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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SteelDraco" data-source="post: 746520" data-attributes="member: 359">Entangle is very powerful... if you can use it. Pretty much any underground or civilized area is going to make it totally useless. It's a very nice niche spell that has no use at all outside it. I've got no problem with it.I've played a very amusing druid recently. He was a dwarf with bear and frost themes. There are a lot of good spells out there for druids, if you have access to a few splatbooks. I found that Masters of the Wild, Defenders of the Faith, Magic of Faerun, and the Book of Eldritch might were very useful here.Anyway, Berrik was a mounted druid. His bear animal companion advanced with him, and went from a regular grizzly bear (6 HD) to a 14 HD advanced dire bear over the course of the campaign, with GM permission and the rules for companion advancement in MotW. Very cool stuff. That bear was a killing machine - at high levels, druid's animal companions can be hard to compete with. If I used the proper buff spells (Greater Magic Fang, Animal Growth, Bear's Heart (DotF), Greater Mark of Earth (BoEM), and Rapid Healing (MoF) worked pretty well), that bear could rip any of our 14th level fighters to shreds over the course of a few rounds. It was terrifying.Unfortunately, you're starting at lower levels. Hmmm. We started that game at somewhat higher than normal, so I'm not sure how I would have played him at that level.A wolverine is a pretty solid low-level animal companion, though it's hard to keep them under control. A badger might be wiser, for that reason. A 1 HD bird that you have well-trained can serve all manner of functions, especially if you can talk to it (by 3rd level). Unfortunately, once you can wild shape pretty regularly, this gets to be less useful.Remember that your character is in a niche. If you're in a wilderness setting, you're a powerhouse. Most of your spells are geared toward fighting in the natural world, and you can do very impressive things there. Unfortunately, if you're outside your element, you've got problems. Try and prepare battlefields beforehand, and ambush people. For that reason, a level of ranger or rogue might do you well, or even monk. You'll get a nice bonus to AC out of a monk level, along with evasion. That's handy all the time, particularly considering how often you'll be wild shaped once you get to that level. Wild Spell is a great feat to pick up, since you can cast spells while wild shaped. Very useful for all kinds of stuff, since you won't want to waste your precious daily wild shapes.You're in between clerics and wizards in a lot of ways. You don't have all the clerical buffs or wizardy blasting, but you have some of both. Animal companions are a great asset, so use them. Use your buffs on them, too - you have access to a number of great buffs that only work on animals.Hopefully, 3.5e will rebalance druid spell lists a bit and make some of their more useful non-core stuff core. I still don't understand why they don't get the stat boosters - they seem perfectly in keeping with the druid's role, after all.</blockquote>

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