Nifty lower level Druid spells

[Pielorinho]

Oh yes--faerie fire! Having been tormented by a Ring-of-Invisibility-wearing assassing at fourth level, I prepared Faerie Fire and never took it off my spell list. It's a must-have (although to be fair, it works pretty well on a scroll).

Daniel

 

[Shadowdweller]

I am playing a 5th level Druid. I have carefully pored over the 1st and 2nd level spells. The ugly truth is that the Druid spell list is pretty weak for levels 1st to 3rd unless you are fighting in the wilderness where you can use Entangle (1st) or Spike Growth (3rd).

Well, if you judge the low-level druid spell list by the offensive spells then yes, you're going to be disappointed. HOWEVER, they have some really amazing and often overlooked utility spells. Including:

1- Speak w/ Animals: Often easy to find a rodent, cat, or other animal that's willing to exchange information or odd services for food.

2- Warp Wood: More of an attack spell, but still has goodly number of uses. Archer's nightmare, and also makes a lot of primitive creatures very unhappy, from the ogre with the big club, to the goblin hordes. Stops wagons, sinks ships (at higher levels).

Wood Shape: Not quite as useful, IMX, as Stone Shape (below) but still highly versatile. Keep in mind that a forest holds quite a lot of wood.

3- Stone Shape: While not (strictly speaking) limited to druids, this has to be one of the most versatile and USEFUL spells off all time. Capable of bypassing walls and traps, creating arrow slits into occupied rooms, blocking enemies, creating staircases and bridges, and innumerable other things.

 

[Twowolves]

What? No Heat Metal? No save!

Heat Metal, Call Lighting, Produce Flame, Warp Wood (so much for that nasty archer!), Ice Storm, Sleet Storm, Entangle, etc etc etc. Druids got a MAJOR power boost in 3.x ed.

Twowolves Howling

 

[Testament]

Um, Heat Metal does allow a save, and is too slow for most combats. Chill Metal on the other hand has some nice tactical possibilities.

Call Lightning, Produce Flame, Warp Wood (my friend!), Entangle, Ice Storm, Sleet Storm, Barkskin all great spells. Quench and Gust of Wind can be suprisingly useful too, I always keep one of each prepared.

From Complete Divine if you're allowed to use it, throw in Briar Web, Mass Lesser Vigour and the most horrendous of them all, Murderous Mist.

Just watch out for firendly fire on some of these, a lot of druidic spells can't be dismissed and have big areas of effect.

PS: Once you get 5th level spells, then take a look at Animal Growth and Wall of Thorns. HATEFUL, HATEFUL spells.

 

[two]

Yup, Wall of Thorns is gross. Don't leave home without 2-3 of them, if you at a level where you can pull this off.

 

[beaver1024]

At low levels, how likely is it that your opponents make the DC20 str check to break free of entangle? Entangle has a huge 40 feet radius. Very powerful.

Did you know that attacks with flame blade are touch attacks? Did you know that flame blade can be used with two weapon fighting?

At 5th level, call lightning will do as much damage as 3 fireballs using only 2 rounds more to do it's damage. At 7th level call lightning will do 21d6 worth of damage. The druid in animal form easily kill any one opponent at distance with that kind of damage with only 1 spell.

Poison is probably the lowest level save or die spell you can get for druids and it scales infinately with your level.

At 4th level even more offensive power with Flamestrike.

 

[Mr_GrinReaper]

Create water, the evilest 0th level spell, just summon it into a container, and shove the container down the opponents throat, taa-daa- instant drowning

 

[Twowolves]

Um, Heat Metal does allow a save.

Bah! It didn't used to in 1st ed!!

It's still 7d4 points of damage for a 2nd level spell, and the save hits the armored up types where it hurts: Will Saves.

 

[Votan]

At low levels, how likely is it that your opponents make the DC20 str check to break free of entangle? Entangle has a huge 40 feet radius. Very powerful.

It is an amazing spell in the right circumstances. In the wrong circumstances it ends up being a summon nature's ally I spell. The main problem is that you need undergrowth so the spell so it does not work on roads or in buildings (for example). The spell in the SRD has the note: "Note: The effects of the spell may be altered somewhat, based on the nature of the entangling plants" which is pretty frightening as it means DM interpretation can make the spell less useful.

Also note that there is a reflex save to avoid being entangled.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE this spell (especially the range) -- it is just that I have run into practical difficulties casting it.

 

[moritheil]

Well, it's definitely something that belongs in the countryside. One DM I heard of ruled that a druid in a planar campaign slaughtered an opposing party because the entangle used nearby razorvine So that interpretation can be beneficial, too!

Definitely look at Vigor and Mass Lesser Vigor, as Testament mentioned. Murderous Mist doesn't seem so good because it, like all the incendiary cloud type spells, moves in a line, but if you can get the right circumstances it can be great. Briar web is just an entangle that deals 2d6 damage to idiots who try to cross it. It's good, but typically you don't need more than one or two entangle type spells, so choose accordingly.

Basically there are many useful things you can do as a druid, and the majority of them are more "utility" and tactical setup than straight damage. If you have a sorcerer in the party, you might want to swap notes and see exactly how much damage they put out, and try to figure out whether it would be better for you to deal additional damage or simply bottle up the enemies in one place so that they all get hit by fireball.

It is an amazing spell in the right circumstances. In the wrong circumstances it ends up being a summon nature's ally I spell. The main problem is that you need undergrowth so the spell so it does not work on roads or in buildings (for example). The spell in the SRD has the note: "Note: The effects of the spell may be altered somewhat, based on the nature of the entangling plants" which is pretty frightening as it means DM interpretation can make the spell less useful.

Also note that there is a reflex save to avoid being entangled.

Don't get me wrong, I LOVE this spell (especially the range) -- it is just that I have run into practical difficulties casting it.