[PF] Melee Druid Advice

[Psyren]

I have a PF game starting up soon and my party needs a primary melee. I settled on an Oread Druid (+2 Str, +2 Wis, -2 Cha) but this is my first time playing a melee druid in PF. For flavor reasons (and to avoid oversaturating the melee in the party - I think we have a Magus and a Monk) I'd like to go with the domain rather than the animal companion; this will also let me take advantage of the Oread's Earth Affinity racial.


Questions for the Playground:

1) Is there a good archetype for a Druid that can help me focus on Wildshape and melee? Preferably one that dumps the "chaff" abilities like Trackless Step and Resist Nature's Lore.

2) Any good melee forms (especially tanky ones) I can look forward to?

3) Any good spells for a gish druid?

4) Lastly, any feat or item suggestions?

I've read Treantmonk's guide but it's unfortunately out of date (core only.) So I'm willing to be there are newer forms/spells/feats out there that he didn't cover.

[Andvare]

The Dragon Shaman (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/druid/archetypes/paizo---druid-archetypes/dragon-shaman#TOC-Totem-Transformation-Su-) isn't bad, too bad there aren't that many lizards. Neither is Saurian Shaman (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/druid/archetypes/paizo---druid-archetypes/saurian-shaman).
A Desert Druid (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/druid/archetypes/paizo---druid-archetypes/desert-druid) might seem a bit counter productive, but vermin shapes are nice.
If none of those trickle your fancy, Menhir Savant (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/druid/archetypes/paizo---druid-archetypes/menhir-savant) is often the goto archetype.

Edit: I really like the Storm Druid (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/druid/archetypes/paizo---druid-archetypes/storm-druid), but it doesn't help your wildshape much.

More edit: On the feat side, there is Powerful Shape (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/powerful-shape) and Planar Wildshape (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/planar-wild-shape). You might also want to look at Wild Speech (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/wild-speech).

[Karoht]

Saurian Shaman.
Call yourself a Dinomancer. Dooo eeeet.

Planar Wild Shape
and
Powerful Shape
Both highly recommended if no one else has mentioned them.

Eldritch Claw tends to be really useful early on (treat natural weapons as magic and silver) but it falls off pretty quick.

A two level dip into Monk is sometimes useful. Depends on if you want to grapple or not. There is a feat you can take that will let you Flurry of Blows with natural weapons, but as far as I understand that really isn't a massively helpful thing.

Another trick I was told was to do about 8 levels of Druid, and then go Barbarian with lots and lots of Rage powers. I've never seen it stat'd out though, unsure how useful it genuinely would be.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Menhir Savant is my favorite Druid archetype.

Are you dead set against a companion? Because Feather (Animal) domain will give you a nice perception bonus and some useful flight spells, and then with Boon Companion feat you end up with a full progression animal as well. It's a pretty good deal. You could pick a Roc to serve as mount for one of the melee people. Or something with really long reach/Lunge to just attack from behind them (like the Giant Praying Mantis, iirc).

I'm not sure what the form will really help you with tanking. Some have pounce, some have flight... but for stuff like natural armor, dex adjustment, etc... it's all determined by the beast shape spell anyway.

Around level 10 when you can start turning into large (and then huge) elementals, you might want to consider switching back to weapons-based combat, since elementals are or can be humanoid-shaped. I played a high level druid and the Air Elemental form is tough to beat; I liked Earth as well but that was before paizo nerfed Elemental Body (Earth) -- it used to give you Push. Still decent for the burrowing and high strength.

If you want to do combat maneuvers, Powerful Wildshape is decent when in a Huge form... +2 to CMB. In large it's only +1 and probably not worth the feat.

For items... I'm a big fan of the boots of feather stepping. 2000 gp to ignore difficult terrain, some of which will likely be created by you anyway. The headband of Aerial Superiority, tied to Wisdom bonuses, is expensive but late game would let you not have to choose between having flight or pounce. At low levels, before wildshape, note that PF gave druids scythe proficiency. Go with that or scimitar + shield. For armor, the eastern ones open up some new non-metal options, like Leather Lamellar (Light, +4 armor, dex +3), Horn Lamellar (medium, +5 armor, +3 dex), and Do-Maru (medium, +5 armor, +4 dex). Do-maru might be questionable, it doesn't mention what *kind* of lamellar it's made up of, but considering 3 of the 4 cheaper lamellar armors are non-metal (and the metal one gives more armor than do-maru!), it should be fair game.

[Andvare]

If you do dip, do get the Shaping Focus (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/shaping-focus) feat.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Oh, at level 11, take the Divine Interference feat and stock up on 1st level pearls of power. Proceed to negate enemies' critical threats all day long. :smallbiggrin:

If your DM will allow the original version of the Glorious Heat feat and not the completely worthless nerfed version that now exists, you might want to consider that at 5th level. The old version healed an ally within 30 ft of half your CL in damage any time you cast a divine Fire spell. So you'd prepare the Spark orison and have unlimited out of combat healing. Ultimately, probably less cost effective than just taking Craft Wands and making wands of CLW (and any other wands the party wants) for half price. But it was really fun for me, healing people by lighting candles.

[grarrrg]

Melee Druid?
Dip Ranger for 1 level, take Shapeshifting Hunter (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/feats/general-feats/shapeshifting-hunter).
Congratulations! You now have full Favored Enemy progression!

Instant Enemy (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/i/instant-enemy), while quite helpful, would require either a Wand, or Samsaran Race for ease of use (there are other options, but they are more involved).

[Gnaeus]

Oh, at level 11, take the Divine Interference feat and stock up on 1st level pearls of power. Proceed to negate enemies' critical threats all day long. :smallbiggrin:


All day long but only once per person per day.

[Psyren]

Thank you all for the great advice!

1) Menhir Savant is perfect for this character :smallsmile: I'm definitely going with that. Before I lock it in though, what are opinions on World Walker? I don't know enough about rangers to know if Favored Terrain can be optimized in any way. Our DM tends to favor urban and underground environments so I could potentially get some use out of it.

2) Powerful Shape is a great suggestion and definitely going on the feat list. I'm less enamored of Wild Speech though - Natural Spell already handles my verbal components so this seems a bit redundant. Are there any items that can let me talk in-form? If not, I'll just leave the talking to outside combat. Planar Wild Shape is a great suggestion too because my DM likes evil monsters (undead, chromatic dragons, fiends etc) so I expect to get decent mileage out of the smite ability. Divine Interference looks amazing.

3) I probably won't dip, but if I do, Shaping Focus is a good suggestion, thanks!

4) Thank you for the gear suggestions Stream. I'll likely go Scimitar + Shield to start off, and move to the others as we gain levels.

5) I'll skip the unlimited healing and make wands :smallsmile:

Thank you for all the suggestions and keep them coming!

[Squirrel_Dude]

Do-maru might be questionable, it doesn't mention what *kind* of lamellar it's made up of, but considering 3 of the 4 cheaper lamellar armors are non-metal (and the metal one gives more armor than do-maru!), it should be fair game.Eastern Armor does have the best selection of medium armor. I love me some Kikko (if only you weren't a druid)

Also, historically (aka according to wikipedia) Do-Maru was typically made of either leather or metal strapped together. It should definitely be fair game.

As for the Oread part, I'll make sure to remind you to pick up some of their alternate features.
- Earth Affinity is for Sorcerers and Clerics. Get rid of it unless you can talk a DM into allowing the cleric stuff to apply to your domains & you want the Earth domain. I'd recommend Earth Insight or Crystaline Form.
- Their favored class options is ****e. I wouldn't recommend it. Hit points for you.
- I'd recommend Ferrous Growth over Magic Stone. There's more you can do with the ability to turn a sliver of iron or steel into a mundane weapon/item for a little bit than you can with magic stone.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Oread has some great variants.

I'd take Ferrous Growth and Crystalline Form. Granite Skin is the best trade of all, though as a druid you will quickly obsolete it w/ wild shaping... Still might be worth it, acid resist 5 is pretty useless.

[Psyren]

Are you dead set against a companion? Because Feather (Animal) domain will give you a nice perception bonus and some useful flight spells, and then with Boon Companion feat you end up with a full progression animal as well. It's a pretty good deal. You could pick a Roc to serve as mount for one of the melee people. Or something with really long reach/Lunge to just attack from behind them (like the Giant Praying Mantis, iirc).

Feather doesn't really fit his concept (going heavy on the earth theme for this guy) so I'm going to pass, but I will file this one away for a later campaign.



As for the Oread part, I'll make sure to remind you to pick up some of their alternate features.
- Earth Affinity is for Sorcerers and Clerics. Get rid of it unless you can talk a DM into allowing the cleric stuff to apply to your domains & you want the Earth domain. I'd recommend Earth Insight or Crystaline Form.
- Their favored class options is ****e. I wouldn't recommend it. Hit points for you.
- I'd recommend Ferrous Growth over Magic Stone. There's more you can do with the ability to turn a sliver of iron or steel into a mundane weapon/item for a little bit than you can with magic stone.

1) I'm aware of the technicality, but I'm confident I can get the Earth Affinity approved for my druid. I also plan on getting Granite Skin.
2) HP indeed :smallcool:
3) Actually I'm leaning more towards Treacherous Earth, to stop a spellcaster from stepping away from me. It appears to be supernatural too, so I can activate it in melee.


Oread has some great variants.

I'd take Ferrous Growth and Crystalline Form. Granite Skin is the best trade of all, though as a druid you will quickly obsolete it w/ wild shaping... Still might be worth it, acid resist 5 is pretty useless.

Granite Skin is a racial bonus though, so it'll stack with both wild shape and barkskin by my estimation.

[StreamOfTheSky]

Oh, right. It's a racial bonus to natural armor, not a natural armor bonus. That's strange. But good for you! Since wild shape doesn't change your type...I think.

EDIT: Even if you do get Earth Domain powers and spells at +1 CL, will that really help you much? Most of the spells don't really need high CL for much. If you're doing Earth, you definitely want Caves subdomain, though.

[Psyren]

Oh, right. It's a racial bonus to natural armor, not a natural armor bonus. That's strange. But good for you! Since wild shape doesn't change your type...I think.

That's actually left pretty vague. Alternate Form doesn't exist in PF so I would rule that it does actually change your creature type (making you susceptible to spells like Charm Animal) but it's not clear.

The closest I've found is the line in the polymorph descriptor that says when you change into X type, your gear melds into your body.

But it's moot anyway because the polymorph descriptor doesn't say anything about losing racials. If it did, you'd lose your human bonus feat for instance.



EDIT: Even if you do get Earth Domain powers and spells at +1 CL, will that really help you much? Most of the spells don't really need high CL for much. If you're doing Earth, you definitely want Caves subdomain, though.

For Soften, Stone Shape, Wall of Stone, and especially Stoneskin I'll want as high a CL as I can get, so every bit helps. Caves is nice too, I'll take a closer look at that.

[Psyren]

Couple of last-minute questions before my session today:

1) I'm most likely going with Menhir Savant, but I was also curious about the World Walker archetypes. Both would fit my character concept pretty well. Are there any cool tricks concerning favored terrains?

2) Any spell suggestions? I'm probably going with Barkskin and Goodberry to start.

3)What combat forms do people recommend? Treantmonk's guide is core-focused, so there may be good options in the later bestiaries that I'm unaware of. I'm probably going to go with a Mountain Lion form (stats as Leopard) when I first gain Wild Shape.

[grarrrg]

1) I'm most likely going with Menhir Savant, but I was also curious about the World Walker archetypes. Both would fit my character concept pretty well. Are there any cool tricks concerning favored terrains?

Nature Warden (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/prestige-classes/other-paizo/n-r/nature-warden) has a couple tricks for Favored Terrain.
It has Full Animal Companion progression, but only 7/10 casting.
The best overall bonus comes at level 2, which gives you an Insight Bonus to AC equal to half your Favored Terrain bonus when in a Favored Terrain.
There are a few more bonuses, but they either come really late, or are pretty weak.
Overall I find it good enough for 4 levels, after that the lost casting piles up.

And of course, good old Horizon Walker (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/prestige-classes/other-paizo/e-h/horizon-walker). The 0-casting will make this a short dip if anything.
The big draw here is the 3rd level Terrain Dominance ability. Besides granting you a (usually) sweet power, it lets you count ALL enemies 'native' to your Dominated Terrain as Favored Enemies, with the bonus equal to your Terrain bonus for that Terrain.

[Psyren]

Hm. I think that could be cool for an Undine Druid I was thinking of rolling. This one would use the animal companion, so that PrC would work well.

Thanks again to the Playground!