Variant Druid - Wolfbrother

[cappun]

I am currently playing an 8th level druid with a dire wolf companion. I have been trying to come up with a direction to take the character in and I really like the Wolfbrother PrC from Wheel of Time. The main abilities a wolfbrother gains abilities include telpathic communication with wolves, scent, low-light vision, yelloweyes (wolf eyes), and the ability to detect and summon wolves in the area for aid.

What I want to do is to adopt some of the wolfbrother abilities as I gain levels as a druid. I think that it would fit nicely with my character. What I would like to do is to lose some druid abilities in exchange for wolfbrother abilities. Any ideas on abilities to lose that would be a fair exchange? Is the advanced wild shape abilities (tiny, dire, huge, elemental) too much to give up? I don't want to mess with spell casting abilities.

Thanks for any thoughts you might have on this.

 

[las]

Conver the Prc to D&D then take it I did a PC class and the the made it a PRC after.

 

[Destil]

Telepathic Communication: This is rather minor, unless it's very powerful. I suspect you just talk to wolves as if they were people, directly into their minds, and not being able to communicate over vast distances or detect wolf thoughts for miles around. If so trading it for your venom immunity (also fairly minor, but a nice flavor perk) should be fair, and you get that next level.

Scent: A nice feat. I think trading a wild shape / day increase should work. It might be a good idea to also require you to actually spend a feat for it, as well as trading the wild shape use, since it's a rather strong feat.

Low light vision: This a rather low power ability... the only thing that comes to mind is perhaps resist natures lure (if you're not against swapping things you already have. If your DM doesn’t want you to do that ask if you ever used resist nature lure, and if not remind him that there's no real campaign president saying you do indeed have the ability). That's almost unfair, though, because resist natures lure is so specialized it's almost worthless, and you're trading it for a very generally useful ability. I think I'd allow that, just because it's a nice flavor change and almost insignificant power adjustment by 8th level. But you would be getting a good deal out of it.

Yellow eyes: Unless this has some in-game benefit you should get it for free with your dark vision. It's just cool and very much in line with your concept.

Detect and Summon wolves for aid: You mean natural wolves? Over what distance? Do they just appear like a summon nature's ally spell? Hard to gauge without specifics, but since wolves don't get tooooooo strong I think trading a wild shape would be good, again.


I think I'd want to keep the Dire and Huge advanced wild shape, simply because those let you WS into wolves of various sorts. Also, there's nothing saying elementals have to be humanoid, you could turn into an elemental shaped like a wolf and it should be fine if you don't change their stats. You could also apply the elemental templates to wolves and compare them to the base elementals you can WS into, if they’re close in power that would be even cooler. I'll take a look at a templated elemental wolf later tonight or tomorrow and compare the two.

I haven’t seriously played a druid enugh to comment on how useful any wild shape ability is, though. Nor have I had one in my game above around 5th level. But I think the flavor of what you want to do is cool enugh to warrant some rules bending, at least if I were your DM.

 

[fba827]

Sean K Reynolds (the designer formerly known as the Sage ) posted varients on making a druid that mimiced a lycanthrope wolf.


http://www.seankreynolds.com/rpgfiles/misc/lycanthropicwildshape.html

Basically, it is taking one ability normally gained by a "standard" druid that doesn't apply to the "wolf"and replacing it with some equivalent-power ability that does apply to wolves.

Even if it isn't exactly what you are looking for, it may provide you a good starting point.

 

[cappun]

Telepathic Communication: This is rather minor, unless it's very powerful. I suspect you just talk to wolves as if they were people, directly into their minds, and not being able to communicate over vast distances or detect wolf thoughts for miles around. If so trading it for your venom immunity (also fairly minor, but a nice flavor perk) should be fair, and you get that next level.

The telepathic communication is pretty powerful under the right circumstances. It allows the character to detect and communicate with wolves from a 10 to 100 mile radius, depending on the character's level. I see it mostly as a great way of obtaining information about the surrouding area if there are wolves there.

Thanks for your other thoughts, they were very helpful!

 

[Destil]

Telepathic Communication: This is rather minor, unless it's very powerful. I suspect you just talk to wolves as if they were people, directly into their minds, and not being able to communicate over vast distances or detect wolf thoughts for miles around. If so trading it for your venom immunity (also fairly minor, but a nice flavor perk) should be fair, and you get that next level.

The telepathic communication is pretty powerful under the right circumstances. It allows the character to detect and communicate with wolves from a 10 to 100 mile radius, depending on the character's level. I see it mostly as a great way of obtaining information about the surrouding area if there are wolves there.

Thanks for your other thoughts, they were very helpful!

Humm... that's somwhat equivelent of the 5th level spell cummune with nature, though at a reduced level of versitility. One option would be to make it a 3rd level spell... I think trading for a wild shape per day and making it usable 1/day would work, too.

Elemental Wolves. Here's a quick rundown of the elemental templates from MotP
Earth Elemental (Earth)
HD become d8
Speed: ‘Burrow’ speed of 20’ or normal speed, whichever is less. Plus any other speeds.
AC: Natural Armor +3
Earth Mastery: +1 to hit if both the elemental and it’s opponent are on the ground. -4 if opponent is airborne or waterborne.
Burrow: Move through earth like a fish through water.
Immune to sleep, paralysis, stunning, critical hits.
Darkvision 60’
Tremorsense 60’ (ex)
HD DR
1-7 -
8-11 5/+1
12+ 10/+2
Str +2, Dex -2
Speak Terran

Fire Elemental (Fire)
HD become d8
Heat(ex): natural attacks deal extra damage
Burn(ex): Thoes struck by a natural weapon of a fire creature or striking one with their own make a reflex save (DC 7 + HD) or catch on fire and burn for 1d4 rounds.
Immune to sleep, paralysis, stunning, critical hits.
Darkvision 60’
Immune to fire, take double damage from cold unless they make a successful save.
HD DR Heat damage
1-3 - -
4-7 - 1d4
8-11 5/+1 1d6
12+ 10/+2 2d6
Speak Ignan

Air Elemental (Air)
HD become d8
Speed: Fly 100’(perfect), or creatures existing fly speed, whichever is better
Air Mastery: Other airborne creatures suffer -1 to their attack rolls vs. air elementals
Immune to sleep, paralysis, stunning, critical hits.
Darkvision 60’
HD DR
1-7 -
8-11 5/+1
12+ 10/+2
Dex +6
Speak Auran
Gain Flyby Attack feat

Water Elemental (Water)
HD become d8
Speed: Swim 90’ in addition to the creatures original speed
Water Mastery: +1 to hit if both the elemental and it’s opponent are on or in the water, -4 if opponent is land bound or waterborne.
Drench(ex): Touch puts out non-magical flames of Large size or smaller automatically, can dispel magical fire by touch as if casting dispel magic as a sorcerer of it’s HD as level
Immune to sleep, paralysis, stunning, critical hits.
Darkvision 60’
HD DR
1-7 -
8-11 5/+1
12+ 10/+2
Speak Aquan

The small, meidum and large elementals would be equivelent to about 2, 4 and 8 HD wolves. A normal meidum wolf has 2HD, a 4HD wolf is an advanced (large) wolf, and you'd want an advanced, 8HD large dire wolf for the large elementals...

 

[Suldulin]

or you could try the WolfLord(animal lord) Prc from MotW, mimics the telepathy quite well, you gain scent, and the ability to assume the shape of a wolf at will. you could ask to trade out some ability for low-light vision, or take it as a feat. The calling of aid can(and should imho) be rp-ed with the farspeech ability.

requirements for WolfLord: animal empathy 6, Wilderness Lore 8, Hide 2. Animal control and Expertise feats.

 

[cappun]

I've thought about the wolflord PrC, but in my opinion, it is rather underpowered. The loss of druid spell progression is too much to give up. That said, I really like the concept of an animal lord character, which is why I am trying to tweak the druid class to accomodate it.

 

[Bean 2.0]

look at animal lord and tamer of beasts from Masters of the Wild

 

[las]

we all have good points you know its comes to what do you want to do.