How do I not outshine everyone else while playing a druid?

[raxies94]

Hello Playground. Some of you may remember that I asked for some help on a barbarian/frostrager/bear warrior before. I decided that I was ultimately going to be unsatisfied with that character, so I started looking for other options. I saw that Pathfinder summoner was really neat, and I've always like the concept of a summoner, so I converted it to 3.5 and asked my DM about changing. He didn't want to do that, but I came up with the compromise of playing a druid. Our party didn't have a primary healer, so I can fill that role a bit.

The party consists of a paladin, a barbarian/fighter, a rogue/barbarian, a sorcerer who seems to be going the blasting route, a ranger who has 12 Wis, and myself, the Druid. We are all 4th level. I've taken Spell Focus and Augment Summoning as my feats. We played a dungeon today and I could already see the druid being powerful. My wolf was doing work, and at one point I summoned a hippogrif and it smashed. I mostly focused on healing, but gave the fighter/barb a bull's strength also.

So my question is, how can I not upstage everyone? The obvious answer seems to be to not take Natural Spell and to buff and heal. Any other ideas?

[ArcanistSupreme]

Hello Playground. Some of you may remember that I asked for some help on a barbarian/frostrager/bear warrior before. I decided that I was ultimately going to be unsatisfied with that character, so I started looking for other options. I saw that Pathfinder summoner was really neat, and I've always like the concept of a summoner, so I converted it to 3.5 and asked my DM about changing. He didn't want to do that, but I came up with the compromise of playing a druid. Our party didn't have a primary healer, so I can fill that role a bit.

The party consists of a paladin, a barbarian/fighter, a rogue/barbarian, a sorcerer who seems to be going the blasting route, a ranger who has 12 Wis, and myself, the Druid. We are all 4th level. I've taken Spell Focus and Augment Summoning as my feats. We played a dungeon today and I could already see the druid being powerful. My wolf was doing work, and at one point I summoned a hippogrif and it smashed. I mostly focused on healing, but gave the fighter/barb a bull's strength also.

So my question is, how can I not upstage everyone? The obvious answer seems to be to not take Natural Spell and to buff and heal. Any other ideas?

If it's not too late, the ACF from PHB II is a pretty good nerf. No animal companion and worse wildshaping for the win.

[Shadowknight12]

Give him or her an Int of 8, then take a race that gives a further -4 to it (Gray orc... I think?). Make them Neutral Good and have them be a carefree fellow that likes playing with his/her cute little pet and speaking with plants, animals and stones. Bonus points if he or she doesn't even understand what wild shaping actually is.

[Figgin of Chaos]

Prepare as many buff spells as possible. Then even if you are having a huge effect, you're doing so by empowering the rest of the party.

[raxies94]

If it's not too late, the ACF from PHB II is a pretty good nerf. No animal companion and worse wildshaping for the win.
Well, the problem with that is that I pretty much took the class because it was mechanically similar to the summoner. So having a pet is a pretty big part of why I took it.


Give him or her an Int of 8, then take a race that gives a further -4 to it (Gray orc... I think?). Make them Neutral Good and have them be a carefree fellow that likes playing with his/her cute little pet and speaking with plants, animals and stones. Bonus points if he or she doesn't even understand what wild shaping actually is.

Well, my stats and race are already set, plus, I don't want to really severely nerf myself, just not outclass everyone else.


Prepare as many buff spells as possible. Then even if you are having a huge effect, you're doing so by empowering the rest of the party.

That's basically what I was thinking.

[Kaeso]

Use wis as a dump stat. You'll still be more useful than the fighter. :smallamused:

[Kojiro]

The other suggestions here are good, especially buffing rather than t-rex throwing fireballs style of play. Another one is to just use discretion; don't prepare spells that are too abusable, fight at a level that is "effective" rather than "dominating" (may require some judgment on your part, and erring on the side of caution is fine as long as you don't accidentally go too far and impede your team), and so on. Not taking Natural Spell, so you have to choose between being a big melee force and a spellcaster with weapon skills, could also help, if you were up for that.

[raxies94]

Use wis as a dump stat. You'll still be more useful than the fighter. :smallamused:

Lol. An interesting idea, but unfortunately undoable, as my Wis is already 18.

[Cespenar]

Send your wolf to guard the sorcerer instead of wreaking havoc on the front lines. Use Wildshape (when you get it) only as a last resort. Cast buffs, battlefield control, and heal spells. It's rather easy, really.

[PollyOliver]

Focus on making the other players better. Buff them, use your wolf to flank with them so they hit more often, etc. With such a melee-heavy party, buffs like mass snake's swiftness and animal's x or animalistic power should go over well. Alternately, debuff enemies so they can't hurt the meleers as badly when they wade into the fight--tie them up with kelpstrand, blind them with rot of ages, etc.

Basically, though, I'd pick a couple of roles and stick to them--when you do everything is when people get left out. Since you have a lot of meleers, summoning a crap-ton of things (unless you really, really have your heart set on summoning) or next level using wild shape to be a better fighter than the fighter might step on a few toes. I wouldn't break the latter out except as a last resort, and I might even ask about retraining the summon feats, because as useful as those are for you, summoning up packs of meleers on top of your companion will probably make the party's meleers feel useless.

Healing is a good minor role for you. Buffing is a good role, and debuffing/battlefield control is a very good role for you, especially if the sorcerer is a blaster (druids blast well, but if you've already got one, why bother?) Buff your friends, send your wolf out to flank and trip, if it's a really tough fight tie enemies up or blind them so your friends hit better, and then heal up after.

[Kaeso]

Lol. An interesting idea, but unfortunately undoable, as my Wis is already 18.

Well, perhaps Druid 1/Monk 19 is a viable plan :smallamused:

[OracleofSilence]

well, you could simply work as a shapeshifted fighter most of the time, go low on the spell casting, and then cut lose if everything is going to hell. basically, use unenforced averageness.

[Ursus the Grim]

You've got a good idea going already. Spell List should look something like this.

0 Light, Cure Minor Wounds, Detect Magic, Read Magic x 2
1 Cure Light Wounds (Or Vigor) x 2, Jump (for the Paladin), Faerie Fire
2 Summon Swarm, Bull's Strength

Summon Swarm can keep enemy spellcasters and mooks away if your brawlers are outnumbered, and benefit from your Augment Summoning for HP.

Use your Wolf's trip to assist other party members. If no one's going after the sorceror, have the wolf flank enemies with the rogue and hope for some trips. Your wolf will do some damage, but the Rogue will be doing more, and get a nice bonus from having a prone enemy.

When you get wild shape, you should use it when the softer members are threatened. Go Dire Weasel and latch on, for instance, would be a great way to distract the bad guy. Naturally, don't take natural spell.

If things go really bad, you can always Spontaneously Summon bodyguards for your team without looking too overpowered.

So yeah, pretty much everything you said you've been doing.

[PollyOliver]

What books do you have access to? If you've got Spell Compendium, I'd recommend similar to Ursus above but with the number of fighter-types you have, mass snake's swiftness as one of your second level spells. If you ever really need to shut down an enemy caster, summon a grappler in front of it spontaneously. If there's any sort of plant growth in your dungeon, entangle is a good "oh crap" spell to pull out, but if you're feeling too powerful already, I wouldn't pull it out unless you really need it (similarly with spells like blinding spittle). Rot of ages will give your rogue a chance to get his sneak attack against a target, if you've got Dragon Magic. Obscuring mist is almost always useful.

[Serpentine]

I would recommend focussing on a specific role, and just pretty much ignoring other options for the most part. Support and summoning should be pretty reasonable ones, I think. If you can find - and retroactively implement - a variant that lets you focus on these aspects at the expense of others, so much the better.
Roleplaying stuff can help, too.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Don't take natural spell. Don't stay in wild shape all day.

[Yora]

It usually sounds as if Wild Shape and Animal Companion are among the most powerful abilities, aside from being a full caster.
Do not always switch to the strongest possible animal companion, and don't wild shape into the most powerful creature you can.
If you have a wolf now, keep it and don't switch it for dire bears or fleshrakers or something like this. Should you lose it and you want to shift a gear lower, take a hawk or a fox as your new companion.

With this group, not taking Natural Spell seems like a good idea. In combat use your spells for crowd controll to make life easier for your allies how deal the primary damage and use wild shape to scout hard to reach places instead of being an 800 pounds death machine of claws.

[Leon]

So my question is, how can I not upstage everyone? The obvious answer seems to be to not take Natural Spell and to buff and heal. Any other ideas?

Smart Play and self restraint - know what others in the group do and like doing and try to not step onto those roles much.

If you play a summoner limit yourself to a singular big thing rather than a turn hogging swarm.

From what you say you are playing a Support role which both core Divine classes can do quite well (Druid less so than the Cleric, but still quite decently) which for a great group is very important.

Send your pet to flank with the melee types and assist them rather than overwrite their role - the rogue particularly will appreciate having a flank buddy for more sneak attack options.

[Kuma Kode]

Summoning by itself is pretty powerful, but I'll throw in with the rest of the forumites here and say... keep doing what you're doing. Healbot/buffer is the most socially friendly means of playing a druid or cleric.

See how your friends are playing their characters, and keep thinking about what spells or abilities you have would make them better at it. It's actually rather fun that way; it's like a puzzle.

[HunterOfJello]

First, choose a utility animal companion instead of a combat one. Something like an eagle at low levels and one of those big bats later on is a good idea.

Second, avoid Natural Spell.

Third, be conservative with your summoning. Find what you think is the best choice for each summoning spell and cross that monster off the list. Summon any monsters but that one for each spell level.

Fourth, set up a number of specific roleplaying conditions that your character always adheres to. The Eberron campaign setting has several different druid groups in it who each have interesting philosophies and ways of life that they adhere to. Perhaps your druid hates large cities and people who have forsaken the traditional role of living with nature and chooses to punish people who live that way. You could also have a druid who is more in touch with the fey aspects of nature and druidism and seeks out fey to commune with. The druid could also feel a respect for all living creatures and refuse to harm anything that is living, but shows an absolute hatred of any 'monstrosity' that is an artificial being or unnatural. (This could include Constructs, Undead, Aberrations, and some outsiders.)

[raxies94]

Thanks for all the responses guys. It's encouraging to hear that I'm doing things right. I think the biggest thing is that I'll have to fight myself. I'm an optimizer at heart, so it will be a struggle for me not to pick the best animal companion or summon available.

[Kuma Kode]

Thanks for all the responses guys. It's encouraging to hear that I'm doing things right. I think the biggest thing is that I'll have to fight myself. I'm an optimizer at heart, so it will be a struggle for me not to pick the best animal companion or summon available.

You can still optimize; in fact, you should. Instead of optimizing combat effectiveness, optimize your support. Get your healing spells to heal the most damage possible. Find the best way to metamagic your buffs.

Select the best spells and abilities for making your buddies shine. You'll still be a badass, don't get me wrong. Everyone will know you pretty much won the battle, but you did it in such a way that made them look damn good, too. That will leave everyone with a sense of accomplishment.

Avoid summoning too often, just use it as a panic button. Summoned monsters can easily outperform many martial characters.

[Ravens_cry]

Prepare as many buff spells as possible. Then even if you are having a huge effect, you're doing so by empowering the rest of the party.
AH, the Batman wizard way. Ignore the chest pounding fluff of the guide and that is an excellent way to do it: Play support. Remember, D&D is a team effort, and if you are contributing by making your allies life that much easier and your enemies that much harder, mixing it up with a little battlefield control, and you can be awesome without outshining.

[Kobold-Bard]

If it's not too late, the ACF from PHB II is a pretty good nerf. No animal companion and cooler wildshaping for the win.

Fixed that for you.

[erikun]

Equipment: Druids are pretty good with equipment, as while Hide/Shield/Scimitar (or Quarterstaff) isn't the best available equipment, it can still serve to put you on near footing with the melee types if desired. Probably the best options would be to not wade into melee with a SHillelagh (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/shillelagh.htm) Quarterstaff. Rather, stick with a Scimitar/Shield or even light weapon/Shield and play defensively. If you want to be a "summoner", then it would probably be thematically appropriate that you don't bash heads yourself.

Animal Companion: The easiest choice here would be to choose a weak or noncombat (but thematically appropriate) animal companion. One of the reasons the Druid outshines other characters is because they basically have two sets of actions; having a wolf trip while you attack is a far better combination than anything the fighter can contribute for several levels. There is a reason the Druid is said to have a fighter as a class feature. :smalltongue:

If you don't like that idea, then give your DM a proposal: Allow the Druid to roll Handle Animal to grant a +2 bonus to your animal companion's attack rolls, much like an Aid Another action. This reduces the abuse potential - you end up with effectively only one set of actions each round - but still leaves your character able to heal or cast spells when desired.

Spells: Buffs and heals are probably the best choice for not overshadowing the group. Even a spell like entangle will turn an encounter of kobolds into target practice, and unless you have a DM which encourages spread out battles or several throughout the day, your Fighter may feel left out. Heals will be important because Druids can't give up spells for healing otherwise, and buffs can be applied both to your Animal Companion/summons and to other party members.

Remember that you can give up any memorized spell for a Summon Nature's Ally spell of the appropriate level. That isn't too handy at 1st level, with only a 1 round duration, but it becomes much more useful as you level up. After a few levels, if you start bringing in one summons every couple of fights or so - and perhaps let your DM know you are planning on doing so - then your DM should be able to scale up encounters a bit, making the fights larger and more impressive without the extra creatures making the meleers feel redundant.

I would just recommend: Don't try to flood the battlefield full of summoned creatures (this is sadly far too easy, and far too effective) and don't start using your summoned creatures for the free abilities. Well, it might not be bad to summon a unicorn for Heal, given that you're the party healer, but summoning an earth/air elemental for scouting makes the party ranger/rogue rather redundant.

[FMArthur]

There's a quite low power ceiling on druids for poor choices. The "friends with all the little critters of the forest" archetypical druid is a lot weaker than what many assume to be a normal druid, which is a travelling bear circus. As a sort of halfway point between those extremes, you could carve out a weaker but fairly functional role for yourself as a Ranger++, using your wide variety of awareness and scouting spells to be the party's scout and tracker. Between those and healing you will have a lot of your spells taken up to be supporting the party in a subtler way. Take a bird companion to aid your scouting as well. After all this, you could probably manage to not outshine the melees with ordinary Wild Shaping or summoning on its own.

[UserClone]

Get the Ability Enhancer feat from Dragon Compendium, then cast animalistic power on all your allies. Mass Snake's Swiftness has also been mentioned. Between Support and Summoning, you will have plenty you can do until you run out of spells, at which point wild shape and flank with the fighter, also doing an assist roll (if you hit the target's AC, you give your ally a +2 to hit that target) instead of attacking for obscene damage plus Trip or obscene damage plus Improved Grab, Constrict, etc. Balance it all out as you go and have fun with it.

[raxies94]

I think I'll actually be able to summon a bit later on. Our ranger is a bow ranger who always tries to use his bow instead of melee. The rogue currently melees, but is going to become some sort of crazy two-weapon axe thrower eventually, so he won't be in melee to much. At that point we would have two melee folks, so I don't think a few summons would be out of the question.

[Serpentine]

Thanks for all the responses guys. It's encouraging to hear that I'm doing things right. I think the biggest thing is that I'll have to fight myself. I'm an optimizer at heart, so it will be a struggle for me not to pick the best animal companion or summon available.You could try redirecting your optimising skills - make the most ridiculously flavourful and roleplay-oriented character humanly possible. Try to make as many choices as possible purely for roleplay reasons.

[NecroRick]

Q: " How do I not outshine everyone else while playing a druid? "

A: Take a one level dip into Warlock. At will Darkness. That is all you need.

[Kuma Kode]

Q: " How do I not outshine everyone else while playing a druid? "

A: Take a one level dip into Warlock. At will Darkness. That is all you need. Bad. Bad Rick.

[noparlpf]

Easy. Play with a really good group and a good DM. I've played druids several times with my group, and I've never outshone the party. Of course, I typically avoid the animal companion somehow (be it a variant or a flaw) to avoid the hassle of paperwork and because one of the DMs in my group dislikes dealing with them too. For spells I typically go for being the primary or secondary healer, with moderate buffing, and I tend to avoid summoning because it's annoying to deal with the paperwork. (One 18th level adventure my job as druid was keeping the f***ing cleric alive long enough to do his job. He went through so many races every night that I couldn't count them on the fingers on both hands. The guy had been playing as long as I had, but he somehow managed to not be able to build a primary healer cleric. He didn't even take Augment Healing.) I use wildshape for movement (faster land speed, swim or fly) and for melee. (In that particular adventure, one night we were fighting a 38 HD blue dragon. The cleric was finally alive for a round, so I had time to wildshape into a dire bear, charge the dragon, and finish it off.)

Anyhow, more on-topic. If you're seeming a bit OP or outshining the party too much, your DM might not be handling the encounters well enough, or your party might not be as strong as it could be. It's really more up to the DM to accommodate the players than for you to accommodate the players. Suggest that your DM focus his encounters more on things that would be more difficult for you than for the rest of the party (yes, it is possible for something to be harder for a druid than another class). For example, only fight plant monsters, or something like that.

[Gavinfoxx]

So are you using the Pathfinder Druid or the 3.5e Druid?

The Pathfinder druid nerfs druid power a TINY TINY little bit vs 3.5e druid.

IMO the best way of lowering your power level is to simply figure out what the powerful stuff is and then NOT DO IT all the time.

For example, I can presume that you have already seen the pathfinder and 3.5e druid handbooks, yes? This tells you POWERFUL stuff... what you have to do is simply CHOOSE your power level, knowing that the things these talk about is what makes the characters strong, focusing on the parts of the class that these don't mention as being good ideas.
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/extras/community-creations/treatmonks-lab/druid-handbook-part-1
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/extras/community-creations/treatmonks-lab/druid-handbook-part-2
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/extras/community-creations/treatmonks-lab/druid-handbook-part-3
http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=1354.0

That tells you the STRONG stuff to do with the two systems. ALTERNATELY, there are a few different druid nerfs going around. Some for 3.5e are here:
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=164574
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=158506
As well as the PHB II Shapeshift Druid, or the UA/SRD Deadly Hunter or Druidic Avenger variants. Also the Trailblazer 3rd party book is sorta a different take on rebalancing 3.5e, trying to balance it a bit more than Pathfinder did. They have a nice, thorough Druid nerf which you might want to look into.

[noparlpf]

or the UA/SRD Deadly Hunter or Druidic Avenger variants.

I played a Druidic Avenger once, and it's still plenty strong. I don't think trading an animal companion for rage is a bad deal, and you get +10' speed to boot. But then, I guess I don't usually use animal companions, so that's just my opinion.

[Gavinfoxx]

I played a Druidic Avenger once, and it's still plenty strong. I don't think trading an animal companion for rage is a bad deal, and you get +10' speed to boot. But then, I guess I don't usually use animal companions, so that's just my opinion.

Yea... animal companions kick ass.. Fleshraker, Dire Bat, Dire Eagle, Brown Bear, Cave Ankylosaurus, Allosuarus, Bloodstriker, Dragonhawk, Smilodon, Polar Bear, Dire Tiger, Roc... yea. Animal Companions KICK ASS.

[McStabbington]

Everyone else has basically gotten the big things down: use your spells to buff the party and free up the cleric to healbot, don't upgrade your animal companion over time (come to think of it, seeing a riding horse with 10 extra hit die would actually be kind of awesome), and don't take natural spell. Beyond that, it's basically something like "Let me introduce you to Exotic Weapon Proficiency: Bastard Sword"-type mucking up your feats.

[noparlpf]

Yea... animal companions kick ass.. Fleshraker, Dire Bat, Dire Eagle, Brown Bear, Cave Ankylosaurus, Allosuarus, Bloodstriker, Dragonhawk, Smilodon, Polar Bear, Dire Tiger, Roc... yea. Animal Companions KICK ASS.

Well, I guess I got out of the habit of using them because my DM generally dislikes dealing with them. Playing an 18th level adventure as a druid once I had a dire bear animal companion. Trolls ate it the first night when we were trapped on a prison ship to Carceri. That was the last time I used (tried to use) an animal companion, I think.

[Username_too_lo]

What's your alignment?

Take a vow that you will only kill what you intend to eat, and only fight to defend yourself when attacked.

Sit serenely back, observing the chaos of battle and only intervene when other characters scream for assistance.

Fight in 'gears', controlling the battlefield, summon low level creatures to get in the way of baddies and provide flanking bonuses, change the weather, turn earth to mud; become more of a benevolent spirit rather than Vicious Animal Wrangler - heck, a level of Favoured Soul might even help that along.