Being Everything:

Eggynack’s Comprehensive Druid Handbook

The Basics
Introduction
The Rating Guide
Filling Roles
Ability Scores
Class Features
Race
Templates
Skills
Sample Build

Feats
Summoning
Wild Shape
Animal Companion
Casting
Initiate Feats
Miscellaneous
Core Only

Magic Items
Cheap
Moderate
Expensive

Prestige Classes
Dip Options

Various Variants
Alternate Class Features
Flaws
Traits
Gestalt

Spells (0th-4th)
Zeroth Level
First Level
 Second Level
Third Level
Fourth Level

Spells (5th-9th)
Fifth Level
Sixth Level
Seventh Level
Eighth Level
Ninth Level

Summons
Summon Nature’s Ally I
Summon Nature’s Ally II
Summon Nature’s Ally III
Summon Nature’s Ally IV
Summon Nature’s Ally V
Summon Nature’s Ally VI
Summon Nature’s Ally VII
Summon Nature’s Ally VIII
Summon Nature’s Ally IX

Animal Companion
To Advance or Swap?
Animal Companion Abilities
Feats
The Warbeast Template
Starting Options
Fourth Level
Seventh Level
Tenth Level
Thirteenth Level
Sixteenth Level
Nineteenth Level

Wild Shape
Level Five
Level Eight (Large)
Level Nine
Level Twelve (Plant)
Level Thirteen
Level Fifteen (Huge)
Level Sixteen (Elementals)
Level Eighteen
 Level Twenty (Huge Elementals)

Alternate Wild Shape Forms

Aberration Forms
Dragon Forms

Shifters
Racial Abilities
Shifter Traits
Saurian Shifters
Shifter Substitution Levels
Moonspeaker
Shifter Feats
Miscellaneous Shifter Stuff
Exalted Druids
Vow of Poverty
Exalted Feats
Being a Saint

Acknowledgments
FAQ

Reshy’s Planar Shepherd Mini-Handbook

Prestige Classes
Druids and prestige classes have a complicated and difficult relationship. While
most classes benefit from some amount of prestiging, the most common druid
build, even in optimized groups, is easily druid 20. The issue is that the base class
is just too good. Just about any prestige class obviously has to advance casting to
be optimal, which is a truth that applies to any primary caster, but druids also have
wild shape and the animal companion to worry about, along with a bunch of
significantly worse class features, so a prestige class either needs to advance those
things or provide a replacement of equal or greater value. Needless to say, it is a
rare class indeed that accomplishes this. Planar shepherd obviously does, but that
class is so powerful that it’s unplayable at most tables. Lion of talisid advances your
class features enough to be playable, and moonspeaker advances wild shape a little
and grants enough new class features to be reasonable. So, the druid stands alone:
a 20 level class in a world of prestige classes.

Except that’s not entirely true. Yes, 20 levels of druid is a perfectly viable and
optimal build, and it will lead you to a full and druidy life, but it is not the only
viable option. In addition to the aforementioned classes, which are the most
commonly touted, there are also specialist options, like master of many forms and
arcane hierophant, which are generally worse than a straight druid, but provide
some interesting abilities, and quick dips, like the contemplative and holt warden,
that don’t delay your wild shape or animal companion enough to seriously hurt your
build. The latter type makes for a particularly powerful option, and some of those
classes will be explored in depth in its own section. Apart from that is the hathran,
which is capable of breaking the game in a number of different ways, as well as
some crappy options that are often discussed to balance things out. Between all of
those things, the pool of druid prestige classes is significantly deeper than it’s often
made out to be and all will be explored here.

Arcane Hierophant (RotW, 108): Arcane hierophant is a dual-progression class,

simultaneously advancing both druid casting and the casting of some arcane class,
usually wizard. At the same time, arcane hierophant also fully progresses
spellcasting, effectively combines your animal companion and familiar, lets you
ignore ASF (mostly irrelevant), and grants the ability to channel spells through
animals and plants. With all of those factors acting in its favor, along with the fact
that you can use mystic theurge to extend the dual-progression to dual 9th’s,
makes the arcane hierophant one of the best theurge classes in the game, and a
generally well liked class on top of that.

Unfortunately, being on the top of the theurge curve doesn’t mean all that much,
and the usual theurge problems will plague most of your progression. Basically,
without early entry tricks, you’re inevitably going to end up three caster levels
behind in both druid and wizard casting, and while it sounds like pulling from two
lists should grant an increase in versatility commensurate to the power you’re
losing, it turns out that there is a whole hell of a lot of overlap between the druid
and wizard lists, and that higher spell levels grants its own form of versatility that’s
significantly greater. If you do use early entry tricks, then you’re only ending up
one caster level behind on your main side, which probably leaves you reasonably
neutral with a standard druid, but those methods tend to be pretty cheesy, and
might not be allowed at your table. Granted, both entry paths leave you pretty
much strictly ahead once you get 9th’s, but the increase in power isn’t significantly
meaningful atop the mass of awesome that is shapechange.

It is fortunate, then, that druids can take the hit. Yes, arcane hierophant will likely
leave you behind a straight druid some, but you’ll still be able to be awesome in
just about any party. It is doubly fortunate that arcane hierophant is a rather
awesome class, largely on the back of that nifty companion familiar ability. Arcane
hierophant is far from the best option for a druid out there, but like the master of
many forms, listed below, it offers a unique druid archetype with its own kind of
power, and that is worth consideration in and of itself.

Beastmaster (CAdv, 26): On the first level of beastmaster, you advance your
animal companion by four levels, after which point that animal companion, and the
other animal companions you get later, continue their advancement normally.
Then, at level four, seven, and ten, you get an extra animal companion. For
reasons unfathomable, these animal companions start their progression on the level
you get them, which means that the capstone of beastmaster is essentially an un-
advanced riding dog that will die instantly against your now CR 16 enemies.
Beastmaster doesn’t advance any other druid class features, and to add insult to
injury some errata made it so that natural bond only advances one animal
companion, thus eliminating the most obvious combo. Beastmaster is an utterly
horrible prestige class, whose only redeeming quality is as a first level dip that is
merely incredibly bad instead of build destroying. Avoid this class at all costs, and if
you really need either a better animal companion, or a second animal companion,
just pick up natural bond and wild cohort respectively.

Blighter (CD, 23): To put it as simply as possible, you lose everything. You lose all
of your casting, wild shape, and the animal companion, and in exchange, you get a
pile of crap. The blighter does have replacement casting, and it has that ur-priest
style speediness, but the levels are common where you lag far behind the druid,
rare where you are ahead, and the blighter list is nowhere near as good as the
druid list. You also gain a fancy templated version of wild shape, except it is again
slower, and you’re stuck with only animal forms. The weird deforestation
requirement is another issue with the class, but really, it’s only a minor one
compared to the major issue. The blighter ditches casting completely, giving you
only mediocre blighter casting in return, and that’s honestly enough to make this
just bad. It’s definitely a cool class, giving off the whole anti-druid vibe, but there
are other ways to pull that off without facing the horror that is the blighter. I
recommend a dip in talontar blightlord as a replacement class for anyone who’s
really locked in to the idea.

Daggerspell Shaper (CAdv, 36): You lose a caster level, two feats, animal
companion advancement and some parts of wild shape advancement, as well as
whatever it costs you to pick up sneak attack or skirmish +1d6 (probably either a
level spent in one of the relevant classes, or a pair of feats for assassin stance). In
exchange you get the ability to cast spells while holding a dagger, a merging of the
special properties of daggers you hold with any claw attacks you pick up through
wild shape, sneak attack advancement, move action wild shape, the ability to
maintain enhancement bonuses to physical stats from items in a wild shape, and
finally, the ability to full attack with daggers and swift cast a spell in the same
round. To sum all that up, you get a bunch of stuff that’s very much not worth a
caster level, let alone two feats and two caster levels or four feats and a caster
level. Most of those abilities either offer things that you can already do with relative
ease (move action wild shape, maintaining item abilities in a wild shape), or strictly
numeric bonuses that aren’t worth the effort (sneak attack, claw boosting).
Daggerspell shaper isn’t unplayable, as you do maintain a lot of your druid abilities,
but it is quite bad.

Hathran (PGtF, 59): The hathran is a class in the possession of two abilities that
are completely and utterly broken, rashemi spirit magic at first level, and circle
leader at fifth, as well as the addition of several very strong spells, also at first
level. Getting into the class is a bit costly, requiring that you be a human female
without item creation feats, and requires that you take a feat tax, ethran, and the
exact opposite of that, a feat that you might not want to take because of how
ridiculous it is, leadership. As for the abilities, rashemi spirit magic is the most
straightforwardly crazy of the two. This ability enables you to cast spontaneously
off of your entire list, as long as you’re within the borders of Rashemen. This may
sound like an ability that’s only situationally absurd, rather than all the time
insanity absurd, but then you pick up an acorn of far travel, causing you to always
act as though within an area of your choosing, and you’re casting spontaneously off
of your list forever. I don’t have to tell you how crazy powerful that is, but I will
anyway. It’s crazy powerful.

The second ability, circle leader, is a bit more direct in its usage, and perhaps a bit
less powerful. Basically, circle leader allows you to pull one spell each from up to
five casters, with each spell level allowing you to increase your spell level by one to
a maximum of 40, or apply empower, maximize, or heighten to one of your spells
(with one required for each +1 in spell level), with these effects applying for 24
hours. There’s apparently some third way to apply bonuses, but it looks like those
checks are now handled by caster level, so there’s no real point to that application.
While circle leader takes some work to get it in usable condition, the fact that
you’re required by the class to take leadership gets you a lot of the way there, and
the abilities being provided here are obviously awesome. That caster level boost
alone is far more massive than you’d be able to get from most other means in
existence, and caster level does a lot of things.

As for the spell list additions, the most important thing is that you pick up the
entire planar binding line, as well as the first two planar allies. These are some of
the most potent minionmancy spells in the entire game, and while you need some
variety of magic circle to make serious use of the bindings, probably along with
dimensional lock, those are easier problems to solve than that of getting planar
binding in the first place. And, of course, the ally spells work just fine on their own.
As for the other spells, they’re pretty mediocre, and sometimes on your list already.
Still, they’re not entirely non-objects, so it’s at least an upgrade of some kind. It’s
really all about that high power minion action though.

Overall, the first level of hathran is amazing, and well worth taking if you have the
free feat slots, but the fifth might eat up too much progression to really be worth it.
Besides that, this is a class that needs a lot in the way of DM permission, between
the ridiculous abilities, the prerequisites that require permission in and of
themselves, and the heavily setting rooted power. Hathran is a very tricky class in
that fashion, and I’d heavily advise running it past a DM before even thinking about
it. That might even be more the case here than for something like planar shepherd,
because while the latter is more powerful, this class has a lot more oddities and
moving parts to it. If you do end up bringing this into a game, be prepared for
some very powerful goings on, and be doubly prepared with some serious druid list
knowledge, because that’s going to be insanely important here, due to rashemi
spirit magic, than it is in pretty much any other situation.

Lion of Talisid (BoED, 65): Lion of talisid is a prestige class most notable for how
similar it is to just going druid 20. It doesn’t harm animal companion progression at
all, and sets you back only two levels of wild shape, and while there’s a feat tax to
get in, one of the class features is exalted companion, a feat that you’d generally
be happy to take normally. The goal here, ideally, is to gain enough benefit from
these class features that it makes up for the weakening of wild shape, the loss of
standard druid class features, and the fact that you have to lock a feat in to exalted
companion. Overall, lion of talisid likely fails to meet that goal, but it comes close
enough that this is a reasonably viable class, well suited to a druid pursuing the
exalted path. With that said, the class does have a number of class features, and as
low impact as they are, it is logical to break them down.
Lion’s Courage (1st): You gain immunity to fear, as well as a +4 on will
saves against other mind affecting things. While lion’s courage doesn’t
exactly provide the strongest immunity/resistance in the world, those sorts of
things are always nice to have. Thus, this is a reasonable class feature,
though certainly not a great one.

Scent (2nd): While scent is a decent vision mode on occasion, on a druid, it

is less than ideal. Most animal companions are running scent right out of the
box, which covers a lot of the utility provided here, and spells like enhance
wild shape grant you easy access to scent, as well as a number of other
vision modes, ranging from low-light vision to blindsight. As abilities go, this
one is just somewhat redundant.

Exalted Companion (4th): This is as the feat. As is true of the feat, exalted
companion ranges in quality a lot based on whether you’re allowed/willing to
toss VoP on the fellow. If you can, then this is a feat of reasonable strength.
If you can’t, then it’s a pile of crap, and you might want to avoid lion of
talisid completely. A big part of the draw of the class is that you effectively
maintain feat parity, and if you’re gaining standard exalted companion
instead of turbo-charged exalted companion, then you’re not maintaining
feat parity at all.

Lion’s Pounce (5th): You gain the ability to full attack off of a charge.
Pounce is quite a strong ability, especially if you have a melee focus, but as
scent before it, it is a bit redundant. On the most basic level, you already
have access to pounce, just by taking on one of the many forms that has it,
mostly dinosaurs and big cats. For those forms, this is obviously somewhat
useless. Moreover, a druid gains some measure of pounce ability, just by
having spontaneous summoning. Just toss out a summons 40 ft. away,
perhaps as a standard action with some work, and there ya go, distant full
attack. You can even summon an actual pounce creature, or pick up an
 animal companion with pounce. Still, lion’s pounce is far from worthless.
After all, there’s a good number of combat forms that don’t have pounce, and
tossing pounce onto them means a significant increase in combat capacity.
Overall, this is a pretty good ability, though it is not a great one.

Lion’s Swiftness (7th): Each day, you gain the ability to act as if under the
effects of haste for rounds/class level. Lion’s swiftness is an ability with a lot
of benefits in combat. It allows you to hit significantly harder, granting an
extra attack on a full attack, which is highly likely to occur, due to pounce,
along with a couple of minor bonuses. Moreover, you add 30 ft. to all of your
movement modes, greatly increasing your maneuverability, especially when
you consider how many movement modes a druid can access on the fly. As a
kicker, these rounds don’t have to be consecutive, so lion’s swiftness can
potentially take you through several encounters in a day, especially as you
can turn it off in the middle of an encounter if it becomes unnecessary. With
all of these factors acting in its favor, lion’s swiftness is a great ability, and
aids you more in your druid style beat-stickery than just about anything else
in the class.

Leonal’s Roar (10th): You gain access to the spell leonal’s roar, which is
essentially the same as holy word, three times each day. While you almost
certainly already have access to this spell when you gain leonal’s roar, that
doesn’t change the fact that it is a very strong spell in the right
circumstances. When used against the right sort of encounter, this ability
could easily lead to instant victory, lacking any sort of rolls. Leonal’s roar
isn’t a great ability, as you get tons of this sort of effect in this level range,
but it is a very good one, and at the very least, it represents a bit more
maneuvering that you can do with your high level slots, with this taking
some weight off of the active side of those spells.

Master of Many Forms (CAdv, 58): Master of many forms is the iconic wild
shape prestige class, and almost certainly the most powerful way to use the ability,
only weighed down by the fact that it doesn’t advance any other druid class feature.
In return, you gain an extra form every level, which are, in order, humanoid, giant,
monstrous humanoid, fey, vermin, aberration, plant, ooze, elemental, and dragon,
with speech in a wild shape at level one, move action wild shape at level three, and
extraordinary special qualities from wild shape forms at level seven. Once you hop
into this class, you basically stop being a druid, and start being a master of many
forms, although you can always gain some utility from low level spells, particularly
ones with long duration so that you don’t need natural spell.

In any case, I’m not going to go into ridiculous levels of detail on the massive
number of forms this grants access to, because it’s so far outside of the scope of
this handbook, but if you want more information, the master of many forms bible is
a handy resource, and of course, the descriptions of the forms that are given in this
handbook will sometimes be useful on this class. However, there are two monsters
that are worth mention here, both because they are awesome, and because they
don’t see mention in the MoMF bible, or, indeed, anywhere else to my knowledge.
These forms are the hobgoblin warsoul (MM V, 87) and the kuo-toa exalted whip
(MM V, 95). These creatures are notable because they get what no other creature
in the game seems to get (aside from some weaker versions that are also in MM V),
spellcasting as an explicitly extraordinary ability. The warsoul gets 9th level wizard
casting, on a form with ten HD, and the kuo-toa gets 8th cleric casting on a form
with 10 HD. You can get that whole setup either by level ten, by taking seven druid
levels for enhance wild shape before going MoMF, or by level twelve, by getting the
extraordinary special qualities from MoMF 7, but either way this is a surprisingly
solid amount of casting you’re getting. At least at the moment you get it. After all,
these forms are pretty unique, and they don’t somehow advance into better
casting, so you’ll get this brief period of time with casting that could be considered
close to tier one, and then you’ll just keep that as things advance around you.
Unadvanceable casting is awesome too, though, even somewhat later in the game.
Oh, also, hobgoblin warsouls get the ability to always have 2d4 first level hobgoblin
warriors that fight for them, so that’s both really weird and kinda useful.
Overall, master of many forms is a class that lowers you in power by a whole hell of
a lot, either to tier three, or tier two if you really make best use of all available
resources, but it’s ultimately best to look at master of many forms builds
holistically, and ignore the power you could have had as a straight druid. You can
get some pretty crazy powers from standard druid wild shape, so you don’t need to
enter this class if you want a wild shape focus, but if you really want to push this
character aspect to the limit, then this might be the way to go.

Moonspeaker (RoE, 143): See shifter section for details.

Nature’s Warrior (CW, 63): For five levels, on even levels you advance
spellcasting, on odd levels you gain one out of nature’s armament abilities that will
be delineated below, and all levels advance the HD of forms you can assume with
wild shape. You also need to take track as a feat tax. Nature’s warrior is a bad
prestige class, and it is pretty obviously a bad prestige class, with its lost caster
levels and abilities that are not worth those lost caster levels by any means, but it
does have one reasonable purpose, which is filling out the last five levels of a
master of many forms build. You don’t really have anything to do with those levels,
as returning to druid is a bit of a letdown when you’re already missing so much
casting, and picking up a few passive abilities is pretty nice when you’re spending
all of your actions doing MoMF stuff. Also, this class offers full BAB, which is always
helpful, and that trickle of casting can’t hurt. With that said, and with the full
understanding that this is just a massive bright red on a straight druid (which
means that all assessment will assume that entry point, including the fact that
you’re getting these abilities at level 16 and up), onto the nature’s armament
rankings.

Armor of the Crocodile: Marginal bonuses to AC aren’t all that great at this
level, but a master of many forms can boost that number pretty high
naturally, and the best basis for AC bonuses is already high AC. Armor of the
crocodile isn’t exactly good, but it’s not quite bad either.
Blaze of Power: Fire shield is a decent effect, but fire elemental isn’t even a
particularly worthwhile form on a normal druid. On a master of many forms,
it doesn’t even come close, and fire shield doesn’t change that.

Claws of the Grizzly: This minor damage bonus would be a great deal
worse, but it benefits from the fact that you have access to a ridiculous
number of attacks. Claws of the grizzly is still inevitably limited by the fact
that you’re just buffing damage a bit, but it’s pretty good within those limits.

Earth’s Resilience: Damage resistance is a decent ability, all things

considered, and surprisingly rare on a PC. Protections against melee attacks
aren’t especially important at this level however, even if it’s a reasonably
universal protection. I would advise picking up wild growth instead if you
want to reduce damage.

Nature’s Weapon: If you didn’t already have a +1 enhancement bonus to

attack rolls and the ability to bypass DR X/magic on your natural weapons,
then you just didn’t want it in the first place. Seriously, even your five levels
of druid are enough to keep up greater magic fang for just about the whole
day.

Robe of Clouds: While this is another of those annoying form limited

abilities, this time to air elementals, one way concealment is an ability that
might be good enough be worth the restriction, especially as air elementals
are pretty good.

Serpent’s Coils: Grappling is a potent ability on a master of many forms,

even into high levels, and the bonuses provided here are quite relevant. You
should strongly consider taking this if you want to do much grappling at all.

Water’s Flow: Moving normally without provoking AoO’s is just really cool
stuff, especially as druids don’t usually have the tumble to pull it off
 consistently. You’re likely to be in combat a good chunk of the time, and this
helps some with that.

Wild Growth: While a lot of the damage you’re going to take at this level
will be instantly fatal, some of it won’t be, especially if you have good
defenses, and wild growth means that you don’t need to spend any resources
to recover from those attacks. This isn’t as good as it would have been at
earlier levels, especially because some wild shape forms provide similar
utility, but it is decent.

Wings of the Avian: This would probably be a Blue on a straight druid, as

birds and air elementals comprise a decent majority of aerial forms, and as
maneuverability is always a good problem to solve. However, with the
ridiculous number of powerful flight forms available through MoMF, this just
isn’t going to be turned on whenever you fly. Still, the effect is decent, so it’s
not the worst pickup out there.

Planar Shepherd (FoE, 105): Here it is: that mighty bastion of power. The planar
shepherd is the prestige class universally designated the most powerful druid
prestige class in existence, and it often makes the lists of best prestige classes
overall. There’s too much complexity to the planar shepherd to do it justice in the
confines of this section, but it’s worth some variety of overview here, and you can
see the planar shepherd mini-handbook couched within this one for more details.

At its most basic and low optimization level, the planar shepherd represents what is
nearly a strict upgrade to the druid, requiring a single feat that is always going to
be a pretty reasonable pick, advancing all three of the major druid class features
perfectly, and providing a massive pile of high powered abilities on top of that. On
top of that stack of crazy, because anything that can lay claim to the status of
“druid +” has to be at least a little crazy, the planar shepherd has two distinct paths
towards breaking the game. First, you gain the ability to wild shape into all of the
magical beasts, outsiders, and elementals of your chosen plane, gaining the Ex, Su,
and Spell-like abilities of the latter two creature sets. For a simple idea of how
insane that is, consider that you can select something like the plane of elemental
fire, gain access to efreeti form, and make use of a pile of free wishes. Second, you
gain the ability to create a bubble that maintains the planar traits of your chosen
plane a few times each day. The most infamous use of that ability is choosing dal-
quor is your plane of choice, and gaining access to 10:1 time dilation, breaking the
action economy over your knee so totally that it might as well not even exist
anymore. There are obviously less broken things you can do with this class, but
even then you’re still at the very heights of power level unless you tone down by a
lot. I would strongly advise talking this class over with your DM before bringing it
into a game, and picking a plane that won’t crush the game into nothingness.

Warshaper (CW, 89): This class trades away advancement of all types, including
casting, for a bunch of craziness. The big draw is morphic weapons, which either
allows you to manifest a bunch of natural weapons, or any amount of natural
weapons, depending on how you read it, and you get a bunch of reasonable
bonuses, all leading up to the ability to change form in a wild shape as much as you
want. Warshaper is a great prestige class, granting some of the most potent face
beatery out there, but it is not a great druid prestige class. Casting is just insanely
better than standard beat sticking, and the type of form altering this provides,
based around direct application of power over versatility of form, doesn’t work the
best with druid style shape changing. If you want a wild shape prestige class, then
go with master of many forms, which fits in a lot better with what wild shape does
best, and if you want to add levels of this, you should really only do so as filler
levels after you’re done with MoMF levels. For that particular purpose at least,
where you’re you have little to gain otherwise, and some cool abilities to get ahold
of, warshaper probably moves up to a rating of black.
 Dip Options
Here you’ll find those aforementioned classes that you should only take a level or
two of. The fundamental principle at work here is that you can pick up a few potent
abilities from frontloaded prestige classes without seriously harming the integrity of
your druid progression. Most often, these abilities take the form of domains, adding
spells to your list and/or extra spell slots. You can pick up some serious versatility
on a daily and overall basis alike by augmenting your magic in this way. You can
pick up some other abilities too in this fashion, augmenting your abilities in other
ways. All in all, dips aren’t a necessary thing, but they can do good work in
producing a more potent or interesting build.

Contemplative (CD, 30): Contemplative’s first level grants a bonus domain of

your choice, spells and power alike, along with immunity to all diseases, and all that
is demanded for your entry is 13 ranks in knowledge (religion). Obviously there are
many domains, a good number of whom are worthy of this dip, but the most
optimal is almost certainly the spell domain, and I am going to assume that it is the
one being taken for the purposes of this entry, for a massive rundown of the utility
of every reasonable domain is outside the scope of this handbook. The first order of
business though, is entering contemplative in the first place. The only real hurdle to
entry is the 13 ranks in knowledge (religion), but with that quantity of ranks
required, you pretty much need to add the skill to your list at some point, at least
temporarily. The most direct method is just taking a feat that adds the skill to your
list, which would be either education (ECS, 52), or knowledge devotion (CC, 60).
These feats will definitely do the job, but a feats are a scarce resource, so it’s an
inefficient method. The second way, which is somewhat better, is picking up a
prestige class with knowledge (religion) as a class skill. Holt warden is likely the
best option for this, as you get free slots to put your domain spells in, but nearly
any druid prestige class worth its salt will have knowledge (religion), just as a
matter of course.

Thus, we arrive at the spell domain, in all of its ridiculousness. The most important
spells in the spell domain, and the reason you’d take it over all alternatives, are
anyspell, greater anyspell, and limited wish. Anyspell is a third level spell that gives
you a slot to prepare any arcane spell of 2nd level or lower, greater anyspell is a
6th level spell that does the same for spells of 5th level or lower, and limited wish is
a 7th level spell that lets you cast any wizard spell of 6th level or lower, or any
other spell of 5th level or lower, for 300 XP. To put it simply, that is a lot of spells.
There’s this reasonably long list of things that wizards, as well as other arcane
casters like the bard, do that druids either can’t do, or can’t do with the same
efficiency, and the spell domain cuts down on that list by a lot. These spells are at
their best when they’re being used in an after adventuring context, for things like
minionmancy and random utility/divinations, but they can be pretty great during
adventures too. The wizard list is an overwhelmingly amazing thing, to the extent
that it on its own lets the wizard match the druid’s abilities at later levels on its
merits alone, and this lets you access that.

The other spells in the spell domain couldn’t possibly live up to those three, but
they’re pretty strong in their own right. Silence, antimagic field, and disjunction all
act as reasonable things to use against casters, with disjunction adding a second
worthwhile 9th (though the actual positive impact is debatable). Break
enchantment hits a wide swath of effects that druids cannot ordinarily hit, and
mage armor is an at least decent defensive option. The final spell on the list is
mnemonic enhancer, which is a bit of an oddity as it specifies “wizard only”.
Whether this means that only wizards can cast it, which would make it an odd
choice for a domain spell, that it can only get spells that are also on the wizard list,
which would be reasonable, or that it can get anything on the wizard list, regardless
of its presence on your list, is a bit unclear. Still, in any case, it has some
reasonable utility effects, especially as the 24 hour duration on the retain effect can
stretch into a following day. The domain granted power, a +2 on concentration and
spellcraft checks, is nice to have but not great.

Ultimately, contemplative is a list expander, and one of the best of its kind. As
such, it can represent an enormous boost in versatility, filling the gaps that even a
tier one class is party to. In combination with holt warden, you can even emulate
having an actual domain, granting an extra spell/day at each spell level that is
actually worth casting. You even get immunity to diseases, magical and non-
magical alike, which is a pretty decent ability. All in all, contemplative makes for a
great dipping option, and the gains can easily make up for the losses incurred by
leaving druid for a short time.

Divine Oracle (CD, 34): At the cost of a feat tax, as well as some cross class skill
ranks, divine oracle offers access to the oracle domain, as well as a +1 to save DC’s
on scrying spells. The main feature of divine oracle, as is the case with all domain
adding prestige classes, is a small pile of spells added to your list, which in this case
comes in the form of six divination spells: identify, augury, divination, commune,
legend lore, and discern location. Of these, identify is a useful utility spell, if a bit
expensive, and legend lore and discern location each have a host of situations
where they are perfect for the job.

However, what is really exciting about these additions are the last three spells,
augury, divination, and commune. All three are high end divination options, offering
the sort of open ended information gathering, often capable of hitting specific
details, that make divination the fantastic school of magic that it is. Druids have
their moments where these effects are concerned, but nothing on the scale of
commune’s deity questioning effect. Ultimately, divine oracle lags somewhat behind
other domain aiding classes like contemplative and seeker of the misty isle, both
because the domains offered there are more powerful, and because the cost is
lower. However, divine oracle is still quite a good option for any druid seeking to
flesh out their knowledge acquisition skills, with some of the best divination effects
in the game.

Dracolyte (Draconomicon, 122): After paying an unfortunate two feat tax, and
some awkward skill placement, this class’ first level grants a full fledged bonus
domain, spell slots and all, with the option of glory if you’re good, domination if
you’re evil, and either if you’re neutral. Basically, we’re working with a crappy
version of holt warden here, or a pretty similar version of talontar blightlord, apart
from one major factor that makes it interesting, which is that the domination
domain is actually pretty good. To get this out of the way before talking about the
domination domain, glory is not good. It’s just a long and annoying slog to gate,
which is a nice spell and all, but it’s not worth the cost.

Domination, as the name indicates, is all about dominating folks, mind control style.
Now, mind control isn’t the best thing out there, and that’s a thing that’s
reasonably certain what with immunities and all, but what’s notable about it is that
druids just don’t get much of that style of spell. Moreover, this domain grants you
instantly strong ability in the field, with dominate person a level early, more
powerful versions of dominate person at 8 and 9, and other things that are like
dominate person like suggestion, command, and geas. You even pick up free spell
focus (enchantment), which isn’t spectacular, but it’s pretty nice.

This spell list isn’t a varied bunch, but what it is is better than the holt warden’s
plant domain, which offers no new spells, or the talontar blightlord’s generally
crappy spells. This is an honest to god list expansion on top of the extra spells/day.
Moreover, you can still do all of that awesome stuff you’d do with holt warden, like
spontaneous summoning or slotting in a different domain. Overall though, this
reasonably large advantage probably isn’t enough to make up for the fact that this
is the most expensive to enter PrC of the three. This class is definitely justifiable if
the alternative is talontar blightlord, but if it’s down to holt warden or dracolyte,
holt warden is the more optimal option. Still, there’s definitely some awesomeness
to this class, and if you really like mind controlling folks (and want to do that as a
druid for some reason), dracolyte isn’t much of a hit to your power.

Earthshaker (Dragon Magazine #314, 57): With six ranks in knowledge

(dungeoneering) as the only annoying prerequisite, the first level of earthshaker
offers holt warden style access to the earth domain (meaning that you get domain
slots which are filled with the earth domain spells), with the added bonus of the
domain power of earth elemental turning, along with 5 ft. tremorsense. While the
base spells on offer here aren’t the best, with 5th level wall of stone as the biggest
value added to general casting and perfectly standard stone shape as the best thing
otherwise, this domain does offer those usual awesome side benefits of extra spells
per day, like spontaneous conversion or using these slots for spells of another
domain from something like contemplative. That is, in fact, possibly the biggest
downside of earthshaker as opposed to holt warden, because the lack of knowledge
(religion) on the skill list cuts down on the possibility for an
earthshaker/contemplative dip combo. Still, aside from that admittedly reasonably
large issue, the earthshaker offers benefits comparable to or even possibly better
than what holt warden grants, and it does so at an only marginally higher cost,
making this the likely second best class for this particular domain slot adding
purpose.

Hierophant: Hierophant’s first level loses advancement of everything, including

casting, and in exchange, you gain the ability to transfer any druid class feature,
aside from magic and the animal companion, over to a willing target for anywhere
from 24 hours to a week. While at first glance, hierophant is terrible, because you
lose a caster level, it’s well worth taking if you already have 9th level spells, as you
don’t lose much.

Of course, there’s little point in discussing how little you lose without discussing
how much you gain, and in this case, what you gain is the ability to give folks your
wild shape. While that doesn’t initially sound beneficial, the fact that you can
transfer the ability in uses/day chunks means that you can actually make full use of
the ability, as can several other party members, possibly including your animal
companion. That’s a really powerful thing, even at these really high levels, making
your party beatsticks into massive bear shaped beatsticks. It’s not entirely clear
how much you’re allowed to transfer beyond animals of any size you can take,
particularly as applies to form adding feats, but even the narrowest possible
reading is good enough to make the hierophant a worthwhile class in the endgame.

Holt Warden (CC, 84): Holt warden’s first level grants an extra spell/day for every
spell level you have, pulled off of the plant domain. Additionally, you get an
instance of nature sense that can stack with the one you get naturally. The plant
domain adds no new spells to your list, but gaining that many spells every day is a
valuable thing. The three best spells you get out of this are entangle, plant growth,
and wall of thorns, which act as some of the best BFC options of their level. After
that the best spell is barkskin, which isn’t really the biggest buff, but it’s something
you’ll cast every day, and it will have some impact. Finally you get command
plants, repel wood, animate plants, control plants, and shambler. The first four
spells are rather situational, as command and control plants only work on plant
enemies, repel wood only works on enemies who use wood, and animate plants
only works in an area with a bunch of large trees. Shambler can easily see use
every day, but it’s not shapechange so it’s rather irrelevant. These spells are ones
you likely wouldn’t prepare, but having access to a bunch of situational spells can
be great if the situation comes up.

Holt warden is a pretty strong prestige class, offering a solid spell based benefit in
exchange for the lost advancement. The spells aren’t great, but they’re not exactly
bad either, so they’re a welcome addition to your arsenal. The holt warden’s extra
slots become even more useful if you can do other things with it. First, you can
acquire a second domain from a different prestige class, like contemplative or
seeker of the misty isle, and put those spells in these slots. Second, it doesn’t look
like there’s any particular rule barring you from spontaneously converting out of
domain slots like there is for clerics, so that turns all of the situational spells into
the ever-useful SNA’s. In either case, if you can turn these plant domain spells into
something you’d want to prepare anyway, then holt warden becomes a much better
class. Notably, you can also go the other direction on this, as you can trade away
spontaneous summoning through other ACF’s to make this class grant spontaneous
casting off the plant domain list, and you can even pick up spontaneous summoning
again through either spontaneous summoner (CD, 85) or Initiate of Obad-Hai
(Dragon Magazine #342, 52), though with the low power of the plant domain list,
this will only do so much. The fact that holt warden’s access to knowledge
(religion) can help with the prerequisites of seeker of the misty isle and
contemplative makes that plan even more viable.

Sacred Exorcist (CD, 56): Sacred exorcist is a class you’d take for exactly one
simple purpose, and that purpose is granting you turn undead. Moreover, while turn
undead has a few valid applications, including turning undead, oddly enough, the
only one really worth the cost of entry is using divine metamagic: persist in order to
freely persist a few of your spells. This is a maneuver that’s not worth as much on a
druid as it is on a cleric, as many of a druid’s best buffs are long duration, but you
can do some pretty strong things with the ability despite that.

However, to reach that point, there are a couple of prerequisite shaped hurdles that
must be leapt. First, you need the ability to cast either dismissal or dispel evil. For
this problem, the best solution is dipping into contemplative for either the balance
or good domain, with balance acting as a generally better option. Second, you need
10 ranks in knowledge (the planes), and 7 ranks in knowledge (religion). The latter
prerequisite is easy enough to meet if you’re running contemplative, so the only
real issue is knowledge (the planes). For this prerequisite, I advise picking up a few
planar druid substitution levels, as they don’t have much in the way of downsides,
and they grant the skill in question.

Overall, I don’t think that sacred exorcist is particularly worth the trouble. You’re
paying a minimum of three feats for DMM persist, along with probably another feat
to meet one of the prerequisites, and you’re putting in the work to enter
contemplative as well without a particularly interesting reward. You’re eating up
massive amounts of your build for this ability, and it’s an ability that’s likely just not
as attractive on druids as what you could otherwise get for that many feats, not to
mention the lost progression of druid stuff. The ability being offered here is very
powerful and versatile, such that sacred exorcist might be worthwhile in certain
builds, but in the vast majority of cases, you should probably just stay away.

Seeker of the Misty Isle (CD, 61): Seeker of the misty isle’s first level grants
access to the travel domain along with two extra skill points. There’s a downside
however, in that you have to be either an elf or half-elf, and those races aren’t
exactly the best you have access to, particularly because the variants’ stat
adjustments all fall somewhere between actively harmful and lacking in any affect.
Fortunately though, the travel domain is quite strong, adding a number of spells to
your list that fill decently sized gaps in your arsenal. Those spells are locate object,
dimension door, teleport, greater teleport, phase door, and astral projection. You
technically also get fly, but you’re unlikely to ever prepare it with wild shape sitting
right there.

The first and most obviously important additions are the teleportation options:
dimension door, teleport, and greater teleport. Dimension door represents a
stronger tactical teleportation option than any a druid gets access to, even in later
levels. It’s a spell that is great for getting out of danger, and simultaneously
represents all of the utility that shunting your party to long range can grant.
Teleport is easily the least interesting option of the three spells, as the druid list
already has comparable long distance teleportation options, but at the same time
teleportation is somewhat more powerful than those options, owing its slot
efficiency, versatility, and reasonable accuracy. Greater teleport, however, is a spell
without a point of comparison on the druid list. The range and accuracy here is
fantastic, and both this and teleport enable the ever-popular scry and die tactics
that aren’t made available on the normal druid list.

The second set of spells, locate object, phase door, and astral projection, is
interesting, but it isn’t nearly as interesting. Locate object is certainly a form of
divination that isn’t on the druid list, but it’s not an exceptionally strong form, so
the gain here isn’t a massive one. Similarly, phase door is also not an effect on the
druid list, but I can’t see it as an effect that the druid is in particular need of. Astral
projection is possibly the most interesting spell out of the three, adding a second
powerful spell to the druid’s list of 9th’s, and while a lack of genesis access limits
the viability somewhat, you can use plane shift by various methods, with perhaps
the best being animate with the spirit for a movanic deva. If you can pull this off
then the outcome is nigh-invulnerability, which is great, but it’s hard to pull off. The
final ability you get from this domain is the domain power, which allows you to act
as if under the effects of freedom of movement for rounds/level each day in
response to magical impediments. It’s a good domain power, and can get you out
of some problematic situations, but it’s not a great one. Overall, seeker of the misty
isle is a prestige class that offers quite a lot of benefit, opening up your list in new
directions, but the price is high, and the domain isn’t the best one possible, so
seeker of the misty isle is a class that is good rather than great.

Singer of Concordance (RotD, 91): For a two level dip, which costs only 8 ranks
in knowledge (religion) and having the dragonblood subtype (easy enough, given
how good dragonborn is), you gain an immunity to the first compulsion effect in a
day, a +4 on saving throws against compulsion for you and allies within 10 feet of
you, and as the capstone (and the reason you’re really doing this), one bonus
domain out of dragon, healing, knowledge, magic, strength, travel, and wealth. Off
of this list, it seems reasonable to immediately cross off healing and strength, as
they’re quite weak, and stick dragon and wealth in the not great but serviceable
pile, the former for voice of the dragon, lower level true seeing, and dragon ally,
and the latter for a big pile of not-terrible spells.

From there, you get the good to great remnants: knowledge, magic, and travel.
Travel is covered in depth in the seeker of the misty isle entry, but suffice to say
that teleportation is always good. Knowledge is probably the worst of the three, but
it has a good domain ability, all knowledges as class skills, six out of class spells
that are pretty strong, and as is the case with dragon, true seeing at the normal
level of 5th. This domain is a good source of divination effects, something you can
never get too much of, and a powerful choice in general as a result. Last and
definitely not least, you can pick magic. The spells here are good but not great,
with identify, 3rd level dispel magic, antimagic field, and disjunction as the big
items on offer, but the big deal here is the domain ability. Magic grants you the
ability to use wizard spell completion and spell trigger items, which in turn means
access to tons of spells. Granted, this access can be costly, but even used
sparingly, this is still a big increase in versatility.
Moreover, entering this class grants access to a sphere of concordance, which is
basically your own personal demiplane. Getting there is non-trivial without the 10th
level class feature, but you can use animate with the spirit for a movanic deva to
get there if you want. Beyond the standard demiplane benefit of being hard to find,
the sphere of concordance grants a number of nifty benefits that can make
attacking and/or reaching you quite difficult. First, you get all the class’ aspects all
the time, which means that first level ability above, plus creatures within 20 feet of
you can’t attack other creatures, you get a globe of invulnerability effect, and
creatures attempting to planar travel to within 20 feet of you fail and take damage.
Second, as an emissary of Io, you get to deny entry to any nondraconic creatures,
and expel anyone that does violence, which means pretty broad protection against
most that would do you harm. Finally, positive spell effects get empowered, while
negative ones are impeded, so that’s kinda neat.

Ultimately, singer of concordance is just another contemplative variant more than

anything. There are definitely some interesting twists here, like the necessary two
level investment rather than one, the nifty first level ability, the relatively low
prerequisites compared to the competition, and the particular selection of domains,
but it’s nothing especially special. That two level loss is likely enough to make this a
bit inferior to the one level options, but there are enough cases where progression
isn’t particularly important (especially in the later levels) that it’s the sort of thing
you should really be determining on a case by case basis. And, critically, at those
same later levels where progression gets weakened, picking up a private demiplane
grows in importance as a way to stop high power foes. Adding spells to your list is
always good, and protecting yourself during your off hours can be critical. \

Spelldancer (MoF, 37): A dip in spelldancer basically allows you to freely apply as
much metamagic as you desire, as long as you can either remove or gain immunity
to ability damage and fatigue, generally by way of the spell sheltered vitality.
Usually, this means persisting all of the spells, which is a completely ridiculous
thing, breaking the action economy of buffing over your knee. However, then you
face the big issue of the class, and its name is prerequisites. All in all, you need to
take four feats, combat casting, dodge, endurance, and mobility, that are the
closest thing to completely useless, along with 6 ranks in perform, and 4 in
mobility. This is, of course, in addition to the two feats you need to spend on
extend spell and persistent spell.

Without flaws, a racial bonus feat, or some other feat source, that plus natural spell
eats up every single feat you get over the course of the game, finally allowing you
to start persisting when you pick up shapechange. Even with those extra feat
sources, you’re usually eating up all of the feats you would use for awesome stuff,
like wild shape or summoning. It doesn’t help that, as I note elsewhere in this
handbook, druids don’t work as well with persist as clerics or wizards, owing to the
inherently long duration of their best buffs. While spelldancer is a fantastically
powerful class, capable of breaking the game when it comes online, I think that the
cost is just too high to justify entering it if you’re not starting the game at a high
level.

Talontar Blightlord (UE, 34): This is an odd prestige class which ends up reading
a lot like a worse version of holt warden with some evil theming. Starting from the
top, the prerequisites are great fortitude, which is an absolute feat tax, glaive
proficiency, which might actually be a worse feat tax unless you just so happen to
have that from somewhere else, and evil as an alignment, which is the worst
alignment to be, but if your character was going to be evil anyway, it’s not the
worst thing in existence. Moving on to class features, the big one for the class is the
blightbringer prestige domain, which, like holt warden, adds actual spells/day onto
your character, albeit ones limited to a particular set of spells. As for the spells
themselves, they’re mostly pretty bad, with the absolute worst being command
plants as a ridiculous 7th level spell. You do get fear, horrid wilting, and energy
drain, which are all not on the druid list, as well as finger of death and hold animal,
which are on the druid list, but of a level higher, but none of those spells are all
that great. Realistically, if you’re going to make any serious use of these spells, it’s
going to necessarily be either through spontaneous conversion into summoning
spells, or through a dip into a domain granting class, so that you can swap all of
these out.

Beyond that, you also gain the ability to rebuke or command blightspawned
creatures, immunity to disease, and the power to have blightspawned creatures
ignore you, all at first level. Immunity to disease is always decent, though rarely
great, and the blightspawned thing is really campaign dependent, going from
completely useless to pretty high powered depending on how often you face off
against this rather obscure creature. At level two, the talontar blightlord also
applies the blightspawned template to their animal companions, which is slightly
nifty, but probably not worth it, even with the hefty investment of resources
required for class entry. Overall, the talontar blightlord isn’t particularly great,
offering pretty much the same stuff as holt warden does, except at a much greater
price. The real benefit here is that the class offers a great quantity of evil theming,
and offers a great alternative to the piece of trash blighter. Talontar blightlord isn’t
a bad prestige class, but overall it’s just too damnably expensive for what you’re
getting.