Lord of Vermin

[leegi0n]

Hey guys n' gals,

i want to build a vile, nasty sumbeech around CR 25 that's an underdark dwelling vermin lord. I'm thinking I should start the build with druid...

any suggestions for hardcore build?

The party will be ECL 23 by the time they hear the "boss fight" music.


Thanks in advance

[Flickerdart]

Drow clerics can rebuke vermin, and entomanothropes can command vermin. Between the two, you could have a nice pool of vermin minions for a relatively modest investment.

[leegi0n]

what in the world is an "entomanothrope?"

* so you think drow cleric would be better than a drow druid for base purposes?

[Garagos]

I believe the Forgotten Realms Underdark book has a prestige class called Arachnomancer in it. Not sure if that would work for your needs or not, but that book in general has some good info about vermin in it.

[Flickerdart]

Entomanothropes are werebugs (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/re/20040621a). I like using Giant Wasps for them because their features match up nicely with what transfers over in hybrid form.

Druid would probably be stronger than Cleric because a companion vermin would have more HD than commanded vermin are allowed to. However, an Entomanothrope already does a similar thing (transforming into a vermin, commanding a vermin minion) without costing quite so many levels, so you can more easily diversify your vermin portfolio with it.

[Urpriest]

Eberron has a fair number of vermin-oriented options for Druids. Child of Winter in particular is great for this sort of concept. Vermin Companion and Vermin Shape being the next obvious steps.

Edit: Vermin Companion may not be all that important, though, given the contents of this article (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/re/20040705a).

Edit: Vermin Wild Shape can be replicated (better) by Vestment of Verminshape, DMGII