[3.5 Eberron] Changing Character's/Character Help

[Nautilust]

So I've played my first game in my new group, and as I thought having three players is kind of a hindrance. One of our players (The Wizard) almost died twice and I almost died once (Rogue) some how our other player (The Artificer) escaped with more than one hit point in both combats. I say it's cause he's chicken and doesn't actually want to adventure, everyone else says it was his 16 Armor Class.

Originally I was going to play a Rogue/Wizard, my friend (The Wizard) was going to play a Fighter/Wizard, and the new guy (The Artificer) was going to just play a straight Artificer. However I noticed a couple of things.

1. We have no Healer
2. Changeling Rogue isn't a good choice unless someone replaces Trapfinding somehow.
3. Low starting Hit Points suck.
4. 3.5 seems to be built for groups of at least 4 players.

So I'm looking at changing my character either a little bit or completely. Either I'm going to stick with the Rogue/Wizard Idea and switch to Human with Able Learner, that way I get Trapfinding. Or I am going to go Druid or Cleric to add some healing to the party. While we wait for the Artificer to be able to brew potions

Edit: My question is, what would be best?

[Nifft]

Trapfinding is only necessary if the DM uses traps. It's a sort of mutual niche-enforcement thing.

That said, Artificers can find & disable traps, even if the feature has an unusual name. So don't sweat it. The Artificer is as good as a Rogue.


Two Wizards + one Artificer sounds like a great high-level party, but below level 10 or so you all gonna die.

My suggestion would be for you to play a Druid, so you can do kinda-sorta healing when you want, but mostly so you have a spare big dumb fighter tiger as a class feature.

[Nautilust]

Ok. I know Druids can be pretty powerful, i think i've even heard that they are as powerful if not more powerful than wizards when played right. However I am new to Druids. How do I play one that doesn't suck?

[Nifft]

Ok. I know Druids can be pretty powerful, i think i've even heard that they are as powerful if not more powerful than wizards when played right. However I am new to Druids. How do I play one that doesn't suck? The super-cool things about Druids are:
1 - At low levels, you have this big animal which is effectively a Fighter-type melee PC in addition to your moderately-squishy caster.
2 - At level 3, you can pick up a [Reserve] feat just like a Wizard, and you've got a lot of elemental damage spells to keep making good use of Fiery Burst (for example) or Winter's Blast.
3 - At level 6 you get Natural Spell, and from now on you can fly above the fray, raining down pain upon the unworthy. Sure, Wizards can also do this -- but not as well as you can at level 6. You're ahead of the game. You've also got better death-over-time spells than a low-level Wizard. They get 6d6 fireball; you get 3d6 times six bolts out of call lightning, which turns into 18d6 if you use all of them.

Yes, Wizards are great, and at higher levels blasting isn't as good as planar binding a legion of angels. But Druids are very solid, especially at lower levels.


Long version: http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?439991-Being-Everything-Eggynack-s-Comprehensive-Druid-Handbook

Short version depends on your level, are you L1 or what?

At level one you might want to do something like:
- Silverbrow Human
- Riding Dog
- spells for the day might be:
L0: Create Water, Cure Minor Wounds, Light
L1: Entangle, Lesser Vigor

Feats might depend on what type of Eberron Druid you want to be -- Ashbound, Child of Winter, Nightbringer, Greensinger, Gatekeeper, Warden, or something else -- and they're all pretty good from an RP standpoint with some decent mechanical options, so that's something to maybe talk to your DM about, see which Eberron Druid faction will be more interesting in this game.

There are also Dragonmark feats, if you're allowed to take them. Greensinger Dragonmark is pretty neat with a 5-attack pounce form like Panther or Tiger, and I also like Mark of the Dauntless + Born of the Three Thunders [Metamagic].

Grab a sling and a scimitar, wear leather or hide. Print out a sheet for your riding dog, and always remember the free Trip attack.

[Nautilust]

Yes we are 1st level.

I was actually thinking about playing a Shifter Druid.

Edit: I am looking at going for all of the levels of Moonspeaker. The guide is certainly helping me but it's also kind of confusing me.

[Venger]

Yes we are 1st level.

I was actually thinking about playing a Shifter Druid.

Edit: I am looking at going for all of the levels of Moonspeaker. The guide is certainly helping me but it's also kind of confusing me.

moonspeaker's awesome. what is it you don't understand? let us know and we can provide clarification.

[Nautilust]

For instance there's all these shifter feats, the guide says they are awesome for other builds but for the Druid you don't want to take them. Then it says extra shifter trait could be useful. For instance if I take Dreamsight as my shifter trait, then some of the moonspeaker abilities become useless. But if I take extra shifter trait, and take like longtooth, then they are no longer useless abilities. From my understanding. So I should or shouldn't take extra shifter trait?

Edit: Also should I take the Shifter Racial Substitution levels if I go full Moonspeaker or not? Losing Animal Companion is just weird. And it looks like my Wildshaping is also affected. There's just alot going on.

[Nifft]

IMHO the baseline Druid is complex enough that it's going to be a fun & exciting challenge to master.

So you might want to start with just a plain ol' regular Human Druid, and then after you know how to Druid the regular way, then you look at the weird unusual Shifter options. Which are good, but very different. Basically, the number of people you can get good advice from will get smaller & smaller as you get further away from the core class.

Once you know how to Druid awesomely, then you'll be able to value the oddball stuff correctly yourself.

[Venger]

For instance there's all these shifter feats, the guide says they are awesome for other builds but for the Druid you don't want to take them. Then it says extra shifter trait could be useful. For instance if I take Dreamsight as my shifter trait, then some of the moonspeaker abilities become useless. But if I take extra shifter trait, and take like longtooth, then they are no longer useless abilities. From my understanding. So I should or shouldn't take extra shifter trait?

Edit: Also should I take the Shifter Racial Substitution levels if I go full Moonspeaker or not? Losing Animal Companion is just weird. And it looks like my Wildshaping is also affected. There's just alot going on.

Shifter traits are great, but don't take dreamsight. Longtooth and razorclaw are probably your best bets, and gorebrute for the third.

yeah, the shifter racial sub levels are great if you do moonspeaker. yeah you switch out your animal companion and moonspeaker gives wild shape back.

[Nautilust]

I agree with you I should probably just play a Human Druid and learn how to play a basic Druid before I play something else.

But we are playing in Eberron and a Shifter Druid just has so much more flavor to it. Plus I have played as a Human Druid before so I'm not inexperienced. I qualify myself as new to it though because this is before I found out about optimizing characters. I was like 12 or so so this was 10 years ago, etc.

Basically I'm going to go with Shifter Druid. For flavor and also cause I hate playing Humans. Just personal preference.

[Nautilust]

I might be playing a regular druid though cause my GM and I talked and he didn't accept my character idea because it wouldn't have worked out with the campaign. My character was going to be an Ashbound and anti-civilization but we have two arcane characters in the group and the end goal of our campaign is to save civilization

[Nifft]

I agree with you I should probably just play a Human Druid and learn how to play a basic Druid before I play something else.

But we are playing in Eberron and a Shifter Druid just has so much more flavor to it. Plus I have played as a Human Druid before so I'm not inexperienced. I qualify myself as new to it though because this is before I found out about optimizing characters. I was like 12 or so so this was 10 years ago, etc.

Basically I'm going to go with Shifter Druid. For flavor and also cause I hate playing Humans. Just personal preference. Shifter Druid is awful at level 1 -- you're throwing away the most important low-level class feature (Free Bonus Fighter-- er, Animal Companion). Then at level 5, you throw away your actual best class feature, Wild Shape. Level 4 is also bad, since MIC makes it easy to buy an Insight bonus to Initiative, or just ask your Artificer friend to craft one.

I'm suggesting simple Druid 20 because IMHO that's a huge amount of complexity all by itself. Being Human is not the key thing here -- being a good Druid is the key thing. Shifters are not good Druids.


So, don't be Human, but also don't be a Shifter, and do be a Druid 20.

- Warforged Druid is 500 times more interesting. Why is an unnatural creation of Artifice talking to trees? Also the Artificer and Wizard can both heal you, and you can heal them, so you can spread around the burden of being the band-aid box. You can use your default +2 AC composite plating, or spend a feat on Ironwood Body for DR 2/slashing at level 1. That's nothing much at high levels, but at level 1 it's a pretty amazing defense against death by arrows.

- Changeling Ashbound Druid is super fun -- you sneak into Wizardy places and murder Wizards because you know for a fact that Arcane magic is wrecking everything. Your cover story is that you can't be that Wizard-murderer, why look at how your two best friends are a Wizard and an Artificer. Besides, the assassin didn't even look like you. Ha ha ha.

- Gnome Druid spy for Zilargo is fun. You get double the plot hooks of other characters.

- Half-Orc Druid from the Demon-Wastes is way more interesting. You like nature because you've seen the alternative. Plus, you get to bully animals into being your friend and it works because bullying is magic. Similar stat distribution to a Shifter, but much better racial sub levels.

- Aberrant Dragonmark Druid (any Dragonmarked race) is 700 times more interesting, and you qualify for Aberration Wild Shape (one of the best mechanical options). Shifter isn't a Dragonmarked race

- Halfling Druid with a pet dinosaur is awesome because riding a dinosaur is awesome. Also summoning dinosaurs. Also turning into a dinosaur. Eberron's Halflings are awesome.

- Daelkyr Half-Blood Druid is something so awesome that I've never even seen one. A Druid who is literally an Aberration full of Daelkyr symbiotes. "Look Gatekeepers, I'm halping!"


The Moonspeaker itself is not terrible -- you're not taking Fighter levels or anything -- but the Shifter racial sub levels are terrible, and Moonspeaker is a bunch more complexity without any real increase in power, and it's an actual reduction in power from the very few nice things that the Racial sub levels could give you. Some of the Moonspeaker features are anti-synergy with Druid, like how you get ability bonuses "in your natural form" (i.e. while NOT using Wild Shape). Gate at level 20 looks good on paper, but the fixed list of available creatures means you're not getting the even close to the value that a Cleric or Wizard could get. They get Solars and Balors, you get Elementals and Guardianals. (And you already had better Elementals, via summon elemental monolith... yuck). You get DR 2/silver, which would have been amazing at level 1, but it's garbage by the time you get it. You lose either 4 levels of Wild Shape or 12 levels of Wild Shape, your whole Animal Companion or 12 levels of advancement, and you'll lose some useful passive benefits like poison immunity & elemental wild shape.


tl;dr - The main reason for you in specific to go Druid was so you'd get a nice big meat-shield to protect your fragile companions. Don't throw that away.

Shifter Druid levels are bad.

But, hey, you're gonna do whatever you want :smile: so have fun.

[Nautilust]

I already talked to the GM about it and I'm going regular druid anyways.

I like Ashbound but he said it wouldn't work out cause of campaign reasons

[Nautilust]

The group might be over anyways one of our players left

[Nifft]

I already talked to the GM about it and I'm going regular druid anyways.

I like Ashbound but he said it wouldn't work out cause of campaign reasons

Ashbound is the sect that thinks Arcane magic is inherently evil and Wizards should all be murdered, and your party is 33.33% Wizard, so yeah. It would be funny -- I'd play it in a comedy-themed game -- but it would be pretty bad role-play for a serious game.


Some non-Human races for you:

Warforged Druid is dripping with Eberron flavor, it's a good race overall, you can pick up Ironwood Body at level 1 for DR 2/slashing (or not, the default Composite Plating is fine for a Druid -- you just can't go Adamantine Body with a Druid). One nice thing is that you can force the Wizard and Artificer to heal you, in trade for you healing them. Share the burden and all that.

Desert Half-Orc (from UA) has great racial sub levels. Plus you're a Half-Orc, which might get you the "outcast prejudice victim" RP thing that Shifter also has.

Stonehunter Gnome (from Dragon Magic) gives up the Illusion bonuses which is fine because Druids don't cast a lot of Illusions. Instead you get a +2 to Survival instead (also +2 to Climb), and the Dragonblood subtype, which improves a surprisingly decent chunk of your Druid spells.

Halflings on dinosaurs are awesome. Dinosaurs are awesome. (Don't take the Halfling racial sub levels unless you're in a very stealth-centric party and you NEED the extra skill points and the stealth skill access.)

Daelkyr Half-Blood (from Magic of Eberron) are literally Aberrations, so you probably won't be allowed to join the Gatekeepers, but the Greensinger sect is also great and has a good Initiate feat.

[Nautilust]

I don't know what to do. We just lost a player and I can't think of anyone else who can replace him. So game over I guess

[Nautilust]

Ok we talked it over and we are going to try to make this work. We're going to try to find a few more players and keep playing this campaign.

I have a question. Orc looks like a flavorful race to play. However they take a -2 to Wisdom. Is there a way to negate or get around that? Since Wisdom is my primary stat.

[noob]

Try to find an orc which does not lose wisdom.
Or get a la 0 template that gives 2 wisdom.(I forgot if that existed and it is definitively cheesy)
Anthropomorphic bat is not flavorful but it is very powerful for a race that have no level adjustment(flight and tons of wisdom)