Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 thisthatandtheother May 26, 2013 0:36:55	It's been a very long time since I've put anything like this together.  I'm working off in the woods and will be playing in a 3.5e 10th level core books campaign (with defenders of the faith, tome and blood, and two others of similar print time which I don't recall).  The DM wants to start us on a deserted island without armor/weapons, so naturally my thoughts turned to cleric or druid. I'm thinking to take druid 10 and wild shape into a 10-headed hydra.  Any suggestions?  I guess I could go also max out animal empathy as a druid and see about squirrel companions, but I think I'd need a PrC to split the companion hit dice and I'd rather not lose the wild shape levels.  It's been years and I don't remember what feats are good or what PrC's might be decent.
#2 Tempest_Stormwind May 26, 2013 1:03:11	It's been a very long time since I've put anything like this together.  I'm working off in the woods and will be playing in a 3.5e 10th level core books campaign (with defenders of the faith, tome and blood, and two others of similar print time which I don't recall).  The DM wants to start us on a deserted island without armor/weapons, so naturally my thoughts turned to cleric or druid. Those books are 3e, not 3.5, and it shows. (The others in that series are Sword and Fist, Song and Silence (which really should have been named Lutes and Loots, but I digress) and Masters of the Wild.) Aside: One of the examples of that design is the Shifter in Masters of the Wild. If you're emphasizing Wild Shape it's actually competitive with straight-up Druid, as I recall - I seem to remember it copying all the magical properties of its other forms. Its revised version in 3.5, the Master of Many Forms, most decidedly is not. I'm thinking to take druid 10 and wild shape into a 10-headed hydra.  Any suggestions?  I guess I could go also max out animal empathy as a druid and see about squirrel companions, but I think I'd need a PrC to split the companion hit dice and I'd rather not lose the wild shape levels.  It's been years and I don't remember what feats are good or what PrC's might be decent. Animal Empathy is also a 3e-exclusive skill - are you sure you're not actually playing 3e? (A simple way to check with the druid: does it have an animal companion sidebar, or does it just describe the companion as a product of the animal friendship spell?) The basic idea with a druid is just to take Natural Spell and keep up with your companion, spell, and shape choices (which are all available to you for free, more or less). That's really all you need to rock in 3.5. Here's a proper quickstart guide without all the detail; there's a lot more out there even for just core-only. If it's 3e, I'll have to do some digging - in general, the companions are useless and you're not as good as a summoner, plus most druid spells have a long casting time and there aren't as many good ways to speed that up. Thus, wild shape becomes your best option, and when you add in how wild shape worked in 3e (referencing Polymorph and generally going better from there), particularly with the Shifter, this might get out of hand really fast.
#3 thisthatandtheother May 26, 2013 16:15:05	The campaign is definitely 3.5, but I may not remember the exact differences between 3.0 and 3.5 -- I'm nowhere near the optimizer that I once was. :p Thanks for the quickstart guide, I'm running through it -- I haven't really found much else core-only for an edition that was replaced about 5 years ago, what with most people having at least access to most of the books that were printed for 3.5.
#4 draco1119 May 26, 2013 16:29:57	Druid 20 with Natural Spell taken at level 6. All other feats open.