporarily took over a druid NPC for half a level after her original character's heroic death. In my current PF2 Strength of Thousands campaign two bard PCs took druid multiclass free archetype. But the outstanding druid in my campaigns was Stormdancer in my PF2-converted Ironfang Invasion campaign. With her Stormborn powers and lots of primal Area-of-Effect spells she was a killer of the Ironfang armies. At 7th-level I invented some Ironfang rangers with Large roc animal companions and Stormdancer adopted one of the rocs, took Animal Order via Order Explorer at 8th level, and became a roc rider (I altered her Stormwind Flight spell to allow it). Stormdanger was glorious flying on her roc high above the battlefield and raining down fire and lightning from above. Just two pieces of flavor: elemental spells including Tempest Surge and a flying animal companion--led to a memorable character.
And that is essentially how PF2 design works. A few characteristic abilities added to a basic core create a flavorful character fun to play. For the druid the core is a primary spellcaster (with primal tradition for natural and elemental flavor) and the abilities are shapeshifting or an animal companion or a plant familiar or a Tempest-in-a-teapot focus spell. The player adds a backstory and personality that fits the abilities for a good start on roleplaying an adventure. Classes do not need to be uniquely built from scratch like the alchemist and kineticist.
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For me I wish orders had more substance to them. Wild Order can be build defining, and some of them have good focus spells, but otherwise there's a lot of very ancillary material that imo leaves the druid feeling kind of sauceless compared to other casters.
Its probably RP at least as much as mechanics but my various druids have felt very different to each other.
Gnome Dr Doolittle
Hit you in your face shifter
Everything dies by lightning
to name a few
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Well, I spoke with Paizo, had a quick word with them to see what they could do about this, and they said they'd go ahead and put out the Blossom Druid in January.
Well, I spoke with Paizo, had a quick word with them to see what they could do about this, and they said they'd go ahead and put out the Blossom Druid in January.
Do about what? More Druidic Orders, I hope.
Blossom Order's name would fit well alongside Cultivation Order and Spore Order in the Leaf Order family.
Player Core has four orders: Animal, Leaf, Storm, and Untamed. The newer orders of Cultivation and Spore are variants of Leaf. I think four families of orders is sufficient. The Desert Order I imagined could become Desert Rider Order and be a variant of Animal Order, and the Winter Order I imagined could be renamed Snow Order and be a variant of Storm Order.
Secrets of Magic had tried to create an elemental family by linking Flame Order, Stone Order, and Wave Order with Storm Order, but nowadays after Rage of Elements they would need a wood-based order and a metal-based order, too. Wood Order would be too close to Leaf Order, so I don't think PF2 Remastered should have an elemental family. Instead, Flame Order could be about hot weather and be a variant of Storm Order. Stone Order could gain a mountain- or cave-dwelling animal companion, such as Cragstone Bear or Goat, and be a variant of Animal Order. Wave Order could gain possibilities about transforming into fish and be a variant of Untamed Order.
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I do think that there is space for another order that is about the non-living aspects of nature. While storm is about (violent) movement and change, something like stone (I would not use stone itself, in order to avoid confusion with the legacy order) could instead be about stability and resiliency. Then, as Mathmuse said, variations could exist.
Not bad per se, but also like... they're a three slot caster and that's the end of the sentence. Their best nonspell features are being wisdom based and having a pretty good statline, which is strong in its own right but also doesn't have a very high gamefeel necessarily compared to other caster gimmicks.
Like maybe the best feature of the druid right now is that the only other prepared primal caster is the witch, which is basically worse at everything in exchange for a dodgy cantrip.
I do agree that it's probably the main issue with the class, that "being the primal caster" took up so much space in the class chassis that it didn't leave much space for more flavorfull or unique elements, leaving them feeling pretty generic. It's sorta the same issue that wizard have with "being the arcane caster", while cleric and bard manage to avoid it by having more baseline unique stuff with the composition and the divine fonts. And the feats don't give enought unique customisation to compensate this relatively boring baseline.
I absolutely adore the druid flavor, I'm the kind of player (when I'm a player, I tend to GM more than I play) that could play just different flavor of druid for every character I make and still have fun, but compared to PF1, druids in PF2 just don't feel all that exciting to build compared to most other class.
The two things that actually made me interested to play druid in PF2e was the release of the spore order (alongside the plethora of leaf order feats) and the spooky druid feats from dark archive, both because they feel like they open some interesting customisation and playstyle without being mandatory or bland. If other orders could be given more depth the way the plant order have with the new suborders and feats, and if there could be new flavorfull "order agnostic" feats, it would go a long way making the class more appealing, even if at this point they can't really fix the issue of the chassis itself feeling bland.
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I would like desert and plains druidic orders, as well as druidic orders for each of the elemental planes.
I would like desert and plains druidic orders, as well as druidic orders for each of the elemental planes.
Hmm... A Metal Order druid. Nice.
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Yeah the decision to not have a metal order in RoE really annoyed me. Paizo broke from metal = unnatural and even introduced an elemental plane of metal and then ... druids didn't get a order for it. Very frustrating.
The reappearance of the Metal plane is VERY recent. Having something as structured as a Druidic order based on it suddenly appearing out of the blue feels somewhat off.
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Yeah the decision to not have a metal order in RoE really annoyed me. Paizo broke from metal = unnatural and even introduced an elemental plane of metal and then ... druids didn't get a order for it. Very frustrating.The reappearance of the Metal plane is VERY recent. Having something as structured as a Druidic order based on it suddenly appearing out of the blue feels somewhat off.
Eh... True, I suppose. But it could have been an order based on the plane, an esoteric order from antiquity few knew about and so on. The same book mentions Talos and Ardande existed on golarian in small enclaves despite the loss of their planes.
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Yeah the decision to not have a metal order in RoE really annoyed me. Paizo broke from metal = unnatural and even introduced an elemental plane of metal and then ... druids didn't get a order for it. Very frustrating.I remember reading that they were going to have a metal-related order in RoE, but then the OGL thing happened and the base druid lost the restrictions it had on metal armor and such. Doing a bit of googling, this wargamer article mentions an iron druid archetype. So I guess they didn't have the time and/or resources to retool it after the change.
Hm, I didn't know that. Maybe one day...
As much as I'm happy with the previews from Unseen World...what looks like yet another plant-themed druid makes me think someone at Paizo is really into botany.
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As a druid affictionados I can't complain about the abondance of plant and spore stuff since "life druid" is by far my favorite flavor, followed by land druid, with elemental druids being pretty far behind. We do need more animal feat or suborder that aren't automatically tied to polymorphism or the animal companion tho, I understand that it's a harder sell to have animal spontaneously appear from nowhere compared to plant, but there got to be ways to make interesting stuff beyond what we already have.
Also, we don't have enough insect druid option, my bug hunger is far from satiated.
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I love plant stuff too, but it would be cool if there were more options rather than a third plant order.
There's only one post remaster option for a non-life druid so it feels like such an untapped area. Granted, three more if you include SoM but I know some people are skittish about that given it's essentially a depreciated book.