Druid combat

[Albanymusicfund]

Dear gianttip members,

I hope you are doing well! I have a conundrum which I am faced that I was hoping that you could assist with. Due to intra-party conflict, the issue has been resolved out of meta but the fight will continue on regardless, my Druid will be faced against a combat expertise build Paladin and a Bard.

The Bard is fifth level, as am I, but the Paladin is 4th. I currently restricted to only SRD materials for my Druid. There is a lack of forestry and we face an open grassy steppe. There might be the possibility that the 4th level Barbarian joins the battle on my behalf, but how can I prepare for this combat on my end? As in, could you help me formulate a battle plan?

Best,
AMF

[Doctor Despair]

Are you BUILDING the druid? Or are feats already picked? How much gold do you have to spend? What do you already have?

[sleepyphoenixx]

As a druid you don't really need much preparation.
Wild shape into something that can fly, stay out of range and utilize long-range spells and your ability to spontaneously summon to destroy your enemies with impunity.
Should things unexpectedly go against you simply fly away, rest to recover spells and hp and try again until you succeed.

You'll want to keep a Wind Wall prepared in case they have bows, but that's pretty much it. At low levels melee enemies can really only hurt you if you allow them to.

Edit: forgot you don't have Natural Spell yet. If you have 24 hours to replace your animal companion with a Dire Bat you can still do the same thing though, you'll just be riding instead of flying yourself.

[Doctor Despair]

As a druid you don't really need much preparation.
Wild shape into something that can fly, stay out of range and utilize long-range spells and your ability to spontaneously summon to destroy your enemies with impunity.
Should things unexpectedly go against you simply fly away, rest to recover spells and hp and try again until you succeed.

You'll want to keep a Wind Wall prepared in case they have bows, but that's pretty much it. At low levels melee enemies can really only hurt you if you allow them to.

An issue is that they can't cast spells while wild shaped at level 5, Sleepy. Level 6 would make this a lot easier for sure, but that's not what's being offered.

They could wild shape into a flying form, but with SRD only, there's no foot bow.

Surrogate Spellcasting is also off the table, as it isn't SRD, even if they could qualify.

I also thought about trying to ride an animal companion, but... it's SRD only. No flying ACs are on the table.

Edit: Ah, just saw your edit, and I'd overlooked dire bat; I was like, Oh, hunting bat and dire eagle are off the table, so there's nothing. Back to basics!

Yeah, there's a strat. Ride on the dire bat and sling spells down at them. Bring a bow and lots of arrows too; alchemic splash weapons are always nice. Basically just remind them why flight invalidates a ton of encounters. The paladin's only recourse will be to shoot at you with a bow. The bard might be able to throw some mind-affecting spells at you, but apart from that, they are also stuck on bows.

[ciopo]

Is preparation at all possible? Because like, cloudburst+ call lightning+ flying should be good enough to get it done and over with in the course of 5 rounds at 3d10 damage per round, you just need to cast those before engaging.

Either way you're at a level where you can fly and they supposedly can't, they are outranged and outgunned unless you're starting out adjacient for some reason and they fully incapacitate in a surprise round

Nevermind the cloudburst, sorry. Missed the srd only.

Anyway, simple 2 step plan

Step 1: cast call lightning
Step 2: shapeshift into something flying and fly withing the long range of call lightning sometime withing the next 5 minutes.

Spike growth would be quite debilitating to them, too. Like it last 5 hours and you make 5 squares ... just put them in a line between you and them, it,s a magical trap neither of them can actually search-check spot it, so that's 20d4 damage right there if they come straight at you from over 100ft away

What's your animal companion?

Even just entangle from afar, they stand no chance imho if you don't start right next to each other, especially if they are srd-only too

[sleepyphoenixx]

Yeah, there's a strat. Ride on the dire bat and sling spells down at them. Bring a bow and lots of arrows too; alchemic splash weapons are always nice. Basically just remind them why flight invalidates a ton of encounters. The paladin's only recourse will be to shoot at you with a bow. The bard might be able to throw some mind-affecting spells at you, but apart from that, they are also stuck on bows.

Entangle does apply an overall -4 penalty to ranged attacks (-2 to attack rolls and -4 dex), so it's an option to keep in mind if you're worried about bows. Probably better than wasting one of your two 3rd level slots on Wind Wall.

Or you could cast Obscuring Mist (while riding your dire bat of course) and just keep spamming dire wolves, giant eagles (remember diving charges) and hippogriffs while being near-untouchable yourself.
If you have Augment Summoning that should be more than enough, though even without it it's unlikely they'll last against your full set of spell slots unless your dice hate you.

Simply bombarding them with Call Lightning is also an option, and the 3d6 damage per bolt is still somewhat relevant at that level.

Since the bard is limited to a single 2nd and a few 1st level spells - most of which will likely target your will save, assuming they're offensive at all - and the paladin doesn't have spellcasting at all there really isn't much they can do about it.

I'd probably go with a combination of 2 and 3. Use summons to keep them busy and soften them up while hiding in your fog cloud 30-40ft above the ground, then use Call Lightning to finish them off if your summons don't manage by themselves.

[Albanymusicfund]

Unfortunately, I cannot have access to any preparation time besides picking spells. I removed my animal companion from the game because it slowed down combat for the other players. I never thought I would want one eventually to actually attack them back.

I thank you all for your input! This is a tremendous aid to my efforts! I should have stockpiled in advance, truthfully, but I didn't actually think my fellow players would want to kill my character.

[sleepyphoenixx]

Unfortunately, I cannot have access to any preparation time besides picking spells. I removed my animal companion from the game because it slowed down combat for the other players. I never thought I would want one eventually to actually attack them back.

I thank you all for your input! This is a tremendous aid to my efforts! I should have stockpiled in advance, truthfully, but I didn't actually think my fellow players would want to kill my character.

You could always wild shape into an eagle and simply leave. You could come back prepared and ambush them more or less at your leisure, but you don't even have to.
A paladin and bard don't have anything at that level to actually force an engagement on you unless you let them.

[Doctor Despair]

You could always wild shape into an eagle and simply leave. You could come back prepared and ambush them more or less at your leisure, but you don't even have to.
A paladin and bard don't have anything at that level to actually force an engagement on you unless you let them.

Don't forget -- you can get a new animal companion by escaping in this way and praying for 24 hours in seclusion.

[daremetoidareyo]

Cast tree shape. Then get your monkey AC to disguise you as a dryad. Seduce the bard. Murder the paladin in his sleep

[Dimers]

I didn't actually think my fellow players would want to kill my character.

If that's an accurate description of what's happening, winning a fight is unlikely to solve the underlying problem. Like, it doesn't matter for gameplay whether that druid even survives -- it sounds like he won't ever be welcome in the party. Maybe you should talk to the other players outside the game instead.