Need help building a high lv druid

[ghostfreak24]

Hi, looking for experienced players to help me build a very high lv druid. No books were banned save for the magazines. An his only stipulation was that the classes has to stick to a particular theme. He was very adamant about that so I decided to go with a druid. I'm not all that familiar with them but I have no issue with learning how to play one.

My original idea was Druid 10, Planar Sheperd 10 and Master of the many forms 10. Any and all improvements and feats are all deeply welcomes and appreciated. Same goes for advice. Detailed, thorough advice also works as well. Thank you for your time.

[eggynack]

Well, my sigged handbook should help somewhat to start with. It doesn't cover the epic level stuff though, so you may need to either find another source or be on your own for that one. Also, here's the master of many forms bible (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?472737-Updated-Master-of-Many-Forms-Bible-official-wild-shape-rules-(recovered)), to help with that side of the character. Not sure what theme you actually want, though it seems like you have a whole form swapping thing going on. I'm not sure how utterly you want to break the game either, cause with access to epic casting you can pretty much do whatever you want all the time. Even planar shepherd insanity becomes somewhat irrelevant at that point.

[Troacctid]

There's a good chance you just want to go Druid 30 to get bonus epic feats. Epic feats are pretty legit.

[ghostfreak24]

What feats should I look into with druid 30? An wouldn't master of many form give me more options with what I can turn into and make my wild shaping a move action? An if I take a feat i becomes a free action? Please share your thoughts so I can better understand.

[eggynack]

For the speedy wild shape thing, you can get that effect through a mantle of the beast from complete champion, which makes your wild shape a swift action. You'll likely want a ring of the beast too, just cause it's good. For standard feats, you obviously want natural spell, and probably want aberrant blood and aberration wild shape from lords of madness, because aberration forms are powerful. For epic feats, epic spellcasting is broken to an insane degree which trivializes all other forms of power for the most part. I'm not actually sure if magical beast wild shape is good, cause I haven't researched it, but it seems like there's stuff you could do with it, if you want additional forms. Fiend folio is a good place to start for such things, and the chronotyryn is a good example creature for that (though you could do about as well with the nilshai from unapproachable east, which is an aberration form, albeit without all the side abilities that aren't extra actions).

[ghostfreak24]

Whoa. That definitely sounds powerful and it shall be something I look into. So I instead of the master of many forms I should just got druid 20 and planar sheperd 10? So I can get the full 30 caster lvs?

[eggynack]

Planar shepherd is nice. I dunno. Not much of an expert on epic stuff. I've always considered it somewhat pointless given that you can just win the game at that level without any real effort. Anything non-epic that I know is likely gonna be in the handbook. Except sporebat, cause I was planning to add that in a bit. The apparent ability to just turn off listen checks is nice, with the camouflage ability seeming nice but limited. It additionally seems relevant that shapechange also trivializes a lot of optimization. Meaning that most things you'd do are two orders of magnitude away from relevance. But, y'know, aside from that, this stuff is pretty nifty. You can do a lot of things that are great, but not on the level of those mentioned things, with aberration wild shape and things of that kind.

[Troacctid]

Epic Spellcasting is the main epic feat you're concerned with. The nice thing about getting it as a bonus feat via Druid 30 is that you also get to take an Epic Destiny (http://web.archive.org/web/20100916093852/http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/drfe/20080428), which would normally take up all of your epic feat slots. Force of Nature and Eternal Hero in particular are super cool. Almost certainly cooler than what you'd get from a prestige class.

Although, actually, double-checking, you don't get a ton of bonus epic feats as an epic druid. So maybe you just want to go Druid 24/Something Else 6 to pick up Epic Spellcasting while still getting an epic destiny.