What do I need?

[sabres]

I am jumping into a current adventure playing as a druid, a class I have never played before. I have done some searching and found some good info about tactics, feats and comapnions, but I could not find any good info on equipment. I will be starting at 12 lvl druid and wil have full amount of gold to spend. Any ideas on armor and magic items that will be helpful?

 

[Hygric]

an item of wisdom +6 is always a good investment for a Druid or Cleric.

Don't worry about AC to much, everything will still hit you anyway. Instead, invest that money in a con boosting item for lots of HP (a +4 con item would grant you an extra 24 HP as well as +2 to fort saves).

Weapons... depends entirely on how you are going to fight. But pick up a +3 weapon of some sort, as that will defeat nearly any DR that is out there (very, very few non-epic critters need +4 or +5 weapons).

As you can't spontaneously cure, consider a wand or 2 of CLW or CMW.

 

[LokiDR]

Where do you want to start?

The first thing you want to take care of is armor. I would suggest a duskwood breastplate +1 wildshaping. If that isn't to your liking, try the ever-smackdown fun Rhino Hide.

Next, a weapon. Quarterstaff and schemitar are good choices. Wood shield for more AC, or wildshape into a dire bear and next level use Thousand Faces to be the same size as always. If you go the Thousand Faces rout, you will want a two handed weapon.

Then, there are the extras.

AC is always good, especially without the full armor of clerics or the massive buffs of wizards. Ring of protection is always good. Obviously skip the Amulet of Natural Armor. Cloak of Resistance works well in general as well.

Anything a cleric would like for extras, you probably would too. Ioun stone of spell storing, Periapet of Wisdom, pearl of power. Ioun stones are nice and usable in wildshaped form.

Others you may want to heavily consider are the torc of animal speach and druid vestments. Shapchange is fun, hence the vestments, and the torc allows you to become a great spy master. Don't forget extras like the collar of tricks for you animals.

Skip: most rings, belts, boots, gloves, ect. because they will loose their effectiveness in wildshape. Only consider them if they are really usefull (ring of protection, cloak of resistance) or you don't care about their use while wildshaped (druid vestments) Go nuts with the armor, if it is wilding.

Finally, if you have an evil bent, condsider poison. You become immune to most of them after a certain point, so you can coat yourself in them and grapple people. Work out rules with your GM first, if that is your plan.