Phaezen
Adventurer
I have a feeling that if you are shackled the turning tiny won't help anyway, as equipment you are wearing shapes with you.
Phaezen
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Playtest: The Druid (merged)
- Thread starter Fallen Seraph
- Start date
I have a feeling that if you are shackled the turning tiny won't help anyway, as equipment you are wearing shapes with you.
Phaezen
To everyone who reminded me that you can only Wild Shape once per round: I know.
Here's what you can do:
You're in combat, right?
Minor action, wild shape. Shift back a space taking you out of the threatened area around your opponent.
Move action, move. With an elf this is potentially eight spaces.
Standard action, cast a spell. Your spells are control, so they will hamper your foe's ability to pursue you.
Next round, wild shape, and charge back into battle.
You can vary it up as necessary, but basically, Druids have a partial form of the Shifty power. It does everything that Shifty does, except it requires you to switch "attack modes" each time you use it.
Also, if your spell-centric druid gets caught in melee, he can shift one space, then wild shape and shift another space, and hopefully end up joining the melee in a flanking position. Double shift.
Here's what you can do:
You're in combat, right?
Minor action, wild shape. Shift back a space taking you out of the threatened area around your opponent.
Move action, move. With an elf this is potentially eight spaces.
Standard action, cast a spell. Your spells are control, so they will hamper your foe's ability to pursue you.
Next round, wild shape, and charge back into battle.
You can vary it up as necessary, but basically, Druids have a partial form of the Shifty power. It does everything that Shifty does, except it requires you to switch "attack modes" each time you use it.
Also, if your spell-centric druid gets caught in melee, he can shift one space, then wild shape and shift another space, and hopefully end up joining the melee in a flanking position. Double shift.
Evilhalfling
Adventurer
Flight, if going by established models will be a utility power. Warlocks get a flying shadowform at level 10 that lasts till the end of the encounter. I think 1 round of flight with forced landings comes earlier. At lvl 1 with Air Gensi.
I like the druid, and am especially grateful that it is an open look. It is much broader than I thought possible.
Anyway for those people demanding more specific animal forms - The ranger companions in MP show a decent, but still limited variation. There should eventually be PP based on chosen animal, like there are for rangers.
But not likely in the PHBII which will have to include at least a generalist wildshape focused class, and a weather mage focused class. Primal Power is the most likely, but a large enough outcry may get one published for online subscribers, or in 3rd party products.
perhaps as feats, based on MP ranger companions:
Bear Form: -2 AC, -1 to hit, +1d6 damage with all beast form attacks.
Wolf Form: +2 damage with Combat advantage.
Snake Form: +1 AC or +1 to hit with OA.
The APG clearly loses out on the wildshape area, but their nature priest has some lovely summon spells, based on existing wizard/cleric summon effects. I am especially fond of Slashing Tree.
I like the druid, and am especially grateful that it is an open look. It is much broader than I thought possible.
Anyway for those people demanding more specific animal forms - The ranger companions in MP show a decent, but still limited variation. There should eventually be PP based on chosen animal, like there are for rangers.
But not likely in the PHBII which will have to include at least a generalist wildshape focused class, and a weather mage focused class. Primal Power is the most likely, but a large enough outcry may get one published for online subscribers, or in 3rd party products.
perhaps as feats, based on MP ranger companions:
Bear Form: -2 AC, -1 to hit, +1d6 damage with all beast form attacks.
Wolf Form: +2 damage with Combat advantage.
Snake Form: +1 AC or +1 to hit with OA.
The APG clearly loses out on the wildshape area, but their nature priest has some lovely summon spells, based on existing wizard/cleric summon effects. I am especially fond of Slashing Tree.
Oni
First Post
Their at wills seem better than the wizards IMHO.
The rest it seems to early to tell, Though for the level I don't think anything they have is as good as Flaming Sphere.
I wonder how they'll work with paragon multiclassing since wildshape is an atwill but not strictly useful on its own.
There must be something you'll be able to do with a dwarf lock/druid combo that'll be decent have to wait and see.
The rest it seems to early to tell, Though for the level I don't think anything they have is as good as Flaming Sphere.
I wonder how they'll work with paragon multiclassing since wildshape is an atwill but not strictly useful on its own.
There must be something you'll be able to do with a dwarf lock/druid combo that'll be decent have to wait and see.
Shifty works every round. The druid has to spend one round to go INTO beast form in order to be able to come OUT the following round.
Oh, you're right.
Still, that doesn't effect the fact that shifting out of beast form also lets you essentially escape melee for free (elf predator druid can travel 9 spaces that round and still attack). And the round you switch to beast form and reenter melee, you don't need the shift as much.
Plane Sailing
Astral Admin - Mwahahaha!
On the whole, I think it looks very promising. Particularly in the implementation of WildShape (BTW, 3e PHB2 had a shifter variant of the druid who could shift every round into generic shapes, and it worked pretty well overall. I think this implementation owes a little to that)
I'm really pleased to see such a wide choice of at-wills. If only the PHB had 8 at-wills per class we would have seen less complaints and/or problems about cookie-cutter PCs.
I'm a bit disappointed in some of the details. I don't like to see all those beast attacks targeting reflex. If a wolf attacks you it attacks vs AC. If a druid wildshaped into a beast attacks you I think that should attack AC too. If worried about the impact of not having a 'proficiency bonus', then I would have much preferred the beast attacks to have a +2 bonus figured in to them. Neater and more appropriate to my mind.
I'm a bit disappointed to see the power creep inherent in things like Flame Seed which really ups the ante for at-will minion killing (it has the autokill benefit of cloud of daggers, but over an 8 (or 9) times bigger area). Wind Prison also looks a bit suspect - hit the low reflex minion with it and when he moves all the giants (or high reflex quicklings) get knocked prone regardless of their defences.
Back to the utilities, two things I really like: Skittering Sneak for tiny animal infiltration, and the Obscuring Mist sustain: minor with the opportunity to grow the area effect. I think that is great, and ought to be back-filled into some of the PHB powers (like cloudkill, which really needs a boost).
Cheers
I'm really pleased to see such a wide choice of at-wills. If only the PHB had 8 at-wills per class we would have seen less complaints and/or problems about cookie-cutter PCs.
I'm a bit disappointed in some of the details. I don't like to see all those beast attacks targeting reflex. If a wolf attacks you it attacks vs AC. If a druid wildshaped into a beast attacks you I think that should attack AC too. If worried about the impact of not having a 'proficiency bonus', then I would have much preferred the beast attacks to have a +2 bonus figured in to them. Neater and more appropriate to my mind.
I'm a bit disappointed to see the power creep inherent in things like Flame Seed which really ups the ante for at-will minion killing (it has the autokill benefit of cloud of daggers, but over an 8 (or 9) times bigger area). Wind Prison also looks a bit suspect - hit the low reflex minion with it and when he moves all the giants (or high reflex quicklings) get knocked prone regardless of their defences.
Back to the utilities, two things I really like: Skittering Sneak for tiny animal infiltration, and the Obscuring Mist sustain: minor with the opportunity to grow the area effect. I think that is great, and ought to be back-filled into some of the PHB powers (like cloudkill, which really needs a boost).
Cheers
