Most interesting Druid?

[Nightgaun7]

What's the most interesting druid build you have seen or can come up with? I love druids and I was just toying around with one as a backup character for a game I'm in, but my druids tend to look very similar to one another, so I thought I'd see what other people have come up with.

If it matters, assume LA buyoff, Fractional BAB, no psionics (unlikely to come up but still). Drag Mag/Pathfinder stuff is allowed if DM-approved.

[hymer]

You already have enormous versatility as a druid. There's no need to fret over the build, IMO. Just get natural spell at level 6, and avoid LA and wisdom penalties (though you can work with those if you want).
Pick a philosophy for your druid and go with it. Personally, I like the life-focused NG druid and the stern LN guardian of nature. The first focuses on health, boosting and teaching. She is patient, nurturing and motherly.
The second is nature's enforcer, breaking laws, bonds and bones with equal determination to make sure everybody remembers that nature came first and will be here after, so you better show some humility in the face of that which nourishes you and slays you when your time has come.
And while very different people, they're easily achieved with the same build, and just the personality (and alignement's) difference.

[Nightgaun7]

I'm not fretting about exactly how I will build him, I'm just curious about other people's ideas. Approaching things from a mechanical point of view here, rather than the character. Since, as you say, you can play two fairly different personalities with the same Druid build.

[hymer]

Fair enough.
It's actually rather hard to come up with much interesting in terms of druid builds. You could take Planar Shepherd or Lion of Talisid (I think is the name) and not drop in power from the basic druid, but that's about it. So the build (as I'm sure you know, but not all readers may) tends to come down to templates and feats on singleclassed druid - not that you have all that many feats to play around with.
If you're willing to take a hit in power, it's a different matter, of course. Then you can go in a shapechanging direction, or take some of the ACFs.

[Kuulvheysoon]

The funnest Druid that I ever played was a shifter Druid/Moonspeaker. as actually pretty fun, especially when I traded away my AC for the shifter racial sub level.

[ShriekingDrake]

Talya had a nice build, which I can't find at the moment, that used VoP and, I believe, her homebrew Vow of Nudity. I say this is interesting not for the sexiness of it, but rather the superb, flavorful build.

[Demorden]

I vaguely remember the shifter druid alternative class levels being interesting. Also, they have a nice dedicated PrC. Can't remember much more now.

EDIT: ninja'd!

I love the concept of the Arcane Hierophant.
And if you bypass the needed 3 wiz levels you can even enter as druid6/wiz1.
Then proceed with druid. Now you're basically a druid who casts arcane spells and has some nasty abilities.
Also, your animal companion can become more intelligent than your party fighter, if he's not already.:smalltongue:

[Vizzerdrix]

With enough Dragon Mag dipping, you can make two concepts work. Somewhat. A plant focused druid, and (my favorite) an aberration focused druid (couse slimy tentacled monsters are creatures too!)

[Lord Haart]

Well, i had that lame ork with Vow of Powerty. Roleplay-wise, he was from your typical proud warrior tribe that was all but decimated in attempt to ransack a dragon treasure (they were losing against their neighbours and new chief was very desperate); he got half-buried in the gold, went unnoticed by dragon and eventually crawled out to a heavy-forested valley where a local dryad found him, helped him survive and taught the ways of druidism. All he wanted from his life was to never touch a gold piece again in his life and to be left alone with his survival checks until his inevitable yet organical death, but he owed his life to the dryad and she, in turn, owed a few favors to the Harpers…Still, his cultural heritage and warrior's training prevented him from either playing a wizard-wannabe or going all bearzilla (besides, for the task Harpers gave him he'd do well to pass for a simple badass monkalike or something as often as possible); instead, he'd take a big stick, a level in swordsage, front-load some staff-enchanting spells (Thorns, Entangling staff and so on) and melee-debuff your ass seven ways to China. Wildshape was neither used nor needed — instead he got shapeshifter ACF to turn into equally ass-kicking (and equally limping while doing so) Dingo dog. And just in case of creative emergensy, his staff meant he always had a chunk of whatsoever ready (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/woodShape.htm).

Now i'm sure it's not really an original build, but a synergy between staff combat-oriented spells and some maneuvers (and thematical synergy overall, as druid does also get fire spells so desert wind maneuvers don't seem out of place) was pretty sweet while leaving an impression that i didn't touch cheesy parts of the class.

[Diovid]

A druid with one or more of the following feats could be a bit different:

Tainted Druid (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/re/20030428a)
Child of Winter / Vermin Companion / Vermin Wild Shape (Eberron Campaign Setting)
Beast Totem / Beast Shape / Totem Companion (Eberron Campaign Setting)
Abberation Wild Shape (Lords of Madness)
Corrupted Wild Shape (Libris Mortis)
Feral Animal Companion (Champions of Ruin)
Savage Empathy / Monstrous Animal Companion (dragon #326)

Also various dragon magzines have druid variants which could shake it up a little.

[Urpriest]

I've always liked the idea of grabbing Initiate of Mabar and doing a stealth-focused Druid, getting Aberration or Dragon Wild Shape at later levels for Will O'Wisp or Shadow Dragon respectively.

[eggynack]

It's actually something of a problem with druids, how similar their builds end up looking. They're nearly always druid 20, or should be druid 20. The only real variation is in feat choice, except you only get between seven and eight feats, and one of those feats is natural spell. From that point, there's some diversity. Druids essentially have four separate routes of optimization open to them, casting summoning, the animal companion, and wild shape, and you could spend the majority of your druidic career improving one of them. With summoning, for example, you could go spell focus conjuration, augment summoning, natural spell, ashbound summoning and rashemi elemental summoning without ever hitting a suboptimal wall. There isn't that much variety within the class feature subsets, although there are a few good summoning paths to focus on. It's just not a class that responds that much to build optimization.

[Nightgaun7]

I would consider losing up to, say, 4 caster levels acceptable for the sake of variety. For example, Unarmed Swordsage 2/Fist of the Forest 2/Druid 16 or Barbarian 2/Druid 14/Nature's Warrior 4. Both o those are melee oriented but you get the idea.

[eggynack]

It just always feels like a total loss to the power of any given druid build. Those dips aren't just losing casting, though that's the most important part. They're also losing you animal companion advancement, and wildshape advancement. Unlike the other casting classes, druids have excellent powers that aren't casting, and it's rare that you'll find powers to make up for them. People rarely even take prestige classes because the non-casting powers are so much better than anything you're replacing them with. For caster level not-improving combat bonuses, I'd just go with master of many forms instead of standard melee dips. At least in that case you're taking actions that advance one of your class' core goals. Basically, any dip that someone takes on a druid build is effectively going to be for flavor reasons. There're only like two or three prestige classes that give you equal power, and only one that definitely makes you better, except n-one plays that one because you can gain infinite wishes or 10:1 time dilation.

[Nightgaun7]

It just always feels like a total loss to the power of any given druid build. Those dips aren't just losing casting, though that's the most important part. They're also losing you animal companion advancement, and wildshape advancement. Unlike the other casting classes, druids have excellent powers that aren't casting, and it's rare that you'll find powers to make up for them. People rarely even take prestige classes because the non-casting powers are so much better than anything you're replacing them with. For caster level not-improving combat bonuses, I'd just go with master of many forms instead of standard melee dips. At least in that case you're taking actions that advance one of your class' core goals. Basically, any dip that someone takes on a druid build is effectively going to be for flavor reasons. There're only like two or three prestige classes that give you equal power, and only one that definitely makes you better, except n-one plays that one because you can gain infinite wishes or 10:1 time dilation.

That's pretty much why I made this thread. 90% of Druids are 95% the same.

[eggynack]

Well, yeah. Basically. There's still a lot of variance in play though. two druids can, and often do, have all the same feats, and play very differently. They can have different spells on their list, different wildshapes they tend to use, and different animal companions. They can use battlefield control spells to shut down the encounter, or use some of their buffs, turn into a bear, and eat face, or they can fly into the air as a bat and rain down lightning and summons. The best part is that all of those options are both viable and effective, so you never feel bad using one of them. In the same way that druids are one of the classes with the lowest amount of build variation, they're also one of the classes with the highest amount of play variation.

[Monticularis]

Though a wildshape ranger is better for the build, a druid can pull this off just as well. Master of many forms 7 + warshaper 5 lets the druid constantly switch between pretty much any form as a move action and gain all extraordinary qualities. Float around as an invisible spell immune will'o'wisp out of combat, then switch to a cave troll to pounce + rend once combat start, then to a war troll for damage reduction + regeneration + other goodies for the rest of the fight, and back to a will'o'wisp once the fight is over. The build can also pick out many other forms for more out of combat utility and what not.
There's the issue of not progressing animal companion and spells, which makes it a rather bad idea.

[eggynack]

It's actually possible that the druid is better for that build, because the spellcasting and animal companion are so much better. The problem is that for druids it's a suboptimal choice, while for wildshape rangers it's an optimal one. Druid is probably better from the perspective of the build though.

[Nightgaun7]

They can have different spells on their list,

Druids don't have a list. At least not like Wizards do. In theory all druids have the same "list".

[eggynack]

Druids don't have a list. At least not like Wizards do. In theory all druids have the same "list".
I'm aware. I was referring to the spells you prepare day by day. Granted, you could spontaneously shift from the first druid to the second druid the next day if you want, but if your character has a focus that's going to inform your day to day decision making as much as your build decisions.

[Gnome Alone]

Well yeah, but a druid can have a list in the sense that the spells they prepared that day (or usually prepare) form the list of options they have at the moment.

EDIT: Why are there shruiken in my back?

[Nightgaun7]

I was flicking through Dragon 311 looking for something else, and I noticed that the Wild Reaper variant gives you Turn Undead at level 12. Does that allow for anything interesting?

[Norin]

DMM.

That is interesting. :smallsmile:

[Nightgaun7]

Obviously that. I mean in terms of PrCs and such. Also, its get you two pools of Turning for DMM in a theurge...

EDIT: Not that it helps a whole lot because you have to be at level 12 in the class. But still.

[Swooper]

I vaguely remember a druid build thread from years ago that had both the Druidic Avenger variant from UA, trading his animal companion away for rage, fast movement etc., and also something that got rid of the wildshaping (not shapeshifting from PHB2 though). He had martial weapon proficiency, either from that ACF or a dip, and fought with a glaive. I think he had a desert theme to him, possibly it was for a Dark Sun game?

So basically it was the most interesting druid build I've seen because it was nothing like a druid.

[Menzath]

If there was a good incarnum Prc for druids that would be awesome to take a totemist dip, even if the prc only had half caster lvl, it would be a good alternate to DMM thanks to midnight augmentation and the chakra binds would be pretty crazy on a VoP build.
Alas there is naught that I have seen of this.:smallfrown:

[Kristinn]

Arcane Hierophant is probably just what your looking for, a new spin on the old druid.

Enter as Druid 4 / Wizard 1 / Mystic Theurge 1, entering MT with Alternative Source Spell (Dragon Mag #325). With fractional BAB this gives you the +4 BAB needed. You only loose one caster level of Druid and two levels of wild shape, and with Natural Bond you don't loose any level of Animal (Familiar) Companion.

This way you get many neat arcane spells (Haste et. al.), and it improves your Animal (Familiar) Companion and you get Improved Initiative for free. For extra cheese, be a conjurer and trade away your familiar for Abrupt Jaunt ACF (as technically your arcane spell casting class doesn't have to have a familiar, the book assumes you have it).