The Gaming Den

[The_Hanged_Man]

One of my players wants to play a druid-type character. Straight druids've been banned from our group for a while now, but I thought I'd allow it. He's said he'd like to have the druid spell list and abilities, but not wild shape. How valuable is a druid w/o wildshape? Does it need something else to be at least somewhere in the Rogue level of power?

[RandomCasualty]

Well, assuming you're using dragonscale armor and it's readily available, a druid is a little worse than a cleric. It definitely won't be a dominating class, but I think just as a primary caster alone, it'll still be rather useful.

It'd be close enough to the rogue I think that we could call it balanced.

[Wrenfield]

[The_Hanged_Man]

Druids were obviously overpowered and nobody wanted to deal w/ making a class that worked, so we punted on it. One player wants to be a druid, doesn't want to wildshape (which he saw as the main problem w/ the class before). So we're trying to figure out what losing wildshape is worth as a class feature.

[FrankTrollman]

What is it that he wants?

Nobody wants to play "A Druid" or "A Fighter" - those are game mechanical character classes, not character conceptions.

While various character classes can be used to represent the character you want to play, they aren't the character you want to play any more than the jump skill is the character you want to play.

So what does he want? With the abotively stupendiforous amount of Cleric Cheeze available, you can represent most Druid Archetype Characters just by taking the Cleric Class and slapping the Plant Domain on it.

With the extreme customizability of the Wizard spell list, you can do most Druid Archetype Characters just by being a Conjurer or a Diviner Specialist Wizard.

The only thing that Druids really do that other classes really don't do from a game mechanical outlook is gain multipurpose Lycanthropy at level 5. If that's not what he wants, he can be a "druid" by being a Ranger, Cleric, or Wizard straight out of the box.

-Frank

[The_Hanged_Man]

I was trying to avoid the cleric b/c that's got enough trouble of its own. Does just dropping wildshape destroy the class?

[Wrenfield]

Depends.

If he is going to stay the route for going straight Druid, I would give him some minor compensation. Perhaps 2 feats to be chosen from a small pool of appropriate-themed "spellcaster Druid" feats (and gained at different but appropriate levels). This also might compel him to stay straight and not go with a PrC.

If he is going to be taking a PrC as soon as possible, you probably don't need to adjust anything.

Since this is customized revision for just your campaign ... other information is needed as well. What level are you starting play at and how many levels does your module or campaign last? If we are talking, say, 1st level, and a rise to only 3rd - you don't need to change much at all.

[The_Hanged_Man]

Don't know yet. We pick characters first, then decide who wants to DM and what sort of campaign it's going to be based on teh PC's. If most everybody wants to be fighter types, it'll probably be low level. If everybody wants to play magic user types, it'll probably be higher.

[RandomCasualty]

[Maj]

You may want to check out some of the class variants of the druid in Unearthed Arcana.

According to UA, page 58, a Druid's armor and shield proficiency + all forms of Wildshape is approximately equivalent to gaining a monk's unarmored bonus and Wis to AC, fast movement as per monk, favored enemy, swift tracker, and the Track feat (all as per the ranger).

I'm highly inclined to believe that they severely undervalued wildshape, but since I don't know the power level of your games, it might work for you.

Also, beginning on page 67, there are "aspects of nature" that replace wildshape. Across twenty levels, the druid gains the ability to take on up to four of these aspects concurrently. Some of the aspects are things like:

Endurance: +4 Con
Agility: +8 Dex, -4 Strength
Elemental Air*: Like Gaseous Form with fly speed of 100 ft (perfect).
Plant*: +10 Hide while in forest, overgrowth, etc. +4 Natural Armor, plant immunities.
Scent: you gain the scent ability.
Vigor: +8 Str, -4 Dex


There are more of these, and I think the idea is really neat, but there's also a listing for some of them like "Plant" that says you can only combine it with one certain other aspect ("Plant" can only be combined with "Vigor", for example) - which means that the ability to combine four aspects at 15th level is superficial.



* There are other effects mentioned, but the book text is long and I don't feel the urge to paraphrase the whole thing

[The_Hanged_Man]

Interestin, thanks Maj. That's exactly what I was looking for.