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Try not to give up caster levels or wild shape if you can help it, whatever prestige classes you want to take. Give up Wild Shape if you NEED to, but not casting. If you want to be very powerful, casting is it in 3.5 other abilities are just things casters could do with spells anyway (for the most part).

If you do straight Druid levels it's probably best, but there are a few noteworthy exceptions to what I just said.

Warshaper, up to 2 levels. It doesn't actually advance EITHER casting or Wild Shape, it does however make you a passible tank when in wild shape, giving +4 Str, +4 Con, immunity to critical hits and stunning. It's not something all druids should take, but if you feel you're going to be in the tank role, it's worthwhile.

Natures Warrior's another alright choice, it loses some casting but advances wild shape HD. It's got some neat tanking abilities and some stuff that makes for good melee controller fodder. Again, specialized, do not take if you want to be generalized or a solid caster.

Arcane Hierophant, one of the only Theurge classes worth really talking about. Unfortunately it's MAD, but it makes one of the best Pet buffing classes (again specialized).

Summoning? There's good stuff for that, but most of the better stuff is for Shifter's not Elves or Humans.


Fochulacn Lyrist... it's a Bard PRC right? Wrong... minimize Bard for Entry (3 levels tops), get Evasion from Combat Medic and this makes for an interesting combat Druid with as high as 16 BAB, CL 17 as a druid and Bardic music to inspire your summons and yourself. 

I'm not going to get into build right yet. Some specifics about how you'd like to work this druid. 

Any class too I assume? If so just look into the Planar Shepherd... this is a 'Hello, I'm a druid but better' class. It's in Faiths of Eberron and a handbook is here:

community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/758... 

The only druid prestige class that is better than druid 20 is planar shepard, which is so good its stupid. 

Druid 20, take natural spell. Is all the advice you need to outshine your avergae PC. 

Until level 6, you generally are right about your spells. From level 6 onwards your tactic becomes "Turn into a bear and be a bear all day. Buff yourself and your bear companion with spells. Wade into melee."

You can also summon some more bears if you want a little buff. 

I like bears, but others prefer wolves. Fleshrakers dinosaurs are also super good. I go bears because they are cooler. 

My suggested druid feat order for a human (which I'd take over elf) is 

• H - Spell focus conjuration
• 1 - Augment summoning
• 3 - Beckon the Frozen - Frostburn. Remember you don't have to use this feat if they use fire.
• 6 - Natural Spell
• 9 - Frozen Wildshape - Turn into cryo hydras
• 12 - Dragon Wild Shape - does what it says
• 15 - Hover - Monster Manual. - Check with your DM, they may not use this sort of thing. If so, take flyby attack.
• 18 - Multiattack

Ask your DM if natural bond offsets a stronger companion, or only benefits multiclass druids. If it offsets, take it.  at 3 and move everything else but natural spell down a slot.

Basically turn into awesome stuff, buff yourself and your companion. Then summon awesome stuff. 

Stats are Wis > Con > Int > Cha > Str > Dex. If you are doing point buy, you literally do not care about str and dex. To give an example, with 25 point buy, I would do 8, 8, 13, 10, 18, 10. The more points you get, the higher your con goes. 

If you can find an elven race that gets a str or dex penalty and a boost to anything else it might be worth it over human. 

Trick to being a Druid:

Step 1: Live to level 6 (which isn't hard, Entangle I'm looking at you).
Step 2: Aquire Natural Spell at level 6.
Step 3: Proceed to dominate those who oppose you.

Druids don't need optimization, it's built into the class.  A companion that's better than a Fighter PC, full divine casting (off an incredible list), shapeshifting into ridiculous forms (and at disgustingly early level), average base attack and both fort and will saves.

Sadly, what DM Golem stated holds some water.  One can easily pick up a random monster manual, flip it to a random page and say, "I'm that now."  Buff yourself (and your companion with share spells) and eat anything that you think might be tasty.


...To be fair, I still think the Factotum is better than the druid.  I mean, come on. Factotums can turn into a T-Rex (just like a druid) but also get extra standard actions.  Also, playing a Factotum has a significantly less chance of having a sharp object or book thrown at you. 

Sep 1, 2012 -- 8:50AM, Alsebra wrote:

Except that the WS description states that you need to be familiar with the creature.  I suppose you could justify it by saying that you studied a book in a library, but...

Damn...I just realised that my Druid's planned path wouldn't have worked.  I was going to go Reaping Mauler (sneak in under the guise of something innocent, find the leader, shift to something with a grapple ability, then destroy), but I found out that when you shift, you don't keep your Ex abilities :/  

1- You have ranks in knowledge, scry spells, and if its really that big of a deal, summon one and study it. 
2-  If you become large size or greater you loose all of reaping maulers class features. Its also one of the few classes that taking levels in makes you worse at your end goal, so its debatable on whether or not loosing those features is a good thing. Its not debatable that you should never take levels in it.