New player needs advice

[wulfire]

Ok, so I finally caved in and decided to join in with a group of friends who wanted to start playing D&D (3.5). However, from what I can gather from other posts, our DM is doing things others aren’t.

Firstly, I created a Druid (being a nube) thinking that would get me into things and enjoy the wildshaping aspect of the character. All the DM allowed us to do was assign the attribute points and race and gender of our class and he would do the rest, including skills and back story of all characters – all in order to give us “another class to our characters later in the game”.

Well my Half-elf druid now has aspects he shouldn’t, such as knowledge of Draconic language and of the Arcane. Also, the back story mentions that the mother of my character had a close affinity to Dragons…

During the first ‘chapter’ of play the group came across a dragon who would only talk to me, though I was not the only one to understand the language. I’ve had a sly look through the 3.5 Character book, I believe that I will be gaining Dragon Disciple as long as I rank up Arcane.

My question is this: How can I make this work? Surely as a Dragon Disciple I will lose my druid powers as I wouldn’t revere nature any more? Is there another class I can add that would improve my chances of holding my own within the group?

Any help you can give me would be fantastic!

[Der_DWSage]

There's no reason to think that taking levels in Dragon Disciple will make you lose Druidic powers. Nothing short of wearing metal armor or changing alignment will do that to you.

As for Dragon Disciple...it's an interesting thought. Normally, you need spontaneous arcane spells (Druids cast divine spells, and are prepared casters.) but the GM may be waiving that requirement for story reasons. But if he is going to force the class upon you, the only real thing you can do in response is take more martial feats as you level up. Things like Power Attack, Improved Grapple, and whatnot. Dragon Disciple does not advance your spellcasting or wildshape capabilities, but it does give intrinsic bonuses to stats. These bonuses don't apply if you're wildshaped-so I would ask if you could change out the normal Wildshape for the one from PHBII. (Yes, mechanically inferior, but more balanced in my opinion, and more flavorful.)

If he's not putting Dragon Disciple to you, just lay back and enjoy being a Druid. He may just be giving you a Dragon Animal Companion and Dragon Shape later down the road, and you may be misreading the situation.

[Evolved Shrimp]

My advice would be not to worry. Your DM seems to have plans for the development of the group, and as such I would rely on him to not leave you stranded with an unusable development path. (Unless you have reason to believe he’s a bozo –*but why would you playing with him in that case?)

Should it later turn out that your DM did not take good care of the requirements for your character’s development, you can still take the issue up with him, and suggest appropriate changes to the character’s story and capabilities.

But, again, for now I’d say enjoy the game and don’t worry.

[eggynack]

You can take dragon disciple without ill effects. You should not do that. The DM you're playing with seems like a somewhat problematic person, and druids can adapt to problematic situations of the nature your DM presents pretty easily. The DM can control many aspects of your druid's build, and he'll still be about as powerful as he would be with an actual build. You still have perfect control of your spell selection, and your animal companion, and your wild shape forms. If you want a high chance of providing value to your group, just take as many levels of druid as there are levels of your character, and never look back.

I'm just going to assume that you're looking at purely core book access, and that you're level one. If that's the case, you should probably prepare a couple of entangles, and fill up the remaining slots with obscuring mist and produce flame. Entangle is just an absolutely amazing spell, locking down an entire battlefield, while produce flame can serve as an effective damage spell, particularly if you share it with your animal companion. Obscuring mist is just a standard defensive spell, and a pretty good one at that. For zeroth level spells, you should go with mostly detect magic, with some cure minor wounds and create water filling out the rest. Detect magic has obvious utility, even at high levels, while cure minor wounds is just about the only cure spell I'll prepare, and create water just has a bunch of different uses.

As for other stuff, you should probably use a riding dog as your animal companion if you're not doing that already. Those things pack a huge punch for their level, and putting leather barding on them just gets that power up higher. For feats, I'd generally recommend spell focus (conjuration), augment summoning, and natural spell at 6th. No matter what else you do, take natural spell at 6th. For equipment, I'd go with a sling to back up my riding dog at range, and maybe a quarterstaff or spear for closer fights. You should also pick up studded leather armor, because it's the best you have access to. If you have broader book or level access than I've assumed, then some of this advice changes, but much of it does not.