druids: caster or shapeshifter? optimized?

[The Shadowdove]

Our party is pretty full of new players.

Myself, previously an adventurer without any DM experience, am now one of two DMs.

Honestly, I've never played a druid and haven't put much mind to them.

Most of my experience with them in my party (no one optimized/just picked fun classes back then) is that they kind of heal, kind of light things on fire, and turn into cool or uncool things..

Our druid wants to play a crafty gnome druid who has a riding dog familiar.

What do optimized druids look like?

What are the go to feats, spells, and combos?

Are they summoners too?

Do they scale?

Thanks in advance.

Your superior knowledge and experience are much appreciated!

-Dove

[rmnimoc]

An optimized druid doesn't have to pick between caster or shapeshifter. They just take natural spell and drop blizzards on people as an angry polar bear riding giant angry polar bears.

[gorfnab]

This may be of some use:
Druid Handbook (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=1354.0)

Druids are one of the most powerful and versatile classes in D&D3.5. For feats Natural Spell at 6th level is pretty much required as it allows you to cast spells while wild shaped. Natural Bond is a nice feat to give you better progressions of higher level animal companion choices.

[unbeliever536]

Note that taking both alternative class features from the PHBII will considerably simplify the druid and also make it less likely to overshadow other players. I and a few other people on these boards think it's a good option for inexperienced groups so as to avoid the problem of the druid being accidentally super op (or just slowing everything down while they look up summons and transformations, but that can be solved by preplanning).

If the whole party is going to hunt around op boards and the like, of course, you'll want to worry about things like the tier list (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?PHPSESSID=m30kedjci3qk7vs4cbsu4q5pb7&topic=658), but that shouldn't be a big deal in your second campaign, as long as you're careful with full casters on the high end and Monks/Fighters on the low end.

Again, though, it's hard to screw up a Druid; much easier to accidentally be way overpowered relative to the rest of the party.

[Drachasor]

A Druid looks like a charging massive feline with 5 attacks along with a half-dozen similar buddies. And they can cast just fine before, after, or between those attacks.

They are one of the classes with the highest optimization floors; it's easy to make them extremely effective.

They only need 3 feats. Spell Focus (Conjuration), Augment Summon, and Natural Spell. Those are also the most obvious feats for them to take given their class abilities. This is why they are very easy to make powerful.

A Druid pretty easily makes traditional warrior classes look weak (because they are). They pretty much have to put a good bit of effort into not doing this (such as not using Wild Shape).

[The Shadowdove]

An optimized druid doesn't have to pick between caster or shapeshifter. They just take natural spell and drop blizzards on people as an angry polar bear riding giant angry polar bears.

Confused @.@

But amused?

Riding???

[Gemini476]

A Fighter can fight like a bear.

A Druid can fight as a bear, while riding a dire bear, and summon a horde of bears to fight alongside him.

That's the moderately mid-op version.

Higher op includes stuff like being a Desmodu Hunting Bat and flying around nuking enemies with spells while your Animal Companion wrecks the opposition down below (Fleshraker is nice for high Medium, but for larger sizes bears are actually a decent choice).

But yeah, read some handbooks.

[The Shadowdove]

A Fighter can fight like a bear.

A Druid can fight as a bear, while riding a dire bear, and summon a horde of bears to fight alongside him.

That's the moderately mid-op version.

~~~~~~.

Had no clue you could ride a bear as a bear..... -to ride check?

Anyway, yah! Thanks for introducing me to the handbooks. They'll save me a lot of embarrassing questions in the future.

[Spore]

Had no clue you could ride a bear as a bear..... -to ride check?

Anyway, yah! Thanks for introducing me to the handbooks. They'll save me a lot of embarrassing questions in the future.

That's a joke on the russian bear cavalry "meme"

http://i.imgur.com/cmOB3s0.jpg

Still, you need about two turns to throw 3+ bears onto the battlefield if you want. One companion, one summon (or several if using higher level slots for lower creatures) and your own wildshape. And you deal about equal damage as a fighter anyway on your own. Summons and the companion are just pitched in.

[eggynack]

Druids are all about the spell list. With sufficient book access, and a solid working knowledge of those books, a druid can do just about anything in existence, including some stuff that they don't seem to have that much ability to do. The list isn't quite as powerful as the wizard list, and it tends to be a bit worse than the cleric list if you optimize domain selection (though this can be reversed to some extent by dipping contemplative), but that still leaves you with one of the most powerful lists in the game. Moreover, with spontaneous summoning in hand, a druid has the capability to prepare situational spells like wind wall with the assurance that they can convert them into generically useful dire wolves. In a broader sense, spontaneous summoning grants a variety of useful abilities, all accessible at any moment.

However, the really scary thing about druids is, druids are not all about the spell list. The animal companion starts out the game as a not so mini fighter, granting the low level druid the capacity to beatstick and spellcast simultaneously. The animal companion is ultimately the ability that grants druids their low level superiority over other classes, and it's an advantage that can stretch out even longer if you pick up natural bond (CAdv, 111) and get a fleshraker (MM III, 40) at level 4. Meanwhile, they also get wild shape, which is effectively a multi-use long duration buff that grants everything from utility to mobility to face consumption, and it allows you to switch between those things as a standard action (swift, if you have a mantle of the beast (CC, 140)). Wild shape gets even more absurd when you toss on something like exalted wild shape (BoED, 42), granting access to the Ex abilities of all of your animals and at-will dimension door from blink dog, or when you get dragon wild shape (Draconomicon, 105) for all of the absurd abilities inherent to small and medium dragons.

So, what do optimized druids look like? There's some stuff beyond that point, if you know the class, but most often they look like a druid 20 with natural spell at 6th. Where are the feats, spells, and combos? All around you, though constructing a massive list of that stuff seems a bit outside the scope of a single post. Still, for feats you're usually picking out of one of three or four categories. You have summoning stuff, like greenbound (LEoF, 8) and rashemi elemental summoning (UE, 45), you have wild shape stuff, like the aforementioned dragon and exalted wild shape, you have animal companion stuff, like natural bond or companion spellbond (PHB II, 77), and you sometimes have magic stuff, like extend spell. Are they summoners too? Yes, very much so, even without any real investment. Do they scale? Yes, all the time, forever. If you seek more information on the druidic arts, mostly spell based but often not spell based, I could always PM over the handbook I've been working on on the topic. Either way, may you have great success in your druid endeavors, and maybe not have your entire campaign devoured by one's gaping maw.