Wildshaping Ranger Feats

[arkol]

What sort of combat feats should a Wildshaping Ranger get? I'm looking for feats that would help while in and out of wildshape. Any interesting ideas?

[Glimbur]

Take Alertness. Not because it's good (it's quite weak) but because it's a pre-requisite for Master of Many Forms.

Power Attack is nice on natural attacks because unlike with Two Weapon Fights it applies to every weapon you use. Throw in Favored Power Attack if you want.

[Person_Man]

For your perusal:

Aberration Wild Shape: Lords of Madness. Let's you turn into an aberration.

Frozen Wild Shape: Frostburn. Let's you turn into anything with the Cold subtype. Like a Cryohydra.

Dragon Wild Shape: Draconomicon. Let's you turn into a Dragon. I think it has Epic requirements though.

Dragon Tail (Races of the Dragon) + Prehensile Tail (Serpent Kingdoms): Let's you use your tail as an arm. Normally this just qualifies you for Multi Weapon Fighting, which by itself rocks. But when Wild Shaped, this lets you make your normal attack routine plus all of your animal natural attacks (except the tail), essentially doubling the number of attacks you can make.

Natural Spell: SRD: If you're going strait Ranger and own the Spell Compendium.

Scorpion's Grasp: Sandstorm: Free Grapple with every attack.

Knock-Down: Free Trip attack with every attack of 10+ damage.

Combat Reflexes: Always useful, especially when you Wildshape into things with reach.

Frightful Presence (Draconomicon) and/or Imperious Command (Drow of the Underdark) and/or Bloodsoaked Intimidate (Champions of Ruin) and/or Dreadful Wrath (Player's Guide to Faerun): Fear feats are great against mooks.

Power Attack -> Improved Bull Rush -> Shock Trooper -> Leap Attack: Complete Warrior and Adventurer: Solid direct damage.

Deepspawn: Lords of Madness. 2 tentacles, ie, 2 extra attacks.

Star Spawn: Lords of Madness: Gain a limited fly speed.

Tomb Tainted Soul: Libris Mortis: You are healed by negative energy and harmed by positive. Now your allies can dump Uttercold spells in the middle of combat to heal you and harm (non-undead) enemies.

Note that many of these have pre-reqs. That's just off the top of my head. If you can tell us your exact ECL, books allowed, and build goal, it'd be easier to give advice.

[arkol]

It's actually for an NPC. Lvl5 right now.

[Eldariel]

Multiattack and possibly Improved Multiattack are really handy; you'll have lots of forms with a large number of natural attacks - being able to do them all at high AB is awesome.

Robilar's Gambit [PHBII] is awesome. Especially if you take Frozen Wildshape. A 12-Headed Cryohydra doing 12 counterattacks each time you're attacked is all sorts of awesome. Karmic Strike [CWar] is a worse, but still impressive and earlier-available version of Robilar's. They're great in other forms too, but Hydras are the truly insane ones.


Other than that, thanks to Ex Wildshape-ability from MoMF, many of the Wildshape-feats becomes less impressive. That said, Dragon Wildshape [Draconomicon] and anything that grants Supernatural abilities in general (also, Assume Supernatural Ability [Savage Species]) is just insanely good.

Then the usuals: Power Attack-line, Combat Reflexes-line, Combat Expertise > Improved Trip, etc.