Good races for druids

[Ridley's Cohort]

Gnome riding a Wolf (or Riding Dog) is very good at low levels, BTW.

I often would charge in and Aid Other my pooch rather that bother attacking -- they are unreliable but Trips are very useful. Either Aid Other, Produce Flame, or Summon were my meat and potatoes.

 

[Shayuri]

Huh. I enjoy an elf druid...both thematically and mechanically.

The elf weapon proficiencies are nice...longbow druid. Granted, they don't help as much once you're wildshaping a lot, but you can't wildshape -every- time. When I do an elf druid, I usually focus on spellcasting (elves are good for ranged touches too), with wildshape reserved for when a backup melee combatant is needed, ambushes, and escapes.

It's also fun when a monk rushes over to grapple the wimpy elf caster...only to find he's got an armful of angry grizzly bear.

 

[Darklone]

Halfling rocks. Especially with a Wis bonus and a monk level.

 

[Nifft]

Halfling rocks. Especially with a Wis bonus and a monk level.

You like the XP penalty?!

, -- N

 

[blargney the second]

An elf druid is fun: TWF with a Shillelagh. Yeehaw!
-blarg

 

[krissbeth]

I like playing human for druid because of the extra feat and skill points. Druids are pretty lacking with the feats to begin with and squeezing in a "Scribe Scrolls" for those extra spells you just can't do without is a good thing.

 

[tecnowraith]

Halfling rocks. Especially with a Wis bonus and a monk level.

Where are you getting the Wis bonus from?

 

[Demoquin]

The poster must be referring to actually having a decent WIS score in the first place. Adding a monk lvl would add WIS to AC. *And many other goodies*

 

[Darklone]

Where are you getting the Wis bonus from?

Variant halfling race from Kalamar. Golden Halflings.

Niffty:
XP penalty: Yes, it might hurt, but many groups play without it anyhow. That halfling mentioned above was a replacement char and so had one or two levels less than the rest of the group... comparable to an XP penalty for an original character who played the whole campaign.

Still: He easily rocked the battlefield. Wildshaped druids suffer from the animals main problem: Low AC. Now this one had AC 30+ in animal form. Easily wrestled a dragon from the sky when I did a test fight for the final climax of the campaign (Though that dragon missed it's vampiric blackguard rider at that point).

Edit: Next point for halflings, especially with that monk level: Saves! And if you can afford to lose two spellcaster levels and you've ever been attacked by scout archers with Imp Skirmish, Deflect Arrow doesn't sound that bad anymore.

 

[Hejdun]

It's kind of hard to go wrong with a race for druid. You don't really have to worry about Str or Dex, and not many give a bonus to Wis, so everything is pretty much on neutral ground. I like gnome because the Str penalty doesn't really hurt you, while the Con is always handy. Low light vision is always nice to have, and the cantrips are surprisingly useful.

In general, the best are:

1) Anything that gives you a feat
2) Small size
3) Everything else