Druid//Totemist

[CryptbornAkryea]

Build ideas for crazy gestalt cheese?
I'm thinking either goliath, skarn or illumian... Unless anyone has a better idea ;)

[shadowseve]

For the druid side cheese is easy. If you prestige I would go druid 5/planar shepherd 10/ druid 5. Go Dal Qour so your planar bubble gives your party a 10:1 turn ratio as long as they're in the bubble. That is broken cheese fondu. For the other side factotum ads some nice features to compliment the druid. Maybe a few levels of sword sage depending on what you want to do.

Druid with planar shepherd is pretty broken.
Humans for the extra feat is great. It really depends on the concept you want.

[Vaz]

Totemist and Incarnum in general has quite a low ceiling in that it doesn't have much game breaking power associated with it. Totemist just makes you more capable of doing what a Druid's wild shape is able to do.

Totemist 5 is a decent cut off point. It allows you to get Pounce with all Natural Attacks from Sphinx Claws bound to Arms, Telepathy to key off Mindsight with from Shedu Crown and numerous other 'low op' abilities, like Girallon Arms giving you arms which you can use while Wild Shaped.

You already have Turn Undead from Bone Talisman spell, so can go for DMM natively. The other 15 levels are up to you, really. Factotum 8 is good to get additional actions from, which is useful if you've not gone for Dal Quors 10:1 time trait. Any initiator class requires only 14 levels to still get 9th level maneuvres (14th taken at ECL20). Swordsage gets the best return from your wisdom, but its not the most major thing as a druid your mentals should already be pretty high so Crusader and Warblade should both work

Totemist 5/Cloistered Cleric 1/Warblade 14 would be my chosen 2nd side.

[CryptbornAkryea]

Thanks for the input, I don't think I ever realized how gouda the druid cheese can be.


heh, gouda...

get it?

[Red Fel]

As far as base race goes, have you considered Shifter? It's a +0 LA race, and its native Shifting ability isn't so great (I wouldn't use it) but its first two Druid Substitution levels are insane. (The third is rubbish and will be ignored.) At Druid 1, you trade your animal companion for scaling powerups. Really, really good ones. At Druid 4, you trade Resist Nature's Lure (really? a bonus against Fey?) for +2 to Initiative and Ref saves, -2 to Will saves. I remind you that your Will saves are very good, your Reflex not so much, so this is quite good.

At Druid 5, you can give up the ability to Wild Shape. Don't do that; it's a dumb idea.

Additionally, Druids gain access to some nice spells that Shifters can boost. Aspect of the Werebeast, for example, gives a nice boost to a choice of two of your physical stats, and requires the caster to be a Shifter; Reachwalker's Wariness is cast at a +1 CL by Shifters; and the Mindset bonus from Wild Instincts is increased to +2 if prepared by a Shifter.

Finally, if you decide you don't want straight Druid for whatever reason, and for some reason don't feel like taking MoMF or Warshaper either (Shifter gives you the Shapechanger subtype, so you're doubly-qualified for Warshaper), you could take the Shifter-exclusive Moonspeaker class and be completely insane.

[CryptbornAkryea]

I had been thinking that MoMF + totemist could be pretty decent, maybe with powerful wildshape.

[Vaz]

MoMF cuts off at 7th level if not going full way. Outside of that, not much point. You can't have two PrC's at the same time.

[eggynack]

At Druid 4, you trade Resist Nature's Lure (really? a bonus against Fey?) for +2 to Initiative and Ref saves, -2 to Will saves. I remind you that your Will saves are very good, your Reflex not so much, so this is quite good.
I just thought I'd note that this trade is great, but it's both better and worse than it looks. On the better side, the beast spirit's will of the spirit ability lets you re-roll saves against enchantments in the round after you fail the save in question, which makes high will saves even less necessary. On the worse side, you're not really trading away resist nature's lure. Instead, you're trading away what resist nature's lure could otherwise be, which at a baseline level is usually going to be iron constitution (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20070228a), which essentially represents immunity to nauseate, along with a bonus on saves against disease. The shifter trade is still likely the one most worth making, because initiative is just that important, but I think this stuff is worth some consideration.

[Coidzor]

Build ideas for crazy gestalt cheese?
I'm thinking either goliath, skarn or illumian... Unless anyone has a better idea ;)

Basically you want a high wisdom race that's good for Druid and a good Constitution score because of the meldshaping.

Depending upon what level you start at(5-6ish), you can go ahead and dump your Strength and Dexterity if you're using Point Buy.

A Tiger Claw Focused Warblade14/Totemist 6 gets 2 binds & Totem+Least Chakras opened. You may find this Totemist handbook (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?287304-danzibr-s-Totemist-Handbook)of interest.

With the Dragonblood subtype & a double-bind on the Totem and a bind on the shoudler chakras one can get 4 extra claws(6 if one didn't have a pair of claw attacks to start with), 2 wing buffets(with reach), and a tail attack that has some wonky rules surrounding it which would have to be negotiated with your DM. So that's between 7 and 9 extra natural weapons that can be put onto the Druid's combat forms. For two less natural weapons they can increase the size of all of their natural weapons by 1. With a combo of three soulmelds they can get the ability to deal extra fire damage on all hits and two different types of extra damage per attack on charges. Or get some mobility/flight on their less mobile heavy-duty combat wildshape forms.

Lots of ways you could play that interaction out. Druid's the most important part though because spellcasting.


I had been thinking that MoMF + totemist could be pretty decent, maybe with powerful wildshape.

Wildshaping Mystic Ranger 10/MoMF 7/Warshaper 3//Totemist 6-10/Warblade 10-14 wouldn't be too shabby, in fact, it'd be rather nice, but it would be a step down from Druid 20.

[Rebel7284]

Goliath is OK if you can buy off the LA, otherwise not worth it. Scarn lose their spines when wildshaped, so I would suggest against that. Shifter is indeed great for druids.

Some dips into classes that give turn undead allows you to use Divine Metamagic to make your spells last all day. Great on any character.

[CryptbornAkryea]

See, I personally have no experience with spell casting and/or ranged combat characters. Neither do the two PCs I'm running this gestal game for. Pitting them against such characters is a learning experience for us all.