Race for Druid and stats

[mikrisar]

Which race would be to make the druid? half-orc or half-elf or elf? any ideas for a build of 36 points? should be distributed as?

[Diyon]

The answer to this question is: yes.

Human- extra wis, extra feat, HV if melee type
Halfling- SA bonuses great for a melee build
Dwarf- Con bonuses are great
Elf- arguably not that great, but could put together some sort of scimitar focus.
Drow- Okay, so drow is probably a bad choice generally.
Half elf- How many classes is this a bad choice for?
Half orc- Str bonuses good for melee type, no penalties where it hurts.
Warforged- can use PDK docent for PDK set, gets to be a real boy. Con bonuses.

As to stats, that highly depends on what you build. The druid class is looking to be extremely versatile build wise. You could make a nuker/buffer, a healer, a caster/melee, a melee/caster, a tank, High STR/dump STR, high WIS/dump WIS, or something in between, and all of these can heal to some degree. And that's without even touching the multiclass options.

[mikrisar]

The answer to this question is: yes.

Human- extra wis, extra feat, HV if melee type
Halfling- SA bonuses great for a melee build
Dwarf- Con bonuses are great
Elf- arguably not that great, but could put together some sort of scimitar focus.
Drow- Okay, so drow is probably a bad choice generally.
Half elf- How many classes is this a bad choice for?
Half orc- Str bonuses good for melee type, no penalties where it hurts.
Warforged- can use PDK docent for PDK set, gets to be a real boy. Con bonuses.

As to stats, that highly depends on what you build. The druid class is looking to be extremely versatile build wise. You could make a nuker/buffer, a healer, a caster/melee, a melee/caster, a tank, High STR/dump STR, high WIS/dump WIS, or something in between, and all of these can heal to some degree. And that's without even touching the multiclass options.

I would like to make a druid specializing in melee... caster/ meelee

[Osma77]

Warforged- gets to be a real boy.

+1. Made me laugh out loud, startling the people around me.

I disagree with the idea of dumping wis, but play as you like. With my wolfform druid that had around 20 wis and nearly 40 str, i was nowhere near as powerful as i should have been imo.

As someone mentioned, +8 Wis and -8 str = +4 dc to spells and -4 to damage. The to-hit is negligible while the +dc is significant.

[Diyon]

+1. Made me laugh out loud, startling the people around me.

I disagree with the idea of dumping wis, but play as you like. With my wolfform druid that had around 20 wis and nearly 40 str, i was nowhere near as powerful as i should have been imo.

As someone mentioned, +8 Wis and -8 str = +4 dc to spells and -4 to damage. The to-hit is negligible while the +dc is significant.

Well, completely dumping WIS might not always be a great idea, but my point was you can could make a fairly servicable melee focused druid without much wis. I mean, yes the attack spells have saves on them, but they don't effect damage (using the animal based spells that is).

[Osma77]

Well, completely dumping WIS might not always be a great idea, but my point was you can could make a fairly servicable melee focused druid without much wis. I mean, yes the attack spells have saves on them, but they don't effect damage (using the animal based spells that is).

Your right, sort of.

Dont know about bear spells, and yes wisdom does not effect the direct damage of wolf form.

However, the spells for wolves all have debuff effects that make killing stuff without them killing you back much much easier. The only "exception" is baiting bite, where if you are able to make the bluff hit, actually will increase your damage due to sneak attacks. Of course baiting bite is bugged (say that 5 times fast). But being able to freeze, paralize, or trip the enemy makes it much easier to take them down, or concentrate on someone else. And all those abilities use wis.

Yes, a full str build with minimal (19) wis will work fine, i had one and it was ok. It is just that a pure str build in wolf form wont do the damage you want it to because there is no twf or thf. Non-power attacks for me with near 40 str was only doing 25 damage. Until and unless they increase the basic damage of an animal (through feats, or like a monk with increased damage die due to level), the extra str just isnt going to help your damage much.

[Diyon]

Your right, sort of.

Dont know about bear spells, and yes wisdom does not effect the direct damage of wolf form.

However, the spells for wolves all have debuff effects that make killing stuff without them killing you back much much easier. The only "exception" is baiting bite, where if you are able to make the bluff hit, actually will increase your damage due to sneak attacks. Of course baiting bite is bugged (say that 5 times fast). But being able to freeze, paralize, or trip the enemy makes it much easier to take them down, or concentrate on someone else. And all those abilities use wis.

Yes, a full str build with minimal (19) wis will work fine, i had one and it was ok. It is just that a pure str build in wolf form wont do the damage you want it to because there is no twf or thf. Non-power attacks for me with near 40 str was only doing 25 damage. Until and unless they increase the basic damage of an animal (through feats, or like a monk with increased damage die due to level), the extra str just isnt going to help your damage much.

The str applies the same way it does with any other nonTHF weapon. In case you hadn't looked though, there is natural fighting. And the shield mastery feats. That will get you a 26% doublestrike alone, and that's pretty significant.

The bear form attacks have some knockdown abilities and such, but I think it would be okay to neglect wis some for str and con on a tank build. I'm thinking of making one with 6 fighter for stalwart, haven't decided whether to go 11 starting WIS, or 15-16 starting WIS (lvl ups into STR or CON, not sure which yet).

But like I said, my point being there are a number of options. For instance, my acrobat druid with 7 or 8 lvls of druid won't be bumping up WIS very high, I won't be in animal form so that's out, and I can forget about dc's for other stuff. Plan on maybe going with draconic incarnation and bumping creeping cold and icestorm damage, which should still be pretty good that lvl (if you look where the enhancement lvl gates are and that they don't scale much with CL, should work out okay as supplemental damage).

[HatsuharuZ]

The answer to this question is: yes.

Human- extra wis, extra feat, HV if melee type
Halfling- SA bonuses great for a melee build
Dwarf- Con bonuses are great
Elf- arguably not that great, but could put together some sort of scimitar focus.
Drow- Okay, so drow is probably a bad choice generally.
Half elf- How many classes is this a bad choice for?
Half orc- Str bonuses good for melee type, no penalties where it hurts.
Warforged- can use PDK docent for PDK set, gets to be a real boy. Con bonuses.

As to stats, that highly depends on what you build. The druid class is looking to be extremely versatile build wise. You could make a nuker/buffer, a healer, a caster/melee, a melee/caster, a tank, High STR/dump STR, high WIS/dump WIS, or something in between, and all of these can heal to some degree. And that's without even touching the multiclass options.

Why would you dump Wis? O.o

[Diyon]

Why would you dump Wis? O.o

As I explained in following posts, some melee build possibilities, depending on their focuses could do just fine with fairly low WIS, primarily bear form more so than wolf. Multiclass types even more so.

That said, most druid type builds will want moderate to high WIS scores.

[fatherpirate]

As I explained in following posts, some melee build possibilities, depending on their focuses could do just fine with fairly low WIS, primarily bear form more so than wolf. Multiclass types even more so.

That said, most druid type builds will want moderate to high WIS scores.

Agreed

Not all good druid builds are high WIS, the nukers are...the animals do ok with a fair WIS
and the hack and slash druids do best with just enuff to get the spell levels available to them.

druids are prob the most weapon swinging pure casters in game
and they got the hp to do it

[Expalphalog]

So the DC's for paralyze, trip and whatnot from wolf form are WIS based?

I don't really now how viable it is, but I was thinking of a sort of wolf based melee CC build where my main goal would be to keep things down/immobile (and DoTted if possible) while assisting the bigger, better, and badder melee toons with a little sneak attack damage when I can.

I was thinking Helf with Rogue dilly for the extra SA damage, but I'm also looking at that extra Human feat out of the corner of my eye wondering if the grass really is greener over there.

Would this build even be possible?

[fatherpirate]

Do remember

high level druids are going to be rather specialized
so they are going to be very gear dependant

some racial abilities are going to play heavily in druid builds
like halfling healer druids

This class is for the player that likes to specialize

'generic druids' are weak at high levels
and you would need a bunch of different gear sets just to function

I would even go to say...
Generic druids will likely be very rare or not exist at all in game.

[Osma77]

before dec gets into it, i will make one quick comment diyon.

You said:
/Lets say an attack does 100 damage.

/TWF 180%, so 180 damage.
/Wolf form 130%, a 130 damage, plus 26% increase (130 x 1.26), for a total of 163.8 damage. Unyielding sentinel /shield ability can get another 9% in there I believe (130 x 1.35), for 175.5.

Ignoring your math, one of dec's main problems (because he dosen't feel that every other thing a druid can do makes up for bad damage) is that wolf form does horrible horrible damage.

Saying "lets say an attack does 100 damage" is the problem: it dosent. With str around 30, damage is around 25. An increase of 50 str (total 80) would only put the base damage at around 50. Yes it is that bad. I was just messing around in the forest and low 20's is accurate for a wolf around 30 str.

Of course i was attacking at such stupidly high speeds that it dosen't really matter. Dozens of doublestrike %, lots of attack speed buffs (wolf, blood moon, some frenzy enhancement, cant remember the name), and with a crit range of 18-20 before improved crit feat i was getting 100-120 crit damage about every 4-5 attacks. With about 4-7 attacks per second, that adds up. All that was without haste.

However, as dec says all the time, a reasonable barbarian can do tons more damage. Around 180 damage per second is far, far below what a barbarian, or even a gimped fighter, can dish out in a normal situation, so wolf damage is indeed far below what a normal twf would get.

Of course, each of those attacks were paralizing, lowering con, lowering wis, and often procing slay living, but none of that matters, because i wasn't doing 500+ damage per second.

[Osma77]

As for race, i'd say human, at least for me. I origionally went half elf fighter dilly, but desided to actually take fighter levels, so i went rogue dilly. While rogue dilly grants you 1d6 sneak attack, compared to what you already get as an animal with the prestige class, an extra 1d6 isn't a big deal, and i wouldn't want to spend 6 enhancement points to increase that by another 2d6.

In the race of extra skill points and extra feat, versus rogue dilly, human wins hands down, and i don't even have anywhere else i really need skill points or feats. (I can always go more umd/tumble or toughness. Dont need jump due to fighter levels, and dont need more balance since i max that out anyhow.)

[Eladiun]

Depends what type of druid that you want? They can be built with amazing role flexibility. Max DC's, Melee, Primary Healer, Maximize Form Damage...

[Asar]

Drow- Okay, so drow is probably a bad choice generally.

Please, tell me this is not right info. I've wanted to create Drow druid because of RP reasons :/

[Diyon]

Please, tell me this is not right info. I've wanted to create Drow druid because of RP reasons :/

Well look at it this way:

-You get automatic build points of +2 each into DEX, INT, and CHA. DEX isn't really all that helpful, bit of reflex, bit of AC, maybe TWF prereq help if you go humanoid TWF melee, but I imagine to make that a viable idea you'd have to do some sort of multiclass. INT, you don't have a lot of skill points that are important, and pretty much nothing else based on this. CHA, you get +1 umd, and +1 on wild empathy, bluff, and diplomacy. Some of that's useful, but nothing really important.
-You get -2 CON. This sucks in general, able to be overcome, but not helping the case.
-You're left with 28 points to put into other stats. The important ones for druids are generally WIS, CON, and STR, the importance of each depending on what type you are building. But the point being none of the racial bonuses are here, and one of the penalties is.
-You get SR. Nice, but not reliable.
-Pretty much no enhancements that help out.
-Elf is in the same boat mostly, except it can have 32 points to spend, and can maybe use the scimitar enhancements.

Best bet is some sort of rogue/druid multiclass is going to be the about the only thing a drow would be ok-ish for.

[oweieie]

Human is always the right choice. The extra feat can't be beat.

[Jsbeer]

Human is always the right choice. The extra feat can't be beat.

Pretty close to the truth - I once had a in-forum debate with Wax-On-Wax-Off about this (needless to say he ended up convincing me that my view that Humans were the best race overall viewpoint is not as clear-cut as I thought).

Basically I now feel that Human is probably optimum for the majority of casters, but Half-Elf is superior for most melees (except Barbarians).

[FuzzyDuck81]

Pretty close to the truth - I once had a in-forum debate with Wax-On-Wax-Off about this (needless to say he ended up convincing me that my view that Humans were the best race overall viewpoint is not as clear-cut as I thought).

Basically I now feel that Human is probably optimum for the majority of casters, but Half-Elf is superior for most melees (except Barbarians).

I agree - i have a bunch of monks & multiclassed monks & half elf is now my preferred race for the cleric dilly... UMDing a Heal, raise or resto scroll is nice, but having that "count as level 10 cleric for item use" (even if you do have a fail chance vs. UMD) is far superior in some situations - like if you've just had a bunch of negative levels applied & no longer have the UMD to even look at the scroll

On classes that can self heal well enough anyway, you can get your free weapon proficiencies, saves, toughness or sneak attack dps boost while not missing out on other abilities (ok, will have to spend a few AP & effectively lose a feat vs. humans).

Having said that, i think my own druid is likely to be a warforged, since the "be a real boy" & "connecting with your roots" things made me giggle - plus i have a nice wf 2hander pally with some nice that could TR well into a melee one, once i've played around a little to see how they work, though subject to confirmation about ToD rings burst effects working in animal form, i have a monk lined up that could make for a good one too - but again, will likely still be a half elf & take monk dilly for healing amp