D&D 3E/3.5 [3.5] Need character ideas for joining new group

[Dandu]

Straight Druid is already more powerful than many, many, many, many other classes and prestige classes.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Master Transmorgryphist (spelling?), Warshaper (C.Warrior), and Nature's Warrior (also C.Warrior) all benefit your Wildshaping, at tremendous expense to your caster level and in some cases, animal companion.

I think straight Druid is fine for wildshaping well. If you have access to dragon magazine, there's a totem druid that can only turn into his totem animal and get those types as companions, but gets many, many buffs to that one animal form. Like early access, free Natural Spell, more times/day, ability to talk while wildshaped... The lost versatility isn't worth it from a strict optimizing point of view, but it's fun if you want a theme.

The single best buff to wildshape you can get is the Exalted Wildshape feat (Book of Exalted Deeds), if you're willing to be super duper good. Just for being able to turn into a Blink Dog and get ALL its Supernatural abilities, huge added option.

As for reserve feats...the blasty ones are actually kind of underpowered, so your DM did you a favor. Right around the level you're starting is where their damage ceases to keep up fast enough to be worth a combat action. Granted, Fiery Burst has hilarious out of combat applications to start fires without anyone knowing it was you. If you like reserve feats and want the DM to warm to them...ask if you can take Healing Touch (from C.Champion) instead. Offers infinite healing, but onl to the target's half max hp. If you can run with that and show him it doesn't ruin the game, later on you could get the summoning reserve feat (nice for "trapfinding," if you catch my drift) or Minor Shapechange (never-ending temp hp is awesome!), or whatever. Just as long as you take Natural Spell at level 6, the other feats are just icing.

 

[Dandu]

You left out Master of Many Forms.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Yeah, that, too. Also hurts everything but the wildshape.

 

[Verequus]

I'll check the suggestions out, if they are interesting enough. Loosing spell progress isn't on my list tho. Anyway, aren't there feats to improve wildshaping? Size, type, abilities? Or did I imagine them?

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

There's feats to use wildshape uses per day for other, less good things. Exalted, Dragon, and (I think?) Abberant Wildshape open up new forms. There's a feat, I think called Powerful Wild Shape, in Races of Stone so if you have the racial Powerful Build trait, you benefit from it while wildshaped. But then errata made the feat unnecessary. There's a level 4 spell in the Spell Compendium, called Enhanced Wild Shape I believe, to either give you some minor bonus to a wild shaped form or give all Extraordinary special qualities (I use it for that option) of the form.

Not sure what else you were thinking of.

 

[Nifft]

An update on my current situation: My DM informed me that he would use his second campaign and not his planar campaign. As I want to reserve my current favorite (Ultimate Mage) for the planar campaign, I tried to get his permission on at least the battle sorcerer. Timing issues prevented this before I actually arrived at the meeting. When I was at the game table, I was informed, once the DM looked through his notes: "Oh, we'd actually need someone divine!" What irony... :S In the five minutes I had to decide I settled on the druid. Not sure how good my choice was. It's now only a straight 9th lvl druid, but my DM allowed me more customization afterwards.

Straight Druid is a fine choice.

Anyway, is there any prestige class for druids I should know about?

Nope. There are a lot of PrCs which will lower your power level, but very few that will keep it even or increase it. If this is your first shape-changer, it's way easier to just stay straight Druid, and you will PWNZORX just fine as a straight Druid anyway.

Basically, power for a shape-changer comes from knowing your options. As a Druid, this means learning what all the various Animals can do in terms of ability scores, special attacks, and bonus feats.

In Core, bonus feats come in two varieties: Weapon Finesse and Track. This means you don't have to take Track, but that if you have a lot of Survival skill ranks you get another option. Weapon Finesse is useless by itself, but it's nice to know you have forms that will allow you to make good use of ranged touch spells and regular touch spells.

For everything else, get to the Animals appendix and start reading.

Learning your animal options is good for three things:
1/ Wild Shape, obviously.
2/ Choosing your Animal Companion.
3/ Summon nature's ally, your signature summoning spell suite.

Druids are spiffy because most things you need to know for summoning will also pay off for shape-changing.

Otherwise, I was thinking about choosing Fiery Blast from Complete Mage to round out my offensive capabilities, but after first proposing to my DM it seems, that he's more inclined to disallow it. He considers it more powerful what a fighter can do (especially once 9th level spells are available) and that it steps too much on the Warlock's feet. He considers it rules breaking, too.

Oooooh-kay. Your DM is not great at evaluating brokenness, and conservative options ("core only") will probably be acceptable to him even if they're way more broken than newer material. Please try not to abuse this knowledge.

Stay straight Druid. Not only is it more powerful overall, it'll probably be less objectionable to your DM when you start kicking ass and taking names.

Your feat choices might be:
1/ Scribe Scroll
(human bonus)/ Empower Spell or Extend Spell or maybe even Quicken Spell
3/ Spell Focus (conjuration)
6/ Natural Spell <-- this is not optional
9/ Augment Summoning

Cheers, -- N

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

One other thing Druids do besides changing shape is summon stuff.

There are a few feats that work well for summoners of all kinds:

Imbued Summoning (PHB2, p92) Your summoned creatures can come into existence with the benefit of a buff spell.

Cloudy Conjuration feat: conjurations accompanied by a cloud of sickening smoke (CompMage p40). The cloud is similar to a Fog cloud spell, and doesn't affect creatures summoned by the spell.

Dimensional Reach reserve feat: if you have a 3rd lvl or higher conjuration spell, you get an at will mage hand effect, and you also get +1CL for conjuration (summoning) spells. (CompArc p41)

Summon Elemental reserve feat: lets you briefly summon elementals, and also givs a +1CL on summoning spells. (CompArc p47-8)

 

[Verequus]

Straight Druid is a fine choice.

Nope. There are a lot of PrCs which will lower your power level, but very few that will keep it even or increase it. If this is your first shape-changer, it's way easier to just stay straight Druid, and you will PWNZORX just fine as a straight Druid anyway.

Assuming I don't suck playing one.

Basically, power for a shape-changer comes from knowing your options. As a Druid, this means learning what all the various Animals can do in terms of ability scores, special attacks, and bonus feats.

In Core, bonus feats come in two varieties: Weapon Finesse and Track. This means you don't have to take Track, but that if you have a lot of Survival skill ranks you get another option. Weapon Finesse is useless by itself, but it's nice to know you have forms that will allow you to make good use of ranged touch spells and regular touch spells.

Bonus feats for druids as like for fighters? Or do you mean that I get more out of it than other classes? And regarding Weapon Finesse I have the problem, that my Dex is only 12 but my Str is 16. I was told that I would fight more in melee than ranged, but looking at the summoning spells I think the summonees are supposed to take care of keeping enemies at bay. And otherwise I have the wildshape form to grant me strength. Tho I'll lose out magical boni and effects... Or what else is the tried-and-proven way to play a druid? Should I use a light weapon to take advantage of the Weapon Finesse feat? Seems that my choice would be the sickle instead the scimitar I have now. I am indeed new at this particular class.

For everything else, get to the Animals appendix and start reading.

Learning your animal options is good for three things:
1/ Wild Shape, obviously.
2/ Choosing your Animal Companion.
3/ Summon nature's ally, your signature summoning spell suite.

Druids are spiffy because most things you need to know for summoning will also pay off for shape-changing.

Oooooh-kay. Your DM is not great at evaluating brokenness, and conservative options ("core only") will probably be acceptable to him even if they're way more broken than newer material. Please try not to abuse this knowledge.

No problem doing that.

Stay straight Druid. Not only is it more powerful overall, it'll probably be less objectionable to your DM when you start kicking ass and taking names.

Your feat choices might be:
1/ Scribe Scroll
(human bonus)/ Empower Spell or Extend Spell or maybe even Quicken Spell
3/ Spell Focus (conjuration)
6/ Natural Spell <-- this is not optional
9/ Augment Summoning

Cheers, -- N

I get Natural Spell (was on my list anyway ), Spell Focus (Summoning) and Augment Summoning, but the other ones... Is Extend Spell intended for summons? Not sure if the fights last longer than 9 rounds. Empower Spell: Do druids have enough spells left after summoning allies to make this feat worthwhile? Quicken Spell... If I have the double number of feats, maybe, but right now too much competition to consider. And why Scribe Scroll? Isn't that something more suitable for wizards?

 

[Nifft]

Assuming I don't suck playing one.

If you take generally useful feats in addition to Natural Spell -- an item creation, a metamagic, and stuff to enhance your Summoning spells, for example -- then the only thing you can suck at are things you can change day to day.

1/ Spell Selection. This can be hard. You will want to spend some time figuring out which spells to put in items (scrolls & wands) and which ones to prepare, and you will be wrong about more than a few of them. But even if you suck at this, it only hurts until you learn better. You can learn and put your new knowledge to work the very next day.

2/ Animal Stats. This isn't hard, but it's time-consuming.

3/ Tactics. You have a lot of options in combat. Applying them well will take time, but again, you're going to be able to use what you learn almost immediately.

Bonus feats for druids as like for fighters? Or do you mean that I get more out of it than other classes?

What I meant was that, when you take the form of an animal, you get that animal's bonus feats... except it looks like now you don't.

You only get free access to feats when you turn into an Elemental starting at level 16. So don't worry about it, I was wrong here.

I get Natural Spell (was on my list anyway ), Spell Focus (Summoning) and Augment Summoning, but the other ones... Is Extend Spell intended for summons? Not sure if the fights last longer than 9 rounds. Empower Spell: Do druids have enough spells left after summoning allies to make this feat worthwhile? Quicken Spell... If I have the double number of feats, maybe, but right now too much competition to consider. And why Scribe Scroll? Isn't that something more suitable for wizards?

Wizards get Scribe Scroll for free, and no, it's best for Clerics and Druids. See, you get FULL ACCESS to your whole spell list. If you have a week of down-time, you can prep any spell in the book, even if it's not a spell you would normally prepare.

Water breathing, for example. A Wizard would need to spend gold just to have access to that spell (or take it as one of his very limited 2/level free spells). You get access to it automatically at 5th level, but you won't prepare it regularly unless you're going on a boat trip. So scribe yourself a couple scrolls of water breathing (level 6 so it'll last for 12 hours) and keep them in your back pocket, then whip them out when you unexpectedly need to fight in / search / traverse a body of water.

When you read through the spell list and think "oh that's nice but ...", you've found a candidate for scribing.

On the subject of item creation, you will want a wand of lesser restoration and several wands of cure light wounds.

- - -

Extend Spell does work on summoning spells, but I was more thinking about it for buffs like greater magic fang and barkskin and longstrider.

Empower Spell works with your big boom spells like call lightning and flame strike.

Remember that you never need to prepare summoning spells, since you can convert any prepared spell into a summon nature's ally of the same level.

Cheers, -- N