Need help to sorta break a lvl 20 druid.

[Escheton]

2 classes allowed, including prestige. So druid 10/prestige 10.
We have only 1 magic item. So need to be effective without any.

Planar shepard is already banhammered. So I need something along else along those lines.

Any ideas?

[Prodan]

Druid 10/Druid 10

[Ranos]

You're a druid. A druid with 9th level spells at that. You don't need a prestige class to be broken.


Possibly get arcane disciple for Miracle. That might come in handy.
Then again, you've already got shapechange, you can just use that to get miracle or anything you want.

[Glimbur]

Consider making your allowed magic item a Tome of Con or Wis, as the inherent bonus should carry over to wildshape form. Honestly, if you are looking for pure power on a druid and can't take planar shepherd you should take more druid.

[Lycanthromancer]

2 classes allowed, including prestige. So druid 10/prestige 10.
We have only 1 magic item. So need to be effective without any.

Planar shepard is already banhammered. So I need something along else along those lines.

Any ideas?

They're right. The strongest druid build this side of planar shepherd is druid 20, with Natural Spell. Grab that, and learn the strategies from the handbooks to push them hard, and you've got your answer.

[Jack_Simth]

2 classes allowed, including prestige. So druid 10/prestige 10.
We have only 1 magic item. So need to be effective without any.

Planar shepard is already banhammered. So I need something along else along those lines.

Any ideas?

Druid-20. Possibly Monk-1/Druid-19. Skip the magic item - take the Vow of Poverty from the Book of Exalted Deeds (unless you expect the campaign to go Epic). Should break things quite well.

[Escheton]

We start at lvl 20 and epic is certainly an option.

So why would one refrain from monk 1 and VoP then?

[tyckspoon]

We start at lvl 20 and epic is certainly an option.

So why would one refrain from monk 1 and VoP then?

Because it doesn't have provisions for scaling into the Epic levels, and it'll prevent you from using the largish amounts of cash you would need to use Epic Spellcasting, which is the definitive power option for Epic levels. (Mind, if you're playing with such low magic wealth that you only get 1 magic item, you probably won't have the resources to use Epic Spellcasting either, so it might be moot.)

[ScionoftheVoid]

We start at lvl 20 and epic is certainly an option.

So why would one refrain from monk 1 and VoP then?

I'm not sure, but I seem to remember reading that the bonuses from VoP don't progress into Epic.

Also, does your DM realise quite how much of most PC's power is in wealth, and why are you only allowed two classes?

Edit: Swordsaged.

[aivanther]

Skip monk, get either vow of poverty or monk's belt or either supermegaawesome beastskin armor, or superawesome armor of the wild.

Druid 20 gets you all you need. Grab a horrid tiger for an animal companion. Go wild with Nature's Avatar and/or Summon Nature's Ally 9: 1d3 greater storm elementals.

There, it's broken.

Oh, obligatory guide book link

[Escheton]

yeah, the idea is we start off with one items and get the rest of our list of items as random drops. But for the first few sessions we will be rather itemstarved it seems.

[Jack_Simth]

Ah, there we go - Dwarf Monk-1/Druid-19, pick up the +6 Belt of Magnificence from the Minatures Handbook (+6 to all attributes, 200,000).
Feats....
1: Extend Spell
3: Natural Bond (+ a bit to your effective Druid level for purposes of animal companions)
6: Natural Spell
9: Practiced Spellcaster (Druid)
12: Companion Spellbond (Extra range on Share Spells with your animal companion)
15: Quicken Spell
18: Persistent Spell

Now, the bick trick with Natural Bond is to convince your DM that it helps with the mitigated animal companions (e.g., gets rid of the level adjustment for having a Leopard, rather than a wolf).

Persistent Mass Lesser Vigor (Spell Compendium): The entire party now has Fast Healing 1.

[gorfnab]

Here is a thread with a possible fix for Epic Vow of Poverty if you want to go that route.

[Dr.Epic]

Druid 10/Druid 10

Yeah 20 levels of druid is kind of ridiculous. It's one of the most broken classes at any level in all of D&D.

[Escheton]

Been checking out the shifter druid subs.
Is it viable or a clear powerdip?

[MattintheHat]

There is no reason to multiclass. At all. Just ignore it.

As a druid you have two amazing abilities: casting and wildshaping. Everything else is thick, delicious icing on a cake that tastes better than virtually anything else in the cookbook.

Casting has so many options, and one of them is the ability to summon some truly awesome allies. If you have spare feats, boost this. Augment Summoning is worth the useless Spell Focus for this. There's another feat that doubles the duration (it's not metamagic, but I forget the name).

Wildshaping is so easy to break. Look at a guide, it'll help. Generally, anything that lets you get supernatural and spell-like abilities is what you're looking for. Also, Natural Spell. Take this. Period. There is never any reason for a druid (with wild shape) not to take it.

If you have spare feats and your party lacks a dedicated healer, you might consider spontaneous healing (Complete Divine?). It's not broken at all, but rather useful depending on party composition.

[Premier]

Why do you need to 'break' a druid? Why do you have to build something ridiculously overpowered and mess up the various challenges the DM has prepared for the party? Why do you want to turn all those situations that he meant to be hard, probably for a good reason, into easy-as-pie curbstomps, thus eliminating the suspense and the enjoyment of overcoming a serious obstacle?

Why do you want to, ultimately, decrease the enjoyment of everyone around the table?

[Moriato]

I know I've said it before but I'm a big fan of Lion of Talisid.

As a druid10/lion of talasid10 you still get full spellcasting, and full animal companion, you'd gain Scent, Exalted Companion (Feat which adds some celestial magic beasts to the list of available companions, or lets you add the celestial template to any of thwe normal choices), Pounce, Haste 10 rounds/day, and a Holy-Word-like SLA 3/day.

The downsides are that you have to be Exalted (may or may not be a problem, depending on your dm, really), you have to take the feat "Favored of the Companions" to qualify, which is pretty useless, and you wind up losing 2 levels worth of wild shape.

All together it's probably not much more or less powerful than druid 20, but it is a little different, and I think a lot of fun.

[aivanther]

Why do you want to, ultimately, decrease the enjoyment of everyone around the table?

Why do you assume everyone else at his table is not an extreme optimizer as well?

Moonspeaker is a viable shifter alternative, it's just different. I'd say it's decent enough, maybe = druid, but not quite as good as planar shepherd (but what is?).

[Lycanthromancer]

Why do you need to 'break' a druid? Why do you have to build something ridiculously overpowered and mess up the various challenges the DM has prepared for the party? Why do you want to turn all those situations that he meant to be hard, probably for a good reason, into easy-as-pie curbstomps, thus eliminating the suspense and the enjoyment of overcoming a serious obstacle?

Why do you want to, ultimately, decrease the enjoyment of everyone around the table?

It starts at level 20, going into epic, and his campaigns are on the difficult side?

[Escheton]

It starts at level 20, going into epic, and his campaigns are on the difficult side?

prettymuch yeah

and it's "sorta break" as in: be powerfull enough to deal with a dozen homebrewed souldrinker squidfaces without having too call on gods or wish for an out.
You can always downplay a powerful character during play. You can't have a weakling save the day...

[tyckspoon]

Re: Need help to sorta break a lvl 20 druid.
Been checking out the shifter druid subs.
Is it viable or a clear powerdip?

Shifter is a bit of a loss because the Shifter race is pretty weak. The Beast Spirit substitution is pretty good, tho, especially if you end up with many levels in things that don't advance Animal Companion. Wild Shifting is a flat out nerf, but it does pair well with the Moonspeaker PrC. If you don't mind dropping a little bit of power, Shifter (Beast Spirit) 9/Moonspeaker 11 is a pretty good setup with full casting progression, Wildshape as a Druid 16, some neat extra summoning tricks, and a bonus 3rd-level auto-Quickened buff spell. Plus some stat buffs from your shifter trait(s) and the Beast Spirit, which will help keep you going until you have your proper allotment of magic junk.

[Prodan]

Why do you need to 'break' a druid? Why do you have to build something ridiculously overpowered and mess up the various challenges the DM has prepared for the party? Why do you want to turn all those situations that he meant to be hard, probably for a good reason, into easy-as-pie curbstomps, thus eliminating the suspense and the enjoyment of overcoming a serious obstacle?

Why do you want to, ultimately, decrease the enjoyment of everyone around the table?

Oh noes, somebody on the internet is having doubleplus wrongbadfun.

[Escheton]

why not druid 8/moonspeaker 12 on that shifterbuild?
with the lvl 1 racial sub.

[PId6]

Just pick any PrC that progresses casting. Animal companion is useful but not necessary at such high levels. Wild Shape can be dumped entirely. As a 20th level druid, you have access to Shapechange, which trumps Wild Shape in every way. Any "breaking" you need to do can be entirely achieved by that one spell.

For the magic item, make it a Necklace of Natural Weapons (Savage Species) with +6 enhancement to Wisdom and +6 enhancement to Constitution (using magic item improvement rules in MIC). Give it as many enhancements as you can, for as many natural weapons as you can.

[Math_Mage]

Initiate of Nature, Rashemi Elemental Summoning, Assume Supernatural Ability, Fell Drain/Weaken...there's all kinds of fun stuff to help Druids break the world, but at level 20, do you really need it?

[Eldariel]

It's easy. You know Shapechange. D&D broken. Even if you can't pick spellcasting, with little work, you'll get all spells in the game as Su-abilities. Consider 1 level of Hierophant (Divine Reach obv) and Sacred Exorcist along with lots of Extra Turnings for persisting everything if you really need to "break" the game.

And heck, VoP and Dark Chaos Shuffle. 'cause why not? You don't have magic items anyways, might as well pick up a lot of feats like Extra Turnings. Or is that not the kind "breaking" you are thinking of?


Anyways, deck out your AC with non-magical Gear that can get Magic Vestmented by a Cleric (or you if you bother to learn the spell), consider the Monk-dip if you want Wis to AC, etc. One magic item, Beads of Karma, Orange Prism Ioun Stone or Greater Metamagic Rod of Quicken are all good picks.

And really, Druids are easy. Writing it all down is hard. But the power comes naturally, especially at Caster Level 20 where your Giant Vermins and Control Winds solo many silly encounters and raze cities from your low-level slots. And your silly Shapechange means you have Etherealness, Astral Projection, Disintegrate, Flesh to Stone and company as Su-abilities anyways. And two Standard Actions. Really, more than anything, you should learn to use Shapechange. And SNAs; they get you Otto's Irresistible Dance as repeated castings, some Bard-abilities, some Healing and actual Restoration too, a mind control lite and other such abilities when properly used.

[Brock Samson]

Forget the monk dip. Starting at level 20 you've got enough Shapechange spells to go around (extended via rod of metamagic if you can get ahold of one, pretty cheap).

Then take the ACF, dropping wildshape and picking up the Deadly Hunter variant (?) that gives you Wis to AC, fast movement, track, and one or two other things.

Then rely on Shapechange all day, as it's MUCH better than wild shape. Be a Solar or Titan or Pit Fiend for mega-awesomeness. UMD a wand of Scintillating Scales to get all that sweet Natural Armor into a Deflection Bonus. Then Barkskin. Good times.

[Eldariel]

Forget the monk dip. Starting at level 20 you've got enough Shapechange spells to go around (extended via rod of metamagic if you can get ahold of one, pretty cheap).

Then take the ACF, dropping wildshape and picking up the Deadly Hunter variant (?) that gives you Wis to AC, fast movement, track, and one or two other things.

Then rely on Shapechange all day, as it's MUCH better than wild shape. Be a Solar or Titan or Pit Fiend for mega-awesomeness. UMD a wand of Scintillating Scales to get all that sweet Natural Armor into a Deflection Bonus. Then Barkskin. Good times.

Wildshape does have other beneficial qualities as an overlay for Shapechange; you can take non-combat forms with good Sus and Wildshape into something transferring the Sus into your whatever Wildshape form you're using and thus...well, do fun stuff.

Also, the correct order to do buffing is Shapechange > Tortoise Shell > Scintillating Scales > Tortoise Shell (with optional Wildshape to get a new Natural Armor base too). This ends up with you having your (massive) NA (+ Enhancement) converted into Deflection, followed by a new (massive) NA (+ Enhancement).


And instead of UMD, you could just use Shapechange to gain access to Scintillating Scales. Given the rarity of Magic Items, that seems prudent.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

For that one magic item, I'd take Item Familiar and make it a set of red wool footie pajamas with a door at the back to poop through, equivalent to masterwork padded armor. It would have a cinch in the waist, a hood, gloves that could fold back when not in use, each sleeve would have a loop at the end to go around a finger so they wouldn't ride up the wearer's arms, and a short decorative cape attached at the shoulders. This one item would take multiple item spots thus enchanting it would be priced as though it were multiple items (armor, chest, feet, waist, hands, wrists, head, back, rings). Being your item familiar you could upgrade everything yourself as though you had all the proper item creation feats to do so, and since you'd get a +10% XP bonus you could even still end up ahead of everyone else. Also note that an item familiar is considered an intelligent item, which is treated as a construct, which makes it immune to antimagic field, dispelling, and disjoining, and an invalid target for sundering, plus since everything is attached it couldn't be disarmed or slight of handed.

You can break a Druid 11 with Aberration Blood, Aberration Wild Shape, and Assume Supernatural Ability: Eye Rays, just wild shape into a Beholder and fire all those eye rays at will, casting spells all the while.