[PF] Druid tactics help

[Legato Endless]

Greetings.

A few month ago I started a game of pathfinder, playing a caster Druid whom I intended to focus on battlefield control. Unfortunately, due either to tactical ineptitude on my part (most likely), party make up, or design flaw, my druid appears to be pretty superfluous in combat.

The party consists of a human barbarian, a half elf summoner, and a ranger. The barbarian has yet to need to hit anything outside of a solo encounter or BBEG more than twice to kill it. The summoner's offense/buffing is promising, and only going to improve. Because the Ranger wanted to be the party beast master, I took Menhir Savant as an archetype and traded my creature for the weather domain. With the eidolon, the ranger's companion, and all the summons flying around, it seemed sensible.

Out of combat, I'm the healer, the sense motive sidekick to the face. In combat, I'm redundant. The barbarian complains about any difficult terrain I create (entangle, soften earth) since he kills things fast enough that it only seems to really slow him down. Fog, mist, sleet, anything that blinds or blocks sight, is also not appreciated, since it slows down everyone's offense. Enemies rarely attack from multiple directions to make slowing them down with such worthwhile, and none of them live long enough for zones of any sort to matter. The summoner can already buff and call forth an army of creatures, so after a magic fang or two I end up blasting with flaming sphere...so I'm playing a poor man's wizard in a role no caster should ideally fill. Something's wrong.

I'm not sure if I'm mistaken about how to be a controller, mistaken about the Druid's role, if control was nerfed from 3.5, or if the party composition would be be. Any advice would be appreciated. Stats follow (perhaps a build mistake)

(25 pt build)
Str 10
Dex 14
Con 14
Int 12
Cha 7
Wis 23 (+2 bonus)

Feats
Spell Focus
Augment Summoning
Improved Initiative
Natural Spell

Skill ranks: Fly, Heal, Survival, Kn Nature, Perception, Sense Motive,
Weather domain, Menhir Savant Archetype

Assuming the problem lies with me and not the build or party synergy, any equipment advice beyond the obvious wands of metamagic would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you in advance for anyone who responds.

[Dr. Yes]

Well, it sounds like your party comp has you in kind of a tight spot. Since so much of your group's damage is coming from melee, movement-oriented battlefield control really doesn't make a lot of sense. Summoning is always an option—I mean literally, always an option, and a good one at that. You could focus on control spells like Aqueous Orb and Heatstroke that won't affect your allies' combat efficacy. You could also go blasty, though that's not going to really be rewarding until higher levels.

[Fax Celestis]

Switching to blasty is my recommendation as well. You're doing controlling right, but the party doesn't frankly need a controller--the enemies you're facing are too weak and/or uncoordinated and/or too few in number for it to be relevant.

The solution, then, is to switch to poor-man's control and just switch to the big guns. Your feat spread suggests 7th level, 5th if you're human. I'm going to assume you are and give advice for good spells to take.

1st -- hydraulic push (not damage, but good for repositioning for your partymates), produce flame (one casting should last you a whole combat), frostbite (touch attack cold damage + fatigue will screw up a lot of fighters), burning disarm (as will losing their weapon and taking damage).
2nd -- divine trident (flame blade, but electrical, which means it'll get resisted less), frigid touch (frostbite but staggered instead of fatigued; staggered is an excellent condition to inflict).
3rd -- burst of nettles (AoE physical/acid damage; good for now but doesn't scale), contagion (great for stat debuffs, as the disease applies immediately), hydraulic torrent (hydraulic push but better), ice spears (aka Evard's spiked icicles of forced intrusion), poison (can kill someone by itself if you let it go and they keep failing saves), vengeful comets (actually not very good, but hilarious).

[Khantin]

feather step (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/f/feather-step) the barb, and make him wear a goz mask (http://www.pathfindercommunity.net/magic-items/wondrous-items/goz-mask). Problems solved.

[Arbane]

Use Summon Nature's Ally to create flankers, maybe?

[Dr. Yes]

The stuff in this thread about being a poor man's Wizard actually raises a good point: without using wild shape to dominate melee or an animal companion to run interference and deal extra damage, the Druid really does compare poorly to other full casters. IIRC Treantmonk's guide has a pretty good overview of how you can get mileage out of your animal forms; being an air elemental or bird for flight comes to mind immediately. Actually, as a non-melee caster Druid, you'll probably want to be an air elemental most of the time once you can do it. I would also recommend retraining your Nature Bond to a good old fashioned tiger the next chance you get. The problem with domain slots as a Druid is that early levels, where you really feel the effects of those extra spells per day, are also where animal companions are most valuable. Once your companion starts to fall behind in efficacy you'll already have more spells per day than you can cast, and ideally they'll all be useful spells because you got to choose them.

Another point: the Druid gets a lot of "cast once per combat" blast spells, which, along with "incredibly situational nature-themed spells," seem to be part of the niche Paizo were trying to carve out for the class. These are, by and large, traps. Dealing 3d6 per round on a failed save under ideal conditions compares really, really poorly to other sources of damage. In most cases you'll be better served doing basically anything else. You could, for instance, spontaneously convert that spell slot into a Crocodile which will also last you the whole combat and can keep doing its thing while you take a full round action to do the Hokey Pokey.

[Legato Endless]

Summoning is always an option—I mean literally, always an option, and a good one at that. You could focus on control spells like Aqueous Orb and Heatstroke that won't affect your allies' combat efficacy. You could also go blasty, though that's not going to really be rewarding until higher levels.

Ah, about what level would blasting come into its own? Yes, I haven't gotten a lot of mileage out of Summons yet, but the duration at the lower levels made it seem unpalatable. I will try experimenting more with it now that actually seems usable, though the optimized Summoner might laugh at my efforts. Thanks.


Switching to blasty is my recommendation as well. You're doing controlling right, but the party doesn't frankly need a controller--the enemies you're facing are too weak and/or uncoordinated and/or too few in number for it to be relevant.

A frequent unfortunate pitfall of using a published campaign. The ranger, barbarian and I hadn't played Pathfinder before now, so we opted out from being the DM until we had some experience under our belt. The pathfinder society fanatic Summoner already DMs two other games. The current DM has played pathfinder before, but this is his first time running a game, so he decided to ease into it with Reign of Winter by Paizo.


The solution, then, is to switch to poor-man's control and just switch to the big guns. Your feat spread suggests 7th level, 5th if you're human. I'm going to assume you are and give advice for good spells to take.

Whoops. I thought I wrote that down earlier. Yes, I'm playing a level 6 human Druid.


1st -- hydraulic push (not damage, but good for repositioning for your partymates), produce flame (one casting should last you a whole combat), frostbite (touch attack cold damage + fatigue will screw up a lot of fighters), burning disarm (as will losing their weapon and taking damage).
2nd -- divine trident (flame blade, but electrical, which means it'll get resisted less), frigid touch (frostbite but staggered instead of fatigued; staggered is an excellent condition to inflict).
3rd -- burst of nettles (AoE physical/acid damage; good for now but doesn't scale), contagion (great for stat debuffs, as the disease applies immediately), hydraulic torrent (hydraulic push but better), ice spears (aka Evard's spiked icicles of forced intrusion), poison (can kill someone by itself if you let it go and they keep failing saves), vengeful comets (actually not very good, but hilarious).

Ah, thank you kindly. If it isn't too much trouble, do you have any recommendations for the remaining spell levels?

[Dr. Yes]

Ah, about what level would blasting come into its own? Yes, I haven't gotten a lot of mileage out of Summons yet, but the duration at the lower levels made it seem unpalatable. I will try experimenting more with it now that actually seems usable, though the optimized Summoner might laugh at my efforts. Thanks.

It's hard to place, but I'd say roughly when you can cast some version of Flame Strike every encounter without worrying about it. Until level 11 it's basically just a smaller version of Fireball, but the more fire resistance you run into and the higher you get past level 10, the more favorably Flame Strike compares. Add Empower, Maximize, and (especially) Dazing Spell along with some metamagic reducers, and by mid- to late-levels you're looking pretty formidable. At 13th level you get Fire Storm, which you can merrily shape to include every enemy in an encounter without touching any of your allies (although it doesn't get the hedge against fire resistance that Flame Strike does).

Actually, now that I think about it, Snowball is a very solid single-target blast (no SR, no save for damage) with a staggered rider that's also a 1st level spell. Throw on Intensify to keep the damage scaling, and you'll be acquitting yourself rather decently even before the fire stuff comes online. So forget all that stuff I said above. You can start blasting now.

[Legato Endless]

The stuff in this thread about being a poor man's Wizard actually raises a good point: without using wild shape to dominate melee or an animal companion to run interference and deal extra damage, the Druid really does compare poorly to other full casters.

So there was a flaw with how I built the character...especially trading the offense for something that didn't end up being relevant to the campaign. Gah, hindsight.


It's hard to place, but I'd say roughly when you can cast some version of Flame Strike every encounter without worrying about it. Until level 11 it's basically just a smaller version of Fireball, but the more fire resistance you run into and the higher you get past level 10, the more favorably Flame Strike compares. Add Empower, Maximize, and (especially) Dazing Spell along with some metamagic reducers, and by mid- to late-levels you're looking pretty formidable. At 13th level you get Fire Storm, which you can merrily shape to include every enemy in an encounter without touching any of your allies (although it doesn't get the hedge against fire resistance that Flame Strike does).


A Druid with an affinity to the sky and earth who eventually becomes a pyromaniac. That would make for some interesting role play for the character. Heh, sounds amusing.

Thank you for the idea and especially the analysis!

[Fax Celestis]

Ah, thank you kindly. If it isn't too much trouble, do you have any recommendations for the remaining spell levels?

4th -- ball lightning, blast barrier, cape of wasps, flame strike, geyser, ice storm

5th -- call lightning storm, fire snake, insect plague, wall of fire, wall of thorns

6th -- fire seeds, sirocco, tar pool

7th -- fire storm

8th -- finger of death, stormbolts, wall of lava

9th -- clashing rocks, polar midnight