Druid: High powered, Low Level

[kooshlord]

Hi all,

I'm playing a druid in a heavily DM-customized setting, and I'm wondering how to make him an effective team member.

The basics: D&D 3.5, wilderness setting. Stat generation: 5 choose 3 X2 (roll 5 dice, choose 3. do this twice. pick your favorite set, assign stats as you will). Natural Spell has been disallowed by the GM as being too powerful (dire bear wandering around all day casting spells). The DM allows such powerful PCs (but disallows natural spell, grumble) because he likes really powerful monsters and NPCs. As such, I worry that most of the druid summoned creatures are going to be largely ineffective as anything but flankers, as they won't be able to damage anything. My personal melee capacity is about nil, and without the host of ranged feats, I can't reliably shoot anything anymore.

I'm playing a 3rd level elven druid, with a DM allowed elven hound as an animal companion.
Str 9 Dex 18 Con 13 Int 14 Wis 18 Cha 14. Feats: Track, Spontaneous Healer (complete divine).

The rest of my party consists of a barbarian, a scout, a warblade (book of 9 swords) and sporadically another warblade, barbarian or a cleric. NO ARCANE CASTER (sigh).

So, please give me advice for tactics at this level (at least 2 adventures before I level) to contribute to combat, and for useful feat and animal companion progression for future adventuring (remember, natural spell was disallowed).

Thanks!
-Koosh

 

[Piratecat]

Welcome to the boards!

I strongly recommend you go with the variant wild shaping from (I believe) the PHB2. It trades wild shaping and the animal companion for the ability to instantly shapeshift into certain pre-defined combat shapes.

It's a little less powerful than normal wild shaping, but not if the DM has disallowed Natural Spell. And it's vastly easier to keep track of.

 

[kjenks]

At level 3 druid, try Produce Flame. You can toss three balls of fire (one per caster level) as ranged touch attacks for 1d6+3 damage. You're at +6 on these attacks due to your BAB and Dex. That's better than you'll do with any mundane weapon.

Your elven hound is a decent melee combatant. You can help him out with your spells, like Magic Fang, Nature's Favor (a swift spell from Spell Compendium) Barkskin and Bull's Strength. Align Fang (Spell Compendium) is handy, but only in rare situations; investigate whether you can get a scroll.

Look into getting your hound some barding. Ask your DM what "trained for war" means in his campaign; sometimes, it means just having the Attack trick, sometimes it means having all of the tricks in the Combat Riding package, and sometimes it means having the word "war" in the animal's name (like warhorse). If your hound is trained for war, he may be proficient in armor -- see the animal type description in the Monster Manual. Armor proficiency is nice because he can wear heavier barding, but even if your DM does not allow him to be proficient in armor, he can wear masterwork studded leather barding with no armor check penalty. Consider buying a magical enhancement bonus for that barding, too, but be aware that you're likely to be choosing a different animal companion next level.

Depending on the availability of magic and gold in your campaign, you could also buy an Amulet of Natural Armor for your hound. This doesn't stack with Barkskin, but it can be used on other creatures later on.

If you're conserving spells and you don't want to melee an enemy directly, you can also use a longspear to Aid Another on your hound's attack or AC. This requires only an attack against AC 10, which you can make about half the time with your Str and BAB.

Next level, get a dire bat animal companion. Riding the dire bat lets you hover above the battlefield and shoot a crossbow or summon creatures into the melee below. Relatively few monsters have ranged weapons or area attacks, so you can stay out of danger much of the time. It's also amazingly useful to be able to fly across obstacles, carrying a rope for other party members or whatever.

At higher levels, a bear or tiger animal companion is great for melee.

 

[Nifft]

I strongly recommend you go with the variant wild shaping from (I believe) the PHB2. It trades wild shaping and the animal companion for the ability to instantly shapeshift into certain pre-defined combat shapes.

Seconded.

With the feat Natural Spell off the table, it's nice to have Swift and unlimited wild shape at your disposal.

Also, this variant allows you to keep your good physical stats -- normally, a benefit of Wild Shape is that you can cover over bad Str & Dex, but in your case, it might be stronger to keep your (hopefully) excellent Str & Dex.

Cheers, -- N

 

[kooshlord]

kooshlord=fairly new to D&D character strategizing, so thanks everyone for the tips!

Piratecat and Nifft: thanks for the suggestion about the variant wild-shaping. The DM didn't tell me about the natural-spell restriction until after I'd already decided not to use the variant wild-shape. Since he nerfed the feat, maybe he'll allow me to rework the character a bit. BUT: I believe the variant eliminates the animal companion. Is it worth losing the enhanced companions (I got the elven hound at 1st level, I think it is considerably more powerful than the average 1st level animal companion). And I'm strength 9 without enhancements...

kjenks: Thanks for clarifying produce flame for me. I already like the spell (we ran into some ghosts and it worked wonders), but I wasn't adding my level bonuses to the damage.

The DM makes blanket assumptions about the hound for simplicity:
-I control it by will, so tricks are largely irrelevant unless I'm asking it to run through fire or something.
-It can be (and is) wearing MW studded leather now.

The dire bat is also intriguing, especially as we castle-vania-ed a bit last adventure (jumping over pits while being attacked by ghosts). However, we've already run into a whole nest of kobolds with x-bows, and we're up against a half-fiend sorcerer/barbarian, and his imp companions. So flying will help, but it won't keep me out of harm's way very long.

Other questions:

I'm going up against the following in the close future: half-fiend sorcerer/barbarian, nasty warg with character levels. The half-fiend has damage reduction (5? making my racial longbow proficiency irrelevant) and immune to fire (negates produce flame, flaming sphere, and fire sword). I'm looking into Creeping Cold from some sourcebook or another, but any other ideas to damage it?

And, at this level is it generally a good idea to concentrate on direct damage, or bolstering my allies? I have a theory that I'm better off doing direct damage against low-level minions, and bolstering allies in end-boss-fights, due to the elevated CR of the bad guys this DM throws at us. Does that sound appropriate?

 

[Wolfwood2]

And, at this level is it generally a good idea to concentrate on direct damage, or bolstering my allies? I have a theory that I'm better off doing direct damage against low-level minions, and bolstering allies in end-boss-fights, due to the elevated CR of the bad guys this DM throws at us. Does that sound appropriate?

At this level, summoning is a good bet. All of your Summon Nature's Ally creatures from spell levels 1 through 4 or so are just plain better than what you can get with an equivalent level Summon Monster.

 

[Shayuri]

Ghosts and half-fiends at level 3? And he's not letting you use Natural Spell?

Sheesh.

You're right though, about the elfhound. Cooshee are pretty paarful, compared to normal animals. It sounds to me like you'll probably want to become a spell/buff druid, at least for now. Get some spells to slap on the cooshee, like Magic Fang and Bear's Endurance. Consider picking up a feat like Elemental Substitution either Acid or Lightning...for druids, I like lightning for that 'storm' theme, but it's up to you. Since the majority of a druid's "mainstream" offense spells are fire, you can use Elemental Substition to deal with critters that are resistant or immune to it.

Call Lightning will be great too, when you can cast it.

Druids can actually pump out a fair amount of magic firepower if you push in that direction. The trick is to use that companion to meatshield for ya. That'll give you the opening you need to step into the mage's shoes and unleash the fury of nature! YAAARGH!

 

[Christian]

An often-overlooked advantage of summoning spells is the damage they absorb for you. Every hit point the bad guys apply to the temporary effect is a hit point not being taken by you or your allies, which is worthwhile even if they're not hitting back that hard. I found myself using them more and more as I continued to play my druid.

 

[kjenks]

The dire bat is also intriguing, especially as we castle-vania-ed a bit last adventure (jumping over pits while being attacked by ghosts). However, we've already run into a whole nest of kobolds with x-bows, and we're up against a half-fiend sorcerer/barbarian, and his imp companions. So flying will help, but it won't keep me out of harm's way very long.

No matter what creature you're riding, you can make a DC 15 Ride check to get Cover from Mount -- this gives you a +4 bonus to your AC. Since you have a high Dex and Ride as a class skill, you should almost always be riding something, even if it's not your animal companion. Get a warhorse at the very least. Look at the Bottle of Smoke spell, too.

Riding a mount also lets you move and cast 1-round spells like Summon Nature's Ally. (But if your mount moves more than a single move, you need to make a Concentration check.)

I'm going up against the following in the close future: half-fiend sorcerer/barbarian, nasty warg with character levels. The half-fiend has damage reduction (5? making my racial longbow proficiency irrelevant) and immune to fire (negates produce flame, flaming sphere, and fire sword). I'm looking into Creeping Cold from some sourcebook or another, but any other ideas to damage it?

Your bow does, what, 1d8-1? That's not gonna hurt any serious opponent, even with your +6 attack bonus.

(Creeping Cold is in Spell Compendium.)

And, at this level is it generally a good idea to concentrate on direct damage, or bolstering my allies? I have a theory that I'm better off doing direct damage against low-level minions, and bolstering allies in end-boss-fights, due to the elevated CR of the bad guys this DM throws at us. Does that sound appropriate?

Your theory is sound, but it depends on the nature of the bad guys. Be flexible -- that flexibility is one of the key features of being a druid.

With you, your horse, your animal companion, and any creatures you can summon, you'll have a lot of creatures making a lot of relatively small attacks. These work best when concentrated on a single enemy without damage reduction. Leave the guy with DR for the other characters in your party.

 

[Darklone]

Couldn't Produce Flame be extended for more shots ?

Too bad you can't exchance your feats for PBS and Rapid Shot or put at least a 14 on strength to make a valid druid archer.