Druids too powerful?

[Majere]

Potion of Protection from evil.lawful/chaos whatever will affect the bears (50gp)
You summond monsters cant touch me
and now I whack your druid for the damage listed above (lets be annoying, take the two weapon fighter and let the first 4 attacks hit). So you take 4d6+66 (+5 weapon so your stoneskin isnt effective)damage on round 1 and I have ac of 45ish.. I still think you may struggle to hit me and even if you do I have a better grapple bonus. Of course you just lost about 1/2hp of your hp so you might be healing yourself instead.
Sure heat metal.. 7d4 damage over 7 rounds.. I dont think that will play a huge part in the battle. Entangle.. oh potion of freedom of movemet (50gp)
And finally, eve if you do splot me it wont be ass effective as a level 17 mage casting maze (no save) setting up 5 delayed blast fireballs for my return and then refocusing to maze me again. when I pop out I can eat a few more fireballs. And of course against the mage I have no chance.
All your proving is spells are more powerful than weapons over a limited duration.

 

[Pielorinho]

Potion of Protection from evil.lawful/chaos whatever will affect the bears (50gp)

Majere, you missed my request, apparently, which is to try playing through a combat between the two. In my experience, fighters fall to creatures with improved grab and size differentials, no matter what. You're suggesting this breaks down at high levels; rather than theory, I'd be interested in what you find out when you play through this. Admittedly I've never played a druid past eleventh level, so I can't say one way or the other. However, my experiences with them suggest to me that grappling is too powerful and universally good, and that druidic wildshaping is unbalanced.

I know every tactic has a counter. I'm suggesting that in general, wildshaped druids + their cheese can beat fighters + their cheese.

Daniel

 

[Henry]

Seeing as how this thread is getting very rules-y, I'll shift it into more harmonious plane of existance...


Ohmmmm....

Ohmmmm....

*VOILA*!

Carry on.

 

[DM2]

I may be way off. Try taking one of your typical fighters and placing him against a reasonably-buffed 17th-level druid who does the tactic mentioned above (summons dire bears, animal growths them all). Reasonable buffs=barkskin, greater magic fang, and one or more of the stat-buffs, stoneskin, produce flame, true seeing, and/or repel metal). Give the druid equipment equal in value to the fighter -- reasonable equipment might include gloves of rusting grasp, stat-buffing items, wild armor, etc. Lemme know who wins.

Daniel

Couldn't you make that argument for most spellcasting classes facing a fighter?

Give them more than a few rounds to buff before they face the fighter, and wizards, clerics, and perhaps even bards may have similar results....

Of course, give a fighter with a 1/day item that grants him freedom of movement one round to prep, and the playing field just got leveled quite a bit.

Give him boots of flying, a good bow, and 2 rounds to prep, and the druid will have trouble.

Give him a protection from evil amulet or 1/day item, and the dire bears can be ignored.

Have him sitting there, unaware of the druid while the druid spends several rounds summoning and buffing, and he'll get slaughtered....

DM2

 

[youspoonybard]

Before we start going back and forth on what they can/can't do against a particular opponent, I'd just like to say this:

1) Druids, unlike most Spellcasters, can be good at multiple forms of physical combat, but mostly melee.

2) Druids, unlike most Warriors, have a full spell progression and can take out foes using magic.

 

[Pielorinho]

Couldn't you make that argument for most spellcasting classes facing a fighter?

Give them more than a few rounds to buff before they face the fighter, and wizards, clerics, and perhaps even bards may have similar results....DM2

Fine -- give the druid in the example only the buffs with durations of 10 min/level or more -- these are ones that characters will have up before any encounter, generally. Barkskin, greater magic fang, and stoneskin might do it. Then let them at it.

I'm still interested in seeing a test of a normal PC fighter vs. a normal PC druid. As I said before, a normal sixth-level PC fighter goes down before a normal brown bear most of the time; I'm just surprised at folks' suggestions that a high-level fighter would, unless designed specifically to stand vs. a druid of equal level, have much of a chance, when the druid has the options of improved grab + animal growth.

Daniel

 

[Thanee]

That's the nice thing with wizard-summoned dire bears, they can punch right through a whimpy Protection from Evil from an item (because of the low caster level and their SR).

Anyways, if a fighter's weakness is grapple, then probably most high level fighters will pick up Close Quarter Fighting.

Golems are immune to most spells, so the two wizards (and the cleric) couldn't harm it.

Only unimaginative casters can't harm an iron golem with their spells!

Bye
Thanee

 

[wolff96]

Only unimaginative casters can't harm an iron golem with their spells!

Or ones that didn't know at the beginning of the day that they would be facing an iron golem and prepared all the wrong spells. (NOTE: Obviously doesn't apply to Sorcerers and Bards, but they might not know the right spells anyway.)

I think the real problem is:

Everyone is presenting ways for other classes to either A) defeat the druid or B) defeat the iron golem... assuming that the other class is PREPARED to fight the druid or iron golem.

The druid can always use Summon Nature's Ally and will (once they hit 5th level spells) always have an Animal Growth prepared (because the spell is very powerful -- and supremely useful to the druid with the 3.5 wildshape changes).

So this tactic is ALWAYS there for the druid. The other classes are not always tricked out and ready to face a horde of enormous bears or iron golems, though.

And that seems to be the heart of the matter.

 

[Thanee]

Actually, it's highly realistic, that high level casters are - at pretty much all times - prepared for these situations!

Bye
Thanee

 

[ascendance]

Everyone is presenting ways for other classes to either A) defeat the druid or B) defeat the iron golem... assuming that the other class is PREPARED to fight the druid or iron golem.

Umm, all high level spellcasters SHOULD be prepared to deal with challenges involving SR and immunities, just because so many high level monsters have such abilities. If you can't deal with SR and immunity, YOU'RE A BAD WIZARD.

Similarly, the current metagame requires combat characters to deal with a variety of different resistances. Sadly, your party probably got up to 17th level playing 3.0E, so nobody bothered to run out and get some adamantine weapons. Once the party fixes up that little problem, they should be able to cleave through iron golems like nobody's business.

Also, nobody seems to have pointed out the obvious, namely, that a 17th level monk would have reduced that iron golem to scrap, too, without any preparation. Probably in 2 rounds.