I recently stumbled into a deck of many things on my beloved barbarian and managed to draw a void. So that's a goner. Now I read about the awesomeness of the druid in all its many shapes and thought to myself: why not play one.
Initially it looked nice: I built a ghostwise halfling with lots of Con and Wis and a few skill points (and completely neglected Str and Dex, thanks to being introduced as level 11). I got my feats selected and I picked up a few nifty combat controlling spells, a lot of buffs for me and my heroic animal companion and generally spent hours over the character generation. Good times.
Intermezzo: Valid Books are basically Core, with the Prestige Classes from the "Complete .." line available, but nothing else (we operate on a rather limited budget here :P).
My optimal general purpose combat shape, it seems, was the Dire Lion at that level. Ended up something like 2 claw attacks at +17 with greater magic fang and one bite at +15 (also GMFanged and Improved Natural Attack boosted). The damage output (if I remember correctly - don't have the sheet here) was something like 1d10+8 for the claws and 1d8+10 for the bite (or close to it).
To get there, I needed to prepare well for combat. Two greater magic fangs (one claws and bite) needed to be cast (2 rounds), a barkskin helps lots (1 round), the damage could be boosted with bulls strength (1 round) and armour further with cats grace (1 round).
Unfortunately - that means 5 rounds spent buffing. All well and good for planned attacks, but a bit bad for ambushes we fall into (and we do a lot - that's our groups style of play and I don't want to change that either).
Intermezzo two: Before anyone asks: The stats of the druid are a good bit better than normal: We operate on a 42 point buy system and one free attribute increase and a +2/+2 attribute increase to important stats was granted later as a quest reward. That's important for the next bit:
Now back to my old (and new) barbarian: In the damage dealer role we have a dwarf, optimized for bashing things with a greataxe. He brings a mithril fullplate to the table, hefts a magic weapon and the usual magic "fluff" (Belt of Strength, Ring of Protection, Amulet of Natural Armour).
His armour class is higher than my druids in "normal" form (read: without buffs) and obviously most of his magic items continue functioning (unlike the rings, belts and whatnot for the druid: The wilding clasp apparently only works for cloaks and amulets as far as I read the rules). His damage output is off the scale, compared to the lion thing (attacks more around +26/+21/+16 with a damage of 1d12+20 ish). Pure damage output is hence bigger. Lots. The approximately equivalent armour also means that he will not be hit much more (even enraged) and of course the barbarian can take more damage (Wildshape errata read right by me? Hit points just carry over ...).
Intermezzo three: Our group consists of a Cleric (Healbot - we hired one to heal, he's not really player controlled, it's complicated ... basically see job description), Ranger (Ranged damage specialist and spotter/scout), Wizard (Battlefield control, Utility arcane caster, AoE Damage) and Rogue/Shadowdancer (Sneaky scout and flanking damage + exploration utility)
In the current group the versatility of the druid seems unneccessary. What we need most is a melee damage dealer/tank. The barbarian seems in all aspects the better choice.
Now to the question: What am I doing wrong about the druid? How could the druid perform so much better to actually deserve the attributes given here?
Help ... I don't get it
Druids benefit greatly from Splatbooks by their spell mechanics (Knowing All lSpells, prepare as needed) - take a look at Bite of the Werebear combined with Wildshape for a simple example on how to make the Barbarians Stats look like a halfling childs. Also, both Eberron and Realms material have a few huge boosts to offer.
Intermezzo: Valid Books are basically Core, with the Prestige Classes from the "Complete .." line available, but nothing else (we operate on a rather limited budget here ).
Does this mean Complete xxx PRC's are ok, but Feats, Spells and Equipment are not ? Sounds weird, considering you may need some of those to fulfill PRC requirements.
Does this mean Complete xxx PRC's are ok, but Feats, Spells and Equipment are not ? Sounds weird, considering you may need some of those to fulfill PRC requirements.
Yes that requires explanation. The books we had are complete adventurer (?)and complete warrior. None of the prestige classes in the material I had at hand had the slightest appeal for me, so I skipped most of them. The only one we used so far is the Shadow Dancer for our rogue.
The group still prefers playing on the "Core only - no Completes" set, but we made some concession to give our rogue darkvision :P
So basically.. this druid is limited to PHB spells and the equipment from DMG and PHB.
And carry a ring of counterspelling on you. To prevent a wizard of dispelling your expensive buff.
You can replace the bull's strength with an item of STR and make sure a wildling clasp is attached to it. That way you keep the item's bonus while you wildshape.
Cat's grace is nice, but it only yields you a +2 to AC.
Get a monks belt with the same wildling clasp I mentioned earlier and have your wis+1 to your AC.
Which leaves you with just 1 casting of barkskin to prepare yourself for combat.
Its too bad you don't have the spell compendium available. Because there are a few "bite of the were[X]" spells in there which all provide large bonuses to STR DEX CON and natural armor making them some of the most useful druid buffs in the game.
What you do in combat is pretty much up to yourself from then on.
With your dire lion form you can charge and open up with a full attack right from the start followed by an optional grapple which sets the target up nicely for the rogue or power-attacking character in the group.
As an addition you can use the spell slots you're not using to buff yourself as methods for battlefield control. Everybody hates entangle. And its for a reason. Briar web from complete divine is even nastier. Especially with a metamagic like Fell Drain slapped on it.
All in all you can be sporting an AC in the high twenties without buffing yourself and with a single buff round you can enjoy an AC of well in the thirties.
As for Spells, I also suggest taking a look at :
Stoneskin - should make you tougher than the barbarian, for a time. And a price.
Rusting grasp - Great when it works against heavily Armored Foes.
As for Battlefield Control Spells, you might also want to look up Wall of Thorns. Saved my Druids live countless times
If you need the really big gun, try and buy one or two scrolls of shapechange for BBEG encounters. The forum is brimming with how to exploit that spell.
You may want to look at Quicken Spell. It will start to become more useful for buffing while attacking in Wildshape.
You didnt mention your Animal Companion. Thats a good part of the druids melee damage potential, as is your summons. 1d3 Dire Lions + your Companion + Animal Growth is a whole lot of damage.
Also, keep in mind, you're at the very end of the usefulness of the Dire Lion. Next level you gain the mighty Dire Bear, which will last you until either Elemental Form or Dire Tiger.
But you in wildshape form wont beat a dedicated 2handed Melee brute in physical damage. You + Your animal Companion + Your summons will. And you've still got full druid casting to fall back on.
Wildshape is awesome when you can use it to cover dump stats. With as good as your ability scores sound, you don't even need to cover any stats. (If you could get your hands on a PHB II, the shapeshift druid variant plays well with good ability scores).
But you in wildshape form wont beat a dedicated 2handed Melee brute in physical damage. You + Your animal Companion + Your summons will. And you've still got full druid casting to fall back on.
Very true. And don't forget that you + most animal companions get free battlefield control in the form of grapple checks. One of you charges, Pounces, hits once or twice and grapples. Then the other one charges and pounces the target now denied its dex bonus. Even if you are fighting a large creature with good grapples, you should successfully grapple a fair % of time, and I LOVE watching big monsters spending their turn breaking my grapple, just in time to be grappled again on my next turn. All the Melee barbarian is doing is damage. You can do damage + some lockdown, without even casting.
Note : Does not work in combination with the Monk Belt mentioned before
I'll explain and then stick to my barbarian ... but in order:
The duration of many buffs is something I completely forgot about. Very true... casting those at the start of the day is going to be a distinct advantage.
The animal companion + summons plan: Animal companion I was using a dire wolf for the trip feat. It was unfortunately not able to put up serious resistance to controlling by the enemy (It is, after all, just an animal and not a very intelligent one). This could probably be countered by a little "cheating" (telling it to run circles around areas on the battlefield that make sense to cast spells on, making him spread out of AoE range from PCs and so on, but that is .. well.. not entirely "right").
The summons are less powerful than I had hoped, unfortunately. Even a huge earth elemental is not a very efficient fighter, and more useful for flanking - due to our campain being a little more high-power than usual (not sure I mentioned that in the original post) many encounter enemies are able to get rid of an elemental in very few actions (dismissal and banishment for the casters, just killing it ded ded ded! for the melee classes).
The main disadvantage appears to be size. Three huge elementals cannot sensibly flank a single medium sized creature - especially if there is supposed to be room for the rogue in the mix - and confined environments do not help.
Wilding clasp and items: As far as I know this item only applies to cloaks and amulets. None of them are of much use (that is twisting the truth a bit for my argument), but according to the DM guide (my source) the only amulets are the periapt of wisdom (good) and the natural armour amulet (nice) - there is no strength amuluets in there. Oh yes.. and the wilding clasp is not part of our allowed books anyway.
Monks Belt and armour: Again something that the rules make difficult. To use dragonskin fullplate (or any other fullplate made from natural materials) I need to waste a feat on heavy armour proficciency (our ruling). That seems a little weird, but ok. The monks belt doesn't grant the wisdom bonus in combination with armour, so it's one of those either/or things. If my periapt of wisdom does not have a wilding clasp, my armour class will also drop when in wildshape.
And lastly: Tanking: If my druid doesn't deal enough damage, the non-intelligent evildoers will kill my rogue. If they are intelligent they go for the spellcasters anyway. I think in combination with the classes we have (arcane caster, divine caster and scout) the full two-handed melee damage dealer is better.
However, if you really want to go melee, try this Druid 5/Master of Many Forms 6.