Homebrew Challenge: Tier 3 Spellcasting Druids

[johnbragg]

I've been trying to build and collect class-fixes for the Tier 1-2 classes for Tier 3-4 campaigns. I looked in Morph Barks' Homebrew Tier Compendium, and I didn't see any casting-focused Druid fixes.

Now some parts are obvious--no wildshaping takes away a lot of the druid's melee power. A caster-type probably shouldn't have d8 HD and 3/4 BAB either.

But you still have a Tier 1 spell list. Spontaneous Divine Caster is one way to go, but that's Tier 2 by analogy. Just the Summon NAture's Ally line might put you at Tier 3 based on flexibility. And do we want the druid to be limited to the Sorcerer's spells known plus SNAs?

Limiting to 6-level Bard-progression casting is an option too, but I think the spellcasting Druid *should* have access to the high-level city-wrecking wrath-of-nature spells.

Does the spells-only Druid need to be split up into a bunch of fixed-list casters by climate region? Forest druids and arctic druids and desert druids and mountain druids and desert druids?

Thoughts?

[dspeyer]

Just off the top of my head, I may have overlooked important things...

LevelBABFortRefWillSpecialSpells/Day (major)Spells/Day (minor)
0123456789012345
10022Wild Empathy311
210334221
3213342131
43144Second Minor53232
53144532142
642556332421
7525564321431
86266Animal Companion (half ranger)64332432
96366644321442
1073776443324421
11837765443214431
129488Third Minor65443324432
139488655443214442
14104996554433244421
151159965554432144431
161251010Rebuke Animals and Plant Creatures65554433244432
171251010655554432144442
1813611116555544332444421
191461111Fourth Minor6555555433444432
201561212Second Major6555555544444443

Prepared wis-based caster. Track major and minor spell slots seperately. You may use a major list as one of your minors, but you never get the high level spells on it.

Major Lists

animal
0
1
Calm Animals
Charm Animal
Detect Animals or Plants
Hide from Animals
Speak with Animals

2
Animal Messenger
Animal Trance
Hold Animal
Reduce Animal

3
Dominate Animal

4
Giant Vermin
Repel Vermin

5
Animal Growth
Awaken

6
Antilife Shell

8
Animal Shapes

9
Antipathy
Shapechange
Sympathy


healing
0
Cure Minor Wounds
Virtue

1
Cure Light Wounds
Goodberry

2
Delay Poison
Restoration, Lesser

3
Cure Moderate Wounds
Neutralize Poison
Remove Disease

4
Cure Serious Wounds
Reincarnate

5
Cure Critical Wounds
Death Ward

6
Cure Light Wounds, Mass

7
Cure Moderate Wounds, Mass
Heal

8
Cure Serious Wounds, Mass

9
Cure Critical Wounds, Mass
Regenerate


plant
0
1
Detect Animals or Plants
Entangle

2
Tree Shape
Warp Wood
Wood Shape

3
Diminish Plants
Plant Growth
Speak with Plants

4
Antiplant Shell
Blight
Command Plants

5
Tree Stride
Wall of Thorns

6
Liveoak
Repel Wood
Transport via Plants

7
Animate Plants
Changestaff
Transmute Metal to Wood

8
Control Plants

9
Shambler



summoning
0
1
Summon Nature's Ally I

2
Summon Nature's Ally II
Summon Swarm

3
Summon Nature's Ally III

4
Summon Nature's Ally IV

5
Insect Plague
Summon Nature's Ally V

6
Summon Nature's Ally VI

7
Creeping Doom
Summon Nature's Ally VII

8
Summon Nature's Ally VIII

9
Elemental Swarm
Shambler
Summon Nature's Ally IX


survival
0
0
Create Water
Detect Poison
Guidance
Know Direction
Mending
Purify Food and Drink
Resistance

1
Detect Snares and Pits
Endure Elements

3
Snare

4
Scrying

5
Commune with Nature

6
Find the Path

7
Control Weather
Scrying, Greater
True Seeing

9
Foresight

violence
0
1
Magic Fang
Magic Stone
Shillelagh

2
Barkskin
Bear's Endurance
Bull's Strength
Chill Metal
Heat Metal

3
Contagion
Magic Fang, Greater
Poison

4
Rusting Grasp

5
Baleful Polymorph
Stoneskin

6
Bear's Endurance, Mass
Bull's Strength, Mass
Ironwood

7
Fire Storm

8
Earthquake
Finger of Death

9
Storm of Vengeance


Minor Lists

air
0
1
Obscuring Mist

2
Fog Cloud
Gust of Wind

3
Wind Wall

4
Air Walk

5
Control Winds


earth
0
2
Soften Earth and Stone

3
Meld into Stone
Spike Growth
Stone Shape

4
Spike Stones

5
Stone Tell
Transmute Mud to Rock
Transmute Rock to Mud


energy
0
0
Light

2
Resist Energy

3
Call Lightning
Daylight
Protection from Energy

5
Call Lightning Storm


fire
0
0
Flare

1
Faerie Fire
Produce Flame

2
Fire Trap
Flame Blade
Flaming Sphere

3
Quench

4
Flame Strike

5
Wall of Fire


magic
0
0
Detect Magic
Read Magic

2
Owl's Wisdom

3
Dispel Magic

5
Atonement
Hallow
Spellstaff
Unhallow


motion
0
1
Jump
Longstrider
Pass without Trace

2
Cat's Grace
Spider Climb

4
Freedom of Movement


water
0
1
Obscuring Mist

2
Fog Cloud

3
Sleet Storm
Water Breathing

4
Control Water
Ice Storm

[ngilop]

I would recommend splitting the druid up into 2 different classes, the spll casting animal companion one. and a wild shape focused one

dspeyer has a good idea there. though I think that igving them 1.5 the number of spells per day is a not going to drop it down to 'tier' 3. but giving an animal companion at 8th level is pointless if anything sneezes its dead.. I am just against handing over class abilities that are actually hindraces

if you are taking the druid's casting down a few notches then I see no reason with letting the druid get an animal companion at 4th ( I switched ranger and druid companions myself) also I think it be ok to give the Druid 7th level spells


I have the Primal (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=264875), wildshape in a class with invocations. If you wanna take a look at what a wildshape class would look like.

[johnbragg]

I would recommend splitting the druid up into 2 different classes, the spll casting animal companion one. and a wild shape focused one

I think that's a given. The problem is that, with or without an animal friend, the Druid's spellcasting is way above Tier 3.


dspeyer has a good idea there. though I think that igving them 1.5 the number of spells per day is a not going to drop it down to 'tier' 3.

I like it as a start, too. I like that it keeps 9th level casting--the Beguiler and Dread Necromancer etc have 9th level casting in their niche, so should the Tier 3 Druid.

The majors-and-minors is an idea that has promise. Maybe instead of two separate lists, just a rule that you can't prep more than 1 spell/spell level from a minor list, and nothing above 5th or 6th?

The PRimal doesn't look too bad, but it's the opposite focus--it replaces the already-serviceable Wildshape Variant Ranger. Cool bells and whistles, I like it.

[Alent]

It's nowhere near ready for use, but I'm working on a Psionic druid that currently looks something like this:

Druid

Hit Die: D6

{table=head]Level|BAB|Fort|Ref|Will|Special |
Power Points/Day |
Powers Known |
Maximum Power Level Known

1st|+0|+2|+0|+2|Animal Companion, Nature Sense, Wild Empathy|
3 |
3 |
1st

2nd|+1|+3|+0|+3|Woodland Stride|
5 |
5 |
1st

3rd|+1|+3|+1|+3|Trackless Step, Wild Shape (Animal) |
7 |
7 |
1st

4th|+2|+4|+1|+4|Resist Nature's Lure|
12 |
9 |
2nd

5th|+2|+4|+1|+4||
15 |
11 |
2nd

6th|+3|+5|+2|+5|Wild Shape (Large)|
28 |
13 |
2nd

7th|+3|+5|+2|+5||
36 |
15 |
3rd

8th|+4|+6|+2|+6||
52 |
17 |
3rd

9th|+4|+6|+3|+6|Wild Shape (Plant)|
67 |
19 |
3rd

10th|+5|+7|+3|+7|Venom Immunity|
81 |
21 |
4th

11th|+5|+7|+3|+7|Wild Shape (Tiny)|
97 |
22 |
4th

12th|+6/+1|+8|+4|+8||
111 |
24 |
4th

13th|+6/+1|+8|+4|+8|A Thousand Faces|
127 |
25 |
5th

14th|+7/+2|+9|+4|+9|Timeless Body|
141 |
27 |
5th

15th|+7/+2|+9|+5|+9|Wild Shape (Elemental)|
157 |
28 |
5th

16th|+8/+3|+10|+5|+10|Wild Shape (Huge)|
171 |
30 |
6th

17th|+8/+3|+10|+5|+10||
187 |
31 |
6th

18th|+9/+4|+11|+6|+11||
201 |
33 |
6th

19th|+9/+4|+11|+6|+11||
217 |
34 |
7th

20th|+10/+5|+12|+6|+12|Wild Shape (Magical Beast)|
233 |
36 |
7th

[/table]

Balance points I'm working on:

Wild Shape:
The maximum HD of creature you can wildshape into is limited by your BAB. This will limit you to 10 hit dice forms at the high end.

Wildshape will cost PP/hr to use as if it were a psionic power. This will put it in direct competition with your spellcasting resource. When I start cost testing I'll also look at the duration of Wildshape. It seems too cheap as an hourly resource.

The more wildshape features you manifest, the more expensive the PP cost. Wildshaping into a medium animal is cheap. Wildshaping into a Large Elemental is expensive. Exact costs need to be mathed out still, but I was thinking a 10 HD Elemental would be equivalent to a level 9 power, or 17 points.

When Wildshaping into a creature you gain bonus hit dice equal to the creature's that function as the temporary HP gain from Rage, instead of magically healing you to full or giving you their exact HP.

Under this model, Natural Spell would not be a requirement to manifest powers in Wild Shape, it would however still be a requirement to cast spells from other classes in Wildshape.

Spellcasting:
I'm limiting it to 7ths because as I recall, that's how 2e druid domains worked. You can swap it to 9ths if you want.

Druids gain all levels of Summon Nature's Ally when appropriate, it does not count against powers known.

Druids choose a domain (Animal, Plant, Earth, or Air) and gain powers from either it or the Druid powers list. Domains would go to 7th level, the druid powers list would only go to 6th level.

I've been busy with day job stuff and haven't been able to flesh this out as much as I'd like, but on my todo list is to build the domain powers list and the generic druid list.


Druidic:
There is no Druidic. You gain Mindlink as a bonus power.

Assumptions:
You houserule that PP regen exploits don't work.

Again, this is still horribly unfinished, until I actually get a day or two to sit down and finish reviewing the Psionics rules, build the spell lists, and math out appropriate PP costs for Wildshape, it probably only moves it to T2 at best.

[dspeyer]

giving an animal companion at 8th level is pointless if anything sneezes its dead.. I am just against handing over class abilities that are actually hindraces

Good point.

I needed to put something at 8th and 16th levels, and aggravatingly the druid doesn't have much in the way of features. Three powerful *progressions*, yes, but things to stick at a single level, not so much.

Maybe there's a more elegant solution...

[Yitzi]

I think the most promising approach is to give druids a poor selection of weak combat spells, but complement it with the ability to get animal allies (either the SNA line or multiple animal companions with fewer boosts) and with extremely powerful, but slow-to-cast, "wrath of nature" type spells at higher levels.

[ngilop]

you can improve woodland stride at 8th level to make it work against magical thorns and terrain.


but that is just an idea and I am against giving spellcaster class abilities that increase their power.

[dspeyer]

Hmm, maybe this will be more elegant.

One set of spell slots, but each list goes into your class spell list at a different rate. Which means you could use a 6th level slot for a minor list spell with metamagic on it. Pick 4 lists and then get the very bottom of all the others at high level.

LevelBABFortRefWillSpecialSpells/DayMax Spell Level Known
01234567891st2nd3rd4thAll
10022Wild Empathy311
210334211
3213342121
4314453222
53144532132
642556332321
7525564321421
8626664332431
96366644321531
1073776443325322
11837765443216322
12948865443326422
139488655443217422
14104996554433274331
151159965554432184331
16125101065554433285331
171251010655554432195331
181361111655554433295441
191461111655555543395542
[tr]20156121265555555449555[td]3

[Alent]

I think the most promising approach is to give druids a poor selection of weak combat spells, but complement it with the ability to get animal allies (either the SNA line or multiple animal companions with fewer boosts) and with extremely powerful, but slow-to-cast, "wrath of nature" type spells at higher levels.

As I understand it, the action economy hack of Summon Nature's Ally, by itself, is one of the more imbalancing things about Druids. You can give yourself an ever increasing number of turns. Who needs to tumble when you can run your opponent out of AoOs by giving him a "Bad either way" situation where he can AoO one of a few summoned bears, your bear, your bear mount or you in bear form. Odds are he doesn't have more than the one AoO, and even if he does, you still would have more summoned bears. Just have a bear grapple him and forget about AoOs, anyway.

For how abusive SNA can be, I'm not sure you can remove it without taking away one of the staples of what makes 3.5 druid a druid. :smallannoyed:

On the other hand, giving them weak combat spells? Yeah, Blasting makes casters overpowered. :smallwink: