DragonDruid build

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Flayeriv
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DragonDruid build

Post by Flayeriv » Sun Jun 17, 2018 10:44 pm

So. The RP concept is for a true neutral druid (patently dislikes the concept of 'balance' but also dislikes the thoroughly subjective nonsense of good/evil). Studies dragons, history and collects old legends in their spare time.

Race: Svirfneblin

1-16 Druid (16)
17-20PDK (4)
21-24 Druid (20) (Dragon Shape)
25-27 Monk (3)
28-29 Druid (22) (Dragon Knight)
30 Monk (4)

If my maths is right, should have 16 BAB, infinite wildshape, epic tumble and Discipline, and all of the dragons.

Sidenote: Yes I know that Monk AC and Flurry etc do not function in wilshape. To be perfectly honest I'm in it for the movement increase :p

NOTE: I have not actually looked at Totem Druid at all before writing this so this is assuming standard druid.

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Jagel
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Re: DragonDruid build

Post by Jagel » Mon Jun 18, 2018 6:55 am

Short answer: why epic tumble ?

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Opustus
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Re: DragonDruid build

Post by Opustus » Mon Jun 18, 2018 7:23 am

I think the OP meant that she'll have Tumble30 for +6 AC, not Epic skill focus: Tumble. Don't know about dragon builds, sorry! I guess it looks adequate, though.
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Jagel
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Re: DragonDruid build

Post by Jagel » Mon Jun 18, 2018 2:57 pm

Ah, makes sense.

There is no mechanical reason to build around dragon shape but if it’s a concept you like then go for it. I would consider settling for just one multiclass dip as epic caster levels will increase the power of your dragon knight.

Really I’d just go pure druid.

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Re: DragonDruid build

Post by Flayeriv » Mon Jun 18, 2018 4:47 pm

What exactly are the benefits of more epic levels for the summon?

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Jagel
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Re: DragonDruid build

Post by Jagel » Mon Jun 18, 2018 4:50 pm

Epic levels in the summoning class will also increase the power of epic summons.
+1 AB per odd epic caster level
+1 prime attribute per odd epic caster level (i.e. strength or dexterity)
+1 universal saving throws per even epic caster level
+1 AC per even epic caster level
+1 skills per epic caster level
+1 hit dice worth of hit points per epic caster level
+1 caster level per epic caster level

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Re: DragonDruid build

Post by Miskol » Mon Jun 18, 2018 5:35 pm

Do keep in mind that you need to have 25 levels in druid to take dragon shape with 25 WIS (after finding a secret location), otherwise you would require 30 WIS.

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Re: DragonDruid build

Post by Wytchee » Mon Jun 18, 2018 7:36 pm

Ranger synergizes well with a dragon shape druid, namely 25 druid / 5 ranger. Take four of those ranger levels pre epic and use the favored enemy bonus feat on Greater Spell Focus instead (you gotta have Spell Focus first!). The second favored enemy could be spent on an epic bonus feat provided it's taken after 20. The downside to this is that you don't get dragon shape until waaaay late (level 29), unless you want to forgo your fourth attack per round and take all your ranger levels post 25.

You have high wisdom, so make use of spot and/or listen, which are both ranger class skills. As is discipline.

The only downside to this is you'll have to cross-class tumble at a loss of 3 AC; however, you get access to Ranger Studded Leather Armor which is a flat +6 AC that carries over into dragon shape, so it's definitely made up.
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Jagel
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Re: DragonDruid build

Post by Jagel » Tue Jun 19, 2018 6:49 am

By the by: not sure what you mean by the character not giving a hoot about “The Balance” (TM) but just remember that blighters are not allowed on the server.

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Re: DragonDruid build

Post by Flayeriv » Wed Jun 20, 2018 6:15 am

Regarding 'balance', I mean doesn't believe in that philosophy.

Doesn't Dragonshape require only 21 levels and other requisites available at that point? Thus able to take it at level 24?

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Re: DragonDruid build

Post by Wytchee » Wed Jun 20, 2018 7:13 am

Flayeriv wrote:
Wed Jun 20, 2018 6:15 am
Regarding 'balance', I mean doesn't believe in that philosophy.

Doesn't Dragonshape require only 21 levels and other requisites available at that point? Thus able to take it at level 24?
I'm sorry, resident druid purist here. A druid is an agent of the Balance. The Balance isn't some moot philosophy in Forgotten Realms lore but a real, tangible phenomenon that a druid is tasked - by nature of being a druid - with maintaining.

Saying your druid "doesn't believe in that philosophy" is like saying a Ilmateri priest "doesn't believe in healing people."

... the whole point of a druid is to maintain the balance, the delicate equilibrium that exists on the material plane. If you're not maintaining the balance, you're not a druid. If you're drawing power from nature without maintaining the balance you're a blighter, and blighters aren't allowed on Arelith without a 5% roll (see epic sacrifice on the wiki).

Just throwing that out there.

As for your question regarding Dragonshape, it requires either the default 30 wisdom, which is unobtainable before late epics, or 25 druid levels and 25 wisdom and speaking to a semi-hidden NPC that can give you the feat.
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Flayeriv
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Re: DragonDruid build

Post by Flayeriv » Wed Jun 20, 2018 8:12 am

Actually, that's not entirely true.

Firstly, to counter the statement about Blighters. Blighters are specifically druids that have turned away from nature and gain their spellcasting by destroying natural life. It has nothing to do with balance, everything to do with nature.

As for druids being 'agents of balance'...

From the Players Handbook:
Alignment: Druids, in keeping with nature's ultimate indifference, must maintain at least some measure of dispassion.
Religion: A druid reveres nature above all... ...the typical druid pursues pursues a mystic spiritualiy of transcendent union with nature.
Ex-Druids: A druid who ceases to revere nature, changes to a prohibitted alignment, or teaches the druidic language to a non-druid loses all spells and druidic abilities.

All of this emphasises connection to nature. In fact thte concept of 'balance' is not referenced even once.

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Re: DragonDruid build

Post by Wytchee » Wed Jun 20, 2018 8:33 am

Flayeriv wrote:
Wed Jun 20, 2018 8:12 am
Actually, that's not entirely true.

Firstly, to counter the statement about Blighters. Blighters are specifically druids that have turned away from nature and gain their spellcasting by destroying natural life. It has nothing to do with balance, everything to do with nature.

As for druids being 'agents of balance'...

From the Players Handbook:
Alignment: Druids, in keeping with nature's ultimate indifference, must maintain at least some measure of dispassion.
Religion: A druid reveres nature above all... ...the typical druid pursues pursues a mystic spiritualiy of transcendent union with nature.
Ex-Druids: A druid who ceases to revere nature, changes to a prohibitted alignment, or teaches the druidic language to a non-druid loses all spells and druidic abilities.

All of this emphasises connection to nature. In fact thte concept of 'balance' is not referenced even once.
Okay dude. I wish you the best of luck in your non-balance-caring-about-druid endeavors.

There have been plenty of druids who've chilled with necromancers and demon-summoning warlocks and yet somehow were never smoted by the DMs for whatever reason so you do you, I guess.
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Re: DragonDruid build

Post by Flayeriv » Wed Jun 20, 2018 8:52 am

You do realise you just described every druid ever already right?

Druids are specifically ranging from neutral good to neutral evil, and are specifically noted to range from fighting for good or fighting for evil based on their philosophy (of which balance supports joining the forces of evil from time to time). And again, balance and nature are NOT the same thing. Necromancy is pretty opposed to nature, and my character still reveres and follows nature. He just doesn't believe in the balance concept. It is a difference in philosophy.

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Re: DragonDruid build

Post by Wytchee » Wed Jun 20, 2018 8:58 am

Flayeriv wrote:
Wed Jun 20, 2018 8:52 am
You do realise you just described every druid ever already right?

Druids are specifically ranging from neutral good to neutral evil, and are specifically noted to range from fighting for good or fighting for evil based on their philosophy (of which balance supports joining the forces of evil from time to time). And again, balance and nature are NOT the same thing. Necromancy is pretty opposed to nature, and my character still reveres and follows nature. He just doesn't believe in the balance concept. It is a difference in philosophy.
Druids (for the most part) don't care about good and evil. They care about maintaining the balance. Undead and extraplanar interlopers upset the balance. Good and evil don't really factor into it.

I'm not gonna argue over what constitutes a "real druid" and what doesn't. FR lore gives a wide berth to them. Arelith is kind of its own little world, though, and on Arelith the concept of druidry has evolved over time to mean "maintaining the balance."

Druids are a divine class, after all. You don't gain the favor of Toril and harness its power just by hugging trees. You have to actually give something back.

That being said, who knows? Maybe your druid will break the mold. I've had a bunch of druids in the past. One of them was a Cordor Guard who believed that illegitimate hierarchies upset the balance and wanted to infiltrate the city's political structure and tear it all down.

Druids don't have to be druid-y but on Arelith it's pretty much canon that they prioritize maintaining the balance, even evil ones.
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Flayeriv
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Re: DragonDruid build

Post by Flayeriv » Wed Jun 20, 2018 10:54 am

Touche. I cannot at all comment on Arelith specific lore. Only FR and core lore.

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Re: DragonDruid build

Post by Opustus » Wed Jun 20, 2018 11:15 am

I speak from interest to lore and server management in general.

In my humbledore, unless the DMs have given an explicit ruling that goes against the canon of FR textbooks, I do not think player opinions should trump a difference of interpretation in terms of lore. Shortly, canon should be what DMs say is canon, and otherwise the FR textbooks should be the primary source of canon lore.

It sounds problematic to me that players would be given the OOC power to enforce standards of correct druid RP by deciding what the canon is, first, because players could not be fairly expected to know this information, and second, because it would fuel an arbitrary power dynamic between players.

Further, a dispute such as what is the ultimate purpose of druidry must have many versions, because even the nature deities are at odds with this to the point of full-blown antagonism. It sounds like the question not even a grove of WIS 30 druids can sufficiently and simply resolve!

This discussion got me thinking if there should be a subforum reserved exclusively for lore talk?
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Re: DragonDruid build

Post by Rwby » Wed Jun 20, 2018 11:25 am

I would strongly recommend before creating a controversial character, just to ping the active DM team a brief summary of the concept.

Then you know 100% for sure, if you're good to go or not. It saves a lot of hassle down the road.

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Re: DragonDruid build

Post by Flayeriv » Wed Jun 20, 2018 11:31 am

As a lore-nut myself, I'd love to see a dedicated lore forum. And I completely concur with running the idea clearly past a DM first - especially because it has been raised that Arelith lore has differences to FR lore that I wasn't previously familiar with.

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Re: DragonDruid build

Post by The Kriv » Wed Jul 11, 2018 8:37 pm

Fore the Lore-nuts: Nature/Balance as recorded in the druidic libraries of the Heartwood and Arelith Forest:

interpretations of "Balance" are as varied as there are druids. It's an interpretation and a philosophy. Druids are tied to Nature and the natural world, not THE BALANCE. The words "Balance" is mainly a word used to describe the harmony, at least as I understand it, and from looking into the Complete Druid's Handbook (which admitadly is 2nd edition) for inspiration.

In Arelith, the ancient Druid teachers have left the below information behind, which also has been put into textbook form IG.

Is this absolute? No. You're welcome to write your own and add it to the library. This is what past characters have written on it within our campaign:


"A Perception of Balance"

Rules of Nature: Rule 1 - Competition
You may protect your territory, you may protect your food, you may not exterminate your competition. There are four things that "Civilization" does, that never happen in the "wilds" or the community of "The Balance". The first being the extermination of competition. In the "wilds" an animal will defend its territory and their kills, but it will not seek out its competition and kill it, just for the sake of killing. Even when the two species include competitors as their prey, they never seek them out just to kill them the way a farmer does with wolves, foxes and crows. In general terms, what they hunt, they eat they do not exterminate like the farmer.

It is of note though that animals of the wild can and will kill in self defense, or even if they feel threatened. The proof that this law is followed by everything but the civilized world is that there is diversity amongst competitors. If all acted as the farmer, the competitors would hunt each other to extinction and there would be only one predator. This predator that would remain would be of course the strongest but the only one left.


Rules of Nature: Rule 2 - Take what you need, leave the rest alone.

This is one of the most important laws and the most dangerous threat to "The Balance". The farmer will destroy the source of food for everything else to make room for his own. This expansionist policy is what the druids fear the most. The biggest problem with this is the excess in food. The more food that is needed to be stored, the more the population will grow. Thus in the coming seasons the land that is being cultivated is not enough to support the now larger population. What does this mean? It is simple... more land is needed to cultivate and thus more intrusion into the wilds. This greater population also adds a greater threat of diseases to be spread and famine to occur. This puts some of those who work with the balance at odds with each other.

Take the faithful of Chauntea, she sees to both the wild, and the agriculture domain of the plants. This has caused a certain split in the church and also made those of other faiths who tend to the balance wary of them. Just how far will Chauntea go to see the farms thrive and the population grow... and when does it becomes a hinder to the balance if it is not already. This can also be applied to hunting. Take the game hunters of the noble humans. They see little fear in killing massive amounts of "game" and have no understanding of how it can be dangerous to the surrounding wilds. There are times yes, when the population of certain animals grows too large due to an excess of food, like the deer. In times like this it is a policy to cull the excess and return the population to a level which can be stable to the environment. This is the job of the druids though; it is for them to decide when this must be done.


Musings of the Balance

It is no secret that the system works, the forests thrive and the animals are healthy and well populated. Though, the "civilized" world draws back in horror from it, they fear it in-fact. They see it as a world of chaos, endless competition, and where every living creature lives in fear for its life. This is not the case at all; those who live in this "world" would defend themselves to the death rather then be separated from it. Take the deer, some would claim the deer and the wolf are enemies... but I can assure you they are not. The wolf does not massacre every deer it comes across, it only takes what it needs. A content and full wolf will pass by a herd of deer who will happily go on grazing. That is the basis from one of the laws, it is not chaos... it is in-fact a law of peace keeping.

It is when one thinks that they are exempt from these laws that the problems start. They create a civilization that flaunts the law at every turn. This is where some might disagree with me that civilization can work in the balance. But in the form as we see it now? I can attest that there are those who live with the balance and do not flaunt it. So is it civilization that is against the laws of the balance or is the "people" themselves?


At One With the Balance

The Balance represents the important sides of all things natural. It represents the importance in preserving the wilds as well as the tame. The importance of the forests, the deserts, the farms and the gardens. The importance in fertility and even infertility. The importance of destroying any and all undead and aberrations. The importance in keeping a close watch on those not native to our world, in case they seek to push their alien agendas on our lands, peoples and creatures. The importance of the sanctity of our natural life spans; people, animals, creatures and all. The importance in not altering or destroying the soul of any being. The importance in magic and it's proper use. The importance in the wolf eating the deer, the deer eating the grass and the grass taking the nutrients from the ground after the wolf dies, decays and is recycled into the earth itself. All this and more is the Balance and it is of utmost importance that we all do our part in protecting it by preserving and defending it.


On Balance - A Broader View

The first and most important task in this essay is not a simple one: To clearly define the concept of "The Balance". Now, as the observant reader will notice, the concept is "The Balance", not simply "Balance", which implies that only certain, pre-determined variables are included in the concept. This then, means that we are looking at something specific, not "Balance" in a broad term that can include anything someone wish to see in relation to something else. Specifically, "The Balance" as understood here, refers to the optimal state of "Nature", in which the land is utilized and preserved in a manner that sustain the world as a whole. It does not refer to "Balance" in ethic and morals, and do not propose neutrality in all matters as some falsely believe. The next question then, would of course be "What is Nature"?

"Nature" would here need to be understood in the broadest meaning of the term. "Nature" is not simply trees, water, birds and bushes, it is also mountains, cities, Elves, Men, Dwarves, Gnomes and so forth. "Nature" in this regard, is the sum of everything that is native to Faerun, with certain exceptions that will be mentioned later. The much used division between "Nature" and "Civilization" is inherently false, for the following reasons: It is the natural instinct of most humanoids to band together and build communities in order to survive and improve their lives. As such communities evolve beyond a pack of roaming humanoids into stable settlements (as is a natural and logical path for most humanoids to pursue) they become "civilizations". Does this mean that they cease to be a part of "Nature"?

Ofcourse not. They still depend on the land for the resources they need to survive and thrive, and are as affected by their surroundings as their surroundings are affected by them. They are a part of "Nature" still. This distinction originates both from the "Civilizations" themselves, who sometimes wish to believe that they have evolved into something that exists independently of the world around them, and from those who advocate "Nature" as something pure and unchanging in which
everyone are, or should be, wild animals with contempt for anyone who develop and use tools. They are both, as you can see, very narrow interpretations that can be demolished by taking a broader view.

Original Author of this work:
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Flayeriv
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Re: DragonDruid build

Post by Flayeriv » Wed Jul 11, 2018 11:31 pm

I love this and if this isn't on the wiki already I"m putting it on there.

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Re: DragonDruid build

Post by redhawx » Thu Jul 12, 2018 6:32 am

Flayeriv wrote:
Sun Jun 17, 2018 10:44 pm
So. The RP concept is for a true neutral druid (patently dislikes the concept of 'balance' but also dislikes the thoroughly subjective nonsense of good/evil).
If you pick monk you can't be true-neutral but have to be lawful-neutral.

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Re: DragonDruid build

Post by Flayeriv » Thu Jul 12, 2018 7:16 am

Good point! Thanks for that pick up.

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