First Level Druid for a New Player

[ScubaGoomba]

Hey all!

I have a player that is new to tabletop gaming coming into a newly starting campaign. She will be playing a Gnome Druid and I was wondering what some good suggestions for first level feats could be. She has an Animal Companion and, I imagine, she'll be focusing on magic with Wild Shaping at higher levels to make for an effective combatant, as well.

Looking through the various books, I found a small handful of Feats that seemed useful to such a character, but I thought the community could help me out. It seems like most Druid feats have Wild Shape as a pre-requisite, so they're not attainable until level 9 (because, let's be real, level 6 will be Natural Spell). The ones that look most appealing, from my scan, were Animal Affinity, Combat Casting, Combat Expertise, Dodge, Fleet, Scribe Scroll, Spell Focus, Toughness, Weapon Finesse, Eagle Eyes, Go Unnoticed, Gnome Trickster, and Low Profile. Any other suggestions? I plan to gather a list of feats that would work well and present them to her.

[Edenbeast]

There are some good handbooks for PF druids out there, so have a look at those. Contrary to 3.5 etc, the pathfinder druid has to make a choice wether to excel in wildshaping and melee combat, or casting offensive spells, or more the summoner route.
My advise is to ask her what she has in mind, so you can pave the road towards the appropriate build.

[ScubaGoomba]

Oh great! I just found Treantmonk's guide to the Druid; I hadn't realized he (she?) made one. Thanks for pointing me towards that! :)

[grarrrg]

It seems like most Druid feats have Wild Shape as a pre-requisite, so they're not attainable until level 9 (because, let's be real, level 6 will be Natural Spell).

Pathfinder gives feats every Odd level. Still doesn't change the "wildshape feat math" much, as 7th will be Natural Spell.


As for feats, that depends on if they want a casting focus, a summoning focus, a melee/wildshape focus, or kinda floating in between all of them.

[MightyPirate]

Unfortunately gnomes kind of have an uphill battle if she wants to be a melee druid. It can be done of course but strength needs to be a big priority at character creation and her damage will always be a bit behind (wildshape does help a bit).

Melee focused druids enjoy beefy animal companions, especially with many natural attacks. With a casting focus it can be really hard to give up your animal companion for a domain but the payoff can be huge. Alternatively the feather sub-domain gives an animal companion at level -3 with some nice perception buffs and moderate casting power. Boon Companion can really make that worth it so add that to your feat list.

Wild Shape should be your 5th level feat. This is the case for any kind of druid, melee or casting focus. If she's not planning on heavy melee you might want to add summoning feats to the "to take" list. Spell focus conjuration tax opens up augmented summoning, superior summoning. Spell perfection is cool combined with augmented summoning and perhaps superior summoning as well. Druids really lose out on standard action summoning but the spontaneous ability almost makes up for it.

[ScubaGoomba]

Thanks for the responses! I'm going to bring these up to her next time we get a chance to sit and talk character stuff. I know the Gnome Druid with a dog Animal Companion (I'm giving the dog Trip so it's not just a useless Wolf) is something she's really set on and I anticipate she'll want to go more towards casting than combat.

With regards to creating a good build, as a DM, I'm more of a "rule of cool" DM than anything else, so flavor is always something I'm interested in cultivating over anything else (and, thankfully, my players are also of a similar mindset). So, with a Gnome Druid, she may not get a bonus to Wisdom to help with casting and has a penalty to Strength, going against melee fighting, but the concept is cool and I can adapt my encounters to best suit the players' capabilities.