ciopo
2022-03-17, 06:02 AM
Hello everybody! It's been a while, intense months, how are you all doing?
I'm here today, other than to see if I can sneak back in the various optimization competitions, to ask for opinions on a rebuild of my druid that I'm thinking about, in particular I have little ideas about what to do with my 20th level, whenever that happens to be in a year or two, that would be what I'm most looking forward on advice for :)
First, a bit of background, so you know what the status quo and houserules and ruling are, and many thanks ahead of time for any thought you send my way!
we are a party of 5 doing a long running campaign, somewhat incorporeal heavy, teleportation is heavily restricted. We are currently level 12 in a biggish dungeon of sort, we know already we will level to 13 (milestone) when we finish this dungeon, the campaign is planned to go into epic, but I don't know how high on epic and how long it will take, we've been at it for 2-3 years if not more already so far, there will be a big infusion of wealth when we finish this dungeon but currently we are somewhat below WBL. Our bags of holding are full of loot but because of pacing we have not had time to stop by a big enough city to unload it all and buy what our hearts desire.
My current possessions are a +2 wisdom amulet with attached wildling clasp,one lesser estend rod, +1 dragonhide breastplate and +1 heavy wooden shield, each of us has a "Boon" that's 1/day SLA of a first level spell of our choice, I picked conviction for mine.
Stats were rolled by the GM for all of us, we all have a 16 15 15 14 14 13 array
Game is 3.5, no dragon magazine but yes dragon compendium,no prc/feat/spell that was unupdated from 3.0, unupdated 3.0 items are allowed on a case by case basis, no pathfinder feat/class/item that doesn't also exists in 3.5 is allowed
houserules:
feat progression is every odd level, like in pathfinder
combat special actions use the CMB/CMD , like in pathfinder
, skill points and skill ranks use the pathfinder rules, but not the skills themself ( hide and move silently are separate skills, and so are spot and listen, etc)
for the purpose of prc prerequisites, any prerequisite of 6 or more skill ranks can be qualified for 3 less than the listed amount, 1 fumbles skills checks too.
races are limited to "standardish"
ToB classes are allowed but not the martial study/martial stance feat if they are taken on a vacuum (mea culpa for showcasing martial spirit healing when combined with improved trip and combat reflexes here)
we have a "good faith" approach, we players are expected to know our stuff if we intend to use a noncore subsystem such as psionics/incarnum/ToB/binding/whatever
no fractional saves/BAB
no multiclassing penalty
first 5 levels HD is maximized
"once in a while" (more or less at the end of each module, so every 3 or so levels) we can roll one of our highest HD, and if we are below our max HP for our level, we add the result to our HP
the current party is :
human warlock/cleric/hellfire warlock with strongheart vest , I don't know the level split, but she pewspews much ( average 60ish damage/round )
human savant/chamaleon, primarily divine gish with a touch of arcane utility (his spellbook is bare because current incarnation is a rebuild, another heavy hitter for 40-80 damage/round when he novas it)
half elf cleric/contemplative, he isn't going persistomancy but is partially built around the usual cleric gish suspects
changeling rogue/duelist/warshaper (GM ruled : Only as many extra natural attacks as the BAB would allow iteratives, so she is currently at 2 natural attacks, she would have 3 when her BAB becomes 11, she has strength devotion which has been ruled to give a permanent higher damage die to natural attacks, the minute/level is only on the bypassing hardness)
half orc shapeshift variant druid 7 / nature's warrior 5 (that's me)
conceptually, I'm "the tank", with high AC, HP, high saves, a bit of DR and fast healing and my spells prepared devoted to self buffing, the reason I've gone for shapeshift variant was mostly to avoid the pitfall of "being too powerful", this was a deliberate choice as I was unsure how it would fit 3 years ago when we were at level 1. Losing the animal companion was "an unfortunate conseguence", but with the prc I was planning my though was "it would lag behind anyway", for your information my initial outline was/is druid 6 / nature's warrior 5 / druid 7/ warshaper 4 / druid 11, feat choices were built around tripping stuff and making lots of AoO.
Now, the reason I'm thinking of rebuilding is threefold : I feel more comfortable about the level of munchikry I bring to the table relative to the munchikry of the other players, I actually really wanted to play about with an animal companion, and I (re)discovered the arcane hierophant prc, and had a good chat with my GM what it means for advancing animal companion.
the reason I want to go arcane hierophant, other than yay bear companion (everything is better with more bears, no I'm not going to SNA them, we frown at minionmancy), is to have those juicy arcane spell we currently don't have. Chiefly in my mind is enabling the rogue to do her sneak attack, which she currently almost never does, so improved invisibility and bear grappling for denied Dex.
Specifically, I've talked with my GM about going for a refluffed sha'ir as the arcane component, and we agreed to the following interpretation of the class :
yes, my bear companion can go gallivate to Elysium to ask momma bear for spells
the class is considered spontaneous, I can cast a known retrieved spell as many times as I want within the time frame, if I have the unused slots for doing so.
the time frame is equal to my CL for sha'ir, (so 13 hours at my 13th character level, when I would do the rebuilding)
it is assumed I have retrieved all the known spells during the same hour I am praying to prepare my druid spells.
The reasoning that known spells will work as if I was a sorcerer : even if I had to reretrieve spells such as nerveskitter each time I want to use it, 2-5 rounds of "no bear" between encounters wouldn't have any impact, my sha'ir known spells will be full of combat-related buffs, which would be trivial to refresh "like ToB manouvers", so this is simple a quality of life ruling
I can retrieve unknown arcane spells that are common or that I have witnessed and identified, but unlike the known ones, those behaves as prepared spells, I must put them in the "slot" they would use and I can't use that slot for anything else until the 13 hours elapses or a long rest happens
for now, it is a "maybe" on advancing sha'ir spellcasting with prc that says "+1 to divine spellcasting class"
The reason I like sha'ir is for the freedom of cherry picking unknown arcane spells for out of combat utility : no need to "waste" a known spell on rope trick, I can just send the bear to retrieve it when I need it, pending a successfull spellcraft check and if the spell is common enough (core, or otherwise witnessed). In particular, I fully intend to move my long duration buff suite to the arcane slots that I customarily do "before going to sleep" ( primal hunter/instinct/senses/etc, heart of air/water/earth etc ), it has been okayed for me to retrieve them as unknown arcane spell "since I know all about them for being a druid anyway". Same for any other spell that appears both on the sorc/wiz and the druid list.
With all that said, my intention are to beef up my survivability, piecemeal, with the arcane usual suspects (displacement, mirror image, mage armor), especially agaisnt those damn incorporeals (ectoplasmatic armor, scintillating scales), while still staying somewhat centered around "I trip stuff" and "I facetank stuff for my squishier friends"
Of note : I've talked with the gm about what a custom wild shape amulet (from magic of faerun) would cost, if it was only +3 and wouldn't allow for shapeshift forms above my character level, it's purpose would be to keep me at the same forms I have currently available, rather than losing the plant form with the rebuilding, we agreed 9k sounds reasonable if it's capped to character level, or 22,5k if it's uncapped
I had a back and forth with my gm about how arcane hieropant behaves on animal companion when my druid doesn't have an animal companion, we came to this compromise : I will take the wild cohort feat, entering arcane hierophant will combine the wild cohort with the sha'ir familiar to make it a normal companion familiar, with all attendand effects ( it's an animal companion of druid+hierophant level and a familiar of sha'ir+hierophant level)
My, how long winded I am , sorry!, without further ado, here is the tentative plan :
desert half orc (no retraining run, well I haven't brought it up but it feels cheesy to me), at 13th level, after racial, the statline would be 16 str, 14 dex, 18 con, 12 int, 18 wis, 16 cha. this is with a +2 wisdom item and a +2cha cloak
My nominal "leveling plan" to be rules legal with prerequisites, Ye's I'm aware I could early entry with precocious apprentice for a sha'ir 1 / druid 6, I'm not going to do that:
1 1 druid wild cohort
2 2 druid
3 3 druid shape soulmeld astral vambraces
4 4 druid
5 1 shair practiced spellcaster (shair)
6 2 shair
7 3 shair practiced spellcaster (druid)
8 1 arcane hierophant
9 2 a. h natural bond
10 3 a. h
11 4 a. h minor shapeshift
12 5 a. h
13 6 a. h open lesser chakra: arms, later retrained to strength devotion
14 7 a. h
15 8 a. h companion spellbond
16 9 a. h
17 10 a. h incarnum spellshaping
18 1 totemist
19 2 totemist share soulmeld
20 secret bonus level
21+ 11 epic arcane hierophant or mystic theurge or alternating the base classes
feat reasoning:
the astral vambraces are "that early" because the DR 2/magic they gives would be most relevant at early levels, if I am to pretend I would have actually played this character from level 1. Their actual purpose are to give me the wolf trip(ex) when I bind them at 13th level with open chakra, this is what is replacing combat expertise + improved trip
practiced spellcaster and natural bond are self evident in use
minor shapeshift it's an (happy) concession to my gm : she find it frustating that she never hits me, I agreed to "buff less" ( Ac of 27ish instead of 39 or so at 13th level , pending buffing up more again when enemies become bigger), I get an extra natural attack or a regenerating buffer of temporary hp which is fairly bigger than the fast healing 1 I currently have
open chakra : to have that trip(ex), later retrained when I will open the chakras with spell slots
strength devotion : per the "the die increase is a permanent effect", this means my slams in plant form are 3d6 instead of 1d8, including the one from minor shapeshift, and in elemental fury they would be 4d6, because of size huge
incarnum spellshaping : mainly for the "open chakra" spells, it's taken at 17th level because that's when I get the 7th level slot for binding the vambraces to the arm slot ,the spell does what it says it does : it allows me to bind the soulmeld, giving me the "bind slot" to do so
companion spellbond and share soulmeld : has been ruled spellbond also affect the share soulmeld, so it's out to 30ft for both spells and soulmelds
speaking of soulmelds, for now my tentative plan is this, taking into account I can bind them all by expending 2 4th level slot and one 7th level slot, with an argument to be made that I do not need to recast it every day, thus making this only a cost of "arcane spell known"
soulmelds
hands : sphinx claws for pounce, better later than never ( I do't particularly feel like I need pounce, but it's still nice)
totem : girallon arms, grapple bonus for my companion and 4 more secondary attacks, that do 4d6 thanks to the combination of size and strength devotion
shoulders : totem avatar, natural attacks are now 6d6 instead
arms : astral vambraces, for that automatic trip attempt whenever I hit with a natural attack
I got no clue what I want to do with my 20th level, originally I was thinking of soulcaster... but totemist 3 gives a big fat nothing in terms of meldshaping, so it might as well just be something that simply advances sha'ir, here are some idea that have crossed my mind.
abjurant champion, free extend is free extend, and by this time I might be allowing myself to use luminous armor again
sacred exorcist? this would give food for the strength devotion, on the assumption that it might be nerfed to "actually, you only get the better damage die when you actively use it"
one warshaper level? but if I go that route I might as well drop totemist for 3 levels for the reach, but that feels "hardly relevant" at 20th level, but still if it's "3 more natural attack" that's not to bad, right?
lion of taliasid? I'm currently barred from BoED tho, I'm not being worshipful enough
simply mystic theurge?
One of a myriad prc that advances spellcasting?
I would prefer to advance sha'ir, but I can see the appeal of advancing druid, to have 8th level spells, but I honestly have no idea what to do with high level spells :P I'm staying away from 9th on purpose
noncasting prc for that level are totally on the table too, if they have a nice frontloaded for me to squeeze everything out of, but I feel I might feel it more keenly what I'm actually sacrificing by "dropping down" out of 8th/9th level slots
I'm here today, other than to see if I can sneak back in the various optimization competitions, to ask for opinions on a rebuild of my druid that I'm thinking about, in particular I have little ideas about what to do with my 20th level, whenever that happens to be in a year or two, that would be what I'm most looking forward on advice for :)
First, a bit of background, so you know what the status quo and houserules and ruling are, and many thanks ahead of time for any thought you send my way!
we are a party of 5 doing a long running campaign, somewhat incorporeal heavy, teleportation is heavily restricted. We are currently level 12 in a biggish dungeon of sort, we know already we will level to 13 (milestone) when we finish this dungeon, the campaign is planned to go into epic, but I don't know how high on epic and how long it will take, we've been at it for 2-3 years if not more already so far, there will be a big infusion of wealth when we finish this dungeon but currently we are somewhat below WBL. Our bags of holding are full of loot but because of pacing we have not had time to stop by a big enough city to unload it all and buy what our hearts desire.
My current possessions are a +2 wisdom amulet with attached wildling clasp,one lesser estend rod, +1 dragonhide breastplate and +1 heavy wooden shield, each of us has a "Boon" that's 1/day SLA of a first level spell of our choice, I picked conviction for mine.
Stats were rolled by the GM for all of us, we all have a 16 15 15 14 14 13 array
Game is 3.5, no dragon magazine but yes dragon compendium,no prc/feat/spell that was unupdated from 3.0, unupdated 3.0 items are allowed on a case by case basis, no pathfinder feat/class/item that doesn't also exists in 3.5 is allowed
houserules:
feat progression is every odd level, like in pathfinder
combat special actions use the CMB/CMD , like in pathfinder
, skill points and skill ranks use the pathfinder rules, but not the skills themself ( hide and move silently are separate skills, and so are spot and listen, etc)
for the purpose of prc prerequisites, any prerequisite of 6 or more skill ranks can be qualified for 3 less than the listed amount, 1 fumbles skills checks too.
races are limited to "standardish"
ToB classes are allowed but not the martial study/martial stance feat if they are taken on a vacuum (mea culpa for showcasing martial spirit healing when combined with improved trip and combat reflexes here)
we have a "good faith" approach, we players are expected to know our stuff if we intend to use a noncore subsystem such as psionics/incarnum/ToB/binding/whatever
no fractional saves/BAB
no multiclassing penalty
first 5 levels HD is maximized
"once in a while" (more or less at the end of each module, so every 3 or so levels) we can roll one of our highest HD, and if we are below our max HP for our level, we add the result to our HP
the current party is :
human warlock/cleric/hellfire warlock with strongheart vest , I don't know the level split, but she pewspews much ( average 60ish damage/round )
human savant/chamaleon, primarily divine gish with a touch of arcane utility (his spellbook is bare because current incarnation is a rebuild, another heavy hitter for 40-80 damage/round when he novas it)
half elf cleric/contemplative, he isn't going persistomancy but is partially built around the usual cleric gish suspects
changeling rogue/duelist/warshaper (GM ruled : Only as many extra natural attacks as the BAB would allow iteratives, so she is currently at 2 natural attacks, she would have 3 when her BAB becomes 11, she has strength devotion which has been ruled to give a permanent higher damage die to natural attacks, the minute/level is only on the bypassing hardness)
half orc shapeshift variant druid 7 / nature's warrior 5 (that's me)
conceptually, I'm "the tank", with high AC, HP, high saves, a bit of DR and fast healing and my spells prepared devoted to self buffing, the reason I've gone for shapeshift variant was mostly to avoid the pitfall of "being too powerful", this was a deliberate choice as I was unsure how it would fit 3 years ago when we were at level 1. Losing the animal companion was "an unfortunate conseguence", but with the prc I was planning my though was "it would lag behind anyway", for your information my initial outline was/is druid 6 / nature's warrior 5 / druid 7/ warshaper 4 / druid 11, feat choices were built around tripping stuff and making lots of AoO.
Now, the reason I'm thinking of rebuilding is threefold : I feel more comfortable about the level of munchikry I bring to the table relative to the munchikry of the other players, I actually really wanted to play about with an animal companion, and I (re)discovered the arcane hierophant prc, and had a good chat with my GM what it means for advancing animal companion.
the reason I want to go arcane hierophant, other than yay bear companion (everything is better with more bears, no I'm not going to SNA them, we frown at minionmancy), is to have those juicy arcane spell we currently don't have. Chiefly in my mind is enabling the rogue to do her sneak attack, which she currently almost never does, so improved invisibility and bear grappling for denied Dex.
Specifically, I've talked with my GM about going for a refluffed sha'ir as the arcane component, and we agreed to the following interpretation of the class :
yes, my bear companion can go gallivate to Elysium to ask momma bear for spells
the class is considered spontaneous, I can cast a known retrieved spell as many times as I want within the time frame, if I have the unused slots for doing so.
the time frame is equal to my CL for sha'ir, (so 13 hours at my 13th character level, when I would do the rebuilding)
it is assumed I have retrieved all the known spells during the same hour I am praying to prepare my druid spells.
The reasoning that known spells will work as if I was a sorcerer : even if I had to reretrieve spells such as nerveskitter each time I want to use it, 2-5 rounds of "no bear" between encounters wouldn't have any impact, my sha'ir known spells will be full of combat-related buffs, which would be trivial to refresh "like ToB manouvers", so this is simple a quality of life ruling
I can retrieve unknown arcane spells that are common or that I have witnessed and identified, but unlike the known ones, those behaves as prepared spells, I must put them in the "slot" they would use and I can't use that slot for anything else until the 13 hours elapses or a long rest happens
for now, it is a "maybe" on advancing sha'ir spellcasting with prc that says "+1 to divine spellcasting class"
The reason I like sha'ir is for the freedom of cherry picking unknown arcane spells for out of combat utility : no need to "waste" a known spell on rope trick, I can just send the bear to retrieve it when I need it, pending a successfull spellcraft check and if the spell is common enough (core, or otherwise witnessed). In particular, I fully intend to move my long duration buff suite to the arcane slots that I customarily do "before going to sleep" ( primal hunter/instinct/senses/etc, heart of air/water/earth etc ), it has been okayed for me to retrieve them as unknown arcane spell "since I know all about them for being a druid anyway". Same for any other spell that appears both on the sorc/wiz and the druid list.
With all that said, my intention are to beef up my survivability, piecemeal, with the arcane usual suspects (displacement, mirror image, mage armor), especially agaisnt those damn incorporeals (ectoplasmatic armor, scintillating scales), while still staying somewhat centered around "I trip stuff" and "I facetank stuff for my squishier friends"
Of note : I've talked with the gm about what a custom wild shape amulet (from magic of faerun) would cost, if it was only +3 and wouldn't allow for shapeshift forms above my character level, it's purpose would be to keep me at the same forms I have currently available, rather than losing the plant form with the rebuilding, we agreed 9k sounds reasonable if it's capped to character level, or 22,5k if it's uncapped
I had a back and forth with my gm about how arcane hieropant behaves on animal companion when my druid doesn't have an animal companion, we came to this compromise : I will take the wild cohort feat, entering arcane hierophant will combine the wild cohort with the sha'ir familiar to make it a normal companion familiar, with all attendand effects ( it's an animal companion of druid+hierophant level and a familiar of sha'ir+hierophant level)
My, how long winded I am , sorry!, without further ado, here is the tentative plan :
desert half orc (no retraining run, well I haven't brought it up but it feels cheesy to me), at 13th level, after racial, the statline would be 16 str, 14 dex, 18 con, 12 int, 18 wis, 16 cha. this is with a +2 wisdom item and a +2cha cloak
My nominal "leveling plan" to be rules legal with prerequisites, Ye's I'm aware I could early entry with precocious apprentice for a sha'ir 1 / druid 6, I'm not going to do that:
1 1 druid wild cohort
2 2 druid
3 3 druid shape soulmeld astral vambraces
4 4 druid
5 1 shair practiced spellcaster (shair)
6 2 shair
7 3 shair practiced spellcaster (druid)
8 1 arcane hierophant
9 2 a. h natural bond
10 3 a. h
11 4 a. h minor shapeshift
12 5 a. h
13 6 a. h open lesser chakra: arms, later retrained to strength devotion
14 7 a. h
15 8 a. h companion spellbond
16 9 a. h
17 10 a. h incarnum spellshaping
18 1 totemist
19 2 totemist share soulmeld
20 secret bonus level
21+ 11 epic arcane hierophant or mystic theurge or alternating the base classes
feat reasoning:
the astral vambraces are "that early" because the DR 2/magic they gives would be most relevant at early levels, if I am to pretend I would have actually played this character from level 1. Their actual purpose are to give me the wolf trip(ex) when I bind them at 13th level with open chakra, this is what is replacing combat expertise + improved trip
practiced spellcaster and natural bond are self evident in use
minor shapeshift it's an (happy) concession to my gm : she find it frustating that she never hits me, I agreed to "buff less" ( Ac of 27ish instead of 39 or so at 13th level , pending buffing up more again when enemies become bigger), I get an extra natural attack or a regenerating buffer of temporary hp which is fairly bigger than the fast healing 1 I currently have
open chakra : to have that trip(ex), later retrained when I will open the chakras with spell slots
strength devotion : per the "the die increase is a permanent effect", this means my slams in plant form are 3d6 instead of 1d8, including the one from minor shapeshift, and in elemental fury they would be 4d6, because of size huge
incarnum spellshaping : mainly for the "open chakra" spells, it's taken at 17th level because that's when I get the 7th level slot for binding the vambraces to the arm slot ,the spell does what it says it does : it allows me to bind the soulmeld, giving me the "bind slot" to do so
companion spellbond and share soulmeld : has been ruled spellbond also affect the share soulmeld, so it's out to 30ft for both spells and soulmelds
speaking of soulmelds, for now my tentative plan is this, taking into account I can bind them all by expending 2 4th level slot and one 7th level slot, with an argument to be made that I do not need to recast it every day, thus making this only a cost of "arcane spell known"
soulmelds
hands : sphinx claws for pounce, better later than never ( I do't particularly feel like I need pounce, but it's still nice)
totem : girallon arms, grapple bonus for my companion and 4 more secondary attacks, that do 4d6 thanks to the combination of size and strength devotion
shoulders : totem avatar, natural attacks are now 6d6 instead
arms : astral vambraces, for that automatic trip attempt whenever I hit with a natural attack
I got no clue what I want to do with my 20th level, originally I was thinking of soulcaster... but totemist 3 gives a big fat nothing in terms of meldshaping, so it might as well just be something that simply advances sha'ir, here are some idea that have crossed my mind.
abjurant champion, free extend is free extend, and by this time I might be allowing myself to use luminous armor again
sacred exorcist? this would give food for the strength devotion, on the assumption that it might be nerfed to "actually, you only get the better damage die when you actively use it"
one warshaper level? but if I go that route I might as well drop totemist for 3 levels for the reach, but that feels "hardly relevant" at 20th level, but still if it's "3 more natural attack" that's not to bad, right?
lion of taliasid? I'm currently barred from BoED tho, I'm not being worshipful enough
simply mystic theurge?
One of a myriad prc that advances spellcasting?
I would prefer to advance sha'ir, but I can see the appeal of advancing druid, to have 8th level spells, but I honestly have no idea what to do with high level spells :P I'm staying away from 9th on purpose
noncasting prc for that level are totally on the table too, if they have a nice frontloaded for me to squeeze everything out of, but I feel I might feel it more keenly what I'm actually sacrificing by "dropping down" out of 8th/9th level slots