3.5 Better Druid Blaster

[Snowbluff]

So, I want to make a Druid Blaster. Blowing up stuff is fun.

My idea thus far:
DruidX
Feats: Abberant Wildshape, Assume (Su): Choker's Quickness.

Maybe some MM. Possibly enter Dweomerkeeper for MM reduction?

Does anyone have any ideas for this?

[HunterOfJello]

Planar Shepherd of Thelanis. At level 15 or so you can be using all sorts of nice blasting spells at-will in your Eladrin forms.

[Snowbluff]

Planar Shepherd of Thelanis. At level 15 or so you can be using all sorts of nice blasting spells at-will in your Eladrin forms.

That's cool, but 2 standards a round from Choker and my regular MMed spells sound better.

[HunterOfJello]

It's difficult to find anything that goes better with Druid than more levels in Druid. Planar Shepherd is the usual go-to prestige class for that.

The DRUID HANDBOOK (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=940) has lots of good suggestsions in it. The Wild Reaper Variant Druid is pretty awesome. The Turn Undead class feature will grant you access to DMM, which is pretty damn strong. It does take up feats though.

Metamagic reducers are your best bet if you want to just slap a ton of MM on your spells. Arcane casters are usually better at that though.

[Snowbluff]

It's difficult to find anything that goes better with Druid than more levels in Druid. Planar Shepherd is the usual go-to prestige class for that.

The DRUID HANDBOOK (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=940) has lots of good suggestsions in it. The Wild Reaper Variant Druid is pretty awesome. The Turn Undead class feature will grant you access to DMM, which is pretty damn strong. It does take up feats though.

Metamagic reducers are your best bet if you want to just slap a ton of MM on your spells. Arcane casters are usually better at that though.

Yeah, I'm not looking for a Wildhshaper + AnC build. I already have my Wildhshape and I don't want an AnC. Straight druid is not desirable or applicable in this situation.

Wild Reaper does not get turning until level 15.

Yeah, I am aware of that, but I kind of want to take advantage of getting an extra Standard more easily than Arcane Casters.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Feats: Abberant Wildshape, Assume (Su): Choker's Quickness Beholder's Eye Rays.

Fixed that for you. Yes, 'Eye Rays (Su)' is a single special ability that they get, all of those eye-powers (except the antimagic eye) are included in that one ability. Remember that it's a free action to activate all those eyes, so you can fire multiple rays, cast as spell, move/turn, and fire the rest of your eye rays at the same targets. Also note that Beholder flight is extraordinary, so you'll get that as well as it's specifically included as a movement mode despite being special quality.

[Eldariel]

Rashemi Elemental Summoning gives you some nice nukes available. Storm Elementals [MMIII] later on are friggin' awesome too. Combine with Ring of the Beast & Rapid Spell and you should be good to go with spontaneous booms to taste.

[Snowbluff]

@Bifu Oooh, that's cool. I guess the goal will be being able to beat that with Choker.

Also, the eye rays seems to be a Standard action. The word free doesn't seem to appear in the beholder's description, (Su) are standard by default, and the Eye rays are included in the Attack/Full Attack sections of the entry.

[Spuddles]

Rashemi Storm Elementals are about the most efficient blasts available- sonic, electricity, and cold damage.


@Bifu Oooh, that's cool. I guess the goal will be being able to beat that with Choker.

Also, the eye rays seems to be a Standard action. The word free doesn't seem to appear in the beholder's description, (Su) are standard by default, and the Eye rays are included in the Attack/Full Attack sections of the entry.

"Each of a beholder’s small eyes can produce a magical ray once per round as a free action."

[Sir Swindle89]

So this isn't really blaster druid optimization it's wild shape choker optimization.

would it not be easier to take 2 levels in choker (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=ucf2gup8st6lcq3070k1s8f9h2&topic=935.0) and then build a regular blaster?

edit: never mind i forgot they balanced those.

[Snowbluff]

Rashemi Storm Elementals are about the most efficient blasts available- sonic, electricity, and cold damage.

"Each of a beholder’s small eyes can produce a magical ray once per round as a free action."

Yeah. If it taught me new spells I'd be interested. Could be useful for a summoning build, but I don't like summoning. Managing an AnC is already so time consuming, I don't ever bother holding a up a table with summons.

So it turns out I was reading the Entry for beholder, not beholder. /double facepalm


So this isn't really blaster druid optimization it's wild shape choker optimization.

would it not be easier to take 2 levels in choker (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=ucf2gup8st6lcq3070k1s8f9h2&topic=935.0) and then build a regular blaster?

edit: never mind i forgot they balanced those.

Hehe. I don't lose CL for using wildshape. The thing about Choker is taht if you have Quickness, you can get pretty broken pretty fast. I'd suggest it for any Casting Focused Druid (Summoner, blaster, healer, buffer).

[Spuddles]

Yeah. If it taught me new spells I'd be interested.

Are three CL15 cones of cold out of a single 4th level slot not good enough or what?

[Snowbluff]

Are three CL15 cones of cold out of a single 4th level slot not good enough or what?

It's good, but not what I am looking for.It's Summoning, not blasting. One requires an exorbitant expenditure of real time, while the other makes sutff explode. I think we can do better with the PC, Spuddles.

I know I am being nitpicky, but I kind of want something out of the box.

[Akal Saris]

One suggestion: 5 levels of Stormcaster (Stormwrack) would attach a stun effect to all your electricity spells. Could be a fun way to both blast people and open up opportunities for your party to murder many opponents with ease.

For some spells (you probably already know them), I'd peruse some of the ideas in this thread (particularly Darrin's suggestions): http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=180182

The problem with optimizing the character that your feats are fairly set in place. You have:

1: Aberrant Blood
3: [Open]
6: Natural Spell
9: Aberrant Wildshape
12: Assume (Su): Choker's Quickness.
15: [Open] (But I'd take Quicken Spell)
18: [Open]

With flaws and human you could get a few extra feats, but nothing particularly jumps out at me. More metamagic and reducers (perhaps Metamagic School Focus: Evocation from C. Mage) is always nice of course.

[Snowbluff]

Yeah, looking through his post combines with my own thoughts gets me this so far for an initial spell list:

1st: Produce Flame
2nd: Splinter Bolt (Super good, I'll explain)
3rd: Call Lighting
4th: Arc Lighting, Flamestrike
5th: Call Lighting Storm

Splinterbolt is a No Save, No SR spell. You have to hit AC, but the damage is good, and it's a low enough level to reasonably quicken.

The Call Lighting Spells are nice with the added stun (or Fell Drain), but Quickening them is pointless, which is another reason to be grateful to Splinterbolt.

[Malroth]

since your lv 3 feat is open i reccomend the firey burst reserve feat just so you never run out of ammo

[Snowbluff]

since your lv 3 feat is open i reccomend the firey burst reserve feat just so you never run out of ammo

P-Choo! Pew Pew! 2 Standards means 2 bursts!

Um, the lightning one might be better, though. No save without the errata we don't use at my table, IIRC. Ammo may never be an issue s well, since alot of druid blasting spells get an extra use/level.

[Spuddles]

Yeah, looking through his post combines with my own thoughts gets me this so far for an initial spell list:

1st: Produce Flame
2nd: Splinter Bolt (Super good, I'll explain)
3rd: Call Lighting
4th: Arc Lighting, Flamestrike
5th: Call Lighting Storm

Splinterbolt is a No Save, No SR spell. You have to hit AC, but the damage is good, and it's a low enough level to reasonably quicken.

The Call Lighting Spells are nice with the added stun (or Fell Drain), but Quickening them is pointless, which is another reason to be grateful to Splinterbolt.

These are all terrible options unless you have a way to cheat with metamagic.

[Snowbluff]

These are all terrible options unless you have a way to cheat with metamagic.

Well then, present your options, Spuddles. I am listening.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Not exactly blasting, but for a primary caster in general here's what I'd go with:
1st - Entangle, Wall of Smoke (cast across occupied squares to force an immediate save), Produce Flame (only to add fire damage to natural weapon attacks)
2nd - (Lesser Rod of Extended) Creeping Cold (21d6 damage!), Kelpstrand, Cloud Wings (for Beholder form), Blood Snow (see 5th), Chill/Heat Metal
3rd - Icelance (better than Splinterbolt), (Lesser Rod of Extended) Sleet Storm, (Lesser Rod of Maximized) Poison (DC scales well)
4th - Arc of Lightning, Ice Storm
5th - Call Avalanche (then Blood Snow it), Transmute Rock to Mud
6th - (Rod of Empowered) Fire Seeds (berry bombs)

Get a Circlet of Rapid Casting (MIC) and you can cast a 2nd level or lower spell as a swift action 3/day.

If you want to use Fell Drain or Fell Frighten metamagic, then Produce Flame, Creeping Cold, and Heat/Chill Metal are going to be considerably better.

Consider skipping the Choker cheese and going with a Spirit Shaman (CD) instead of Druid.

Don't forget about your standard buffs. (Lesser Rod of Extended) Longstrider, Heart of Water/Earth, and if you want books thrown at you Snowsight and Obscuring Snow. Get a 6th level Pearl of Power and a standard Rod of Extend and for two 6th level spell slots each day you can continually have Energy Immunity x5 and Superior Resistance on you.

[Snowbluff]

All of this is valid Drood stuff. I've played a Drood, doing much of what you have described, but I still want to build something different. These spells won't NOT be on my list, but I didn't bother listing them above since I am focusing on damage spells.



Consider skipping the Choker cheese and going with a Spirit Shaman (CD) instead of Druid.

Well, I don't want to. The premise of this build is based on using the choker to see if I can get some decent blasting done. The Spirit Shaman (Spontaneous caster MM) is a terrible idea if I want to use MM from something other than a Rod.

Also, you want me to use free MM sticks, but you want me to consider not using my Cheeser?

Having Fire Burst does make Produce Flame less useful, unless we do use the fell spells. I am more worried about Fire resist if I do use it. I'll have to think about whether or not I want Searing spell. I'll see about finding some good MM for this.

[Spuddles]

If you want to pretend you're a wizard, you're going to have to planar shepherd for free metamagic. Astral gives free quickens. Planes with elemental traits give free maximizes & empowers, I believe. Midnight Incarnum might help, but not really.

Druid's don't have access to the same methods of blasting as arcane casters do, so expecting to use arcane mechanics for your druid is just going to result in fail.

Abusing Assume Supernatural Ability and dragonshape/aberrant shape will get you some easy blasting. Beholder is of course the best, thanks to free action eye rays. It really doesn't matter what you pair with that, it's just unfair.

Again, the best way to blast with a druid is to summon nature's allies. Get your copy of MM3 out and look up the storm elemental. Then look at rashemi elemental summoning. Because you don't have access to arcane thesis & incantatrix, throwing around flamestrikes is just going to eat up your actions and spell slots.

At level 11 with a ring of the beast, rashemi summons and versatile spellcaster, here's what 1 6th level slot and a full round action can get you:
Huge Storm Elemental with three CL16 cones of cold, a single target 8d4 electrical shock as a free action, and once per minute as as full round action, an 16d6 lighting bolt and 8d6 sonic damage.

So that's 16d6+8d6+8d4, followed by 16d6+8d4 on subsequent rounds. You could also use the slot to summon 1d3 huge rashemi air elementals, each with CL16 cone of cold.

If you combine with planar bubble and shepherding, say, a plane of cold, not only do you get to maximize your summoned allies (3 instead of 1d3), but their SLAs will be maximized if they stay in your bubble.

MotP is a pretty handy book.

There are also numerous other things you can summon for DPS, like Elementite Swarms, Elemental Monoliths, Noble Salamanders, and Greenbound animals for walls of thorns at low levels.

Of course, if you REALLY don't want to summon, planar bubble + native of another plane is the best way to get free metamagic. Elemental plane tends to be the best.

[Snowbluff]

If you want to pretend you're a wizard, you're going to have to planar shepherd for free metamagic. Astral gives free quickens. Planes with elemental traits give free maximizes & empowers, I believe. Midnight Incarnum might help, but not really.

Hm... I'll look into this one. Thanks.



Druid's don't have access to the same methods of blasting as arcane casters do, so expecting to use arcane mechanics for your druid is just going to result in fail.

Yeah, but the point is to see how well we can get this to work. I think ideally we should find a way that druid spells are particularly strong, like the fact they get alot of multiple use spells early one.


Abusing Assume Supernatural Ability and dragonshape/aberrant shape will get you some easy blasting. Beholder is of course the best, thanks to free action eye rays. It really doesn't matter what you pair with that, it's just unfair.


Yes. Because spamming summons is not abusive.

I think Choker will get less DMGs (and PHBs, I don't know anyone who will willingly sit through multiple summons IRL. In PbP it's more acceptable, I guess) thrown at you. Combined with the fact, as you pointed out, the mechanics favor arcanists for blasting, I don't think the word 'unfair' applies here in the first place.

[Spuddles]

Call Lightning and Call Lightning Storm has a rather interesting mechanic. Paired with weather control and shape spell, it becomes slot efficient. Not really action efficient, though.

Fire Seeds are really good and can be very action efficient. Firestorm affects a ludicrous amount of space.

Energy Substitution is desirable. Planar Bubble & being a native of the elemental plane of fire gets you big, free damage boosts on your fire spells. Combine with searing spell metamagic to get around immunities.

Extended Creeping Cold as mentioned above is great DPS.

As you can see, though, a lot of druid blasting isn't very action efficient, though it can be slot efficient.

[ShriekingDrake]

Blasting like a wizard/sorcerer is not likely to be in the cards without significant cheese. The advice you've received so far is pretty good.

There was once a page--that I cannot seem to find--on the wizards.com site that described abusing venomfire (and I think blinding spittle) to make some kind of super loogie. (I'd love to find that page again. My google fu has failed me. It's possible that the original post spelled loogie as lugie.)

There is nothing wrong with trying to make a druid blaster, but just don't think that you've failed to make a blaster merely because it can't blast like some other classes. Druids are much better at AoE and battlefield control spells like Blizzard, Control Winds, Call Avalanche, Entangle, etc. They have some good blasting spells, like the ones listed above, but it will be difficult to make a top shelf blaster with just the druid spell list.

[LTwerewolf]

There is nothing wrong with trying to make a druid blaster, but just don't think that you've failed to make a blaster merely because it can't blast like some other classes. Druids are much better at AoE and battlefield control spells like Blizzard, Control Winds, Call Avalanche, Entangle, etc. They have some good blasting spells, like the ones listed above, but it will be difficult to make a top shelf blaster with just the druid spell list.

Between call lightning (storm), splinterbolt, produce flame, vortex of teeth, blast of sand, spiritjaws, cometfall, fire seeds, quill blast, venomfire (combined with either blinding spittle or fleshraker wild shape), and frostfell, I don't see why druids aren't top notch blasters.

[Spuddles]

Between call lightning (storm), splinterbolt, produce flame, vortex of teeth, blast of sand, spiritjaws, cometfall, fire seeds, quill blast, venomfire (combined with either blinding spittle or fleshraker wild shape), and frostfell, I don't see why druids aren't top notch blasters.

Because it's still just blasting.

[LTwerewolf]

Because it's still just blasting.

That's exactly what they were asking for, and what the person above me had said druids can't do very well. I disagree and believe druids are every bit as powerful as blasters as wizards are.

[Snowbluff]

@Shriekingdrake Well,blinding spittle is not a poison, so that's not it. Maybe the swindle spitter dinosaur?


Between call lightning (storm), splinterbolt, produce flame, vortex of teeth, blast of sand, spiritjaws, cometfall, fire seeds, quill blast, venomfire (combined with either blinding spittle or fleshraker wild shape), and frostfell, I don't see why druids aren't top notch blasters.

Well, lack of things like arcane thesis and incantatrix do more damage to the Build than the spell list does.

[LTwerewolf]

But the difference is that you're not a one-trick wonder when you do your blasting as a druid, whereas a lot of those other builds are good at delivering damage, and good and standing back and doing nothing when it's not needed.

[Urpriest]

Winterhaunt of Iborighu is kind of nice for cold-based blasting.

[Spuddles]

That's exactly what they were asking for, and what the person above me had said druids can't do very well. I disagree and believe druids are every bit as powerful as blasters as wizards are.

Which is to say, not very powerful.

Blasting is a suboptimal attack mode, unless you have some pretty mean debuffs on your blasts. Blasting only becomes competitive once you get metamagic reducers, and those are difficult to come by as a druid.

[ShriekingDrake]

@Shriekingdrake Well,blinding spittle is not a poison, so that's not it. Maybe the swindle spitter dinosaur?

Good point. It was definitely a thread about venomfire, which likely got zapped when WoTC hosed the forums. Anyway, thanks for getting me right headed.

[LTwerewolf]

Which is to say, not very powerful.

Blasting is a suboptimal attack mode, unless you have some pretty mean debuffs on your blasts. Blasting only becomes competitive once you get metamagic reducers, and those are difficult to come by as a druid.

No one is arguing that blasting is or isn't the best way to go, you're ignoring the point of the thread.

[Snowbluff]

Winterhaunt of Iborighu is kind of nice for cold-based blasting.

Hm, the constant Piercing cold sounds like fun. The +2d6 cold damage might be handy as well.



Good point. It was definitely a thread about venomfire, which likely got zapped when WoTC hosed the forums. Anyway, thanks for getting me right headed.

No problem, man.