Please help a starting druid

[Demoquin]

I am DM ing "Harrow of the Forgotten King". It is designed for 2nd lvl chars.

One of my players wants to play a druid. This person has a bit of a chaotic streak and likes to maximse damage whenever possible. SO, i suggested a shapeshifting Druid. How would one optimise this kind of a druid? What is better the standard druid or shapeshifter druid from PH2? Pros and Cons please. 32 pt buy he chose human to start.

What kind of equipment might you suggest and future feats. Any book is game as long as i approve of the feat.

 

[Angerland]

I played a standard Druid and had a ton of fun with him. Folks that play the alternate one from PHBII mainly cite the smaller ammount of paper work involved in running that model of Druid. There is quite a bit of paperwork required but I didn't mind it. (Spells, Animal Companion, Summoned animals, Wildshaped animals)

Feats wise; your 6th level has to be natural spell if you want to cast at all in a wildshaped form. Most Druids also take Spell Focus (Conjuration) and Augment Summoning right away. Other than that there are no other real "Required feats" some of the metamagic feats work great for Druids (Extend comes to mind, persistant)

I would suggest the player do some home work such as printing out a stat block on the animals he will most likely summon per Animal Summoning X spells, adding in bonuses already so you don't have to. Also, I stated out the animal I was most likely to wild shape into a head of time.

Beastshape is an armor enhancement that allows a wildshaped Druid to wear the armor in animal form, so does a wilding clasp. Improved Natural Attack, Mulit attack (both from Monster Manual) are good for druids planning to spend a lot of time as animals, which your melee focused Druid will probably do.