Nature's FAvor - what am I missing?

[The_Hanged_Man]

Just started looking through the spells and found this.

Gives a +1 luck bonus for every 2 caster levels. NO CAP.. 1min/level.

Limit: Animal type. LIke that's a problem

Remember when Divine Favor seemed good? What is the drawback to this sick spell?

[Username17]

You can't make it Persistent.


-Username17

[The_Hanged_Man]

Oh. Well, it's ok then.

And, of course, you can make it persistent at the cost of one level of wildshape, w/ the right skills and PrC.

How is it w/ the hardon for druids?

[RandomCasualty]

All I have to say is... why do they print crap like this?

[Username17]

Because the Ranger's Animal Companion gains abilities at a reduced rate based on half of his levels in one class. Meaning that even if he takes nothing but levels in Ranger, the animal companion is going to be hopelessly outclassed by the time this spell comes out.

The Druid's Animal Companion is not much better off, rising at a reduced rate relative to the Druid. When you have a CR 2 creature at level 4, it's pretty disheartening to have a CR 9 creature at level 17 - it means the relative power of your Animal Companion fell 16 times when you were supposedly doing everything in your power to keep that abiltity up.

So if your animal companion is to be able to matter in the traditional sense of affecting combat and maybe not dying - they need to be the recpient of bonuses larger than any other character can get, because they start off arbitrarily sucktastic relative to everyone else at their level.

The problem here is that is completely stupid - since actually the Animal Companion still sucks and the Druids end up using this spell on themselves (in 3rd ediition they had to wait until 17th level, but no longer!)

The Complete Divine's entire balance concept seems to be based on the idea that since you can choose to suck some of the time, that you should rock everybody the rest of the time. The natural direction this is going, of course, is that sometimes you will choose to not suck ever and instead just be better than everyone else all the time.

But that is why - they woefully underpowered animal companions at higher level and decided to make up for it by printing new spells rather than by printing a revised animal companion chart where they able to keep up with your character level.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

The problem is that I'm not even sure if the intention was to boost the animal companion. That'd be the assumption if you assume that the intentions of the spell were pure.

Based on the blatant class favoritism I've seen in the past, I think the designer's thought process behind this spell was more like:

"Druids r0x0r! They must be 1337 and ownz all."

And believe me, I'd really love to believe they're simply horribly incompetent, but I don't think that's entirely true.

I think they're making things deliberately imbalanced.

[Username17]

It's a reprint from 3rd edition, where Druids supposedly would have to use it on their animal companions because wildshape didn't even grant type changes.

Of course, back then you could assume Animal Type anyway with the Shapechange spell, but only at 17th level and the designers of MotW seemed stupidly surprised when the combo was pointed out to them.

So that is the original reasoning for the spell. What the reasoning is for 3.5 I don't know. As far as I can tell the entire 3.5 design team is simply engaging in a race to the bottom of ramming through all of their own half-baked ideas as fast as possible now that Mote Cook isn't around to hog all the spotlight time.

-Username17

[MrWaeseL]

I made a druid character the other day, for a level 1 campaign. As I didn't have the books by me, I did it by heart.

I didn't once think of the animal companion, and only now realise that I forgot it.

Just to show how much I care for that ability.

[The_Hanged_Man]

AFAICT, it's mostly there so the BBEG has something to threaten that should matter to your PC, if you RP much.

[Wrenfield]

So if your animal companion is to be able to matter in the traditional sense of affecting combat and maybe not dying - they need to be the recpient of bonuses larger than any other character can get, because they start off arbitrarily sucktastic relative to everyone else at their level.

Isn't there a rule option in the MotW that allows a Druid to enhance or advance his Animal Companion, for like, 250 XP a shot?

I don't have the book with me, and I've never seen it used before.

Is it worth it?

[Username17]

Is it worth it?

Of course not! The MotW rule is predicated on the 3rd edition rule - which was that you could just go get a bigger better animal at any time for the cost of a first level spell slot last Thursday.

Paying XP for the priviledge of not renaming your animal companion every time you go up in level is retarded.

-Username17

[The_Hanged_Man]

How effective are animal companions generally? IMC, the druid's bear mostly guards the mounts and keeps watch at night. The player's kind of afraid to bring it anywhere.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

1084994076[/unixtime]]The problem is that I'm not even sure if the intention was to boost the animal companion. That'd be the assumption if you assume that the intentions of the spell were pure.

Based on the blatant class favoritism I've seen in the past, I think the designer's thought process behind this spell was more like:

"Druids r0x0r! They must be 1337 and ownz all."

And believe me, I'd really love to believe they're simply horribly incompetent, but I don't think that's entirely true.

I think they're making things deliberately imbalanced.

Actually, I think their thought process may be more retarded than that. I remember in one of the Dragon magazine previews of 3.5 way back when, they said they were going to power up the "tweener classes," which they said included the bard, ranger, and druid. You know something's wrong when they're mentioning the druid in that company. I suspect they're thought process was something like the following:

1. Bards suck because they're jacks of all trades. They're versatile, but they don't do any one thing particularly well.
2. Therefore, all versatile classes suck.
3. Druids are versatile.
4. Therefore, druids suck.
5. Therefore, we must power druids up.

The hole in this chain of "reasoning" is that being versatile isn't bad if you can be good at a lot of things. We're probably lucky they didn't try to power up the cleric.

[The_Hanged_Man]

lol.

Is it even possible to power up the cleric?

[Absentminded_Wizard]

Maybe that's what stopped them.

[The_Hanged_Man]

Wait, I know! I spell that lets you take any person to any plane, no matter how dangerous, and leave them there to die! That'd be awesome! That'll make the cleric tougher!

Oh, wait.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

In responce to Hanged Man's question:


The druid in my group has an animal companion. dire lion.

The dire lion is pretty cool, until you run into DR. Dr/magic isn't a big deal, she cast greater magic fang in the morning, lasts 14 hours, pretty much don't need to worry about that unless something tries to dispel stuff. Other Dr is a bit harder to overcome, but the lion does frequently do more than 10 points of damage a hit, which is the highest DR at this point as far as I know, so it's not a huge concern.

the biggest problems I noticed is that the lion can't fly. When they are fighting things that stay out of reach, the lion is useless, for the most part. However, in melee, it's pretty formidable. Also, it's saves are good, it's got a collar of Magic resistance +3, and all good saves, it has an unnerving tendancy to make saves that the lion's master fails, as it currently has the best saves of the group. (Who knows why exactly no one in the group has bought cloaks of resistance for themselves yet, I know they've got to be sick of being charmed, being one shot killed, etc.)

[Username17]

3.5 contains DR 15 and even DR 20.

Why does the Lion have all good saves?

An animal companion has good Fortitude and Reflex saves

-Username17

[Count Arioch the 28th]

1085071042[/unixtime]]3.5 contains DR 15 and even DR 20.

Why does the Lion have all good saves?

An animal companion has good Fortitude and Reflex saves

-Username17

Does 3.5 contain monsters with that high DR at CR 11-15? Because that's the monsters they arefighting at this point.

And I didn't realize they changed the rule, dire animals have all good saves, I didn't realize that 3.5 made it so that dire animal companions lose their good will saves for some bizarre reason.

[RandomCasualty]

DR 20 or 25 is certainly ok, so long as the creature doesn't have high AC.

With 3.5 power attack, often I've found that even a DR of 15 isn't sufficient to really hurt players much for not being able to breach the DR at high levels. In most cases it seemed they're better off using their normal +5 sword as opposed to a non-magical variant of a DR peircing weapon.

[User3]

And I didn't realize they changed the rule, dire animals have all good saves, I didn't realize that 3.5 made it so that dire animal companions lose their good will saves for some bizarre reason.

The Dire Animals are miscalculated as having good saves. According to the rules on such things, animals (dire or no) get get Reflex and Fort saves. Not Good Will Saves.

Now, if you look at the Monster Manual for 3.5, yes, the Dire Lion has good Will Saves. But there is not a single reason why it would have good will saves based on its hit die and type.

-Username17

[Username17]

That was me.

-Username17

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Dang. I should keep up with the errata better then. <shrug>

The druid won't be happy about it at all though, and when the druid's player is supplying you with your nookie supply, then things can get a little hairy when you try to fix a mistake.

Wish me luck.

Edit: Frank, where does it say that it was a misprint? I didn't find 3.5 MM errata, and the 3.0 MM errata doesn't mention it from the wizards.com website. Mind throwing me a link or something?

[Username17]

It doesn't say it's a misprint.

You just have to figure that out based on the fact that Dire Animals have the class "Animal" which grants good Fort Saves, good Reflex Saves, and poor Willpower Saves.

It may never get fixed, but it's just like some of the creatures who have attack bonuses that don't add up. The Dire Animals all have Will Saves which are much better than their actual hit dice would give them.

-Username17

[da_chicken]

I'm in a campaign right now with a druid 15/nature's warrior 3.

Last session he did the following:
Wild Shaped into a megaraptor (only have access to MM I, gives pounce and has 4 attacks)
Cast animal growth: +8 Str, +4 Con, -2 Dex, +2 natural armor, DR 10/magic but -1 to hit and AC, size goes to Gargantuan, reach goes to 15'
Cast magic fang x4: +4 to-hit & damage
Cast nature's favor: +8 to hit and damage

Also had stoneskin and barkskin. And some reistance thing.

Next level he gets nature's avatar, which gives him another +10 to hit and damage, haste, and 17d8 temporary hit points.