help building a druid

[lhilas]

Hey guys, it's me again :D
A few days ago a new friend joined our group and asked me to build him a druid and explain the basics of the druid spells and abilities to him.
The problem is that none of the players in my team has any experience playing a druid, so we don't know that much about what he can do besides summon bears and turn into bears XD
Can you guys give me some advices so I could give them to the new player? Plus I'll love to have some tips about which spells I should recommend for him.
P.S.
I told him druid is not an easy class for beginners but he insisted because the class fits his backstory and also he wants to have a pretty strong character.
We're level 14, and the party consists of 3 melees and an illusionist.

[Rangô]

So 14 level... well I found this list posted by Aquillion and I absolutely agree with

Entangle: A first-level save or suck. Which hits an area. And makes it slow to move through that area even if they save. And keeps making anyone in the area save again every turn. One of the best first-level spells period.

Longstrider: +10 movement for 1/hour per level. Basically, at higher levels you get +10 movement all day just for being a Druid. Other classes would have this as a major class feature; you get it basically for free.

Summon Nature’s Ally I-IX: You cast these spells spontaneously, so you want to know them inside and out. Aside from their combat usefulness, disposable creatures have lots of utility, and some of them have useful abilities. Xorns and Earth elementals can use Earth Glide to pass through the earth, say, and grab things for you. Air and Water elementals can make vortices / whirlwinds in their respective environments. Unicorns can heal. Janni and Pixies have several useful spells, like the Pixie's Permanent Image 1 / day; Janni can also go ethereal for 1 hour a day, useful for scouting. Djinni can cast Major Creation (and create things out of vegetable matter permanently) and Wind Walk (making it unnecessary for you to ever prepare it), plus they can Plane Shift (and take others with them) at will. And lots of different things summoned by these spells have useful ways of finding or following fleeing / hidden / invisible enemies, like Scent or Tremorsense.

Keep in mind that all of the above can be cast spontaneously -- a druid can access Major Creation, Permanent Image, Plane Shift, Wind Walk, or lots of healing simply by knowing the right creature to summon, without having to prepare anything.

Gust of Wind: Many different uses. Repels or knocks over small or flying creatures, blows away various effects, and so on.

Lesser Restoration: Because ability damage sucks.

Wind Wall: Archers? What archers?

Poison: Yeah, yeah, not utility. But I'm pointing it out to note that it uses a unique calculation for its save DC, which increases based on your caster level. That makes it worth using on anything with low con (or anything whose con save / max HP you want to reduce.)

Protection From Energy: Lasts a while, and can protect against a lot of different things.

Stone Shape: Many, many uses.

Freedom of Movement: Self-explanatory. Anything that makes you immune to a whole range of dangerous effects is worth having.

(Greater) Dispel Magic: Self-explanatory.

Giant Vermin: A 'summon' that scales up with your CL. Very useful. Also lasts much longer than your SNA I-IX, adding some utility (such as guarding an area while you retreat.)

Scrying: It's scrying. You want it.

Animal Growth: Very powerful buff.

Baleful Polymorph: Save-or-die.

Death Ward: Absolute protection from two lines of effects that you really want to be protected from.

Transport via Plants: Not as good as Teleport, but still very useful in the right situations.

Antilife Shell: Yeah, sure it completely blocks one type of creature from approaching you, but how many creatures fall into this 'living' category, anyway? I mean, it only makes you and anyone else who can fit into the sphere totally immune to the melee attacks of animals, aberrations, dragons, fey, giants, humanoids, magical beasts, monstrous humanoids, oozes, plants, and vermin, and just for 10 minutes / level...

Find the Path: Very, very useful divination. Want to find the Big Bad's largest treasure room? No problem. Want to find your way into the innermost sanctum of a hidden temple that has been lost for thousands of years? No problem!

Liveoak: A huge buddy who lasts 1/day per level. Always bring one with you when you're going on extended multi-day adventures outside or in areas where there's enough room for it to fit; as long as you cast it the day before, it's basically a free pet. Also, it does double damage to objects and can animate other trees in turn.

Spellstaff: A free extra spellslot for whatever of your spells you want... which lasts until discharged. Basically just another free perk of being a druid. By the strict wording of the spell, you don't have to be holding the staff or even have it anywhere near you to cast the spell you put in it; you just need it as a focus when you cast Spellstaff itself.

Greater Scrying: Like scrying, only awesomer.

Heal: The gold standard in healing.

True Seeing: Negates or immediately resolves a very wide number of problems.

Word of Recall: Being able to teleport around is nice, even if it's just to a place you've been in the past.

Shapechange: It's shapechange. echange: It's shapechange.

[Rangô]

After that, both of you should think which path druid's been followed up here, maybe a multishape specialist focusing on close-quarter combat, trying to take advantage of spellcasting, master invocations... Also you might be keen on pick a PrC adding something colourist, I personally like Blighter but is an evil character, and Stormlord is simply attractive, more power options like Master of Many Forms, Planar Shepard and Warshaper. Anyway what do you have in mind?, what does the party needs? Once you have that clear, proceed to set up the feats

[Darrin]

What sourcebooks are available? Are online sources ok? Dragon magazine?

[AnonymousPepper]

For people who say Druids can't blast:

Cloudburst: Second level spell. Creates a long-lasting heavy rainstorm in a very large area.

Call Lightning: Third-level druid spell, lets you concentrate a number of times equal to your caster level, maximum 10, to drop 3d6-damage bolts of lightning on one target. Sounds kinda pointless, right? Well, those dice go up to 3d10 if you're in a stormy or rainy area. You feel where I'm going here? Now, if you can get your concentration to a swift or move action (Easy Concentration skill trick, Sonorous Hum bard spell, or Extraordinary Concentration feat), you can do this while slinging around most of your other spells. But Pepper, you say. 3d10 still isn't that great, even if the action economy is pretty good! And to that I say Sculpt Spell is your friend. See, Call Lightning Storm's bolts are actually a vertical line that hits everything on a path to the ground, which means they can be reshaped via Sculpt Spell. Throw Sculpt Spell on, only a +1 metamagic, and you get to turn the vertical line lightning bolt into four ten-foot cubes or a horizontal line or a cone or whatever else suits your imagination. Now you're hitting four enemies per round, minimum, for 3d10, while casting other spells. NOW YOU'RE THINKING WITH PORTALS. Also really flavorful. A druid summons a nasty thunderstorm to channel nature's wrath through her fingertips into balls of 100% concentrated and precise death on her enemies.

Call Lightning Storm: Call Lightning's big brother. Not much different, except it's instead a fifth-level spell, does 5d10 damage, and can do it up to 15 times. Use this with a mid-tier Metamagic Rod of Maximize Spell (it's a sixth-level spell when Sculpted) to deal 50 consistent electricity damage to 4 different enemies (again, minimum) for up to 15 rounds straight using only one usage of the rod. Fantastic investment. Energy Substitution (Sonic) from Deities and Demigods makes this even funnier and almost never resisted (although you'd either need a greater metamagic rod or Earth Spell shenanigans, iirc, and also ask your GM because Deities and Demigods is 3.0; by RAW in the DMG it should be allowed, but it's still something you should ask permission for).

The only real downside here is that it's Reflex Half, so you're going to be a bit on-and-off versus rogues and the odd other class-level NPC with evasion (either from class, spells, or items). The next spell on the list, not a true blast but it's still worth mentioning, can help substantially with that, though.

Enervation: Not normally something Druids get access to, but if you have Eberron material available and you're willing to be non-good, you can one hundred percent get this on your list via the Nightbringer Initiate feat. It doesn't give you much besides Enervation - a limited Gate, Control Undead, and Create Greater Undead are the only things of any use at all, really - but Enervation on your list makes it worth it by itself. Enervation is perfect metamagic bait, because it's a touch attack to hit, no save, and negative levels suck. Horribly. As long as your opponent isn't immune to negative levels in some way, Enervation is no save, just suck. Particularly relevant to you is the saving throw debuff (-1 per neg level), since your direct damage options are save-heavy.

Incidentally, if you have any source of sonic damage in your party, which you WILL because of something else I'm about to list here's another goodie.

Creaking Cacophony: Third-level Druid spell. All enemies within have to make concentration checks to cast spells, it's harder to hear, yada yada. The big reason you drop this is because everything inside it becomes vulnerable to sonic damage, taking 1.5 times the damage from any sonic attack. A Dragonfire Inspiration Bard that's finagled his way into a sonic energy type is disgusting with this.

Now, the reason I say you have sonic damage for sure is because of Monster Manual III. Storm Elementals are legitimate summons for Summon Nature's Ally III, page 48.

Storm Elemental: To quote from the book - "THUNDER AND LIGHTNING (Su): Once per minute as a full-round action, a storm elemental can emit a blast of thunder coupled with a bolt of lightning. The thunder deals sonic damage (see chart) to all creatures within 60 feet of the storm elemental. A Fortitude save halves this damage. The lightning is a 120-foot-long line that deals electricity damage (see table). A reflex save halves this damage. The save DCs are Constitution-based."

Also, they heal from electric and sonic damage at a one point of healing to three points of damage ratio. It can't attack itself to heal, but it doesn't say it can't heal its allies.

For small storm elementals, it's DC12, 1d6 sonic, 2d6 electricity. Medium, DC14 2d6/4d6. Large, DC18, 4d6/8d6. Huge, DC24, 8d6/16d6. Greater, DC28, 12d6/24d6. Elder appears to be a misprint on the table, as it's probably supposed to be what Greater is listed as, but this is to your advantage, because Greaters can be summoned and Elders cannot, so eh.

Anyway, using Summon Nature's Ally III, you can summon one small. SNAV is d3 small or one medium. SNAVI is d3 medium or one large. SNAVII is d3 large or one huge. SNAVIII is d3 huge or one greater. Buy a Ring of the Beast, really cheap, and your SNA spells count as one level higher than they are. So proceed to spam SNA 7 out of sixth-level spell slots using your metamagic rod(s) for 3 large storm elementals that come in and nuke under your Creaking Cacophony; the result is you dealing 18d6 damage a round (or at least, the equivalent of it; 12d6*1.5) in a huge AOE, plus 8d6 to up to three targets. While you're dropping 50 electricity damage per round on four ten foot cubes, because your concentration is a swift action (probably thanks to your skill trick), and "you may take a swift action whenever you can perform a free action," and a one-round spell takes up a full-round action (taking effect at the start of your next turn).

Your amplified sonic damage targets Fort, by the way, instead of Reflex, so it'll do a number on any rogues and such. Beefier classes like fighters and warblades and some of the more... well... swole monsters such will take less as well. But that's why you've got your electrical attacks targeting Reflex instead.

A note, by the way, on a bit of total Limburger cheese that I do not recommend you play because even I'm allergic to it but is totally a thing that exists and I'm just going to gush about it because I think it's hilarious: a Planar Shepherd, a Druid PrC, aligned to Dal Quor or a similarly fast-flowing time plane or demiplane, can, while inside her planar bubble, take many more actions than anyone outside it (ten, in the case of Dal Quor). This means that (provided you set up the Cloudburst and maybe Cacophany first) you could totally nuke somebody out of all their levels and kill them, while dropping 2000 electrical damage distributed across 40 blasts, from Maximized (Rod) and Sculpted Call Lightning Storm, or instead of throwing out the neg levels, dropping an average of 270 sonic across a huge AOE and 360 electrical damage across 30 strikes (this is all before saves, granted) from Storm Elementals summoned by SNA - all in the space of one of their turns. Which is beyond even the capabilities of a Nuker Wizard or Mailman Sorc pre-epic (unless you take a reaaaaaaaaaally lenient reading of Sanctum Spell in combination with [Greater] Arcane Fusion, and that's the literal fastest way possible for anyone to burn spell slots, while the core of the Druid's damage is just two spells to yield 2000 damage; once epic is in play, enhanced Combust can be chucked out four times by a spellsurging full-op Mailman). And shows just how cheesy Planar Shepherd is and why you should never play it in a game that's not totally gloves-off.

[eggynack]

The handbook in my signature could prove useful, especially if you have relatively broad book access.

[Starkeeper]

Call Lightning: Third-level druid spell, lets you concentrate a number of times equal to your caster level, maximum 10, to drop 3d6-damage bolts of lightning on one target. Sounds kinda pointless, right? Well, those dice go up to 3d10 if you're in a stormy or rainy area. You feel where I'm going here? Now, if you can get your concentration to a swift or move action (Easy Concentration skill trick, Sonorous Hum bard spell, or Extraordinary Concentration feat), you can do this while slinging around most of your other spells. But Pepper, you say. 3d10 still isn't that great, even if the action economy is pretty good! And to that I say Sculpt Spell is your friend. See, Call Lightning Storm's bolts are actually a vertical line that hits everything on a path to the ground, which means they can be reshaped via Sculpt Spell. Throw Sculpt Spell on, only a +1 metamagic, and you get to turn the vertical line lightning bolt into four ten-foot cubes or a horizontal line or a cone or whatever else suits your imagination. Now you're hitting four enemies per round, minimum, for 3d10, while casting other spells. NOW YOU'RE THINKING WITH PORTALS. Also really flavorful. A druid summons a nasty thunderstorm to channel nature's wrath through her fingertips into balls of 100% concentrated and precise death on her enemies.

Call Lightning isn't an area spell thus disqualifying it from Sculpt Spell.

[eggynack]

Call Lightning isn't an area spell thus disqualifying it from Sculpt Spell.
How do you figure that it's not an area?

[Starkeeper]

How do you figure that it's not an area?

It's not listed as one?

[glitterbaby]

l don't think I can offer much in the way of advice apart from what has already been suggested but I'll try. Definitely read Eggynack's handbook. It contains an enormous amount of information and is probably the number one Druid resource out there. It's rather large so if it seems daunting maybe just read the sections that pertains as you go forward in the actual process of building the character.

In terms of playstyle for a new character, the bookkeeping that the class requires can be quite overwhelming. I'd suggest keeping to a few signature tricks. Blasting is something new players always seem to enjoy because they tend to feel like they're participating more that if they would be buffing or setting up BFC. AnonymousPepper had some great insight for that.

Another suggestion to keep one of the most complex classes a bit simpler is to use Wild Shape mostly for defensive capabilities. Grab a Monk's Belt and Wild Shape into a small flying creature to get out of the line of fire while also taking advantage of the high dex these forms usually offer. For specific animals, head over to Eggynack's handbook but, depending of source availability, a Desmodu Hunting Bat is a fantastic defensive form. Even if we're sticking to core you have some options.

I think the most important thing to be doing for this character is to keep things simple. Sure you can be a Planar Shepherd and stack some templates onto your Wild Shape or use Planar Bubble with a fast time plane, but the new person isn't going to know how to use it effectively. Use the spells for damage and defense, use Wild Shape for defense, use Animal Companion as something to do when you run out of spells. The list isn't exhaustive, either.

If you do end up doing a more involved combo, like with AnonymousPepper's Creaking Cacophony/Storm Elemental trick, be sure to write it down into a step-by-step formula so the new player can know exactly what to be doing with his actions. I run into this a lot with my girlfriend who is also new to the game. In the main campaign she plays a Swordsage and she's usually pretty good with her turns but she played a Druid in a one-shot and she was a bit overwhelmed with all the options. Being 14th level, you'll have around 50 standard action spells to choose from so finding the best one for the individual turn can be tricky. At the end of the day, the point is to have fun. It can be difficult for a player to have fun if he's frustrated and overwhelmed by the number of options. Keep it simple.

[eggynack]

It's not listed as one?
True enough. I guess that call lightning's "line" is distinct from that defined by area, in that the latter strictly originates from the caster.

Edit: Separately, a druid blasting list without boreal wind feels fundamentally lacking to me.

[AnonymousPepper]

True enough. I guess that call lightning's "line" is distinct from that defined by area

It defines a line, though. It affects a volume in space in space with defined dimensions, for one, and it specifically describes it as a line. In this situation, if a GM wanted to disallow Sculpt Spell, they'd have an easier time Rule Zeroing it than they would by arguing that it's not a line effect spell.

[Starkeeper]

It defines a line, though. It affects a volume in space in space with defined dimensions, for one, and it specifically describes it as a line. In this situation, if a GM wanted to disallow Sculpt Spell, they'd have an easier time Rule Zeroing it than they would by arguing that it's not a line effect spell.


You can modify an area spell by changing the area's shape

Nothing to do with line effects, though the Archmage's Mastery of Sculpting does work on effects.


Mastery of Shaping
The archmage can alter area and effect spells

[AnonymousPepper]

Nothing to do with line effects, though the Archmage's Mastery of Sculpting does work on effects.

A line *is* an area though, isn't it?

[Starkeeper]

A line *is* an area though, isn't it?

Yes, but at the same time it doesn't matter since Sculpt Spell affects area spells, while Call Lightning is an effect spell.

[ComaVision]

Why do you dislike your friend so much that you're having him start D&D 3.5 at level 14?

But seriously, I scarcely ever let players without prior experience join my games if it's past level 4.

[Warrnan]

Sounds like you've got plenty of melee meat shields. However the druid packs plenty of utility without resorting to mauling his enemies with his summoned bears and his bear animal companion.

He could play a "Way of the Bat" druid. This type of druid utilizes a companion that is more of a scout than a damage dealer. You be a dire bat or whatever high level equivalent you can find. Animal companion or something like an eagle with great spot. You guys are the eyes and ears of the party. Cast spells from up in the air controlling the battle field and blasting bad guys with lightning. As a druid blaster, I found metamagic wands to be particularly useful to get things like twin spell and quicken. That way you can use them on your better spells without raising the level.

Flamestrike substituted electricity was one of my favorites to use. And thunderous roar gives you AOE trip attempts. Between twin and quicken you can trip a large number of foes and your melee friends can Mop up.

Make sure to get tons of initiative + gear. A druid who goes first is a very happy druid.

Use your summons for unicorns to heal for you. Use them for thoqquas to burn holes in stone walls. The sky is the limit. Higher level summons for air and storm elementals can be massive nukes.

Think about the element of air and go to town. That's the way of the bat. Equally fun to the typical bear riding a bear summoning bears.

Recommended feats. Companion spellbond, improved initiative, natural spell, wild cohort