Character idea: butterfly druid (need help designing)

[flamewolf393]

So imagine this beautiful girl, surrounded by butterflies. A wonderful magical moment taken straight from a fae spring meadow. Then she turns to you, you think to see happiness and joy in her eyes. Instead you see anger, smoldering hate as the butterflies swarm you. Then the pain sets in as they devour you. Death by beauty. Death..... by butterfly.

This is the character I want to make. Any suggestions on how to go about doing it? Would I be better off going for huge numbers of animal companions, or spells that summon swarms? I would prefer doing them as animal comps, but not sure its viable to get dozens or even hundreds of them.

[Venger]

So imagine this beautiful girl, surrounded by butterflies. A wonderful magical moment taken straight from a fae spring meadow. Then she turns to you, you think to see happiness and joy in her eyes. Instead you see anger, smoldering hate as the butterflies swarm you. Then the pain sets in as they devour you. Death by beauty. Death..... by butterfly.

This is the character I want to make. Any suggestions on how to go about doing it? Would I be better off going for huge numbers of animal companions, or spells that summon swarms? I would prefer doing them as animal comps, but not sure its viable to get dozens or even hundreds of them.

look into swarmshifter or lord of flies. both turn you into a swarm of insects. just fluff it as butterflies instead of normal flies or beetles.

[John Longarrow]

Butterfly's consume nectar from flowers.

Just pointing out that from a real world perspective non-nectar based life forms would be immune to butterfly attacks.

[Geddy2112]

Right off the bat-Are you trying to build The Monarch from the venture brothers?

In pathfinder there is a deity who's holy symbol is the butterfly (http://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Desna) and she even has a prestige class (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/prestige-classes/other-paizo/s-z/spherewalker) that allows you to turn into a swarm of butterflies.

That said, spherewalker and druid does not work all that well as the starknife proficiency and charisma based abilities are not a major thing. Desna is chaotic good, but the spherewalker does not require CG but you have to worship her. Druids can be NG or CN, both good enough for Desna.

Your best bet would be to use the blight druid (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/druid/archetypes/paizo---druid-archetypes/blight-druid), and reskin a lot of the abilities into butterflies. You could take the darkness domain, or have a butterfly/moth familiar and just use the bat statistics. Familiars can communicate with animals of their own species, even vermin familiars, so it could help get you friends. Once you are sufficiently high level you can have it speak with any animal of its kind, opening you up to the entire lepidopterian family and maybe more (Bees, dragonflies, flying roaches...) depending on your DM. You get vermin empathy which allows you to use wild empathy on vermin, so you could also recruit butterflies and their caterpillar stages to you. Once you get the miasma at level 5, you can fluff this as a swarm of butterflies that just hangs around you, and their poison from their wings and bodies is the sickened effect.

To keep your butterflies fed, wear rosewood armor (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/equipment---final/armor/rosewood-armor) and have the flowers be some kind of milkweed or whatever particular flowers your particular lepidopterians like. Summon swarm is a second level druid spell, and you can reskin the swarm to be butterflies using the bats or spiders. If you don't go with the blight druid, you can take the feat vermin heart that allows you to wild empathy vermin.

[flamewolf393]

First of all, eww no on monarch. This is the pic that first inspired the idea https://i.ytimg.com/vi/eeCkbGDml38/maxresdefault.jpg

Second I was really wanting more to be someone that has/summons butterflies, not turn into butterflies herself, though she will probably be some form of fae, or at least a druid.

[Bronk]

First of all, eww no on monarch. This is the pic that first inspired the idea https://i.ytimg.com/vi/eeCkbGDml38/maxresdefault.jpg

Second I was really wanting more to be someone that has/summons butterflies, not turn into butterflies herself, though she will probably be some form of fae, or at least a druid.

The easiest way to do this is to be an arcane spell caster, take the 'spell thematics' feat, and pick 'butterflies'. Then, when you cast 'fly' or the longer lasting 'overland flight', you'll have butterfly wings. If you cast attack magic, you'll shoot butterflies. If you imprison someone, it'll be with butterflies. It'll be like this scene from RG Veda: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9f666o4cOmY

You could also try being a half fey, or get lucky and roll for wings as an unseelie fey.

You could also take a butterfly as a familiar, then at a higher level pick up an extra familiar to get a 'shimmerling swarm'.

[Geddy2112]

First of all, eww no on monarch. This is the pic that first inspired the idea https://i.ytimg.com/vi/eeCkbGDml38/maxresdefault.jpg

Second I was really wanting more to be someone that has/summons butterflies, not turn into butterflies herself, though she will probably be some form of fae, or at least a druid.

Ahh, I gotcha. Well, I would still suggest going blight druid and just reskin the effects.

Another option would be summoner, and have your eidolon be a butterfly or some other feylike thing. You could use the first worlder archetype to summon nature's ally, including pixies and other fey with insect wings. A synthesist summoner could have the butterflies be a swarm around you, as armor. The unchained eidolon has an evolution called amorphous, making it immune to critical hits and sneak attacks, but no real way to make an eidiolon have the swarm special rules.

You could also do sorcerer with the fey bloodline. The sylvan wildblood gives you an animal companion(use a giant wasp, beetle, or mantis for a base) and the ability to grow insect wings.

[flamewolf393]

Ahh, I gotcha. Well, I would still suggest going blight druid and just reskin the effects.

Another option would be summoner, and have your eidolon be a butterfly or some other feylike thing. You could use the first worlder archetype to summon nature's ally, including pixies and other fey with insect wings. A synthesist summoner could have the butterflies be a swarm around you, as armor. The unchained eidolon has an evolution called amorphous, making it immune to critical hits and sneak attacks, but no real way to make an eidiolon have the swarm special rules.

You could also do sorcerer with the fey bloodline. The sylvan wildblood gives you an animal companion(use a giant wasp, beetle, or mantis for a base) and the ability to grow insect wings.

Great ideas thank!

[stack]

Don't know your feeling on third party, but the dread class from DSPs psionics has an Akashic archetype, the swarmlord. It's whole schtick is spreading fear via a swarm of illusory insects. I once built one and fluffed the swarm as butterflies whose bright, colorful wings flashed black with skill shaped spots when they attacked.

Spheres of power has a swarm form option in the alteration expansion. Conjuration will have a swarm companion option as well, but it's not going to hit playtest for a good while yet.

Sorry I dont have any suggestions for things I didn't write. :smallredface: Lots of good ideas already posted, so nothing to add to them.

[Serafina]

Another Option would be a School Familiar (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/wizard/familiar/familiar-archetypes/school-familiar-familiar-archetype), specifically using the Illusion-school. It turns your familiar into a swarm, with 1D6 damage and a Distraction ability of 10+familiars constitution modifier.
Which still isn't that great, especially since it only comes online at level 10 (or 8, with an archetype (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/classes/core-classes/wizard/archetypes/paizo---wizard-archetypes/familiar-adept-wizard-archetype)) and you really need an Improved Familiar to make this scale halfway-decently.

There's also a Spiritualist archetype (http://archivesofnethys.com/ArchetypeDisplay.aspx?FixedName=Spiritualist%20Sco urge) that allows your phantom to become a Swarm, and of course you can have your phantom look like anything the whole time.