Druid Buff Spells

[Elric VIII]

What are some good non-core Druid buffs that can be used on a party (as opposed to only animals/natural attacks)?

I'm looking for things like (Mass) Snake's Swiftness or Animalistic Power.

Thanks.

[Salanmander]

If anyone in your party uses wooden weapons, spikes/brambles can improve their weapons quite a bit.

[Khedrac]

Most of the good buffs are core (barkskin).

Sheltered Vitality can get DMs to call some fights, as they make you immune to ability score damage/drain - it's one of the best protection buffs in the game.

Serpent's Swiftness and it's mass versions are great if correctly timed.

Animalistic power is pretty poor - generally people will have a stat boost item for more in the stats they want, so for the benefit of boosting other stats you are better off with the Bull's Strength/Cat's Grace etc line and boosting just one stat for more.

The Vigor line of spells are usually worth having - and in a nasty situation can be worth putting on the melee's before they get hit - creatures with fast healing automatically stabilize.

Healing Spirit can be useful - it's not a huge amount but can help the party healer by topping up someone other than the current main healing sponge which the healer deals with them (or helping on the main healing sponge) whilst allowing the druid to do other things.

Monks (and other natural weapon attackers) will love Iron Fang and Align Fang, but most of the non-core buffs are aimed at animal compainons or the druid in wildshape.

Personally I don't think the Complete Champion spells that ward a few points of stat damage are worth bothering with.

[Roguenewb]

Bite of the Were-X. IIRC, it comes in 5 flavors. A DEX booster, a CON booster, and 3 tiers of STR boosters. I believe they are levels 3/4/5/7/8 respectively, but I could be wrong on the last bit. It's an awesome buff to share with an animal companion.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Druids get the best party-buffing spell in the game: Snowsight, from Frostburn. Make everyone in your party put up 2k gp for a 1st level Pearl of Power and to go in thirds for Lesser Rods of Extend so you can buff yourself and everyone else with that for only one 1st level spell slot. The reason it's so good is because just about anyone in the party who can cast spells, including yourself, can have (Extended) Obscuring Snow cast all day, also from Frostburn. It will make every encounter extremely one-sided, but you may want to wear a helmet in case you get a DMG thrown at you.

If you have a few feats to spare, you can pick up Spell Focus: Transmutation and Ability Enhancer, from Dragon Compendium. That will make your Animalistic Power spell (PH2) grant +4 Str, +4 Dex, and +4 Con. It will also increase your Bite of the Werecreature spells' ability score bonuses by two points each.

Druids aren't really great in the party-buffing department. They're much better at buffing themselves and their animals, and using spells to hinder opponents.

[Elric VIII]

Druids aren't really great in the party-buffing department. They're much better at buffing themselves and their animals, and using spells to hinder opponents.

I've realized this. I have been trying to finish up a bunch of half-done characters I had created and one of them was a Bard/Druid/etc. It seems that the buffing power of druids is quite overstated (I had suspected this, but now it seems confirmed).

Also, for some reason I thought Animalistic Power was not an enhancement bonus. Guess that spell is worse than I thought.

[Feralventas]

Bard/Druid into Fochlocan Lyricist? The bard-side of things should be able to handle buffing quite easily between Spells and Inspiration, especially if you take the spell from Complete Adventurer to boost IC by 1, and the necklace for another +1.

I'd also thought that the druid could get the usual Animal's Ability Score spells to boost in that fashion.

[eggs]

Druids don't do numeric boosts particularly well for non-personal/animal targets, but their other buffs can be pretty good.

The big ones are Air Walk, Blindsight, Freedom of Movement, Sheltered Vitality, Death Ward and True Seeing - all of which completely negate a wide variety of threats.

They have some less stunning options that are still very good: Animal Shapes (party-wide polymorph; form selection is somewhat limited, but recipients become valid targets for Animal-specific buffs and HD cap is higher than Polymorph itself), Aura of Vitality (party-wide morale boosts to all physical abilities), Barkskin/Spiderskin/Tortoise Shell (various levels of Natural Armor), Bull's Strength (good buff at low levels until enhancement items come into play), Brilliant Blade/Brilliant Aura (potentially huge attack boosts, better than the weapon enhancements because the buffs turn off), Charge of the Triceratops (short duration but often very good damage output on a Sneak attacker or charger), Fires of Purity (lots of fire damage on an ally with multiple attacks), Girallon Arms (claws+rend, grapple boosts, strength multipliers on melee damage, extra arms in a general sense), Owl's Insight (massive decent-duration wisdom bonus that stacks well), Resistances (Greater and Superior - save a good deal of GP on cloaks of resistance), Scent (heads-up for ambushes and bonuses for trackers) and Venomfire (which is broken enough that we don't really talk about it).

And then there are the circumstantially valuable spells, which the Druid can whip out any time its divinations/animal scouts or other info sources alert it to a specific type of trouble: Swim, Burrow, [Mass] Resist Energy, Energy Immunity, Mountain Stance and Cloak of the Sea (would be one of the best buffs period, if it worked out of water).

So you should have some strong options, but the straight numeric elements like attack and damage boosts are going to need to come from the Bard half of the build.

[Spuddles]

Good list, eggs.

Halo of Sand, from Sandstorm gives a scaling deflection bonus to AC. They also get Deathward, which is pretty handy protection to have.

[Elric VIII]

I didn't even think about utility buffs. I guess that's really a good complement to Bard. Thanks.