Sticking with druid is the more powerful option.
Natural spell is a great feat for druids. It allows you to stay in a wild shape form all day and still cast spells.
You can take the dragon wild shape feat (Draconomicon 105) at 12th level to gain the ability to tranform into dragons using wild shape. This feat also gives you the extraordinary and supernatural abilities of a dragon you transform into. You can take the froze wild shape feat (Frostburn 48) at 9th level to gain the ability to transform into magical beasts with the cold subtype (e.g. a cryohydra) using wild shape. You can take the aberration wild shape feat (Lords of Madness 178) at 6th level to gain the ability to transform into aberrations using wild shape. This feat has a prerequisite feat.
Check out the Druid Handbook.
With those sweet feats listed! Thanks. I playing very closed-to-the world type of droi... erm, druid :P And I didn't even use magic until the final battle of our third session, where I practically disabled the whole enemy band, and let my fighters and animals slaughter them :P and I was only lvl 3 then...feats i love for melee chargers.
power attack
leap attack
shock trooper
natural spell
a little prep goes a long way.
so your shifted into a big lion with pounce. (pounce= full attack action at the end of charge)
now we gotta get more attacks than bite, claw, claw, rake, rake after all who thinks 5 attacks is EVER ENOUGH.
so first we cast our buffs in order of which lasts the longest
girallons blessing (SC) grow 2 extra arms you can make attacks with. also if you hit with any 2 claws you get to rend for free. lasts 100 minutes
next thornskin- all nat attacks gain 1d8 dmg piercing and anyone who who hits you with nat attacks takes 1d8 lasts 10 rounds
last spell bite of the wereboaror weretiger. huge str a little dex big ac bonus, multi attack and blindfight. lasts 10 rounds.
so you cast all buffs you will be fully buffed for 9 more rounds time to hurt people.
pick a target you have a 50 foot speed charge them hurt them kill them i have done over 300 dmg in a single charge.
so you charge power attack max leap multiply your power attack by 3 so 7 bab=21 extra damage ON EVERY ATTACK YOU LAND. now add your ridiculous strength in to all of your attacks except for your bite. you only get to add half of your str to that one.
if you dont wanna look it up you have a str of 41. 25 from dire lion and 16 more from bite of wereboar. so 41 thats a +15 modifier. so we have 6 attacks claw claw rake rake sm claw sm claw that get this 15 dmg. then bite that only get 7 and then your rend gets str *1.5 so 22 more. before rolling dice you now have
21*7 power attack
15*6= primaries
1*7=secondary
1*22=rend
147+90+7+22=266 THIS IS BASE!!!!
so lets see our dice that we get to add
1d8*7=thornskin
1d8*6 claws
2d8*1 bite
2d4*1 rend if any 2 claws hit. we have 6 claws 2 should hit.
these are all this big because of bite of the wereboar.
so if we roll average our total dice dmg is 64
if we roll minimum our total dice dmg is 17
if we roll max our total dice dmg is 128
giving us total dmg dealt as 283 (min) 330 (average) 394 max.
all of this with 4 feats. yeah the prep is alittle tedious 3 whole rounds to get ready but you can cast move cast move and after you charge your ac is gonna go down by 9 b/c of shock trooper and charging but your att will be 21/21/21/21/21/21/16. and if your bite hits you can start a grapple as a free action. then the next round you can attack with 2 rakes 2 small claws a rend and if you have a nice dm who will let you just use yoru mouth to grapple 2 more claws. it is beautiful
warshaper. taking a few levels of this will give you crit immunity, 5 foot additional reach, +4 con and Str, and let you pick one natural weapon type (claw for me) and treat all your claws as if they were one size category larger than normal. so we used to have large made bigger by our spell made yet another size category larger by our new ability. so we have large-huge-really big. the 5 foot reach is useful but since we charge anyways not an OMG ability. the crit immunity is insane no more sneak attacks while your being grappled is very nice, and teh 4 con and 4 str is very very nice.
another is kensai. each level you take in this PrC will allow you to pick a an enhancement bonus= to your class level. so if you are a first level kensai you have to do +1 because your nat attacks are now treated as weapons requiring a +1 before anything else can be added. now you have a choice save those bonuses up and buy a +2 or higher or just spend them as they come. this allows you to tailor your character to your campaign alot. fighting undead and ghosts boom now you have ghost touch. fighting goblins boom goblin bane. save up and put dispelling on them and then EACH natural weapon you enchant gets that bonus so you could have 5 dispelling weapons. the trick to this is there is an xp cost to enchant these natural weapons. since wildshape is a supernatural abilty you can enchant your alternate forms nat weapons. the cost of enchanting natrual weapons is 100% the xp cost listed in the kensai entry +10% per additional natural weapon so if you do all 4 claws and your bite you are paying 140% of the xp listed in kensai. honestly the amount of power for such a low xp cost is amazing. you get a few other abilities but i could care less about them the nat weapon enhancement is where it is at.
the last one is for anyone who wants to piss off there dm. if your dm is stupid enough to let you play a planar sheppherd out fo faiths of eberron then by all means roll him up and a backup toon since your dm will outlaw these characters after there first combat.
the planar sheppherd has this sweet ability to bring a bubble of his chosen plane to the plane he is on now that bubble is treated as having the same traits as your chosen plane. you are immune to all negative effecets as are your party members. the only thing you are not protected from is any chronological difference i.e. time passing at different intervals. well there just so happens to be a plane with a 10:1 time ration for every minute on material plane there is 10 minutes on there plane. figure this means you pop your bubble with your ranged dps friends inside and you have 10 rounds to do whatever you want b4 your enemies get to move. and all you have to do is cast a spell to impeded there movement and then all ready actions and move further away at the same time. you can have 10 rounds to your enemies one for an HOUR that means 10 hours could pass for your enemy b4 they could ever catch up to you. and if you fail to kill them in 10 hours just planeshift to your home plane and take all your friends with you.
ok i kept my previous post pure druid now lets take a few seconds to consider a few levle changeup. all that this change does is lose a few levels of spell progression. now u use bite of weretiger instead of wereboar. so you have a few prestige classes (PrC) i just love for this build. first one is obvious.
warshaper. taking a few levels of this will give you crit immunity, 5 foot additional reach, +4 con and Str, and let you pick one natural weapon type (claw for me) and treat all your claws as if they were one size category larger than normal. so we used to have large made bigger by our spell made yet another size category larger by our new ability. so we have large-huge-really big. the 5 foot reach is useful but since we charge anyways not an OMG ability. the crit immunity is insane no more sneak attacks while your being grappled is very nice, and teh 4 con and 4 str is very very nice.
another is kensai. each level you take in this PrC will allow you to pick a an enhancement bonus= to your class level. so if you are a first level kensai you have to do +1 because your nat attacks are now treated as weapons requiring a +1 before anything else can be added. now you have a choice save those bonuses up and buy a +2 or higher or just spend them as they come. this allows you to tailor your character to your campaign alot. fighting undead and ghosts boom now you have ghost touch. fighting goblins boom goblin bane. save up and put dispelling on them and then EACH natural weapon you enchant gets that bonus so you could have 5 dispelling weapons. the trick to this is there is an xp cost to enchant these natural weapons. since wildshape is a supernatural abilty you can enchant your alternate forms nat weapons. the cost of enchanting natrual weapons is 100% the xp cost listed in the kensai entry +10% per additional natural weapon so if you do all 4 claws and your bite you are paying 140% of the xp listed in kensai. honestly the amount of power for such a low xp cost is amazing. you get a few other abilities but i could care less about them the nat weapon enhancement is where it is at.
the last one is for anyone who wants to piss off there dm. if your dm is stupid enough to let you play a planar sheppherd out fo faiths of eberron then by all means roll him up and a backup toon since your dm will outlaw these characters after there first combat.
the planar sheppherd has this sweet ability to bring a bubble of his chosen plane to the plane he is on now that bubble is treated as having the same traits as your chosen plane. you are immune to all negative effecets as are your party members. the only thing you are not protected from is any chronological difference i.e. time passing at different intervals. well there just so happens to be a plane with a 10:1 time ration for every minute on material plane there is 10 minutes on there plane. figure this means you pop your bubble with your ranged dps friends inside and you have 10 rounds to do whatever you want b4 your enemies get to move. and all you have to do is cast a spell to impeded there movement and then all ready actions and move further away at the same time. you can have 10 rounds to your enemies one for an HOUR that means 10 hours could pass for your enemy b4 they could ever catch up to you. and if you fail to kill them in 10 hours just planeshift to your home plane and take all your friends with you.
one small miscalculation on my part the leap attack only doubles the power attack damage since these are all single handed attacks my bad guys but the overall difference is -7 to each attack.