Help me with my druid

[Gambitspades]

So i joined a campaign today, and want your help (all books avaible)
i am playing a level 4 druid of the extaminaar race.and i need help with several things
First let me point out my flavor/fluff. I want to be a snake lord type. dealing a lot of poison and acid damage. that said;
the things i need help with are

Feats (how do i optimize my animal, poison and/or druid abilities)
Animal companion (i want the best snake avaible)
Spells (good druid spells (preferably with the snake/poison/acid flavor)
Items (same flavor)

[Venger]

try the handbook (http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=940.0) it does a good job of answering most of your questions.

[HurinTheCursed]

I guess you would like to be good at grapple and use spells such as venomfire ?

[Gambitspades]

very much so

[eggynack]

Ooh, that's a new one. I'm going to start with the companion, because that seems like the most snakable thing to me. The best snake companion is probably the giant constrictor, but that option suffers both from a high level and a lack of poison. There aren't really other choices that are massively viable though, so you're probably down to the kinda mediocre viper line. To that end, I think traditional poison and animal companion optimization applies, and if you choose some other way to use poison, it will continue to apply. From a general animal companion perspective, the best feats are natural bond (CAdv, 111), which boosts your druid level for their purposes, companion spellbond (PHB II, 77), which lets you share spells with your companion, and exalted companion (BoED, 42), which lets your companion pick up vow of poverty. That last might not fit great with flavor though. In any case, companion poison optimization mostly comes down to feats for the animal companion itself, and those options include ability focus and virulent poison (SS, 40), which both boost the save DC by 2, and spit venom (SK, 147), which allows the poison's use as a ranged touch attack. Of course, this is all in addition to the already noted venomfire plan, which is excellent.

Spells don't have the densest poison theming, and the snake theming is even lighter. For snakes, all I can find that's worth much is (mass) snake's swiftness (SpC, 193), and maybe using fey ring (http://archive.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/fw/20040710a) to pick up a hkum yeng nat (OA, 175), if you want to go deep. Summoning obviously offers a somewhat wider variety. As for poison, the most obvious spell is poison, along with poison vines (SpC, 160), with red tide (SpC, 170) as a higher level option. Acid is perhaps even less dense than those two, as aside from energy vortex (SpC, 81), I can't find much that's viable at all, and that one's kinda mediocre.

If there's anything that's clear from this, it's that this archetype isn't one that's well supported. I would thus advise going for things that are somewhat similar though not the same. Vermin works pretty well for this as a concept, and picking up stuff like child of winter and some source of vermin wild shape (like a vestment of verminshape (DMG, 273)) goes a long way towards supporting that concept. Similarly, you may do well to expand poison into things that generally deal ability damage or drain, because druids do quite well at that. Adding constitution damage alone with mean gaining things like blood snow (Frost, 89), dehydrate (SpC, 62), and stone metamorphosis (Underdark, 61) for sickstone (Underdark, 104-105). In any case, if you want more information on druid stuff in general, I can always send over my handbook on the topic, which should cover most general druid things, though not necessarily how to be awesome at snake stuff.

[Gambitspades]

that does help! and i noticed the sail snake being pretty good for level 4

[eggynack]

that does help! and i noticed the sail snake being pretty good for level 4
Yeah, that's probably a better choice which I forgot about. Unfortunately, my metrics for thing inclusion do not currently include "is a snake" among them. Might want to add that one, actually, because its overall setup is kinda weird and unique. That whole thing where it keeps its distance while debuffing folks is reminiscent of a swindlespitter with upgrades. Kinda weird interaction with venomfire too, because it looks like attacks wouldn't activate it while the occasional spray would.

Edit: Wow, just noticed that the associated fortitude save is for half, which presumably means that you'd get a blinding effect 3/4's of the time even if the opponent always makes their save. The fact that it's only happening once a combat is annoying, but that's a more consistent ranged effect than just about anything else has. The underlying chassis isn't awful either.