[3.5] Revision Spotlight - Druid class

[Plane Sailing]

It's just that the druid was on the high end of the power scale before 3.5. Lets see a good spell list with the incredibly cool divine I know all my spells trick.

I think I'd definitely have to disagree with you here. Apart from the fantabulous Entangle (if in the wilderness) the druid spell list was appalling when compared to the cleric or the wizard.

Interestingly, when I did a big survey here a few years ago, out of 6241 levels of PC classes, only 208 were in Druid.

This was the breakdown of the number of levels in each class

Fighter 1038
Rogue 840
Cleric 831
Wizard 815
Sorcerer 529
Ranger 437
Monk 403
Paladin 374
Barbarian 303
Bard 275
Druid 208
Psion 138
Psychic Warrior 50

It's not a bad sample size (over 100 respondents, some with more than one campaign parties)

You'll note that Druids came right at the bottom - even below bards, would you believe!

If this was in any way representative of the wider game playing public it is no surprise that the druids were given some additional "interest".

Cheers

 

[dagger]

I have played in a high level game that started at 1st level. The party actually happend to have a straight classes cleric, wizard, and druid all reach 9th level spells.


The wizard was decent or flat out awesome in most situations (if his spells were in order).

Cleric was the same as the wizard.

The druid was just decent. At high level even with a super beefy animal companion, the damn animal was still worthless (in combat), even with Awaken. High level spells destroy animals, and with plane traveling the animals really didnt help much.

We shall see...

 

[Psion]

When danger showed its ugly head
He bravely tucked his tail and fled...

Did not!

 

[youspoonybard]

About druids...

Well, in all honesty, I love the Druid class, and I think it is very strong.

I play with the core and splat only. I don't use miasma.

But I do think you are correct. They are powering up classes no one played instead of the ones that might have necessarily needed it.

But Druids were strong in 3.0, using core and splat, and look to be (depends on polymorph) tweaked up a little in 3.5.

 

[Christian]

From my reading of the description of the druid, it definately sounds like the spell: Animal Friendship is gone. As it seems that they have a new mechanic to summon an animal friend. Which is a good thing because I think I only ever played in one campaign where animal friendship was cast, and that was once and the player had to spend a day to rest and memorize it to cast it on the animal.

Hee. One of the other players was running our druid's character while she was needing to be away from the table for a while. We were taking surprisingly significant damage from a trained dire wolverine hanging around one of the baddies. "Too bad Aramil doesn't have Animal Friendship prepared," I sighed a few rounds into the combat.

"Ummm ... Actually, she does."



She still has Chester the dire wolverine as an animal companion at 9th level. Handy, that fella is sometimes.

 

[MeepoTheMighty]

I played a druid until 9th level or so, and I never really felt like I was all that powerful. Most of my wildshapes were spent scouting or relaying messages back and forth between party members when they were split up. I only had a couple opportunities to shine - once with Call Lightning, and once with Contagion (I managed to infect the commander of an army with a disease which worked its way down through the officer corps and ended up preventing a war).

I imagine it would be possible to build a decent combat druid, but I don't think it would really be overpowering. The spell list is missing a lot of the buffs and healing spells that make the cleric a munchkin's wet dream.

 

[jasamcarl]

Re: About druids...

Well, in all honesty, I love the Druid class, and I think it is very strong.

I play with the core and splat only. I don't use miasma.

But I do think you are correct. They are powering up classes no one played instead of the ones that might have necessarily needed it.

But Druids were strong in 3.0, using core and splat, and look to be (depends on polymorph) tweaked up a little in 3.5.

I think what many are saying is that, outside of a few spells, which are probably being tweaked, the druid was all flash and little show. It simply didn't min-max very well, especially at high levels.

 

[youspoonybard]

Actually, you got me backwards.

All show and no flash is how I tend to think of the Druid. She just gets the job done.

And, yes, mixing in levels of Druid is a waste. Straight Druid, however, never was.

 

[DrinkingBuddy]

I think I'd definitely have to disagree with you here. Apart from the fantabulous Entangle (if in the wilderness) the druid spell list was appalling when compared to the cleric or the wizard.

Thank you Plane Sailing. I was going to point this out earlier using my Living Greyhawk druid as an example but decided it would come across as whining. So here I go, let the whining begin.

At 8th level my druid is just starting to be of use in a group, aside from the phenom tracking ability, she had little to offer in

a) combat (even in animal form, esp when AC drops through the floor without some major magic items)

b) healing (a greater magic fang or Cure Mod... hmmm. Flame Strike or Cure Serious. Heck even the fighters say "TAKE FLAME STRIKE!")

c) firepower (aside from fast track on flame strike, there is almost no fire power in the repitore, SNA are laughable even at 8th level excepting perhaps the thoqqua which is versitile but still weak)

For all the cool druid tricksy stuff, it just does not make a very powerful character. Spells are utilitarian, but weak. At least spontanious casting will kind of help allieviate that problem. Of course LG is a different animal than a home game and may not be a fair comparison, but in my 2 years of druid playing experience, they are very underpowered. Track and heal are the two things I have added to an adventure above any other. And the occasional dire weasel attack. Other than that though...

Let me note that my druid has had very limited magic items and has not had access to feats outside of the PHB. Bag of Tricks II is the biggie. With a bead of karma, ring of animal friendship, and access to Natural Spell feat, things might be different. She ain't maximized, true, but a character shouldn't NEED to be maximized to be viable.

I fully enjoy playing a druid I just do not believe they are one of the 2 most powerful classes in the game. I look forward to the changes, they can only improve things, lets hope that spell list gets a major boost (no access to Bull Strength? what?)

 

[Henry]

If there is one thing I'm hoping for, it's that the Summon Spells become just full-round actions, instead of 1 full round. Very darned few of our players were attempting the summon spells because they not only felt vulnerable for the entire round, but felt as if they were wasting an action on their turn.