A Bit of Druid Help

[Kazudo]

Alright. Well, I'm building a 14th level Druid.

The restrictions are Core only. The DM is a bit of a purist on that. He's being kind enough to grant me Druidic Avenger, but I dare not ask for more since he might just veto that.

At any rate, I'm not looking for optimization here, I need some suggestions for what forms a 14th level druid should typically mainstay from the Core 3. Read: the Monster Manual and that's about it.

[eggynack]

The laws of normal wild shape form selection apply pretty similarly to core as they do to all-book games. In other words, dire animals and dinosaurs. So, as your flight form, the best choice is likely the dire bat (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/direBat.htm), for pouncing, consider something like a dire lion (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/direLion.htm) or megaraptor (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/dinosaur.htm#megaraptor), and for grappling, perhaps a dire bear (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/direBear.htm). Things change quite a bit when you get huge forms in a level, so you'll probably have to reevaluate your list when you hit 15. Incidentally, I'd advise against druidic avenger. Spontaneous SNA is amazing.

[cakellene]

Druid 20 would be better than avenger, imo. Druid is the D in CoDzilla after all.

[Gavinfoxx]

Remember, you use as MANY of these as possible if your goal is to reduce the power of Druid to be lower than normal:

Shapeshift Variant (Player's Handbook II)
Deadly Hunter Variant (Unearthed Arcana, SRD)
Druidic Avenger Variant (Unearthed Arcana, SRD)
Spontaneous Divine Caster Variant (Unearthed Arcana, SRD)
Spontaneous Affliction Variant (Exemplars of Evil)
Spontaneous Rejuvenation (Player's Handbook II)

Because ALL of these are less powerful than the normal core method of playing a Druid.

You know.

Where at level 14, you are a Dire Bear (24/7, use an amulet of thought projection to communicate with the party, put it on after wild shaping) with a pet Dire Bear, both of you wearing Enchanted Barding or Wild Armor, or a Monk's Belt or whatever (put it on after wild shaping), and you have already picked all the useful core feats for Druid-ing, like Extend Spell, Spell focus Conjuration, Natural Spell, Augment Summon, and Improved Natural Attack (Claws).

[Kazudo]

So, yaknow, thanks for all the advicd about why me picking druidic avenger was a bad idea and all. Frankly that part I don't care about. I was more interested in what wild shape forms one would recommend for a level 14 druid.

The entire reason I gave myself a minor gimp by taking avenger was because the remainder of the group aren't optimizers and the core rulebooks are the only thing available. The DM is fully aware of how good a player I am, and the two of us agreed that this would be best for inter-party balance, fluff reasons, etc. That said, thanks for the help!

[Hurnn]

For general purpose and all around use it's hard to beat the dire bear.