How will you handle this?

[GoodKingJayIII]

What I am looking for are alternatives that I might not have thought of.

This is tough to give, because most people don't have the full rules yet, and the NDA has not been lifted for the playtesters.

I think you've been given some pretty solid answers so far, but they all boil down the same thing: waiting. I think the best thing you can do is ask this question again a day or two after release, once people have really gobbled up all the information the PHB has to offer. I think then you'll get more, better responses.

I would personally talk to the player about what she likes in the druid class. Is it the healing? Versatility? Class mythos? Something else? I think that will help you get to the best answer for the question. With these things in mind, look at the classes available and see what best fits her imagination. Wizards have lots of elemental magic and battlefield control-type spells that they could resemble a kind of druid. Give 'em a new coat of paint and it could turn out nicely. Likewise, clerics represent the Leader aspects of the class with healing and powerful melee.

Druids are, I think, the toughest egg to crack when converting core 3.x to core 4e; currently they can do everything, so she's going to lose something in conversion. Bottom line: what is she unwilling to give up?

 

[Fallen Seraph]

Though even if the Druid was in PHB1, it is different then the 3e one. The 4e Druid is based around Wild Shape and some Weather-Oriented Spells, but primarily Wild Shape. It is also supposed to have a relationship similar to the Paladin and Cleric, with the Barbarian.

 

[Mercule]

I'm pretty sure I've heard there will be a shifter/changeling in the MM with dopplegangers...If we are to be given tools in the MM to allow many of those humanoid race to be played as PC's, maybe having a changeling race would emulate that aspect of the druid *shrug*

That'd be a great place to mine alternate abilities from. Let the player use cleric (for sake of argument) and offer shifter (again, for argument) racial abilities to be substituted for clerical ones. This works a lot easier if the shifter has a PC-ready write-up in the MM, but there's no guarantee of that.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

The Shifter has been guaranteed a PC writeup in the MM, as well as Changeling/Doppelganger.

 

[Aria Silverhands]

This marketing decision by WotC really, really PISSES me off. They're purposely leaving out the druid, barbarian, monk, and sorcerer to force people to buy more books and it is another attempt by WotC marketing turds to redefine what Core means to players.

Core, for the past ten years, has been defined by the majority as the PHB, the DMG, and the MM. Even the PHB (3.5) has on pg. 4, a definition of core that matches that perception. WotC fartknockers hate purist dm's who only run Core games, because it's not good for business. So leaving out key classes and iconic monsters (Frost Giant) for later releases is purely driven by greed.

Honestly, that alone is almost enough to make me never buy 4th edition period, but I know for a fact that once released, there won't be any other game being run in my area. It'll all be 4th edition games. Even online, older edition games will die off and be harder to find... so it's pretty much upgrade or don't for me.

 

[Boarstorm]

This marketing decision by WotC really, really PISSES me off. They're purposely leaving out the druid, barbarian, monk, and sorcerer to force people to buy more books.

Or, y'know, they're presenting the most popular options from the last several years in the finite space available to them.

Yes, some things had to be delayed/pushed back to subsequent books. That happens when you take a decade's worth of material and upgrade it.

Absolutely NOTHING says you have to buy those books. No one is FORCING anything on you.

 

[GoodKingJayIII]

This marketing decision by WotC really, really PISSES me off. They're purposely leaving out the druid, barbarian, monk, and sorcerer to force people to buy more books and it is another attempt by WotC marketing turds to redefine what Core means to players.

There is another explanation for this: they thought quality would be better served by devoting more development time to a smaller number of classes.

The druid and monk are fairly complex classes and I can see them being tougher to develop properly. The barbarian and sorcerer are rather redundant in terms of purpose. I suspect I could build a Fighter, Ranger, or even Rogue and label him a berserker of sorts. Likewise, I could say my Wizard traces his ancestry back to some magical beasty, and thats where he gets his power.

So it's very possible that the classes you mention simply weren't appropriate for PHBI, for one reason or another.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

I don't view it is solely a marketing scheme. I am sure it plays a part, but I think overall this decision is a good thing for us.

By spreading out the classes and such it means they get more time devoted to them to be playtested and completely developed. It also means more options for them in that PHB for those classes.

So essentially would you rather have all the classes and have them be poorly developed and not fully featured/supported. Or wait for them to be well developed and fully supported/featured?

 

[MindWanderer]

Back to the OP's point:

I think you're going to be out of luck, completely. If the main gimmick that you're looking for is summoning, there just won't be any. It goes into the "economy of actions" notion, as well as the "everything a player needs is in the PHB" principle. There may, at some point, be some sort of "helper" summons, but they won't be full-fledged creatures.

It sounds like your game would benefit a lot from 4e; the prep time is supposedly considerably lower. But as I've said many times before, it's a tradeoff between loss of content and improvement in design.

 

[sjmiller]

It sounds like your game would benefit a lot from 4e; the prep time is supposedly considerably lower. But as I've said many times before, it's a tradeoff between loss of content and improvement in design.

You know, I don't honestly spend a lot of time preparing for a game. Monster stats are taken from the various monster books, so that's all done. NPCs are roughly sketched out with just the information I think they will need for the encounter, anything else is made up on the fly. Treasures, if rolled randomly, take a bit of time, but not much. Mapping out an adventure is the most time consuming, but that is also the most fun. I guess I really don't know what takes people so long to prepare for a game. The longest time I have spent is cutting out some map tiles I like.