Changing up the Ranger and Druid

[Dsurion]

I was talking about retheming the druid and ranger classes the other day with a friend. Basically, the conclusion we came to was that we wanted each class to focus more on particular aspects of nature, rather than both being the "generic nature guy" classes with all of the overlap. So I was thinking for a while about how to do this. I'd like for the Druid to be more centered about manipulating nature itself, and abandoning all of the spells and class features related directly to animals - that stuff I wanted to shift over to the ranger.

So our proposed changes amounted to this:

Druid
Lose Wild shape.
Lose Animal Companion.
Change from prepared caster to list caster (Like Warmage).
A quick and dirty run-through of the spell list is basically:


Lose Summon Animal.
Lose Bite of the Were X.
Lose all other spells targeting only animals.
Lose all spells related to transforming into an animal.


I'll probably give a full run-through later, but I'm only looking at SRD + Spell compendium, for reference. Dunno if there are any other spells worth looking at, don't particularly care to look.

Ranger
Animal companion progression becomes level minus 1.
Bard casting progression.
Some spells will be modified to reflect this.


Now, I'm not particularly interested in game balance discussion so much, though I was wondering what the Playground thinks. Did I go too far on the druid?

[HunterOfJello]

I prefer to just replace all Druids with Spirit Shaman and have all Rangers replaced with Wildshape Mystic Rangers.

[Dsurion]

I prefer to just replace all Druids with Spirit Shaman and have all Rangers replaced with Wildshape Mystic Rangers.I have to confess I'm not very familiar with Spirit Shamans. Is it worth looking into rather than going through all of this?

[Seerow]

Is there a reason to take that -1 level from the Ranger's animal companion? I mean just letting him have the baseline druid companion I doubt will be unbalancing.

[Dsurion]

Is there a reason to take that -1 level from the Ranger's animal companion? I mean just letting him have the baseline druid companion I doubt will be unbalancing.It was the other guy's suggestion. Since he's played Rangers more I figured I'd go with his experience. It could easily be stricken off.

[HunterOfJello]

I have to confess I'm not very familiar with Spirit Shamans. Is it worth looking into rather than going through all of this?

Spirit Shaman are from Complete Divine and they cast spells from the druid spell list.

To make a spirit shaman from a druid, do the following:

1. Find a druid
2. Remove Animal Companion
3. Remove Wildshape
4. Remove prepare casting
5. Let the character pick up to 3 druid spells per spell spell level to use on their spell list. This list is not set in stone and can be changed every 24 hours. These spells can then be cast spontaneously for that day.

Example: On Thursday, MrSpiritPants chooses the spells Charm Animal, Cure Light Wounds, and Entangle. He casts those spells spontaneously on Thursday. On Friday, MrSpiritPants decides he didn't use Charm Animal much and his new cleric friend can cast Cure spells so he wants to use different spells today. MrSpiritPants therefore chooses Engtangle (again), Obscuring Mist, and Shillelagh to use on Friday.

6. Take away all of the other specific druid class features and give the character some random class features related to spirits.
7. Give the Spirit Shaman a spirit buddy/imaginary friend who no one else can ever see or interact with, but the spirit buddy can concentrate on spells for him once the Spirit Shaman hits level 10.



And that, in a nutshell, is a Spirit Shaman.

[Coidzor]

Druid
Lose Wild shape.
Lose Animal Companion.
Change from prepared caster to list caster (Like Warmage).
A quick and dirty run-through of the spell list is basically:


Lose Summon Animal.
Lose Bite of the Were X.
Lose all other spells targeting only animals.
Lose all spells related to transforming into an animal.


Now, I'm not particularly interested in game balance discussion so much, though I was wondering what the Playground thinks. Did I go too far on the druid?

I would say that if you're taking away the animal companion and wildshape there's probably no need to take away the summoner role from their caster side. So unless you're paring their spell list down for thematic reasons or removing/altering the more innately broken spells, I'd say that's going too far if you're leaving wizards and clerics more or less unmolested.

If you're doing that to all of the full-casters, well, that just seems like a lot of work and good luck, though probably the Druid, being that it has an actual theme, would be the easiest of the Big 3 in the PHB to give such a treatment too.

Since Wizard and Cleric are so generic, it'd probably require something along the lines of having a base list and then expanding it based upon the domains taken/school specialized in, which just seems like it'd be full of pit-falls for kludge.


It was the other guy's suggestion. Since he's played Rangers more I figured I'd go with his experience. It could easily be stricken off.

Sounds a bit like he was trying to convey not having it at level one, but being pretty much full strength, one way of accomplishing that, I've seen, has bee getting the class feature at 4th level, but that it's still full-strength animal companion, so all 4 ranger levels count when first animal companionining.

[BlueInc]

Druid
Lose Wild shape.
Lose Animal Companion.
Change from prepared caster to list caster (Like Warmage).
A quick and dirty run-through of the spell list is basically:


Lose Summon Animal.
Lose Bite of the Were X.
Lose all other spells targeting only animals.
Lose all spells related to transforming into an animal.


Personally (a big YMMV sticker may apply here), I think animals are an essential part of why people play druids - at least a reason I play druids and a reason my friends do. I think a simpler fix might be:

-Wildshape as Pathfinder - seriously nerfed, just gives minor stat benefits
-Lose animal companion - make it solely a Range class feature; expressly give druids the option of picking up Wild Cohort (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/re/20031118a).
-2/3 spontaneous spellcasting (as bard), but druid spells up to level 6.

Just realized, you specifically said you don't want Druids to have anything to do with animals. Well, I've got a fairly simple fix for you: Oracles (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/base-classes/oracle). Limit them to Mysteries you think apply to Druids. I think Nature is the only one that has anything to do with animals, but even if you limited it to Stone, Flame, Waves, Bones, Wind, Wood, Life, Heavens, and maybe Ancestor or Battle, there'd still be a lot of room for different aspects of nature to channel.

[Dsurion]

I would say that if you're taking away the animal companion and wildshape there's probably no need to take away the summoner role from their caster side. So unless you're paring their spell list down for thematic reasons or removing/altering the more innately broken spells, I'd say that's going too far if you're leaving wizards and clerics more or less unmolested.That was more or less the idea, yeah. However, no one touches Wizards or Clerics, really, so I was going to leave them alone. There's been more expressed interest in Beguiler, Warmage, and Dread Necromancer than traditional wizard specialists, so a lot of this was just an experiment to see if Druid could be turned into a list caster as such, "based more upon the romanticized Celtic druids than the legacy D&D version of the druid", as he put it.


Sounds a bit like he was trying to convey not having it at level one, but being pretty much full strength, one way of accomplishing that, I've seen, has bee getting the class feature at 4th level, but that it's still full-strength animal companion, so all 4 ranger levels count when first animal companionining.Sounds simple enough, thanks.