Vow of poverty worth it for shapeshift druid?

[desero clades]

I'm going with the variant in phb2 for druids and am focusing on natural attacks by going warshaper later on. Would VoP be worth it for me?
Oh and my race is shifter.

[eggynack]

I would avoid it. VoP is quite mediocre to start with, and if you have access to neither exalted wild shape, nor exalted companion, then it becomes significantly worse. You're not even necessarily running a positive net effective feat value between the two feats necessary to acquire VoP and the exalted feat you gain from it. I mean, maybe you're running +1 effective feats after the total set of exalted feats, but most of the time you're going to be behind (For this sort of analysis, note that the exalted feats are being considered relative to the actual feats you would be taking. Thus, exalted wild shape has an effective feat value of about one, while something like nymph's kiss is maybe a half, and animal friend is almost nothing).

Incidentally, if you have the option, I would also avoid both shapeshift and warshaper. The former especially is significantly worse than wild shape, let alone wild shape and the animal companion, and the latter doesn't advance casting, which is just about the worst thing you can do on a druid. This is true even on a build focused on natural attacks. Just something to think on.

Edit: Note that, if you do skip shapeshift, vow of poverty doesn't really become good. Items are more useful than what VoP provides. It just stops being quite as bad. Druids are one of the few classes that can really pull VoP off, and get something useful out of it, but you have to be in a pretty low wealth game to hit parity with cold hard cash.

[desero clades]

I was actually trying to nerf the druid by going shapeshift. I know its weaker but the party itself is not optimized, mostly new players.

[eggynack]

I was actually trying to nerf the druid by going shapeshift. I know its weaker but the party itself is not optimized, mostly new players.
Fair enough, though the main point still stands. If your definition of "worth it" here is based on optimal paths, then VoP is very much not worth it in this situation.

[desero clades]

More or less. I was mostly wondering if it was more of a hindrance, and it seems so. I suppose I'll just get improved natural attack and such.

[Pilo]

You want a nerfed druid who focus on natural attack, why not try totemist from magic of incarnum?

Otherwise, no, vow of poverty does not worth it.

[eggynack]

You want a nerfed druid who focus on natural attack, why not try totemist from magic of incarnum?
Yeah, that'd probably work out pretty well. Alternatively, you could always go wild shape ranger for just wild shape without all of the other abilities that make also having wild shape ridiculous. The current plan here doesn't seem the best, as you're basically sacrificing everything but your spellcasting, and then turning your focus to your not spellcasting, which means turning your focus to nothing. Shapeshift is a pretty bad ACF, is what I'm saying, especially if you want to focus on the thing you're doing worse by taking shapeshift.

[Fouredged Sword]

If you want to play a REALLY easy to deal with druid that cuts down your prepwork and paperwork (compared to a standard druid) play a

Spontaneous casting variant, shapeshifting, spontaneous rejuvenation, and VoP druid. You have sorcerer like spontaneous casting (no book diving for spells), no book diving for equipment, no book diving for summons, and no book diving for wildshapes.

You are not NEARLY as powerful as a normal druid, but you can play well in a party of tier three characters, as you are a tier 2 caster who can melee really well. If you find your spells still too gamebreaking, drop a spellcaster level or two by taking 2-4 levels of Warshaper. Taking all four levels almost drops your power roof to the point you are tier 3, as you loose out on 9th level spells, and are 2 spell levels behind dedicated casters for most of the game.

It is a fun druid to play for a casual game. You are tough, hit hard, and simple.

[Eldan]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't both Vow of Poverty and Shapeshift give you an enhancement bonus, so that they'd be pretty redundant?

[Fouredged Sword]

I think, and I am AFB right now so correct me if I am wrong, but I remember shapeshifter druid bonuses as untyped. I WOULD suggest putting the best VoP bonuses into mental stats first though, as they ARE blown out of the water by the Bite of the X spells, and they are large bonuses at low enough spell level to be targets of persist. Persisted Bite of the Wererat, all day +6 to dex, +2 to con, +3 to natural armor, free use of weapon finesse, 8th level spell.

Do some metamagic reduction and you can sneak in Bite of the weretiger as a 9th level spell. +12 enhancement bonus to Strength, a +4 enhancement bonus to Dexterity, a +6 enhancement bonus to Constitution, and a +5 enhancement bonus to natural armor, free powerattack, two claws and a bite. It turns ALL your forms into melee beasts.

[Talya]

If you're just looking at a mild nerf to help with party balance, I highly recommend using a standard druid (no ACFs) with Vow of Poverty instead of going shapeshift druid. Then don't take natural spell as a feat.

You keep all the fun of the regular druid, and are still very playable, but have to decide what you want to be in any given fight.

[desero clades]

Yeah, that'd probably work out pretty well. Alternatively, you could always go wild shape ranger for just wild shape without all of the other abilities that make also having wild shape ridiculous. The current plan here doesn't seem the best, as you're basically sacrificing everything but your spellcasting, and then turning your focus to your not spellcasting, which means turning your focus to nothing. Shapeshift is a pretty bad ACF, is what I'm saying, especially if you want to focus on the thing you're doing worse by taking shapeshift.

I was actually thinking of doing totemist when we were talking about the game first, but unfortunately I'm the only one in our group familiar with incarnum.


Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't both Vow of Poverty and Shapeshift give you an enhancement bonus, so that they'd be pretty redundant?

Well damn... you're right. Well there goes any plan for that completely.


To all: If I want to play druid, it has to be phb2 variant... so maybe wild shape ranger would be a good alternative actually.

[Grod_The_Giant]

Shapeshift is a pretty bad ACF, is what I'm saying, especially if you want to focus on the thing you're doing worse by taking shapeshift.
Eh, I like Shapeshift. It's absolutely a straight nerf from Wildshape, but the Druid kind of needs the hit in your average mid-to-low op-game. Shapeshift gives you some decent bonuses to layer on top of standard buffing. (Although the fact that it's an enhancement bonus is pretty painful, I admit) And the swift-action, at-will usage is a lot of fun. Great for book-shy newbies and optomizers-in-low-op-groups alike!