I've been playing in a 3.5 edition D & D game since the new school year started.
I am playing a (necessarily) lawful neutral goblin druid/monk. I currently have 2 levels of druid and 1 level of monk. I am only 5 xp from 4th level, so I have a decision to make.
I impressed a ghostly paladin with my massive fortitude, my massive will, and my lawful neutralness. (The party consists of me + a bunch of elves, and my character is by far the most disciplined of the lot. This shocked the ghostly paladin, given my race's reputation.) My saves are quite excellent. (I rolled well with my stats, but not anywhere close to my kobold that I played in Doug's one-shot, for which my rolls were absolutely insane.) I don't have huge attacking power (thankfully, my companions take care of that), but the combination of produce flame, flurry, and casting spells through my riding dog animal companion (on whom I ride into battle; I decided to go that route because goblins have crazy bonuses to ride and other relevant skills for that direction) is actually quite potent.
What decision? What class to continue leveling in is a no-brainer (druid ftw!). I'm playing a druid as well, single classed gnome, 5th level, CN. If I could stomach playing a lawful alignment, the monk1/druidX build is pretty awesome. I've also heard good things about NG druids with Vow of Poverty. VoP isn't quite as good as equipment (assuming DMG character wealth), but it gets very costly for druids to bring their equipment with them into wild shape - wilding clasps, expensive armor enhancements, and so forth.
ReplyDeleteFYI, animal companions do NOT increase in size as they gain hit dice. The monster manual stuff about monster advancement is considered entirely different and unrelated to animal companions. So my druid's wolf (named Barky) got screwed out of a couple of sessions of adventuring because we thought he was Large, and in that module all underground passages are 5' wide...
So far my druid isn't terribly effective. I built him for wild shape, so Str is a dump stat and thus he's not much good in humanoid form. In hindsight, I should have taken either the fire or electricity reserve feat (Complete Mage) at level 3, though Warden Initiate (Eberron book) isn't bad. Part of the problem may be the module - I don't think very highly of the designers, since they seem to have a "let's try to set up as many TPKs as possible!" philosophy. One player lost five characters in the first four sessions, for example, and my druid is the only survivor from the start of the campaign.
For future reference, I find Nature's Warrior (Complete Warrior) to be an appealing PrC. Your animal companion won't progress, but wild shape will, and you get some caster progression too. Choose from special abilities (in wild shape only) such as fast healing 1, DR 3/-, bonus damage, or lots of other stuff.
If your dog dies (which seems all too likely, sooner or later), you might see if the GM will allow you to pick up the alternate class ability from Unearthed Arcana, where you give up having an animal companion in exchange for +10' land speed and a few rages (1+1/5 levels, IIRC). Also, riding dogs are considered proficient with armor (barding), so that can really help its AC, at a nontrivial cost for your level.
Is Sir Spinebreaker's campaign over?
Sir Gruul Spinebreaker's campaign sadly ended with the second term last year. We tried to get together during the first few weeks of third term, but people were bad about responding to e-mails and I was traveling a lot that term, so we never met. The current campaign is much better and the people with whom I'm playing are a few years older than those, so I think the mix is much better.
ReplyDeleteI might get some more monk levels because I'd really like things like evasion abilities.
Ugh... TPKs are best left to one-shots, and even then you want back-up plans with other things to do.
My dog has done well so far. I really want to keep the animal companion gig because I want to take advantage of my riding skills and casting spells through it.
Your reflex save is always going to be crap, though (well, crap+2 thanks to multiclassing), so evasion will not be especially useful to a druid IMHO. Maybe in some uber-Dex animal form, I guess. I'd much, much prefer the spell and wild shape progression to evasion. Eventually you can buy a ring of evasion if it's that important to you.
ReplyDeleteAh - the key reason not to take Monk2 is feat selection at level 6. If you take the monk level, you won't be able to get Natural Spell until level 9, which means you'd have two levels of being unable to cast in wildshape (straight druid has one such level, which is very painful let me tell you!). The monk1 build nicely sets you up to take Natural Spell the instant you gain the wild shape ability, though it does prevent you from taking a reserve feat at level 3.
Wow, the monk dip is better than I thought - I was just thinking of the wisdom to AC, saves, and flurry, but you get Grapple too! I'll definitely have to think about doing a lawful druid someday.
Personally, I'm just very reluctant to fall a full spell level behind. I plan to do it with Nature's Warrior since the benefits are great and there's no delayed wild shape progression. I've also thought about it for a two level dip of Swordsage (Tome of Battle - very awesome book!). That would probably be a Druid6/Swordsage2/DruidX build, picking up Wis to AC and a selection of 1st-3rd level martial maneuvers and stances. Hmm, in the fullness of time perhaps I should play three druids - my current one, CN/Natures Warrior; LN/monk1; NG/VoP/Swordsage. And there are multiple options for companions - standard, none but with barbarian-lite abilities, and elemental (from Complete Mage or Complete Champion, I think).
What do you mean by "casting spells through" your dog? Taking advantage of the share spells when adjacent class ability? I guess that does work decently when you actually ride (Barky has the trick, but I rarely use the ability in combat). Non-riders don't get much from it, though, since the spell ends on the companion if you ever cease to be adjacent (unless you take a PHB2 feat, which lets you be within 30'). I think the only times we've used it were short range flights with the swift bird shape spell in Complete Scoundrel - fly in formation for a round or two to get up a cliff or across a channel, that kind of thing. Until I noticed the ends-when-not-adjacent clause, I'd planned on sharing defense buffs (Barkskin, Displacement (the main benefit of the Eberron feat, adds spells to your list), Resists, etc.). I always throw my Produce Flames, but sharing them with the companion should work great for a melee rider druid build.
Just bear in mind that if your dog dies, it'll take you the better part of a month to get your new companion trained up (and until then you just have the bonus tricks).
While my reflex save is my worst save, it is +6, which I think might be +2 better than the best save in the rest of the party.
ReplyDeleteI'm small. I won't be doing any grappling.
I ride my dog into most combat. My ride ability is insane (something like +12) and riding dogs are automatically trained to go into battle. I use produce flame in melee so that I can subsequently flurry with it.
I'll look through the materials before I decide for sure on my next spell.
One annoying issue is that I'm currently our party's main healer because we have no cleric, etc. I think I am the only one who can cast any divine spells.
Heh, tell me about it. The current party in the death campaign is druid, funky incarnum class with an adaptable role, fighter, wizard, and rogue. I prepare one Lesser Vigor every day for healing, and that's it. Most of the party wears Healing Belts (750gp, Magic Item Compendium), and the incarnum guy can do a transfer wounds type of thing.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, lack of healing has never led to any of the character deaths. Overpowered monsters and unexpectedly restrictive terrain took care of that nicely (the one cleric we had was critted from full to dead on round 1 of his second combat, for example).
Re: grappling - your humanoid form is small, but your animal forms will be Medium or greater, and will generally have awesome strength and sometimes an extra grapple bonus, and many will have Improved Grab. So a non-grappling druid would be an odd choice once you reach 6-9th level or so. Even the pouncing forms typically have decent grappling ability - I think it's just the flying casters and the tramplers who don't grapple much.
On the subject of D&D builds, do you have much experience with bards? I thought of a concept that might get me to play such an awful class - dwarven bagpiper! Poking through the books, it's not clear if it's worth going through with it. The attractive PrCs basically push the bard towards being a skillful sorceror with slower spell access. So a variant concept would be to play something else (rogue, sorceror, fighter, crusader, ...?) and claim to be a bard. Most class choices would have perform as cross-class, so those versions of the character would run around claiming to be a bard while playing bagpipes badly! Probably the sorceror option, since it's hard to see how one could use weapons while playing...
I've been using potions and scrolls of cure light wounds and preparing one cure minor every day. (I once prepared a cure light because there was a sort of guarantee of inactivity that day and I wanted to speed things up for a fellow PC without losing the potions or scrolls.) We just got out of a dungeon in which we were using some sort of fountain of holy water. I still have several doses left because my characters always carry spare flasks and such. In fact, this led to the memorable moment of my taking out my wine flask in the early room in the dungeon and chugging the whole thing so that I could fill it with the holy water. Thankfully I made my fortitude save!
ReplyDeleteI haven't played too many bards in 3.x edition. I played a rogue/bard in Joe's game, but I didn't get to a very high level with that character. At the time we stopped, I was also thinking of possibly making my next level one in cleric because our cleric had just moved to Florida.
I'll keep that in mind about grapple, but I don't really want to just have it sit there for several levels before I use it at all.
I think the dwarven bagpiper sounds awesome! Go for it!
What's the cost breakdown of scrolls/potions vs. wands? My impression is that the latter is the cheapest hp/gp healing available, but I haven't looked at the numbers lately. My druid actually carries two wands of CLW, since one was lost for several days on the corpse of one of the dead characters. I just bought another one for 750gp in the mean time.
ReplyDeleteIf you're playing with Spell Compendium, the Vigor series is much more efficient healing than the Cure series, especially for the "down time" healing you mentioned. I prefer it for wands too, but since wands are combat healing (in theory) the rest of the group voted for 1d8+1 rather than 1 hp/round for 11 rounds.
Another very amusing spell to keep in mind is Interfaith Blessing from Complete Champion. As the name implies it's primarily clerical, but druids do get it. 2nd level spell, full round casting (boo!), grants a bonus to allies nearby which varies depending on their chosen deity. Or roll d8 on a chart for characters with no deity or luck-based deities. In addition to the fun factor, it's actually pretty decent, and the bonuses usually stack with other common buff spells.
I gather you picked Stunning Fist with your monk level, then? No worries, the only written-in-stone druid feat pick is Natural Spell at 6th. You already have Improved Unarmed, so you'd be eligible for Improved Grapple at 9th or later, if desired. There's a Draconic Wildshape feat which can be attractive at 12th, as long as you keep max ranks in Knowledge Nature (and have actually encountered dragons so as to be "familiar" enough to wild shape into one).
Magic related feats will probably be attractive for the level 9+ slots as well; I've thought about the reserve feat that lets you pull an elemental out of your butt (not literally, though that could be a fun somatic component if it's an earth elemental) for free as often as desired. Do you use metamagic much (in general, not specifically this character)? Extend, Quicken, possibly Reach seem nice, but the spell level boost looks painful. And I normally play fighter-ish characters so I don't have much experience in this area.
I'll let you know when/if the bagpiper enters play. Won't be anytime soon, sadly. The high level drow-fighting campaign (where I'm playing Commando Smurf, I mean Svirf) is almost done, I wouldn't want to try a bard in something as deadly as the campaign with my druid, and the third campaign that group has in the queue is where I'll be playing a warblade (Tome of Battle again), who is basically a variation of the fighter character concept I've wanted to play since 2nd edition. So many games, so little time!
Actually, the option of wands has yet to be open to my character considering how little money he has. At no point have I _ever_ had more than about 300 gp.
ReplyDeleteI haven't actually looked through the spell compendium. I've basically just been using PHB spells. I only had the one day of downtime anyway, and cure light was sufficient.
I do have stunning fist, though the DC is sufficiently low that I haven't actually used it in game yet.
I'm still working on adding to my knowledge nature. I know less about it than I should. :)