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View Full Version : Need some help with a shape shift Druid build



Enochi
2009-01-01, 12:25 AM
What my build is looking like so far is
Goliath barb1(bear totem variant?CCh)/druid 16(Shapshifter VariantPHBII)/Warshaper 2

Barb 1: Improved Grab, Sacred Vow, Vop(Flaw), Nymphs kiss

Druid 3/5/7/9/11/13/15: Exalted feats
Druid 2/5/8/11/14: Feats
Warshaper 1: Exalted feat/Feat

Anything is usable design to be a grappler, Melee, or something else the only requirement is the build must have 16 levels of Shapshift druid. Goliath and VoP are prefered but not set in stone. Thank you everyone on this forum for answering my all too many questions you have been a great help.

Limos
2009-01-01, 01:00 AM
Grapple? I wonder if it would be possible to shapeshift into some kind of Octopus. That would probably be good at Grappling.

Caduceus
2009-01-01, 01:20 AM
I think OP means the Shapeshifting Druid alternate feature from PHB2. You don't wild shape into specific animals, but shapeshift and take on a couple attributes and ability enhancements.

Enochi
2009-01-01, 02:28 AM
yes I did mean the PHB II variant

Epinephrine
2009-01-01, 09:32 AM
Do you plan on being a spellcaster? If not, I'd talk to the DM about being a shapeshift ranger-type. you've essentially got the potential to hit level 9 spellcasting still, but it sounds like you want to be a meleer. The extra BAB from having full BAB will help grapple checks.

Obviously Improved Grapple is worth getting.

Bumping up your unarmed strike damage could be handy. Improved Unarmed Strike, Superior Unarmed Strike, etc.

I'm not sure that Druid is your best bet for a grappler though. Could you let us know if your desire is to play:
a) a druid, who happens to be a grappler
b) a shapeshifting combatant, able to take on different forms, who want grappling in his repertoire
c) a grappling combatant/wild type, who changes shape to grapple things

For a), a druid is obviously the right choice. For b), you might want to look at a ranger-type who has shapeshift, and for c) you might want to consider something more along the lines of the Bear Warrior.

Bear Warriors (a 10 level PrC) can change into a Dire Bear by 10th level of the PrC, getting Large size and a +20 Strength bonus (so, as big a bonus as you'd get from 16 levels of shapeshift druid).
The advantages? You get full BAB, you have room to take prestige classes that can boost your grapple abilities and damage, you have tons of HP (good for grappling), you get improved grab automatically in the bear forms that have it, and (big deal here!) your strength bonus from the form ISN't and enhancement bonus, so you can add your Vow of Poverty ability bonus to Strength - ending up with whatever your base strength is (possibly a 22 to start with?), your +8 Enhancement bonus, your +20 for Dire bear form, your +5 from advancing your Strength attribute - for a 55 Strength grappler with full BAB (and large size).

Something like a Barbarian 4/Fist of the Forest 3/Bear Warrior 10/Warshaper 2? Fist of the Forest would bump your damage dice up on your unarmed attack damage (for grappling) and gives you your Con bonus to your AC. Dire bear adds +8 to your Con, you could have a +6 enhancement bonus to Con (and a +4 to Dex, too), and a solid starting Con - not only would you have potentially huge hitpoints (thanks to d12 HD and massive Con), but you'd benefit from a decent AC (+7 Natural armour, your base Dex and Con bonuses, +10 exalted armour, +2 Natural armour bonus, +3 deflection bonus, and assuming you put the +6 and +4 enhancement bonuses in Con and Dex, another +5 bonus from these, as well as the +4 from the Dire Bear's +8 Con - even starting with rolled stats of 14 and 14 for Dex and Con you could have a 45 AC - not exactly shabby), and you'd deal at least 3d6 damage with unarmed strikes (+5 enhancement bonus, +your huge strength bonus)

woodenbandman
2009-01-01, 09:43 AM
My personal favorite grapple build is just a druid 20, which has bear wildshape and is therefore awesome. Your buff spells will make you a better grappler than any straight-up grappler build, except maybe a totemist.

Speaking of which, in the way of straight up grappler builds, you have two very good choices, which I'll point out now. One is the Totemist 20, which, with the proper feats, can literally grapple the tarrasque at level 20. To put that in perspective, a BAB 15 medium character can grapple a BAB 48 Colossal character. Actually, maybe not as medium, but still, that's a total of 45 that the tarrasque has on you if you enlarge to large. That is damn amazing.

Another build I like is the wildshape ranger/Master of Many Forms. It's 15 levels, meaning you can pick up some things to make you better, like, say, a level of monk in the beginning there for bonus feats and awesome Wisdom to AC, which still applies when you're using wild armor in wild shape, Warshaper, for increased size natural weapons and +4 strength and Con, and maybe a level of barbarian followed by a level of bear warrior, which surprisingly stacks with being an actual bear. So you can be a huge or larger bear-thing that has gargantuan or larger natural weapons and a grapple modifier of a lot. Might not be able to grapple the tarrasque if you don't get the girallon arms soulmeld, which is how you are so amazing as a totemist. In fact, a 2 level dip in this build can net you +12 to your check if you are a race with essentia and take bonus essentia. You'll basically be a sexy shoeless god of war, except a dire bear-bear.

Oh one more thing: Dire Polar Bear form is actually probably better than taking warshaper levels, so try a Wildshape Ranger5/Master of Many Forms10/Nature's Warrior3/Totemist 2. That should be a pretty good grapple check, though surprisingly not quite as good as the normal totemist. Keep in mind that the totemist can only grapple the tarrasque once per day. The rest of the time, it has to settle for grappling wimpy things, like adult red dragons.

Epinephrine
2009-01-01, 09:46 AM
My personal favorite grapple build is just a druid 20, which has bear wildshape and is therefore awesome. Your buff spells will make you a better grappler than any straight-up grappler build, except maybe a totemist.

I'm guessing that he's asking about shapeshift druid because Wildshape druid isn't allowed.

ShneekeyTheLost
2009-01-01, 10:03 AM
I'm almost wondering if it would be better to go:

Barbarian 7/Bear Warrior 10/Warshaper 3.

You get everything you want (Bear Warrior works exactly like Shapeshifter variant, because mechanically, all it does is add mega bonuses to physical stats when you turn into a bear). You also get the Dire Bear shift at Bear Warrior 10, which gives something like +17 Str (and increase your size to Huge, if I'm not mistaken)

Also, Warshaper 3 is extra reach, which is always handy in a grapple build.

Enochi
2009-01-01, 03:23 PM
Well I thank everyone for there many suggestions on grappling builds and what not but the thrust of this topic was to make the best shapeshift druid possible be it a grappler, melee, ranged, or spellcaster. Also a rather large downside to bear warrior is that he can only grapple up to huge size.

Epinephrine
2009-01-02, 03:07 PM
Hard to say what the "best" would be.

You can't apply the VoP enhancement bonuses to your strength, so you may as well start with as high a strength as you can. If you can put an 18 there, great. As a Goliath it puts you at 22 base, and 38 strength in Huge elemental form, which isn't bad.

Improved Grapple is an obvious choice, since it's a flat +4, and it allows you to start the grapple as a touch attack.

Since grapple doesn't deal your natural attack damage, but instead your unarmed strike damage, you probably want to boost that.

Improved Unarmed Strike and Superior Unarmed Strike can serve in this way - as a Huge size elemental at 16-20th level you would get a base 2d6 damae (medium size), bumped twice due to your size, to a 4d6 unarmed strike damage.

Picking up a stance from the Tome of Battle could be handy; you could do so either by dipping into a ToB class or via feats (Martial Study, Martial Stance). The stance Crushing Weight of the Mountain (3rd level Stone Bones) adds a constriction effect to all your grapples. You could get this by dipping a single level of any of the classes at any point after 8th level (since the 8 non-initiator levels count as 4 levels, the ToB class counts for another one, and you thus have access to 3rd level maneuvers/stances). The constrict damage is 2d6+1.5*Str, so it adds substantially to damage output. I don't think that the constrict damage scales with size by RAW.

Keep in mind that every time you deal damage with a grapple you also deal the contriction damage, so you could deal 4d6+Str+2d6+1.5*Str; with a 38 Strength or so (assuming your Goliath had a base 22, and didn't use his stat advancements on it) you could get 6d6+35, or an average of 56 damage or so per successful grapple roll to damage the foe.

Based on something like this, I'd suggest your 16 levels of Druid, with maybe 3 levels of Unarmed Swordsage (a variant suggested in the book).

You get improved unarmed strike free with the unarmed swordsage, and you get Wisdom to AC, which is great for a druid.

Feats should include Superior Unarmed Strike as well as Improved Grapple.

3 levels of swordsage gives 8 maneuvers and 2 stances. Take the swordsage levels after level 8, so that you can pick up the 3rd level stance you are looking for. Taking swordsage at level 9 sounds pretty good - that's right after you get your Bear-type form (large, first good grappling form) and you can immediately pick up the Crushing Weight of the Mountain stance. Waiting a little later could let you pick two desert wind boosts at the same time out of your first 6 maneuvers - getting Burning Blade and Searing Blade could be handy, as I think that the swift action boosts could be used in a grapple to add fire damage on top of everything else.

So Druid 12/Swordsage1/Druid13-16/Swordsage 2-3,

with the Superior Unarmed Strike and the Crushing Weight of the Mountain, activating Searing Blade at high level could deal 6d6+35 damage + 2d6+11 fire per grapple attempt, and gets 3 per round, at average 56 damage and 18 fire damage per successful attempt to deal damage in a grapple, allowing for 222 damage or so a round in a grapple?

ShneekeyTheLost
2009-01-02, 03:39 PM
Well I thank everyone for there many suggestions on grappling builds and what not but the thrust of this topic was to make the best shapeshift druid possible be it a grappler, melee, ranged, or spellcaster. Also a rather large downside to bear warrior is that he can only grapple up to huge size.

Bear Warrior may grapple any size critter he wants to. He gets the Dire Bear shape, just as your shapeshift druid does, and has nearly twice the hit points by the time he gets there, thanks to the D12 HD for almost his entire career, and has a higher BAB as well. If you are just wanting to grapple, this is a mechanically superior way to do it.

The swordsage suggestion is also a valid one, although you don't get the immunities from Warshaper.

If you are absolutely dead-set on going Shapeshift Druid, and do not wish to use anything from ToB, then I suggest you avoid Golliath as your race, as it hurts you far more than it helps. Loosing a level is not better than the size bonus to the grapple check (doesn't even add damage to unarmed damage). The 3rd level of Warshaper gives you extra reach that you will find most handy.