prospero63 said:
I'm curious as to why folks are saying Druid? My experience with druids is that they tend to get crushed in combat and their animal companions can rarely keep up. Based on the responses though, either I'm clearly missing something or have just never seen an effective druid played.
Anyone care to shed some light?
Basically, if done right (take natural spell), a druid with a decent animal companion is as effective as two other characters. The dudes who spend way too much time on this sort of thing* have come to a consensus that the druid is one of the three most powerful character classes in a game without supplements, and still in the top five if everything is allowed.
To quote the
druid handbook:
"In core, the druid is one of the front-runners for most powerful class, and the vast, vast majority of players will want to take all 20 levels. Druids are full casters drawing from a versatile spell list, can Wild Shape into any number of combat forms, get a handful of handy class abilities, and even have a decent skill list (and the skill points to use it).
Druids also benefit disproportionately from the addition of new material beyond core, as they benefit from the addition of monsters as well as the addition of the usual spells, feats, and prestige classes. (One would even say they benefit more from the addition of monsters; few prestige classes work well with druids, and they have relatively few feat slots.)"
*The WotC character optimization forums.
