Fair trade for a Druid?

[Zesty Gordita]

Me and the DM of my current game have a question for all you great enworlders. I'm currently playing a character entirely based on wildshaping and it occurred to me that my spellcasting is practically useless.

So, in your opinions, do you think trading out all spellcasting for being able to use the Su abilities of creatures during wildshaping a fair trade? I'm not the best at determining balance, so I'm not sure if more should be gained from losing spellcasting or if gaining the Su abilities is too much.

Without going into too much detail, the campaign is gestalt and I'm already planning on going into the main wildshaping prcs. As such, I will only have about 10 levels of Druid.

Thanks in advance for all your feedback.

 

[kitcik]

Natural Spell.

Your spells are not useless.

Planar Shepherd.

Su abilities can be very powerful depending on which books / creatures are allowed.

Overall, I would say take Natural Spell and forget this unnatural idea. But, if you go ahead, I would say you should get more than Su abilities in exchange for spellcasting.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Since a) Spellcasting is the druid's strongest class feature and b) the forms you CAN take with wildshaping (animals, later plants and elementals) tend to not have any Su abilities at all or really unimpressive ones, and the feats you can take to add wildshape options (Abberant Wildshape, Exalted Wildshape, Draconic Wildshape, Frozen Wildshape, etc...) typically give you Su abilities of those forms anyway...it would be a very lopsided trade.

Have you considered just doing Wildshape Ranger (UA variant) / Master of Many Forms? It's a much more wildshape-focused build, and if you use Urban Companion cityscape variant (it's available for free as an excerpt on WotC's website) to get a familiar you can enter MoMF without spending a single one of your general feats.

 

[Empirate]

While I personally hate Natural Spell (it's one of the main reasons the Druid class is so crazy, unbalancingly good), it's the obvious thing to say here.


Gaining all Su abilities, on the other hand, is extremely open-ended, and may either turn out as total crap, or as a horrible game-breaker - depending on the sources used, on the quality of your research, on the scope of your willingness to do bad things to the campaign, and on the DM handling certain abilities.


Of course, animals normally don't have Su abilities, but that's what Master of Many Forms is for, right? Just thinking about a Medusa's Gaze Attack being available to a PC at 8th (?) level makes my hair stand up. Or think about snagging any Change Shape ability (like the Efreeti's, for example), which doesn't usually give a HD limit, opening the door to horrible, horrible abuse with your houserule...

 

[Zesty Gordita]

I suppose I should have phrased it better. The spells are useless for the idea and feel of the character I am playing. I do realize that my spells aren't actually useless. And, at the moment I do indeed have Natural Spell.

While I would loooove to go into Planar Shepherd, my DM will most certainly not allow it.

Since it would probably clear up some things, this is the current build of my character: Druid/MoMF//Wildshape Ranger/Nature's Warrior/Warshaper/(Barbarian)

What else do you think would be appropriate to get Kitcik?

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

That is...insanely specialized. Like...once you hit Warshaper 5, which you can do by ECL 10 easily if you just do Nature's Warrior after it, you basically have infinite wildshaping and getting uses/day from two sides becomes incredibly redundant.

What sorts of things would fit with your character? With the MoMF, Su abilities is too strong, at least till level 17, and limiting it to forms you don't need MoMF to take makes it useless, as Empirate said.

Fighter bonus feats, maybe? Or Rogue sneak attack (you can take the Savage Grapple feat to synergize it)? I mean, there's no answer that'll be an equal power swap that's going to look remotely fair to the classes whose feature's your grabbing from. Hell, the two options I just suggested seem like a tremendous injustice to fighter and rogue, and yet, either would be a significant decrease in power from what 10 levels or whatever of spellcasting would be.

 

[kitcik]

Well, now I think we all fully comprehend the OP's quandary.

Spellcasting does not fit his RP, but what can he trade it for that's neither a total character nerf nor insanely broken?

I'm sure nothing comes immediately to my mind.

Damage increases seem like the obvious answer, which is what sneak attack or, ultimately, fighter feats, or even some monk damage progression would give you, but that seems very limited.

How about swordsage maneuver/stance progression? At least it's more versatile than just damage.

 

[Empirate]

How about a bonus Wild feat every other level? Also, you may want to look into the Thayan Gladiator PrC (Champions of Ruin), which focuses on enchanting natural attacks, and rip off a few abilities there.

 

[Fallenibilis]

Hi guys just wanted to first let you know that I'm Zestys DM, and as such i dont mind custom making a PrC or radically altering the base class (im currently creating two custom PrC's for my other players). Also it should be known this my first attempt at DMing (running WotBS) and that i'm not to familar with strength of wildshape. Now that i've got that cleared up.

If i remeber correctly Zesty also wanted to give up his animal companion (zesty can correct me if this wrong), and it seems that with loss of two of the 3 most important abilties a druid has your going to need focus on and highlight the ability that is left. Thus i was thinking like Empirate suggested giving him the Wild feats ever other level. Other then that i was thinking since he'll lose the buffs of spells and companion who scales by level why not give him a scaling bonus to his forms like his animal companion would get.

As for Su abilities i don't see him attempting to break the game with them (also the player have been made well aware anything they can do so can their foes) but again as a first time DM im not too sure what to look out for.

One final thing i thought of which could be used is the favored forms and Infinite Variety from the Master Transmogrifist Prc, also this seems a bit to strong for the base class and seems like it would need to be worked into a Custom Prc.

Anway thanks for the help thus far guys and i would apreciate any ideas on my thoughts,

Fallenibilis

 

[Duke Arioch]

Just one thing to say on OP: Never ever EVER EVER E V E R give up your casting.

For another idea, you can get monk attack progression plus natural attacks. Giving up spells for monk's unarmed strike seems fair trade to me.

Or you can make barbarian/fist of the forest/bear warrior/warshaper instead of druid. Sure it is only bear you turn into, but it is NINJA bear lol. And if you are dwarf throw in deep warden lvls to get 2xCON mod to AC.