Druid Build?

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Seat the Chairless
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Druid Build?

Post by Seat the Chairless » Sat May 19, 2018 11:59 pm

Hello all! I'm new to Arelith and looking for a solid Druid build. I'm a returning NwN RP'er but have no idea what to expect out of Arelith's builds, so I'm hoping someone might be able to provide a character sheet so I can jump right in!

1.) Would a caster-focused druid be just as viable as a melee shape shifting druid?
2.) Is multiclassing a good or bad idea for Druid in their current state?
3.) Is the totem druid any good? It sounds interesting but I don't see the pay off for the -4 Str/Dex/Con price.

Edit: Also, is the noob friendly starter zone only available in the city or will I be able to survive by starting out in the forest?

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Baron Saturday
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Re: Druid Build?

Post by Baron Saturday » Sun May 20, 2018 3:34 am

Hey, welcome! I'm no expert on druids, but I'll try to give basic answers to at least some of these.

1) Viable? Yes, because druid summons can carry hard. JUST AS viable? No, because extra DC and epic spells you pick up by focusing more on caster just aren't as effective as a tanky Elemental Monolith to the face.

2) Bad idea. Monolith shape is SOOOO much better than Elder shape. So good that even a discipline/tumble dump, ~15 extra AC and monk APR from a 3 level monk dip doesn't really compare.

3) I'm honestly not sure about Totem druid. I've seen some be really effective, that's for sure! They're basically druids that focus even more on shifting into melee forms. Have you looked at the stats Totem druids have while shifted? They certainly look scary on paper!

4) I don't know much about Skal, but pretty much any new character should expect to spend a decent amount of time in their starter city, be that Skal, Cordor, Andunor, or Brog. Most wilderness areas are reasonably dangerous for level 3-5 characters, and you'll probably need regular access to the safety and supplies that cities offer until you have a few levels under your belt and have learned the local dangers a bit better.
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Tourmaline
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Re: Druid Build?

Post by Tourmaline » Sun May 20, 2018 5:00 am

Most druids now go pure like Baron said. You can take 21 con and 19+ wisdom if you want to go the epic damage resistance route (good for monolith shapes mostly) or invest mostly in wisdom. At 25 wisdom you get a (weakened) dragon shape if you want. But if you do go pure there's not all that much division between "melee" and "caster", it's mostly playstyle and your choice of a few feats.

Totems are a weaker, though they're really powerful at low levels and help you level to the teens quickly. Really, take a totem if the animal inspires you and would help the character (a pack of similar animals does look much cooler than a companion + elementals) but don't take one for mechanical power. I personally think rat is the best since +4 int= 60 free skill points.

Buildwise, you want conjuration and transmutation focuses because they are too good for a druid not to take. Other feats really depend on what you want to do, improved expertise and knockdown aren't bad ideas though.

liver and bones
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Re: Druid Build?

Post by liver and bones » Sun May 20, 2018 6:10 am

For your starter area, I just recommend Cordor. More people, better writs, easier leveling overall. Also, if you go with Skal you'll be stuck there till the summer months.

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TroubledWaters
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Re: Druid Build?

Post by TroubledWaters » Mon May 21, 2018 4:18 pm

Baron Saturday wrote:
Sun May 20, 2018 3:34 am
2) Bad idea. Monolith shape is SOOOO much better than Elder shape. So good that even a discipline/tumble dump, ~15 extra AC and monk APR from a 3 level monk dip doesn't really compare.
But you can't cast in shapes either way, right? Wouldn't the monk dip be alright if he's not planning to shapeshift all that much and just cast stuff?

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Baron Saturday
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Re: Druid Build?

Post by Baron Saturday » Mon May 21, 2018 4:34 pm

Ehhhh... Maybe? I dunno, upper-level offensive druid spells are pretty meh, except storm of vengeance, which is conjuration anyhow. I can't speak from personal experience - Wytchee would be the one to ask - but on the whole druid offensive casting doesn't seem that strong. You'll get by, sure, because again... The summon stomps butt.

I guess if you really wanted to go caster druid, you could dip monk or bard, but personally I would still want the option of the monolith shape as a defensive measure.
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TroubledWaters
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Re: Druid Build?

Post by TroubledWaters » Mon May 21, 2018 6:36 pm

Well, you also get extended inferno, harm, nature's balance, drown? Max flame strike is only 90 damage, which isn't great, but it's also not nothing? I guess creeping doom/stonehold as well?

Tourmaline
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Re: Druid Build?

Post by Tourmaline » Mon May 21, 2018 6:59 pm

The exception to not casting in shapes is Hellball and Greater Ruin since they are epic spell feats, so you can be a fire elemental throwing a hellball every rest.

I'll second or third or whatever that pure is the way to go, and the best elemental shapes aren't received until level 28 so you can be a caster along the way (and, perhaps, put off the decision to dip monk or bard until last minute if you change your mind.)

If you prefer spellcasting to shapeshifting and don't want to do that at all I am sure you can get by but you'll be hanging back watching summons do the work much of the time. You may just consider going elementalist wizard or nature cleric instead. Wizard/ranger is actually pretty solid for a nature based caster and you can even potentially take a totem to give all of your summons a theme.

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msterswrdsmn
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Re: Druid Build?

Post by msterswrdsmn » Mon May 21, 2018 7:04 pm

A few things for offensive druid casting

1. Firestorm. This is the one higher-tier offensive spell druids get before clerics. Its 7th level for druids, meaning you can use empower spell on it for some very high AOE party friendly damage. Storm of Vengence also works as a viable 9th level offensive spell.

2. Crowd control: Grease, stonehold, vine mine, spike growth, and entangle are all viable crowd control spells from most to least useful in my experience. For example, unless something was changed, spike growth+vine mine can drop an enemies movement speed to its bare minimum (5% to 10%?). Summoned elementals are immune to stonehold, and a few are immune to grease as well.

3. Most of your offensive casting damage is going to come from summons; spamming empowered firestorm sadly isn't a very efficent use of spellslots. Most of your actual casting is (or should be) going to be a support spell or two per encounter to support your summons if you want to last longer than 6 minutes or so. Ie: Throw stonehold to paralyze an entire mob, then let your paralysis-immune elemental or Greater magic fang companion with freedom on it mop up the paralyzed enemies.

4. Call lighting is probably going to be your go-to damage spell. Its a low level, and its damage has been upped on Arelith. I think by default its something like 10d10 max under normal conditions, and gets stronger in the rain.

You'll need to burn quite a few feats to be a well rounded caster druid. Conjuration for crowd control and a few damage spells (SoV, Creeping doom, etc). Evocation for damage (call lightning, firestorm) and maybe transmutation (drown, vine mine, spike growth) plus whatever metamagic feats you want (empower spell is recommended for abovementioned reasons)

Unless you're using dragonshape or a totem druid, shifted combat is not recommended. Monk levels aren't recommended until later on, as you need a strong WIS score to gain enough monk AC to surpass the 11 some AC you can get from an unenchanted full plate and tower shield.

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TroubledWaters
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Re: Druid Build?

Post by TroubledWaters » Mon May 21, 2018 7:37 pm

Tourmaline wrote:
Mon May 21, 2018 6:59 pm
The exception to not casting in shapes is Hellball and Greater Ruin since they are epic spell feats, so you can be a fire elemental throwing a hellball every rest.
I think earth is the only elemental with KD immunity, right? And earth elemental has a crippling bludgeoning/sonic weakness so anyone with a big sonic club can pretty much end you.

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TroubledWaters
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Re: Druid Build?

Post by TroubledWaters » Mon May 21, 2018 7:43 pm

msterswrdsmn wrote:
Mon May 21, 2018 7:04 pm
Call lighting is probably going to be your go-to damage spell. Its a low level, and its damage has been upped on Arelith. I think by default its something like 10d10 max under normal conditions, and gets stronger in the rain.
I think it's only 10d10 in the rain, 10d6 otherwise.
msterswrdsmn wrote:
Mon May 21, 2018 7:04 pm
You'll need to burn quite a few feats to be a well rounded caster druid. Conjuration for crowd control and a few damage spells (SoV, Creeping doom, etc). Evocation for damage (call lightning, firestorm) and maybe transmutation (drown, vine mine, spike growth) plus whatever metamagic feats you want (empower spell is recommended for abovementioned reasons)
You'll also want trans for inferno and drown, right?

I'm thinking trans is almost better than evo as 10d10 sounds great on a 3rd level spell, but even still that reflex save is a big problem considering the prevalence of evasion/imp evasion.

To get ESF conj, trans, and evo, that only leaves you with two epic feats. If one of those is ESF disc, then we are at... just one left for dragon knight.
msterswrdsmn wrote:
Mon May 21, 2018 7:04 pm
Unless you're using dragonshape or a totem druid, shifted combat is not recommended. Monk levels aren't recommended until later on, as you need a strong WIS score to gain enough monk AC to surpass the 11 some AC you can get from an unenchanted full plate and tower shield.
Druids only have medium armor, I thought? So that would be 5 AC from armor and 3 from shield, so... +8. Only would need 26 wisdom to equal there, right?

Tourmaline
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Re: Druid Build?

Post by Tourmaline » Mon May 21, 2018 8:42 pm

TroubledWaters wrote:
Mon May 21, 2018 7:37 pm
I think earth is the only elemental with KD immunity, right? And earth elemental has a crippling bludgeoning/sonic weakness so anyone with a big sonic club can pretty much end you.
Well, not everyone will be carrying that around, the other shapes are hardly weak (fire shield on fire elemental, regeneration on water) and since your strength will be quite high if you cross-class discipline you can ward off some knockdown attempts.

But in general I would say druids are a class where PVE is a breeze and you are going to struggle in PVP against someone who's built for it and knows how to take you down.

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msterswrdsmn
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Re: Druid Build?

Post by msterswrdsmn » Tue May 22, 2018 4:35 am

Yeah, druids only get med. armor by default. I keep seeing druids with full armor, so I forget that sometimes. +8 AC at level 3 without any enchantments/buffs is still a bit more than you'll get from WIS AC (consistantly) for a while with monks though. It isn't terribly hard to upgrade armor either, so it takes a little while for your WIS to surpass your gear growth. Its not like its high-near-epic levels, but taking monk levels REALLY early on actually makes things harder.

I've never used inferno with druids, so I can't really comment on how effective it is

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TroubledWaters
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Re: Druid Build?

Post by TroubledWaters » Tue May 22, 2018 4:19 pm

msterswrdsmn wrote:
Tue May 22, 2018 4:35 am
I've never used inferno with druids, so I can't really comment on how effective it is
Is drown any good? Does it ever hit?

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msterswrdsmn
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Re: Druid Build?

Post by msterswrdsmn » Tue May 22, 2018 8:09 pm

Yeah, it hits. Its not a bad spell; it has a save vs fort, and when your target fails, it deals damage equal to 90% of their HP. It works differently than the elemental version, which is save or die. This won't outright kill a healthy target, but anything taking that much damage in one round isn't going to be fighting much longer.

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Hannibal
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Re: Druid Build?

Post by Hannibal » Wed May 23, 2018 12:10 am

maximum con
maximum DR
maximum druid
maximum effort

Seat the Chairless
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Re: Druid Build?

Post by Seat the Chairless » Fri May 25, 2018 3:05 am

Just wanted to say thanks for all of the input! After getting some feedback I went ahead and made my character. Hopefully it'll turn out alright, but regardless I'm excited to get back to Roleplaying!

Looking forward to seeing all in game!


Edit: On a side note, can anybody explain what "Adventure XP" is and how to expend it?

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Baron Saturday
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Re: Druid Build?

Post by Baron Saturday » Fri May 25, 2018 4:10 am

There's some info about AXP on the Role Play Bonus page on the wiki. Basically it's a reserve XP pool that gives you a bit of XP every 6 minutes, no matter what you're doing. So you could level for a bit, gain some AXP, then hang out in town and still be gaining XP from your AXP pool.
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R0GUE
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Re: Druid Build?

Post by R0GUE » Fri May 25, 2018 5:29 am

Baron Saturday wrote:
Fri May 25, 2018 4:10 am
There's some info about AXP on the Role Play Bonus page on the wiki. Basically it's a reserve XP pool that gives you a bit of XP every 6 minutes, no matter what you're doing. So you could level for a bit, gain some AXP, then hang out in town and still be gaining XP from your AXP pool.
I realize we are getting horribly off topic but can you also maybe explain when its best to go into "adventure mode"? Is it when your adventure xp pool is drained down low?

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Baron Saturday
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Re: Druid Build?

Post by Baron Saturday » Fri May 25, 2018 5:51 am

I mean, personally, I leave it on almost constantly, but I guess you could turn it off if you have a massive AXP pool that would take dozens of hours to soak up?

I think the only time I turned it off on my last character was when I was really close to leveling and just wanted to grind it out quickly.
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Jagel
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Re: Druid Build?

Post by Jagel » Fri May 25, 2018 7:19 am

Supposedly if you play a lot and spend a good deal of your time in dungeons you'll level faster by NOT activating AXP (full XP right away, no AXP).
For someone with less time AXP should be up constantly, as you get more xp that way (half for the kill, full AXP = 50% more xp but at a slower rate).

If I've understood things right, that is.

Animayhem
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Re: Druid Build?

Post by Animayhem » Sat May 26, 2018 7:05 pm

New to this sever but not to nwn. My druid is half-elven. Elves have the ability to use long swords and bows to supplement.

Will I be able to get that here next feat choice or should I have gotten on creation?

Thanks

MoreThanThree
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Re: Druid Build?

Post by MoreThanThree » Sat May 26, 2018 7:21 pm

Animayhem wrote:
Sat May 26, 2018 7:05 pm
long swords and bows to supplement.
They can, but druids also get scimitars which are better than longswords and bows.
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Jagel
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Re: Druid Build?

Post by Jagel » Sun May 27, 2018 9:08 am

Only elves get the elven weapon prof., half-elves do not. But scims are better and there are some decent craftable spears and a sickle for droods

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