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

Feats
Picking good feats for a druid is quite unlike picking them for most classes. Much of
the time, good builds specialize, taking a bunch of feats that let you do really well
at a particular thing, and then crushing the game with your specialty. For a wizard,
such a build might pick up feats like arcane thesis, easy metamagic, and as many
metamagic feats as they can get their hands on, and for a barbarian, such a build
might pick up power attack, shock trooper, and again, as many power attack
multipliers as they can get their hands on. It is a thing at the very heart of min-
maxing. You maximize one thing, and minimize another, and in so doing, you crush
the game to a pulp.

Druids aren’t like that. If you want to build a really effective druid, what you really
want to do is take one or two feats that augment each of your major abilities,
summoning, wild shape, the animal companion, and sometimes casting itself, along
with natural spell at 6th level to put it all together. This is because, by and large,
the best feats in each category don’t work well together at all. For example, say
you decide to focus all of your efforts on wild shape. Well, the best wild shape feat
is usually going to be aberration wild shape, so you take that, along with aberrant
blood as a prerequisite, and then at 12th level, because you’re focused on wild
shape, you take dragon wild shape, and at 15th, let’s say you take frozen wild
shape, because it just times out well. So, you have all of those feats, except you
obviously can’t take two forms at once, so you end up with a lot of dead weight
forms. Sure, you’re a bit better than you would have been with just aberration wild
shape, but not by that much.

The same thing applies to summoning, though perhaps to a lesser extent, where
greenbound summoning and rashemi elemental summoning war against each
other. Summoning, at least, has some decent support feats, like ashbound and
augment summoning, which stack up well. Animal companion feats actually do
synergize quite well, with natural bond stacking up great with exalted
companion+VoP, and companion spellbond boosting things up even more, but the
animal companion is your worst major class feature, so those mostly end up being
filler feats. The same goes for casting, which is obviously a fantastic class feature,
but in this case the feats themselves are worse than what you would take
otherwise.

Thus, the perfectly optimal druid ends up with a mixture of feats. The general build
shell runs natural spell at 6th, either greenbound summoning at 1st or 3rd, or
rashemi elemental summoning at 9th or later, and a form adding wild shape feat at
some point after 6th, with aberrant blood somewhere before 6th if you’re taking
aberration wild shape. Then, you add in the filler. Maybe a natural bond and/or
companion spellbond here, maybe a nightbringer initiate there, perhaps a
summoning support feat as seasoning, and if you need it, a feat to fulfill the
prerequisites of the odd prestige class that has them. It seems complicated, but
once you make one or two of the big decisions, like what form adding feat you want
to take, or how focused on summoning you want to be, the rest tends to fall into
place pretty easily.

Summoning
Summoning feats can generally be divided into two groups. First, you have the high
powered list altering feats, which are greenbound summoning and rashemi
elemental summoning, with a half-nod to child of winter. These options are good
enough that you’re probably going to want one on any given build, but a second
isn’t particularly valuable. Second, you have the moderately powered summons
boosters. These work quite well together, both with each other and with feats of the
first group, but at the cost of a significant reduction in game impact. On a focused
summoning build, you’re likely to want a few of these, but if you’re not, then you
might want none, only using them as filler feats. Overall, summoning feats are a
rather useful class of feat, augmenting an ability that just about any druid is going
to make at least some use of.

Ashbound (ECS, 50): Double the duration on all of your summons, and give them
a +3 luck bonus to attack. This isn’t the single greatest summoning feat of all time,
but it’s good enough that you’re always going to want it on a dedicated summoning
build. Doubled durations are fantastic, especially at low levels, and a luck bonus is
going to stack with just about anything you’d put on a summoned creature. No
matter what direction you take summoning, this is always going to slot into your
build perfectly, and the lack of prerequisites means that you can pick it up at your
convenience. This is one of my favorite summoning feats, just for how low impact
and generally useful it is.

Augment Elemental (MoE, 46): Summoned elementals get +2 to attack and

damage rolls, and 2 temporary HP/HD. In other words, this is augment summoning,
limited to elementals, minus some of the other effects of the ability scores, and
minus the feat tax. As such, augment elemental is only useful for two reasons, and
it’s not even all that useful in those applications. First, this allows you to double
down on augment summoning. If you’re planning to summon mostly elementals,
and really want to focus your build in that direction, then you might want more
summoning boosts than would otherwise be available. Second, also if you’re
planning to summon mostly elementals, augment elemental could act as an
augment summoning replacement, costing only one feat instead of two.
Unfortunately though, neither of those uses makes for a particularly viable feat.
What you’re looking at here, when all is said and done, is a crappy version of a feat
that’s probably not even worth your time when you have access to resources as far
afield as magic of eberron. This is thus an option that should be avoided, as there’s
just more you could be doing with your feats.
Augment Summoning: Give all of your summons +4 strength and +4
constitution. This is basically the archetypal summoning feat, and has probably
made it onto just about every summoning build in one form or another. This boosts
exactly what you want it to boost, granting your burly meat sacks an edge in
combat. The unfortunate downside of this feat is that it has a feat tax in the form of
spell focus (conjuration), but in a book limited game, this is well worth the cost.
Otherwise, you should probably try to get this from another source, like
moonspeaker, or half-orc substitution levels.

Beckon the Frozen (Frost, 47): This lets you give your summoned creatures the
cold subtype, as well as a +1d6 cold damage on each hit with a natural weapon.
Giving this buff to any given summons is strictly optional, so you won’t be left out
in the cold (har dee har har) against creatures with fire attacks. Beckon the frozen
is a nice little buff, but it’s really not enough to be worth more than most other
summoning feats. With that in mind, it’s a decent pick up after you’re done getting
other summoning feats. Notably, this feat requires both spell focus (conjuration)
and augment summoning, so if you’re getting augment summoning from a non-feat
source, you need to pick up spell focus separately. Do not do this, as beckon the
frozen is just barely worth one of your feat slots, and two is ridiculous.

Child of Winter (ECS, 51): This feat enables you to treat vermin as two
intelligence animals for the purposes of your spells and abilities, and far more
critical, it adds a swath of mostly vermin to your SNA list. While child of winter isn’t
nearly on the level of the other list altering summoning feats, greenbound and
rashemi elemental summoning, there’s very little out there that can claim that level
of power otherwise. On its own merits, child of winter is pretty good, especially at
early and late level, but it’s certainly not great. There are a few interesting utility
options here that change up what your summons can accomplish, with swarms
being a major contribution, and nearly everything being mindless granting some
protection from situations that would otherwise be troublesome, but there’s nothing
out of this world. With that said, here’s a breakdown of the creatures added by
child of winter.
 SNA I

Monstrous Spider, Small: While nothing special in terms of direct combat,

the web ability, capable of entangling medium or smaller foes on a ranged
touch attack, is a strong debuff for this level, especially when you consider
the fact that the spider can use the ability repeatedly. Beyond that, the
monstrous spider also has a 20 ft. climb speed and 60 ft. tremorsense, which
both expand the utility of this summon. The only real downside is that the
small monstrous spider is really fragile, running only 4 HP and 14 AC,
meaning that it’ll die to a stiff breeze. This fragility is protected somewhat by
the spider’s ranged nature, but a little attention on the part of an enemy
could spell the end of the web based fun.

SNA II

Monstrous Spider, Medium: This is really similar to the small version, with
the big difference being that the web can hit large opponents, and is quite a
bit harder to get out of. The size boost is a pretty big deal, as being stuck
with medium targets is a harsh limitation to applicability. The medium
monstrous spider also features an extra seven HP, which is a decent
durability upgrade, but it’s still going to die to most things. Realistically, this
creature should only come out when the small version wouldn’t be able to
web your opponents, but it’s worth the increase in spell cost to have that
capability.

Spider Swarm: You’re basically getting the effects of summon warm here,
except on a spontaneous basis, and with a different duration that’s better
unless you use concentration. What you’re getting, then, is a debuff (in both
one round nausea and 1d3 strength damage flavors) and minor damage
effect that can be very difficult for enemies to interact with, due to its
diminutive swarm nature. The DC’s are a bit low, but you get repeated
opportunities to get the effect. The real downside compared to summon
swarm is that you can’t just hold it up indefinitely against enemies weak to it,
but you don’t risk the swarm going after allies, and, of course, not having to
prepare a relatively situational yet powerful spell is a very strong thing.

SNA III

Monstrous Centipede, Huge: This creature’s claim to fame is right there in

the name, and it’s that it’s huge, a thing that isn’t true of other creatures at
this level. That means that, when it comes to being a giant wall of meat in
the middle of the battlefield, controlling the terrain through sheer bulk, you
can’t do much better. This doesn’t really translate into enhanced ability in
other areas, as the centipede is either middle of the road or a bit below that
in most ways, but there’s a lot of utility to having 25 ft. of control between
space and reach. As for combat, the bite attack on offer isn’t all that bad, at
least when you consider the poisoning effect, and the grapple mod is a
reasonable +15, but realistically, if you’re not after the sheer size, then the
dire wolf is better in most measurable ways.

SNA IV

Locust Swarm: The obvious point of comparison here is to the spider

swarm, and it’s not really adjusted upward enough to be worth the higher
level slot. On the offensive side, you lose the minor poison effect for an extra
1d6 damage, and the distraction ability picks up an entire point of DC. So,
it’s a bit of a wash, in other words. On the defense and utility side, the
biggest advantage here comes in the form of a 30 ft. (poor) flight speed,
which expands the pool of targets by quite a bit, and you also get 21 HP and
18 AC to work with, which is a decent buffer against the few attacks that
would otherwise be effective. The end result is a creature significantly worse
than the spider swarm for its level, unless you’re fighting against airborne
enemies, in which case it’s a decent option.
 SNA V

Carrion Crawler: All of the combat statistics here are outright atrocious for
a combat summons, which is absolutely what this aberration is, with a total
of 19 HP, 17 AC, and a +3 to hit on its attacks. The carrion crawler does
have one combat asset, however, which is its set of eight tentacles which
inflict a DC 13 save against 2d4 rounds of paralysis on a successful hit
(though they don’t deal any damage). Despite the ludicrously low chance of
hitting, and the even lower chance of also getting a failed save, the massive
number of attacks offers a decent chance of getting the paralysis effect off,
and if that does occur, then the afflicted foe is pretty much just dead. The
carrion crawler is a bit of a hail mary pass where summons are concerned, as
fragile as it is unlikely to work, but the impact of a spontaneous save or lose
effect is not to be underestimated.

SNA VI

Monstrous Centipede, Gargantuan: Like the huge version of three levels

ago, the gargantuan monstrous centipede is pretty much entirely set apart
from other 6th level options by virtue of size, a size only matched by the
water restricted baleen whale. As before, this size doesn’t really confer an
advantage with regards to grappling, or durability, or damage, as these
numbers are all exceeded by same level summons, but the gargantuan
monstrous centipede comes with 20 feet of space and 15 feet of reach, and
that can be intrinsically valuable. Not massively so, because the 66 HP of
meat wall can be chewed through with relative ease, but you’re at least
getting some stretch of time with a gargantuan stack of flesh.

SNA VII

Hellwasp Swarm: The first facet of this summons is classic swarm action,
albeit in a higher end form than is typical. 93 HP and 20 AC buffers against
those attacks it’s not immune to, and the offense is formed of both
distraction and 1d6 dexterity damage poison with a DC of 18, and 3d6
damage. Additionally, the hellwasp swarm has a 40 ft. (good) flight speed,
for that broad applicability, and both DR 10/magic and resistance to fire 10
for additional defense. As a final benefit to traditional use, this summons has
the hivemind ability, granting intelligence, which allows for more nuanced
swarming. With all of this, the hellwasp swarm stands head and shoulders
above lower level swarm options.

The second facet is significantly more interesting, albeit rather situational.

This is the hellwasp swarm’s inhabit ability, which allows the swarm to spend
a full minute taking control of a dead or helpless creature, getting an animate
dead effect in the former case and a dominate person in the latter.
Obviously, the duration here leaves much to be desired, as a typical casting
will leave you with only a few rounds of inhabiting, so you’re really going to
need some duration boosters if you want any sort of combat ability out of
this. However, that does not mean that non-combat ability isn’t possible, and
temporarily dominating a helpless caster of some form for access to abilities
that you either can’t use or can’t use at that exact moment is some useful
trickery. It takes a lot of effort to get an enemy helpless that would be worth
dominating for this little time, but it’s a really unique piece of utility for a
druid, and it’s not like you have to plan your strategies around it. This is the
kind of effect that’s going to be useless most of the time, but quite good in a
couple of situations.

SNA VIII

Monstrous Centipede, Colossal: As is typical of these centipede summons,

this is a monster distinguished almost entirely by size, here hitting a scale
that is otherwise unreachable at this level, with a full 30 feet of space and 20
of reach. Moreover, unlike the other centipedes, this one has statistics that
aren’t actively horrible. The HP is a solid 132 points, the damage is
reasonable if not good, and the poison is decently powerful and consistent.
Best of all, the grapple modifier is an incredible +42, albeit a +42 unaided by
any sort of improved grab ability. Like the other centipedes, this option is
serviceable but not great, only really worth it if you just need the size, and
you’re usually going to be better off with the gargantuan monstrous scorpion.
Still, that size is nothing to scoff at, and with that much HP, this creature will
act as an effective wall of meat for a good amount of time.

Monstrous Scorpion, Gargantuan: Finally, here is a child of winter

summon that can really beat face in a manner comparable to traditional
summoning. The gargantuan monstrous scorpion has a pair of big claw
attacks, which improved grab with a +37, before applying a constrict, and it
has a big sting attack which has a reasonably high end constitution poison.
On top of that, the gargantuan monstrous scorpion features a finally
reasonable 150 HP and 24 AC, backed by 60 ft. tremorsense. It’s not certain
that you’re necessarily going to be all that interested in beating down at this
level, and the inconsistency associated with grappling high end opponents is
a big concern, but if you’re going to consume face, this is a great way to do
it.

SNA IX

Monstrous Scorpion, Colossal: This is possibly the best melee oriented

summons in the entire game. Basically, you take the gargantuan monstrous
scorpion, already a strong and viable option, and straight up double its HD
from 20 to 40. The ramification of this are massive, including a bump up to
300 HP, an increase in grapple mod to a ludicrous +58, and a boost to the
attack routine in the form of a +13 to hit, taking the claws all the way to a
+34. On top of all that, the scorpion’s poison gets its DC pushed to 33, with
1d10 dexterity damage as the impact, and as a tiny cherry on top, it gets
bumped to 26 AC. All the numbers here are crazy, higher than anything else
 that you can pull. Of course, you again run into the issue that you’re using a
9th level slot to hit enemies with a glorified stick, but if you can get past
that, then this is amazing at what it does.

Monstrous Spider, Colossal: While this is certainly no colossal scorpion,

there’s a lot of appeal to having both a single massive strength poisoning bite
attack, combined with a web that can entangle any enemy in existence. This
creature is a pretty reasonable beatstick and debuffer, and it even has a +50
grapple mod, though it’s without any support. You should usually summon a
scorpion instead, but if you just want some ranged entangling followed by
face biting, then this is pretty good.

Greenbound Summoning (LEoF, 8): You automatically apply the greenbound

template to all of your animal summons, granting them a massive quantity of
bonuses, and changing their type to plant. The most important thing added by the
template, and the one that most completely pushes this feat into broken territory,
is a small pile of SLA’s, particularly entangle, pass without trace, and speak to
plants at will, and a frigging wall of thorns 1/day. Just to be clear, yes, that is a wall
of thorns, a 5th level BFC that’s quite good for its level, effectively spontaneously
accessible as a first level spell. You’re not getting a particularly high caster level,
with creatures generally having 2 HD out of SNA I, but that’s enough for two 10
foot cubes, each with the capacity to completely trap most enemies in the game at
this level. Entangle isn’t half bad either, allowing your summons to continue
shutting down the battlefield after the first round, if you don’t just want them to eat
face. The other two SLA’s, pass without trace and speak to plants, are largely
irrelevant.

The second most important thing added by the template is a mass of defensive
bonuses. With a +7 to AC, DR 10/magic and slashing, fast healing 3, 10 energy
reduction for cold and electricity, +4 constitution, and a host of plant type granted
immunities, you can be sure that your summons is going to live a long and healthy
life, and if they don’t, that’s a huge quantity of resources that didn’t get used trying
to kill you. More defense can mean more actions, especially if you add ashbound to
your build, and when greenbound is also increasing the quality of those actions,
you’re gaining a lot of power.

The third thing that greenbound adds is a few reasonably powerful offensive
bonuses. In particular, the creature gains +6 strength, +4 to grapple checks, and
60 foot tremorsense. While these abilities look minor in comparison to the other
two categories, and they are, there’s a lot of value added here. Between the
strength and the direct bonus to grapple checks, creatures you summon are going
to have a +7 to grappling, and with the SNA suite of powerful grapplers, that’s a
great thing. The +6 strength also obviously helps with hitting enemies in the face,
which is another common goal of summoning. Tremorsense has some additional
benefits, both in terms of your summons being able to find opponents, and in you
being able to follow their lead, which is nifty. This also incidentally grants a slam
attack, but it doesn’t combo with natural attacks, and is thus not especially helpful.

Ultimately, with all of these ridiculous abilities being offered, greenbound

summoning is easily one of the best summoning feats in the game, and it’s even
high up there on the ranking of all feats ever. It is often claimed that greenbound
summoning was originally designed as a +2 metamagic, before it was ultimately
changed to its current broken form, and that is a thing that is easy to believe. At
later levels, when rashemi elemental summoning and animal growth come online,
and when extremely cheap wall of thorns changes from game breakingly amazing
to just really good, greenbound lowers in value by quite a bit, to the point where
it’s not necessarily the best choice on a high level druid build. Even then though,
it’s still a great feat, and before that, it is utterly ridiculous.

Imbued Summoning (PHB II, 82): This +1 metamagic allows you to apply the
spell in question, which must be of third level or lower with a range of touch, to
some creature that you summon without an action. While imbued summoning
initially appears quite powerful, combining two of a caster’s favorite things,
summoning and screwing with the action economy, it is a surprisingly mediocre
feat. First, the prerequisites, both spell focus (conjuration) and augment
summoning, are somewhat annoying. Sure, they’re not the worst feats around, but
they’re not great either, and the fact that you need spell focus (conjuration) means
that you can’t make efficient use of the methods of acquiring augment summoning
without the prerequisite is additionally problematic. Second, the list of spells this
works on is pretty short, and generally mediocre. Sure, you can toss out bite of the
werewolf for some decent all around bonuses, but it’s not great, and other options
tend to be worse. Third, and this is the most obvious of the bunch, that metamagic
cost. You wouldn’t even necessarily want to spend the basic slot to augment your
summons in this fashion, and spending a higher level one is just bad. Overall,
between the prerequisites, the metamagic cost, and the spell cost, this is
overwhelmingly the most expensive summoning feat to make use of, and it just
doesn’t do enough to justify that. If you want this effect, just pick up a summoner’s
totem instead.

Planar Touchstone (PlH, 41): This feat lets you access one of a number of
touchstones, which grants one base power just for taking the feat, and then a
second rechargeable power activated by visiting the touchstone. Taking this feat
requires 8 ranks in knowledge (the planes), a 250 GP item from the touchstone,
and 10 XP. There are a lot of ways this feat can be used, but the really interesting
one, and the reason this feat is in the summoning section, is using the catalogues
of enlightenment (PlH, 166), whose base ability is a cleric domain granted power,
for the dragon below domain’s power (ECS, 106), which just so happens to be
augment summoning as a bonus feat.

This is a good thing, because where normal augment summoning has a feat tax,
planar touchstone does not, which enables you to get the ability for one less feat,
albeit after meeting some somewhat annoying prerequisites. Planar druid
substitution levels (PlH, 31) do give knowledge (the planes), however, so it’s not an
especially difficult prerequisite to meet. Moreover, you also get that rechargeable
power, which in this case is the ability to cast a spell from your chosen domain once
per day, up to three times. The requirement intrinsic to getting that ability makes it
somewhat situational, but that would mean access to the planar ally line, gate, and
blasphemy in this case, so it’s a good bonus. Overall, while augment summoning
certainly isn’t incredibly powerful, at least in an environment where you have planar
handbook and eberron campaign setting, getting it at a little over half the cost, and
picking up an occasional bonus besides, is a good deal.

Rapid Spell (CD, 84): For a +1 spell level adjustment, you can shorten full round
action spells to a standard action, and reduce spells that take multiple rounds,
multiple minutes, or multiple hours to a single round, minute, or hour respectively.
On the surface this seems like a reasonable summoning option. The full round
casting time associated with summoning is a major downside, and while eating a
spell level on a summoning spell is always a big cost, it could be worth it to
sometimes toss out a monster immediately. However, there’s a big problem with
this plan, and it’s that spontaneous spells can only have rapid spell applied to them
if they take over a round to cast. This means that, if you want to use this on SNA,
then you have to prepare the spells that way. While getting this capability is maybe
worth a feat and a spell level, it’s not worth losing your spontaneity on the relevant
spells as well, and using this on other long casting time spells doesn’t make up that
value gap.

Rashemi Elemental Summoning (UE, 45): First, you add the orglash template
to your air elemental summons. The most important aspect of this template is
easily that it grants a 3/day cone of cold with caster level equal to the orglash’s HD.
What this translates to is that you can use SNA VI to call forth 45d6 points of cold
damage over the course of three rounds, after which you’re left with a huge air
elemental buddy. The damage drops off to 8d6 per cone if you drop a level to large,
and it doesn’t get higher than huge either, so you’re mostly going to be using one
huge elemental, or a few huge elementals. Beyond that, the effects are pretty
standard, with a significant damage buff on the offensive side, and both a +4 to
constitution and a +2 to AC on the defensive side. Solid stuff, as you’re going to be
making use of those abilities if combat goes longer than three rounds, but you’re
mostly in it for the cones.

Second, you add the thomil template to your earth elemental summons. The thomil
template is reasonable as well, but it’s far more defensively inclined, and doesn’t
have much in the big splashy ability department. In particular, instead of cone of
cold, the thomil gets engulf, which is decent, but not really excellent. At the same
time, the thomil also gets the +4 to constitution and +2 to AC that the orglash
does, but on top of that, it also gets damage reduction, SR, cold resistance, and the
ability to take a boulder form that stops it from attacking and increases its
defenses. None of these buffs are worth what orglash grants, but earth elemental
was a solid option to start with, so this will likely see some play despite being a bit
overshadowed.

Overall, rashemi elemental summoning is a feat that takes some of the most
powerful late game summons in the game, elementals, and gives them buffs that
are ridiculously out of scale with what any other summoning feat, aside from
greenbound, offers. As such, this feat is excellent for any druid summoner that’s
edging into higher levels, offering the pure essence of value in summoning form.

Spontaneous Summoner (CD, 85): You can spontaneously convert any spell into
an SNA of the same level a number of times equal to your wisdom modifier.
Spontaneous summoner is strictly worse than an ability that druids get for free, so
the question is why you would spend a feat on it. The answer is that there are
several ACF’s that trade away spontaneous summoning, in part or whole, and using
a feat to recoup that ability is a reasonable expenditure. The trades in question,
mostly halfling druid substitution levels and druidic avenger, aren’t all that
powerful, so the overall build path isn’t that great. However, if you’re making such
a trade anyway, and you want the ability back, this is quite possibly the best way to
get it. Spontaneous summoning is a rather powerful thing, after all, even when it’s
limited in uses/day.

Summon Elemental (CM, 47): You gain the ability to summon one elemental at a
time at-will, for rounds/level, within 30 feet. The elemental is of small size if you
have a 4th level slot up, medium with a 6th, and large with an 8th. You also get a
+1 to CL with conjuration (summoning) spells. Elementals aren’t going to be
especially competitive in combat at this rate of advancement, so the primary
offering of this feat is utility. There’s a decent amount of it too, as earth elementals
make great trap checkers with their earth glide, and as an infinite supply of bodies
has some reasonable applications. The boost to caster level is nice as well, if not
particularly meaningful, and this feat combos pretty well with rashemi elemental
summoning, granting access to a minor at-will blasting effect. None of the things
offered here are out of this world, even in an ideal situation (a summoning build
with an elemental focus), but it makes for a pretty good feat if you’re running low
on options, and it can let you fill in as primary trap checker if the party lacks one.
 Wild Shape
As was noted in the introduction to this section of the handbook, wild shape feats
are just ridiculously asynergystic. The best wild shape feats by a wide margin are
the ones that add forms, and you can’t assume two forms at the same time.
However, there’s another thing that wild shape feats tend to be, and that is
incredibly powerful. The forms you get access to here grant abilities that are
sometimes difficult to access on a druid, sometimes highly synergistic with your
normal abilities, and often both at the same time. So, the result is that you should
absolutely take a wild shape feat, because it represents such a dramatic increase in
power, but you shouldn’t take more than one, because it doesn’t offer that same
scale of increase.

Aberration Wild Shape (LoM, 178): You add aberrations to your wild shape form
list. Aberration wild shape is certainly one of the odder form adding feats you get
access to. Most of the forms you’ll find here offer abilities that you’ll find next to
nowhere else, ranging from immunity to magic, to two actions every turn, to the
ability to attack your enemies from the ethereal plane. At the same time, aberration
wild shape is the most expensive of the form adding feats, requiring aberration
blood (or Mourning Mutate (Dragon Magazine #359, 109) if you’re a non-
humanoid) as a feat tax, and usually requiring either a casting of enhance wild
shape or taking assume supernatural ability, before these forms have anything to
offer. Moreover, some of these forms restrict item usage more than normal, so that
represents further restriction. As a result, this is not a feat to be taken lightly, as
while the abilities given are worth the price, actually accessing those abilities takes
a decent bite out of your build and day to day resources. Once you get past those
issues though, aberration wild shape is one of the most rewarding feats out there,
which is a thing that should be clear from the form list in the aberration form
section of this handbook.

Assume Supernatural Ability (SS, 30): You gain the ability to make use of a
single supernatural ability of a form you can take. Using this ability in stressful
situations requires a DC 19 will save, and you take a -2 to attack rolls, saving
throws, skill checks, and ability checks while using it. Assume supernatural ability is
a feat-shaped chunk of ridiculousness. The essence of the cheese at work here is
that you take aberration wild shape, thus granting access to a bunch of forms with
crazy Su abilities, and then you use this to make use of one of them.

As one example of the potential for insanity, consider using this to gain access to
the eye rays of a beholder (MM, 25). This ability means that, every round, as a free
action, you can make use of charm monster, charm person, disintegrate, fear,
finger of death, flesh to stone, inflict moderate wounds, sleep, slow, and
telekinesis, all in ray form. Entire encounters can easily collapse into nothingness
after one round of that, and then you start using your normal actions. There are a
lot of other ways to make use of this feat, but I’m not going to break down all of
them, so suffice to say that many are utterly ridiculous. Use caution around this
feat, for it is a high order of cheese indeed.

Corrupted Wild Shape (LM, 25): This feat allows undead to use wild shape. On
first glance, corrupted wild shape is an utterly critical feat for any undead druid,
because it grants access to one of your most powerful abilities. The issue with that,
however, is that undead can already use wild shape. The ability was originally
based on polymorph, and in that form you would have needed this feat, but the
transition to alternate form didn’t inherit that problem, and so the feat is entirely
superfluous. So, y’know, don’t take it.

Dragon Wild Shape (Draconomicon, 105): You add small and medium dragons
to your form list, automatically getting access to their extraordinary and
supernatural abilities. Out of all of the form adding feats, dragon wild shape is best
for spontaneously accessible situational abilities. Unlike exalted or frozen wild
shape, dragon wild shape offers a ton of useful new forms (as opposed to one or
two), and unlike aberration wild shape, you don’t need to take time between forms
to cast enhance wild shape. That means that you’re going to be swapping forms a
good amount more than usual, and whether that’s a good or bad thing depends on
how you look at it. On the positive side, you have more ways to adapt to situations,
and on the negative side, you have more information to keep track of, and end up
taxing wild shape uses more than usual. Dragon wild shape doesn’t offer a form
with the raw power of something like blink dog from exalted or nilshai from
aberration. There are a lot of great things offered here though, like movement
modes far in excess of what you’d have otherwise (frigging mercury dragons),
immunities in a massive number of flavors, and some really useful abilities that
aren’t so easily categorized, like shadow blend or limited plane shift. This is
generally the second best form adding feat after aberration wild shape, and that’s a
position that can offer great power. And, as a result of that form density, dragon
forms have their own section in alternate wild shape forms.

Exalted Wild Shape (BoED, 42): You gain the ability to wild shape into a blink
dog, giant eagle, giant owl, pegasus, unicorn, or a celestial version of any of your
animal forms. Additionally, you get the Ex and Su abilities of all of these forms.
While the other forms have a little utility, especially unicorn, if you take exalted wild
shape, you’re taking it for blink dog, and celestial creatures. Blink dogs provide
some fantastic abilities, especially for druids, because they fill a few holes in the
druidic arsenal. First of all, they get the ability to turn blink on or off as a free
action. Druids don’t really have any good sources of miss chance, so this power
gives you a whole new layer of defense that wasn’t even there before. Moreover,
the fact that you can turn the blinking off at will negates the main issue with blink,
which is that it lowers your ability to hit your enemies. Second, they get to use
dimension door, once/round, as a free action. Unlike normal dimension door, you
don’t get to bring friends along, but also unlike normal dimension door, you can
take actions right after teleporting. Like miss chance, tactical teleportation options
are incredibly sparse where druids are concerned, and this is an incredibly powerful
one. You don’t need me to tell you that teleporting hundreds of feet every round, in
a way that doesn’t interfere with your other actions at all, is crazy. For best results,
combine this with a mantle of the beast so that you can become a blink dog as a
swift action, dimension door away immediately, and still get a spell off. As a bonus,
you even gain darkvision, low-light vision, and scent, just because.
Those abilities would easily be worth a feat, but they’re not nearly all you get,
because you also gain the ability to apply the celestial template onto any animal
you can wild shape into. On the most basic level, this gives you a whole pile of
freebies, including smite evil, darkvision, damage reduction, resistance to acid,
cold, and electricity, and spell resistance. Apart from the SR, which can be annoying
on occasion, there is nearly no reason to not just apply this template onto anything
and everything. However, applying the celestial template grants much more than
some mediocre bonuses. You see, just as is true in the case of any other creature
you become through exalted companion, becoming a celestial creature grants you
all of that creature’s Ex and Su abilities. While Su abilities are essentially
nonexistent on animals, they do get a good bundle of Ex abilities. Mostly, what this
means is a whole pile of vision modes, as far as the eye can see, and maybe some
bonus feats, because those are usually Ex abilities (BoED, 39). This ranges from as
weak as low-light vision and scent on nearly every creature there is, to blindsense
and blindsight on a number of creatures, like desmodu hunting bats. In essence,
exalted wild shape means a free casting of enhance wild shape every time you
become an animal, and that is quite a powerful thing. Between these two forms,
exalted wild shape is a highly potent feat, augmenting the druid’s defensive
prowess to a high degree. Due to this, it is well worth taking on a druid focused on
good.

Extra Wild Shape (CD, 81): You get two extra uses of wild shape every day, as
well as one extra use of elemental wild shape when you get that ability. On a
normal druid, this feat isn’t really useful at all. By level nine, when you can first
take this feat (you’re taking natural spell at 6th), you have three wild shape uses
per day that have a combined duration of 27 hours. You don’t need more wild
shape than that. Moreover, even if you really want the effect, there’re a few items
that can give extra uses, like a vestment of wild shape, and armor of the beast, and
items are far more disposable than feats. However, there is one corner case in
which extra wild shape could be useful. There are many ACF’s that trade off wild
shape uses for various things, some of them useful, and some of them not. If you
trade off enough, then you may have need of this ability, particularly because many
of those ACF’s give you new wild shape forms. This feat might still be bad in that
situation, but that situation at least makes a justifiable choice.

Fast/Swift Wild Shape (CD, 81; CC, 62): These feats, the first the prerequisite
for the second, allow you to wild shape as a move and swift action respectively.
These are halfway decent abilities to have, granting you access to the abilities of all
of your forms on a whim, but they have a few problems. First, you only have so
many wild shape uses in a day, and making full use of these feats will run through
them pretty fast, especially before late levels. Second, picking up the swift action
wild shape, which is the more interesting ability of the two, is far too expensive at
two feats. Third, and this is the really big one, you can already pick up swift action
wild shape for 18,000 GP by buying a mantle of the beast, and you even get a
minor bonus on top of that. That is just a much better value. Even without the
mantle though, fast and swift wild shape are just not worth the feat(s). They’re not
bad, certainly, but they’re worse than what you could otherwise be doing.

Frozen Wild Shape (Frost, 48): You can assume the form of any magical beast
with the cold subtype, subject to normal size limitations. Frozen wild shape is often
referred to as “twelve-headed cryohydra wild shape”, because that’s primarily what
it is. Cryohydra form offers some of the most powerful attacking ability of any form
out there, with 12 attacks with a standard attack, and a massive breath weapon
that comes out every 1d4 rounds. Unfortunately, despite this, frozen wild shape
suffers from the fact that you can’t have access to cryohydra form without also
having access to dire tortoise form, and you’re pretty much always going to be in
dire tortoise form if you can. Additionally, it’s a form that relies on normal damage
at reasonably close range, which isn’t all that useful against the enemies that will
challenge you at level 15. Thus, while frozen wild shape is a powerful feat, it is
quite inferior to the other major wild shape feat options, like exalted wild shape and
dragon wild shape. Pick this up if you want to beat face to the maximum possible
extent, because this will allow you to do that with a high degree of power, but if
you want the best form adding feats, this isn’t at the top of the list.
Notably though, while it doesn’t have a big impact on the power level of frozen wild
shape, the feat does offer at least two viable forms that, for whatever reason,
aren’t directly mentioned by it. First is the hoary steed, a creature offered at level
twelve with pretty decent abilities. The big things of note are a 60 ft. (good) fly
speed, 23 AC, a hoof/hoof/bite attack routine with good damage, and immunity to
charm and hold effects if you use enhance wild shape. Second is the asperi (MM II,
25), a creature with mediocre stats but some interesting things granted through
enhance wild shape. In particular, you get uncanny dodge, as well as immunity to
winds of both a magical and mundane variety, which are rare abilities for wild
shape forms, and doubly rare if you’re using frozen wild shape. Again, neither of
these forms should strongly incentivize you to pick frozen wild shape, but if you’re
going with the feat anyway, they offer some additional utility.

Natural Spell: This allows you to cast spells in a wild shape. You will take this feat
at 6th level, and you will accept it for the inevitable feat tax that it is. It’s so good
that I’ve seen threads asking for druid advice, specifically mentioning natural spell
within their contents, and subsequently seen people recommending natural spell.
Folks are falling over themselves to teach people about the might of this feat, and
for good reason. In its ordinary state, unaugmented by natural spell, wild shape
isn’t all that great. Every time you want to fly up a cliff, or fight an enemy as a
bear, you have to expend a wild shape use, because right after you’re done doing
those things, you’re going to want to change back. Being an animal is all well and
good, but you’re a caster first and foremost, and trading away your spells for being
a bear isn’t worth it. Wild shape says that it has an hours/level duration, but that’s
not really true before natural spell, and you end up using up your wild shape pretty
fast because of it.

However, that all changes when you get natural spell. Natural spell turns wild shape
from a somewhat situational combat and utility buff into an all day super buff.
Instead of having to choose between stats and spells, now you can have both all
the time. Moreover, having natural spell lets you combine your magic and morphing
in nifty ways. Using spells with a ranged touch attack is significantly better when
you’re doing it from a bat shaped mobile missile platform, and buffing yourself is
serious business when you’re tossing those buffs on top of bear stats. Suffice to say
that natural spell is really really good, and you should take it pretty much no matter
what.

Surrogate Spellcasting (Savage Species, 39): This is basically natural spell,

except you must hold on to the material components, being a non-humanoid is a
prerequisite, and wild shape isn’t a prerequisite. While surrogate spellcasting is
slightly worse than natural spell, because of the material component issue, it does
have the benefit that you can pick it up before level six. This means that you can
have wild shape’d casting at 5th level, and that you have some room to maneuver
with the 6th level feat. Assuming you have the race for it, surrogate spellcasting
makes for a solid alternative to natural spell.

Vermin Shape (ECS, 62): You gain the ability to become vermin, and lose the
ability to become animals. This feat is completely awful in every conceivable way.
First, the obvious, losing animal forms is not exactly the best thing. Vermin forms
tend to be significantly worse, and you’re spending a feat to make that poor trade
off. Second, vermin shape has child of winter as a prerequisite. That feat is actually
pretty good, but it’s not in the upper echelons of druid feats, so being forced to
take it is a bit of a half feat tax. Third, and this is a big one, there are much easier
ways to get this ability. The wasteland druid variant is perhaps the best method,
costing a wild shape use/day and forcing you into a couple of other class feature
trades, and the vestment of verminshape does the job quite well too, at only
20,000 GP but with only monstrous vermin access, and neither one loses animal
forms. Avoid vermin shape like the plague, even if you’re specifically building a
vermin themed druid.
 Animal Companion
The list of good animal companion based feats isn’t exactly a massive one, really
comprising only three options. However, all of these feats are quite good, and
critically, they stack together very efficiently. Investing in your animal companion
can be somewhat weaker than other choices, because the animal companion is your
weakest major class feature, but in a sense it’s also safer than other choices,
because you’re always making passive use of your animal companion, unlike wild
shape, summoning, or casting, which require constant decision making and/or
action expenditure. As a result, these are feats which can fit well in most builds, as
long as you’re not preoccupied with bigger and better things.

Companion Spellbond (PHB II, 77): Extend your ability to share spells with your
animal companion out to 30 feet, and gain the power to cast touch on it from short
range. This is a rather useful feat, because it effectively doubles your buffing
capacity. Unless you’re casting a buff that works at range, like produce flame, or
staying completely stationary in your attempt at melee combat, then a spell you
share is going to dissipate really quickly. You’d generally be better off just casting
the buff on the animal, and standing back. However, with companion spellbond’s
range extension, you can actually expect your shared spells to last through a little
normal encounter movement. If you want to focus build resources on your animal
companion, this is the second feat I’d take for the purpose, after natural bond.

Exalted Companion (BoED, 42): You gain access to a number of animal

companion options, including celestial versions of all of your normal animal
companions at -1 to your effective druid level. I’m just going to say it directly.
These options, on their own, are not worth a feat. Sure, at the levels where a -1 to
effective druid level doesn’t bump the companion down, adding the celestial
template is a strict upgrade, and having an intelligent companion is pretty nifty on
occasion, but it’s just not enough to justify the cost unless you have vow of
poverty.

Fortunately though, it doesn’t have to be. Between the companion gaining

intelligence, and changing to good, exalted companion is the perfect springboard to
giving your animal companion vow of poverty. This is, for obvious reasons,
excellent. While kitting out your animal companion with gear of various kinds is an
appealing prospect, you’re unlikely to do significantly better with the gear than the
companion does with the vow, and instead of paying large quantities to gain this
benefit, you pay nothing. If vow of poverty is anything like wealth by level, and it
is, then exalted companion effectively means a doubling of wealth. For best results,
pair this with natural bond so that the companion will hit later points in the VoP
progression.

Outside of the standard celestial companion, perhaps the most interesting option
out of this feat is an asperi (MM II, 25), which comes at a -6, presumably equipped
with VoP. While certainly not an effective melee force, this creature is notable for its
60 ft. telepathy, backed by a 30 ft. (good) flight speed. Telepathy is, of course, a
useful ability on its own merits, but its at its best when combined with the feat
mindsight (LoM, 126), a vision mode that sees all thinking creatures within radius
of the telepathy, and which pierces even darkstalker (LoM, 179). It’s a set of things
which, alongside the 13 intelligence, makes the asperi great for scouting out hidden
targets. Granted, it’s not a creature that’s at all good at hiding, so you’re not going
to get a creature that can stealth into an area and give a tactical report, but this is
still rather unique utility for an animal companion, and something worth making use
of, especially late in the game when utility of this sort starts becoming more
important than the ability to beat face.

Natural Bond (CAdv, 111): Increase your effective druid level with respect to
your animal companion by three, with a maximum at your actual level. This feat’s
apparent intended use is to get you back to druidic parity if you’ve lost animal
companion levels along the way, but that’s not the best way to use it. Instead, its
most valuable use is taking an advanced animal companion of some kind, thus
reducing your effective druid level with respect to that animal companion, and using
natural bond to bump that animal companion’s power level.
No matter what, this feat pushes your animal companion one bracket higher on the
advancement table, and that generally means a pretty static set of bonuses, apart
from the special ability section. Thus, compared to a normal animal companion,
yours gets +2 HD, +1 natural armor, +1 strength and dexterity, and an extra
bonus trick. Often, this will also represent a bonus feat, due to the HD boost. For
animal companion boosting, this feat’s capabilities are unmatched, and can keep it
about on par with low tier melee classes for awhile after it would normally start
losing power.

Casting
As I say so often in this guide, a druid is their magic. It is utterly fundamental to
the way you interact with the world. So, it should come as no surprise that
resources augmenting that ability can be quite potent, pushing the peak of your
capabilities to new and interesting places. Still, casting feats aren’t quite at the
upper echelons of druid feats, more because you have such an overwhelming mass
of options than because they’re not good. A druid build isn’t as centered around
magic based feats as a wizard build is, both because druids don’t make use of those
feats quite as well, with a worse list and more limited access to the feats in
question, and because you have more options outside that category. As a result,
casting feats tend to be somewhat on the periphery of a druid, generally coming
after the high end feats for wild shape, summoning, and maybe even the animal
companion in terms of importance. There can definitely be room in a build for these
feats though, and building around them can get you a good amount of power.

Alternative Source Spell (Dragon Magazine #325): This feat allows you to
cast your spells as though they were arcane rather than divine at the cost of being
treated as a caster level lower for the purpose of those spells, with the odd
prerequisite of having the ability to cast both divine and arcane spells. The first
issue, then, is how to get those arcane spells. The most obvious way is to take a
level in wizard, picking up abrupt jaunt or a familiar in the process, but perhaps the
best way is to spend a second feat on magical training (PGtF, 41), which grants
access to some cantrips which fulfil the prerequisites. The second issue is figuring
out what this actually does for you, and the answer is that you can fill prerequisites.
Perhaps the best thing this grants access to is arcane thesis (PHB II, 74), which
allows you to pull off some really high class metamagic, but there’s any number of
prestige classes that require arcane casting for entry, and while most specifically
advance arcane casting, there’s likely something out there that’s casting agnostic.

Craft Contingent Spell (CA, 42): This feat, which requires a CL of 11, allows you
to put craft contingency effects onto a creature, up to one/HD, that trigger a one-
time spell effect in response to a condition of your choice. Craft contingent spell has
two amazing powers that it gives you, though they come at the cost of GP and
time. First, and most obviously, you can put together specific potent responses for
specific situations. You have an energy drain effect launched your way, and
suddenly death ward, or you get low health, and then instantly teleport out of the
way with earth mastery. Perhaps the best utility of this type is last breath, or, if you
know a friendly cleric of sufficient level, revivify, in response to your death. Right
there, at a relatively low cost, you’ve beaten back the forces of death, and you
don’t even take a level loss in the process.

The second use for craft contingent spell is to break the action economy. Make the
crafted spell something really powerful, like control winds, or, if you know a wizard,
celerity, set the condition to you saying some complex phrase, and you’re casting
any spell you want as a free action, one that you can use at any time you want.
Even at these costs, that’s a massive amount of power, enough to pull success from
defeat or save your life if used correctly. Two other things worth noting are first,
the thing implied by the rest of this entry, that you can in fact combine your feat
with someone else’s spell and thus get contingent versions of off-list spells, and
second, that you can toss contingent spells on other creatures, particularly your
animal companion and even tiny creatures that you carry on your person, and thus
break the HD limit in half. Anyway, this feat isn’t as completely broken on a druid
as it is on, say, a wizard, because your list isn’t as crazy, but it’s still pretty frigging
broken.

Easy Metamagic (Dragon Magazine #325, 62): You can reduce the adjustment
of a chosen metamagic feat by one, to a minimum of one greater than the spell’s
level. Out of the feat options for metamagic cost reduction, this is possibly the best
a druid has access to. You don’t have to put much effort into picking it up, it applies
to any spell you can use the metamagic with instead of just spontaneous
summoning, and the scale of the benefit is highly relevant. Unfortunately this
doesn’t really work with extend spell, so your best options are likely quicken and
persist. The real downside here is that taking both a metamagic and metamagic
reduction feat eats into your build resources, and what you gain might not be good
enough to be worth it. This is a solid option if you want to put together a
metamagic focused druid, however.

Extend Spell: This is a +1 metamagic that doubles the durations of your spells.
Extend spell essentially has three applications, depending on the base spell you’re
applying it to. The first use is putting it on rounds/level spells, particularly buffs and
summons. In this case, you’re generally trying to expand your spell such that it
lasts through an entire encounter when it wouldn’t otherwise. At early levels, you
might actually have an encounter that lasts longer than a spell’s duration, but D&D
combat is fast paced, and it won’t be long until extending rounds/level spells is
utterly pointless.

The second use is putting this on hours/level spells. The goal here is getting your
spells to stick around through an entire adventuring day, so it’s a plan that really
comes into play at level eight. You can also extend minutes and 10 minutes/level
buffs, but that’s only going to carry you through a dungeon of some kind, and those
tend to have a rather unpredictable length. Thus, those durations are relatively
irrelevant where extend is concerned.

Third and finally, you can use this on 24 hour spells. There aren’t that many of
these, the best examples being the primal line of spells, but any 24 hour spell you
can extend is amazing. If you have a free day before an adventure, you can just
pop as many of these on as you can get your hands on, and spend the next day
fully buffed at no cost.

Invisible Spell (City, 61): This is a +0 metamagic that causes the spell to have,
to directly quote the rules text, “No visible manifestation.” This right here is a feat
that starts out incredibly wonky, and just grows more and more in degree of
wonkiness the more you know about it. The apparent intended use, going by the
text, is to make something like a fireball invisible, which is cool but not that
impactful. But, what happens if you apply this to summon nature’s ally? Did you
just apply invisibility to your summons? What if you use it on stone shape, or wall
of stone? Do you get stone that’s naturally invisible, and like that forever? Some of
the tricks more clearly legal are also even weirder, like invisible fog and invisible
invisibility, if you can get that on your list, which cause true seeing to reveal a
bunch of fog and an invisible guy where it’d ordinarily pierce those spells. And
because of the metamagic cost, you can use invisible spell on everything you toss
out, even some of the more intended stuff. Basically, this whole feat is bonkers,
and it could plausibly pull a blue rating if not for the fact that you need pretty
favorable rulings to access a lot of the crazy. Still, somewhere between just fireballs
and invisible castles is where most DM’s are likely to fall, and that spot could be
quite powerful in your game.

Persist Spell: This is a +6 metamagic that changes the duration of a spell with
personal or fixed range to 24 hours. While for most casters, meaning wizards and
clerics, persist spell is amazing, it’s not quite as powerful on a druid. Druids lack the
level of metamagic mitigation that either other caster gets, and most of your best
buffs are of the long duration variety already. It’s certainly possible to pick up
mitigation, and if you do that this increases in quality, but persist probably isn’t
worthwhile most of the time. I would advise skipping this one, despite its high
potential power level.

Practical Metamagic (RotD, 101): This reduces the cost of a particular

metamagic by one for the purposes of spontaneously cast spells, which in your case
means summoning, to a minimum of one plus the spell’s original level. Practical
metamagic isn’t exactly the pinnacle of metamagic cost reduction, offering paltry
returns compared to something like arcane thesis, divine metamagic, or metamagic
effect, and being largely limited to a small group of spells, but on a druid, there
aren’t really that many competing options. The list of metamagic feats that work
well with practical metamagic is also somewhat limited, especially when accounting
for the fact that you’re stuck with summoning, but there are options available.
Something like empower or maximize attached to one of the multiple creature
summoning options could be useful, for example, and there are probably some
other worthwhile combinations. Practical metamagic isn’t a particularly good feat on
a druid, but it does provide a unique benefit, allowing you to toy with metamagic
cost reduction without requiring serious investment.

Quicken Spell: This is a +4 metamagic that changes the casting time of a spell
with a casting time less than a full round action to a swift action. Quicken spell is a
classic in the field of metamagic for a reason, enabling you to break the action
economy in a manner that is simpler and more direct than most other methods.
Casting two spells in a round is always great, granting a serious edge in any
combat situation. Still though, the cost here is a big one, and not one to be
dismissed. When you hit, say level nine, the first level where you’d really be able to
use this feat, you have to either fill your 5th level slots with control winds, or with
quickened entangle. The former is just a much more potent use of resources. This
is a feat that’s at its best with mitigation and/or at high levels, when you get more
slots than you can deal with. Until that point, I would tend away from quicken, and
maybe just pick up a metamagic rod for the effect.

Reserves of Strength (DLCS, 86): On the casting of a spell, you can increase the
caster level by up to three, in a way which can bypass the CL cap of spells, at the
cost of that many rounds of stunning, or some damage if you’re immune. Iron will
is a prerequisite. Caster level boosting is always a neat thing, as it helps with so
many of a spell’s variables, and reserves of strength is likely the feat source of CL
boosting that is most efficient. The two main uses here are spells massively
impacted by caster level, like control winds and giant vermin, and long duration
buffs. While the former category is impacted by this spell’s stun based downside,
the latter category is notable because you don’t care about taking some extra
rounds off out of combat, so you basically just get a free +3 to CL on all of those
spells. Of course, you can also apply some extra CL to less impactful spells on the
fly, and while that’s significantly more risky, it’s basically free additional benefit.
Notably, the feat tax of iron will would be quite problematic, but it can be bypassed
with 3,000 GP through the use of an otyugh hole (CS, 151).
 Initiate Feats
This is a set of feats that are distinctive due to the fact that they all provide a
number of spells to your list, and also grant an extra ability as a bonus. For these
feats, due to their spell granting nature, I’m going to discuss the special ability, and
then provide mini-descriptions for each spell that’s added to your list. That’s usually
going to mean a quick paragraph, leaving off most of the summary for the most
part, but there are always special cases (I’m looking at you return to nature from
gatekeeper initiate). In any case, on to the initiate feats.

Dderwydd Chymdeithas Initiate (Dragon Magazine #332, 87): You add one
of knowledge (geography), (history), (local), (religion), or (the planes) to your skill
list. Of these, religion is the clear frontrunner in most cases, because it enables
access to prestige classes like contemplative. In fact, it’s one of the more efficient
feat methods of gaining the skill, given the spell additions. Without that goal, local
and the planes are good options, acting as monster identification skills, and religion
also has utility in that area. The skill you’re adding is going to be pretty good, so
this effect is a solid one if you have the points to invest.

Disguise Self (1st): Typical disguises aren’t a thing druids are great at, but
the +10 you get from using wild shape to disguise yourself as something
provides a solid base to work off of. Notably, combining this with fangshields
druid substitution levels can open you up to a more disparate set of
humanoids, and grants that alternate form bonus while in a form that’ll work
in public, so you can pull off some more traditional disguise shenanigans that
way.

Undetectable Alignment (2nd): The only thing keeping this spell above a
red rating is that the 24 hour duration makes using this something close to
free. Most of the time, enemies detecting your alignment is irrelevant, but
there are a few effects that care, and keeping the information secret can
come in handy very occasionally.
Helping Hand (3rd): There are better ways to locate somewhat distant
allies than waiting for potentially hours on a tool that only hits a select radius
and which doesn’t even guarantee success when the target is in that radius.
Consider keeping this in mind if an ally is lost somewhere in an obstacle
dense environment, though on a one day delay basis rather than a repeated
preparation, but even then you may be better off just flying above the trees
in search of them yourself.

Sending (4th): Druids have a few messaging effects like this one, and some
of them are more effective in most respects, but sending is unique among
those spells in that it can transmit messages across planes. It’s not a
situation that’s going to come up all that often, and you’re going to be better
off with a different spell when that issue is not involved, but this is the spell
for the job when it does come up.

Teleport (5th): Teleport is the best spell granted through this feat by a
wide margin. Druids have similar effects, certainly, but none that combine
the level, range, versatility of targets, and group carrying capability of
teleport. If you’re taking this feat, then teleport is probably the biggest
reason.

Shadow Walk (6th): The fast travel effect of shadow walk is made
redundant by teleport doing the same thing much better, but the planar
travel mode has some utility. You’re not getting a particularly broad or
efficient version of the ability, but druids don’t get planar travel natively, so
it’s a nice thing to get access to.

Sequester (7th): Sequester is a spell that offers a very specific and

situational form of utility, providing protection from enemies locating the
target in return for the target’s ability to do stuff, but it is quite good at
providing that utility. The more interesting mode is probably the one that
provides protection for objects, as that neatly bypasses the suspended
 animation downside, though the creature mode can be useful if you don’t
need the target to actually do stuff. This is definitely one of those spells that
you prepare only when you have specific call for the effect.

Discern Location (8th): Finding stuff isn’t exactly a druid’s strong suit, and
discern location is perhaps the best spell when it comes to accomplishing that
goal, working across infinite distance, through most protections, and past
planar boundaries. The spell level is somewhat high for the effect, but that’s
not necessarily a major factor against as you’re mostly using it prior to an
adventure rather than during one.

Etherealness (9th): This spell would be a bit more interesting, if held back
a lot by the short duration and only moderate effect, but phantom stag starts
pulling off the same effect in a much better way when you have a caster level
of 18, meaning that any CL booster gets you this power and more. Granted,
the ability to hit multiple targets is nice, but you’re still being overshadowed
by a 5th level spell, and that’s not a good place for a 9th level spell to be.

Gatekeeper Initiate (ECS, 54): One of the best of the initiate feats, gatekeeper
initiate adds knowledge (the planes) to your skill list, and allows you to use
knowledge (the planes) to make knowledge (dungeoneering) monster identification
rolls. Oddly enough for a feat based around aberration hatred, this ability is pretty
much perfect in combination with aberration wild shape, enabling you to easily
make the familiarity rolls if you need to do that in your game. It’s a tricky flavor
match, certainly, but there’s definitely some thematic connection there, which
might be better than nothing (you could think of it as using the best weapons of the
aberrations against themselves). Overall, effectively adding two monster
identification skills to your list, and for half the points, is a great trick.

Protection from Evil (1st): While you already have the basic protection
from mind control effect on your list with protection from winged fliers, this is
definitely an improvement. Blocking summoned creatures, and picking up a
solid buff in the process, is a strong ability, especially when you consider the
fact that that’s in addition to the awesome mind control stopping ability.

Zone of Natural Purity (ECS, 117) (2nd): At 2 hours/level, the duration

on this spell is great, but a lot of that advantage is lost when you consider
the fixed and small area, as well as the marginal effect. If you have to
protect a chokepoint from an army of aberrations, and you have a bunch of
fey and plants on your side (reasonably possible, given that you can
summon/call them), go right ahead, but this just isn’t that good for the most
part.

Dimensional Anchor (3rd): Locking down all forms of extradimensional

travel, especially in this difficult to stop fashion, and double-especially when
you do so at a spell level lower than most, is some sweet business.
Dimensional anchor is admittedly a bit narrow, but it’s narrow in a way that
hits some of the most difficult foes in the game, and it deals with a problem
that druids otherwise have difficulty with. This is a great preparation at
higher levels, when extradimensional is more common, and when 3rd’s are
cheap enough to justify narrow preparations.

Nature’s Wrath (ECS, 114) (4th): Situational blasting which isn’t actually
much better than regular blasting, even when it’s at its best, is just not
where you want to be. If you know with absolute certainty that you’re going
to face a bunch of aberrations, then maybe dazing, energy type-less fireball
of a level higher will be alright, but even then you’re usually better off with
something like boreal wind.

Banishment (5th): Now this is more the kind of situational I like. Against
the wrong enemies, this does stone cold nothing, but against outsiders, this
is a mass SoL which you can boost the save DC and caster level check
against SR for. This is pretty good if you know what you’re facing, and the
fact that you get it a spell level lower than most, and two spell levels lower
than some, is cool.

Dimensional Lock (6th): This is like dimensional anchor, except it hits an

area, lasts the closest thing to forever, and you get this one two spell levels
lower than everyone. In other words, it’s awesome. This spell is at its very
best protecting whatever place you call home from intruders without eating
slots, but it’s also strong in combat as a way to stop a bunch of effects
without much in the way of rolls.

Return to Nature (ECS, 114) (7th): OK, so, this spell is ridiculous. To fit
everything in one sentence, you target a creature in close range, and arcane
casting humanoids and all monstrous humanoids take 1d4 negative levels,
giants are hit by reduce person with a fortitude save to negate, dragons and
magical beasts take 1d6 intelligence damage and lose 1d4 Su and Sa abilities
at random, with a fortitude save to negate the ability loss and half the
damage, outsiders without elemental subtypes take 1d8 damage/2 levels and
lose 2d4 abilities with a fortitude save to negate the ability loss and half the
damage, and finally, aberrations take 1d6 damage/level, and lose all Su and
Sa abilities, again with a fortitude save to negate the ability loss and half the
damage. This is all an instantaneous effect, except for the loss of abilities,
which lasts 24 hours.

So, yeah. This spell definitely does some stuff. The most interesting effect
might actually be the negative levels against arcane and monstrous
humanoids, as it’s powerful, unstoppable, and seems to last forever. It’s like
a weirdly focused enervation in a sense. After that, this spell is mostly about
stripping away abilities, because, y’know, druids don’t exactly do that all the
time. It’s pretty cool, and probably has some broken tricks associated with it
that I’m completely unaware of. This spell probably isn’t good, both
overleveled and oddly situational, but I think it’s the kind of thing that you
just have to cast on occasion, because it’s so frigging weird.
 Mind Blank (8th): This here is the real deal, and possibly the best spell
based reason to take this feat. You get two of the most powerful immunities
in the game, against both mind affecting (which includes all enchantment
spells) and divinations used to gather information on you, and you get them
for 24 hours. Once you get mind blank, you should just have it on all the
time, maybe using a greater metamagic rod of extend spell to lower the spell
cost. It’s just that good.

Imprisonment (9th): This isn’t the absolute worst 9th, doing good work
towards the cause of getting rid of someone on the sort of long term basis
that death just doesn’t provide, but it just doesn’t even come close to
competing with shapechange. Imprisonment might be worth the occasional
preparation, but it’s not all that great.

Greensinger Initiate (ECS, 24): You add bluff, hide, and perform to your skill
list. While perform isn’t particularly useful outside of specific builds, bluff is just
universally powerful, and a great compliment to any druid based face strategy, and
hide has solid applications in stealth contexts. Sure, hide isn’t quite as useful
without its partner in crime, move silently, but it can still come in handy.

Charm Person (1st): This is quite possibly the most powerful enchantment
in the game, and it’s even better for a druid, as such effects are very hard to
come by. Enchantments in general are very risky and situational by their
very nature, and this is no exception, but making friend out of foe is a very
potent capacity, and sometimes worth the risk.

Daze Monster (2nd): Spending a round on a spell on a sometimes round

from your opponents is just not where you want to be on a druid, even with
a 2nd level spell. This wasn’t even a particularly good cantrip, after all.

Displacement (3rd): The rounds/level duration on this spell is definitely

annoying, as it means that you’re mostly limited to casting of the in-combat
variety, but miss chance is one of the best defenses out there, and it’s a form
of defense that druids don’t have much of.

Charm Monster (4th): You lose a lot of slot efficiency in the move from 1st
to 4th, but the increase in scope is a nice thing. Not nice enough to justify
the same rating from the same effect three levels later, but sometimes you
have to charm non-humanoids.

Hold Monster (5th): You can just do a lot better than this. Baleful
polymorph is hanging out on your list at the exact same level, with a more
potent effect, and a wider range of targets. The range on this is better, but
that’s just not nearly enough to make up for the mind-affecting compulsion
issue (immunity all over the place), or the repeated saves issue.

Cat’s Grace, Mass (6th): Maybe it’s due to a failure of imagination on my

part, but I can’t really imagine a situation where I’d want to spend a 6th level
slot, along with a standard action, giving a bunch of folks a marginal bonus
to dexterity for a short period of time. This just isn’t worth preparing.

Ethereal Jaunt (7th): While ethereal jaunt isn’t the biggest effect in the
world, it does serve well as both a temporary defensive spell that is
situationally perfect, and a spell that lets you travel through a number of
barriers with ease. You can do better with a 7th, but you can get some
decent mileage out of etheral jaunt.

Mass Charm Monster (8th): We’re heading into the levels now where this
just isn’t enough, partially because of the limited scale of the effect, and
partially because immunity is becoming more and more common. There’s
really not much point to casting a mass version of charm person unless
you’re in combat, and there’s really not much point to casting this in combat
anymore.
 Etherealness (9th): See Dderwydd Chymdeithas Initiate for details.

Initiate of Boccob (Dragon Magazine #342, 49): You can make untrained
knowledge checks, and gain a +1 to caster level on divination spells. The first effect
here is quite good for an initiate feat, as it allows you to parlay a potentially pretty
good intelligence score into more than your one natively available knowledge skill.
The second is a bit less useful, as divination spells tend to reply to CL in middling
manner, but it’s still decent. Overall, not great stuff, but it’s not bad for an extra
power on top of spells added.

Memory Jar (Dragon Magazine #342, 54) (1st): This is just a great way
to boost knowledge checks, whether yours or a friend’s, and boosting
knowledge checks is a useful thing. Druids don’t have all that many effects
along these lines, and the combination of the low spell level and the rare and
useful effect makes for a really good spell.

Identify (2nd): The spell level premium you’re paying here is annoying, but
it’s not a big deal, as this is a spell you prepare after the adventure is over.
You’re actually somewhat better at casting this than arcane casters, as you
don’t have to pay that high material component cost. This spell really just
does the item identifying thing it does, and does it well enough that you
should make use of it.

Research Aid (Dragon Magazine #342, 55) (4th): Two of research aid’s
modes, the ones relating to spell research rules, are tricky, because those
rules depend so much on DM leniency. If spell research is a thing you’re
going to do, then go ahead with this spell, because it’s pure upside, but it’s
just not going to work out well in some games. The other two, halving the
casting time of identify and halving magic item crafting time, are pretty
consistent, but the first effect is making you cast a spell with crazy long
duration to save half an hour per identify, a thing made less interesting by
the hour long casting time on research aid, and the second depends on you
 wanting to craft stuff. There’s a lot of situational pure upside to research aid,
but that upside is sometimes just not going to come up at all.

Initiate of Ehlonna (Dragon Magazine #342, 50): Unlike most initiate feats,
which do things, initiate of ehlonna doesn’t really do anything for a druid. The spells
are all things you already have, the skills granted are already on your list, and the
sole upside, pass without trace as an SLA once a day, is marginal at best,
completely useless at worst. This feat is mostly here for the sake of completeness,
and it’s not a thing you should take under any circumstances.

Initiate of Erythnul (Dragon Magazine #342, 50): When you kill a creature
with a critical hit, you gain the benefits of the spell death knell, granting a few
decent buffs. While the effect here isn’t bad, it requiring that you critical hit an
opponent, and specifically do so as part of a kill, makes it a relatively infrequent
occurrence, even if you’re entering combat a lot. Druid combat tends to be more
about a number of weaker attacks than a single strong one, after all. If it were
possible to get the effects reliably, then that’d be one thing, but the combination of
high activation cost and low impact makes this somewhat subpar.

Cause Fear, Greater (Dragon Magazine #342, 52) (2nd): Cause fear
was at least decent before, causing at least some debuff no matter what, and
while mostly eliminating the HD limit for an increase in spell level probably
puts this spell below that one, greater cause fear is still a decent tool in your
arsenal. You should probably use one of the amazing 2nd level debuffs druids
have over this, but this is at least not awful.

Erythnul’s Slaughter (Dragon Magazine #342, 53) (5th): You really

just need more from a 5th level buff spell, even a mass 5th level buff spell,
than this provides. The duration is bad, and while the effects do synergize
with this feat’s main ability, the impact is very low. The few party members
that really care about a keen edge effect have one already, the rest don’t
care, and no one is going to get excited about stabilization stopping.
 Rage, Mass (Dragon Magazine #342, 55) (6th): Rage already affected
multiple creatures before, albeit a smaller number, and it wasn’t all that
great in that three spell levels lower form. Boosting up to the mass version
therefore doesn’t put you in a particularly good place, especially because
you’re not a good target for the spell, locked out of casting by the low scale
effects.

Initiate of Fharlanghn (Dragon Magazine #342, 51): You boost your base land
speed by 10 ft. You’re basically getting the effect of a first level spell here, or
perhaps significantly worse than a first level spell, given snowshoes, but this does
stack with those spells, and the effect is a pretty good one. This isn’t anything close
to exciting, but it’s decent.

Alarm (1st): Alarm is a spell that does its very particular job, telling you if
an enemy is approaching your sleeping area or other long term fortification,
and it does that job well. It’s not protection on the same scale as something
that provides real defense, like a rope trick, but it’s certainly better than
nothing.

Expeditious Retreat (1st): While this spell certainly isn’t as powerful as

something like snowshoes, with its long duration and application to all
movement speeds, the extra 20 feet of speed boost does count for
something. You’re getting a good amount of extra short term potency here,
allowing for quick maneuvering and escapes alike, even if I’d strongly
recommend using the other spell.

Dimension Door (4th): Dimension door is one of the best tactical

teleportation spells in the game, and probably the best reason to pick this
feat. It just does a lot of work, allowing for subtle repositioning, somewhat
distant travel, and especially hasty escape attempts.
 Phase Door (7th): This is an interesting trick, as tricks go, allowing you to
create a subtle hidden pathway for, again, either short term escape or
somewhat longer term secret hideout entrance creation, but despite druids
lacking this sort of utility otherwise, its impact is a bit limited. Phase door
isn’t bad, certainly, but you’re not getting massive value for your 7th level
slot.

Initiate of Gruumsh (CoR, 24): Once a day, as a swift action, you get to cast a
prepared cure spell, or spontaneously cast an inflict. This ability is obviously not
great, as inflict spells are decent at best, and cures are annoying to prepare, but
swift is swift, and healing that doesn’t hurt your use of the action economy that
much is the best kind of healing. Incidentally, you need to be an orc or half-orc for
this, but that’s no great hardship with half-orc substitution levels sitting right there,
being awesome.

Battle Line (CoR, 28) (2nd): The area on this spell is decent, but shaken
just isn’t nearly good enough of a condition to justify the 2nd level slot. As
cool as this spell is, it’s just not worth preparing.

Bloodspear (CoR, 29) (3rd): Everything about this spell is wrong. The
duration is crap, the ability imposed is marginal and ineffectual, and you
can’t even toss your spear to someone who can actually make decent use of
it. Bad stuff all around.

Pocket Cave (CoR, 33) (5th): As hiding spells go, pocket cave is a pretty
sweet choice. The duration is good enough to last the night, you can just
absolutely limit who can enter, and it’s difficult to find your spot. The only
real downsides are the spell level and the limitation to areas with rock/earth,
but if your party is missing access to something like rope trick, then pocket
cave is great.

Eyebite (6th): Eyebite is alright, as a debuff, but it suffers quite a bit from
 how slow it is, how little it’s going to impact most opponents, and how you
could just be doing something more powerful with your slots, instead of
playing a game of “Guess your HD.” Not a terrible option, and the druid list
always has room for more single target debuffs, but nowhere near great.

Waves of Exhaustion (7th): This is likely the best spell offered by initiate
of gruumsh, providing a powerful area debuff with no save whatsoever. You
just cast it and *foom*, your opponents just don’t walk so good no more.
Sure, druids get a decent amount of stuff that works something like this, but
waves of exhaustion is a solid option to add to that list.

Initiate of Heironeous (Dragon Magazine #342, 51): When using a longsword,

you get an extra 1d4 damage against evil targets, and 1d6 against evil outsiders or
those with an aura of evil. This ability is bad, to put it mildly. If the longsword were
a druid weapon, an decent chunk of damage when hitting most enemies would be
mediocre at best, but without proficiency, it drops all the way down to awful.
Without the proficiency, you obviously just can’t make use of the weapon, and if
you can get proficiency, you’re still probably better off spending those proficiency
acquiring resources to get a different and better weapon.

Mark of Justice, Lesser (Dragon Magazine #342, 54) (2nd): The big
problem with mark of justice, and by extension lesser mark of justice, is that
its sole utility, applying a permanent effect to a creature that’s already at
your mercy, isn’t nearly difficult enough to get rid of. The 25% chance of no
action effect is decent, but the path to that outcome is so roundabout and
ridiculous that the whole thing is rather pointless.

Bless, Greater (Dragon Magazine #342, 52) (3rd): This is a group buff
spell on a class that doesn’t get a whole lot of those, and that’s a pretty neat
thing for what it is. However, you are paying a big premium in the form of
two extra spell levels, and the extra benefit comes in a form that’s not even
helpful immediately. The result is a spell that’s not all that efficient at what
 it’s trying to do, and you’ll typically be better off with one of the druid’s few
other spells in this category, like mass snake’s swiftness.

Righteousness of Heironeous (Dragon Magazine #342, 55) (4th): This

is basically all the crappiness that was the feat ability, except now you’re
spending a short duration 4th level spell for the privilege. Preparing this
wouldn’t necessarily be worth it if it applied to one of your actual weapons,
and gave you the full 2d4 and 2d6 instead of just adding an extra d4 and d6,
and also worked on everyone. In this form, without all of those advantages,
it’s definitely not worth it.

Initiate of Hextor (Dragon Magazine #342, 51): To make a long story short,
this feat is a lot like initiate of heironeous, listed directly above, except probably
actually worse. Instead of a longsword dealing extra damage to evil targets, you
get the equally unusable flail dealing extra damage to good targets, and as in that
case, your 4th level spell is an awful upgrade to that awful ability. Instead of lesser
mark of justice, you get scare, which is an overleveled debuff that doesn’t work on
much, and instead of greater bless, you get greater bane, which instead of being
bad at a job you’re bad at, is bad at a job you’re good at, applying penalties to a
group. The end result is a feat where the highly mediocre scare is somehow the
best offering, and where delving significantly deeper just isn’t worth it, at least not
with the similarly awful initiate of heironeous right above it.

Initiate of Kord (Dragon Magazine #342, 51): You get a +4 size modifier to
bull rush, disarm, grapple, overrun, sunder, and trip attempts. This ability would
actually be pretty good, because those are things a druid is somewhat interested in
doing, but the bonus type means that this isn’t stacking with large or larger size,
and it’s only when you’re at that size that you should be making serious use of
those combat maneuvers. I suppose fleshrakers are something of an exception,
imbued with medium size and a pile of combat maneuvers, but you really don’t
need a feat to make the use of fleshraker form marginally better.
 Kord’s Power Surge (Dragon Magazine #342, 54) (1st): Strength skill
and ability checks just aren’t all that useful, by and large, and this spell isn’t
all that useful by extension. The scale of the bonus is nice, but it just doesn’t
apply to things that are worth the effort, and the fatigue afterwards can be
potentially annoying, though not a deal breaker in and of itself.

Kord’s Greeting (Dragon Magazine #342, 54) (2nd): If this spell just
handed out a +2 to hit and a +1 to AC for its rather short duration, then it
probably wouldn’t be worth a 2nd level spell. As a spell that only gives those
benefits on a charge, it is definitely not worth it.

Champion of Kord (Dragon Magazine #342, 50) (4th): This spell, unlike
the feat ability, actually applies a relevant bonus to combat maneuvers.
However, spending a 4th level spell for a short term bonus to combat
maneuvers, even one that can be applied to allies as well, just isn’t where
you want to be.

Initiate of Malar (PGtF, 81): This is augment summoning, except it only applies
to animals. Basically, at early levels, where animals are your primary beatsticks,
this is a strictly better alternative to normal augment summoning, as you don’t
need the prerequisite feat. Later on, when elementals rule the roost, it becomes a
much worse choice. That’s all there is to this feat, really, as the spells, as shown
below, are just uniformly terrible or mediocre.

Spectral Stag (PGtF, 112) (2nd): This is about the top of the curve as
initiate of malar spells go, applying repeated yet mediocre bull rushes as long
as it’s around, occasionally with a stun effect on top. That’s not the worst
effect ever, but summoning will usually do a better job with the temporary
combat themed lockdown game.

Possess Animal (PGtF, 108) (3rd): Between the short duration, and the
fact that you’re completely vulnerable while this is in effect, casting this in
 any kind of useful way will usually be a death sentence, or at least consume
a bunch of magic to keep your body safe. The risk is not worth the reward.

Strength of the Beast (PGtF, 114) (4th): Nope. You’ve gotta be a

lycanthrope for this one, and that’s universally terrible. Even if you do just so
happen to have spent vast quantities of LA for little gain, this is still just a
modest melee buff that approximates what you were already getting from
your animal form, because you can only cast it in human form. None of this
is good.

Initiate of Nature (PGtF, 81): You gain the ability to rebuke/command animals
and plants. Out of all of the initiate granted abilities, this is the one with the
greatest raw power, and if you take initiate of nature, then it’s highly probable that
this is the reason with the spells being strictly secondary. Commanding animals and
plants isn’t exactly the most powerful form of minionmancy around, but animals
feature some solid beatsticks, and there’s a surprising variety of plants with wacky
abilities, so it’s still a reasonable way to pull to pull together some creature-power.

Mold Touch (PtGF, 106) (3rd): This spell is actually pretty sweet,
providing an instantaneous effect with a reasonable quantity of damage.
Also, the brown mold apparently has the ability to grow infinitely when
exposed to fire, so if you’re just prepping an area with brown mold, then you
only need one casting.

Briartangle (PGtF, 100) (4th): Briartangle has an odd sort of relationship

with entangle, the spell from whom it inherits most of its abilities. On the one
hand, all three upgrades, damage, concentration checks to cast spells, and
cover, are reasonable ones, but on the other, we’re talking about a bump of
three spell levels here. In any case, briartangle definitely isn’t winning an
award for best BFC, but it’s decent, and provides its own kill condition.

Thornspray (PGtF, 115) (4th): In many ways, thornspray is essentially an

 upgraded splinterbolt, with its ranged attack, splittable damage, and lack of
standard damage type. The upgrade comes in with the usually increased and
even more splittable damage and possible sickening, but really, those effects
aren’t worth the spell level increase, especially because splinterbolt features
its own advantages, like bypassing SR/AMF’s. I’d stick to splinterbolt, or
otherwise use a different 4th with more impact.

Tree Healing (PGtF, 116) (5th): This spell basically lets you cast heal on
yourself, except it takes a whole day, and generally heals more HP. In other
words, it’s only useful if you have a condition that would be
difficult/expensive to deal with otherwise, and 24 hours to deal with it. Not
the most powerful ability, but it could be useful in a pinch.

Initiate of Nerull (Dragon Magazine #342, 51): If you have the death domain,
your d6’s are replaced with d8’s. This ability just does a flat nothing. Druids don’t
usually get domains, and if you do happen to pick one up, you definitely shouldn’t
make it the crappy death domain.

Cause Fear, Greater (Dragon Magazine #342, 52) (2nd): See initiate of
erythnul for details.

Nerull’s Scythe (Dragon Magazine #342, 54) (3rd): You’re spending a

third level spell in order to get a halfway decent weapon that you don’t even
have proficiency in. It’s nowhere near worth casting. That nerull’s scythe
inexplicably has a one round casting time just adds insult to injury.

Wail of the Banshee (9th): You just need to be doing better with your
9th’s than an area save or die, with no secondary effect, and with the
limitations of working on only living creatures and having the death
descriptor.

Initiate of Obad-Hai (Dragon Magazine #342, 52): You gain the ability to
spontaneously cast summon nature’s ally. This seems like a useless ability, on the
surface, given the fact that druids obviously already do that, but given the presence
of spontaneous summoner in this handbook, a strictly worse feat aside from the
prerequisites, that’s definitely not the whole story. What this feat does is it allows
you to trade away spontaneous summoning through one of the ACF’s or
substitution levels that do that, like halfling druid substitution levels or sidhe
scholar, and then get it back at reasonable cost. That you need 3rd level spells for
this means that you’ll end up going some time without summoning, which is
problematic, but what that really means is that this feat is at its best in higher
leveled games.

Summer Breezes (Dragon Magazine #342, 56) (1st): While the effect
here certainly isn’t massive, giving a couple of light defenses to somewhat
rare and low impact things, it does come at that usual low level slot and long
duration cost. As such, it can definitely have a place in a morning buff
routine, especially if you’re heading somewhere hot.

Spontaneous Combustion (Dragon Magazine #342, 56) (3rd): The

damage here really isn’t all that good, and it’s way too easy to avoid on
every level, between the repeated saves, the bad energy type, and the
presence of SR. There’s just not much here worth making use of.

Quicksand (Dragon Magazine #342, 54) (3rd): As permanent terrain

traps go, quicksand isn’t massively impactful, with a good shot at avoidance
or escape for those struck by it. However, it does have permanent defensive
utility, running a low cost and applying a somewhat unique effect, so it’s
worth consideration when you’re putting together a defense for a location.

Waves of Destruction (Dragon Magazine #342, 56) (5th): Waves of

destruction is a spell that looks bad on the surface, acting as a low efficiency
blasting spell whose sole advantage is that it lacks an energy type, but
beneath that layer it’s actually significantly worse. This is because, while the
 40 ft. radius seems like it’d be useful, the close range means that you’re
hitting yourself in the face with the majority of spell placements, limiting the
overall utility of the spell greatly. That energy type upside actually becomes a
bit of a downside here, as you can’t even make yourself immune to avoid the
effects. The only remaining aspect of the spell is the ability to put out fires
and drench stuff, and that’s not nearly enough impact for a 5th level spell.

Initiate of Olidamarra (Dragon Magazine #342, 51): You add gather

information, sleight of hand, and tumble to your skill list. None of these skills are
exactly great, but they’re all solid secondary skill options. Tumble is the most
directly beneficial to your potential game plan, enabling higher level combat
maneuvering, while the other two skills push towards the less used face and thief
roles. As tends to be the case, if you have the points to spare, then these aren’t the
worst place to spend them.

Festival Feast (Dragon Magazine #342, 41) (1st): This spell is pretty
good at achieving its main goal, that being providing your party with a meal
on the fly at low cost. It’s not really a thing druids can do otherwise either,
so it’s a nice thing to add to your pile of utility, even if it doesn’t usually do
much.

Olidamarra’s Bard Spell (Dragon Magazine #342, 42) (2nd): You get
to prepare three levels of bard spells, though only from core unless you have
scrolls or a bard on hand. Bards have a lot of great spells that druids do not,
even just limited to the PHB. It’s a list of spells that includes, but is
absolutely not limited to, prestidigitation, grease, identify, silent image,
silence, alter self, glitterdust, invisibility, mirror image, tongues, haste, lesser
geas, and above all, frigging glibness. The bard list is, in a sense, nearly the
opposite of the druid list, filled with all kinds of illusion, enchantment, and
subtlety.

Moreover, the spell seems to grant these spell levels on top of those already
 present, which would render Olidamarra’s bard spell an excellent value even
if weren’t getting spells off-list. At the most basic possible level, you can use
this to pick up something like dispel magic, meaning you’re casting what’s
ordinarily a 4th level druid spell out of a 2nd level slot. And, as the spell
notes, you can spontaneously convert out of these new slots, letting you turn
a 2nd into SNA III if you want. Combine this slot adding power with the fact
that these are bard spells and you’re getting some incredible power here,
letting you pull crap like casting charm monster, which is a 4th level wizard
spell, as a 3rd level bard spell, as a 2nd level druid spell. That’s some hot
nonsense right there. This spell is strong enough, all on its own, to justify
spending a feat. The fact that you get a bunch of other useful stuff on top of
that is ludicrous gravy.

Olidamarra’s Carapace (Dragon Magazine #342, 42) (3rd): This spell

does two very powerful things, either of which potentially being worth a 3rd
level slot. The wall of stone effect is somewhat limited, as it necessarily
surrounds you, but it does a good job of giving you a quick and powerful
defense on the battlefield. The dimension door effect, meanwhile, is already
great as a 4th level spell, and it’s even better at third. That the two combine
together for potential misdirection just makes the whole thing even better. If
olidamarra’s bard spell weren’t directly above this, being incredible, then this
would be your main reason to take the feat, and it’d be a good reason too.

Initiate of Pelor (Dragon Magazine #342, 53): You get a +2 sacred bonus on
turning checks and turning damage. Without any resource use, this ability is
obviously pointless, because druids do not have turning. With some effort however,
whether it come in the form of the bone talisman spell, or the wild reaper ACF, or a
sacred exorcist dip, you can make the ability somewhat more relevant.
Unfortunately though, it won’t be that much more relevant, because the bonuses
are rather small. Notably, two of the three spells provide by initiate of pelor work
based on turning, and the third has been covered elsewhere, so I’m just going to
assume you’ve used one of those turning acquiring methods, because otherwise the
feat becomes even more pointless than it already is.

True Turning (Dragon Magazine #342, 56) (1st): The timing here is
rather awkward, requiring that you spend two rounds in a row on your turn
attempt, and the impact is rather low once you’ve spent that effort.

Bless, Greater (Dragon Magazine #342, 52) (3rd): See initiate of

heironeous for details.

Immolate the Wicked (Dragon Magazine #342, 54) (4th): If you’ve

already successfully turned an undead, then you definitely don’t need to have
spent a round on a short duration buff to deal some weirdly scaling damage
to those undead. You’re way better off just casting a standard damage
dealing spell, because that way you can target some different defenses and
don’t have all your eggs in the turning basket.

Initiate of Selune (PGtF, 81): You get a +5 on caster level checks for the
purposes of augury and divination, which is pretty useless when you consider the
fact that neither spell is natively on the druid list. Even if you do add the spells, the
impact of caster level on these spells is pretty marginal, slightly reducing the failure
chance in a way that doesn’t especially negate the need to cast multiple times.

Handfire (PGtF, 103) (1st): While on an initial reading, handfire is pretty

underwhelming, providing naught but a marginally more powerful produce
flame that fails against constructs, and lacks range, the instantaneous
duration combined with the fact that you can toss this on allies makes it a
free source of random value. Give this to everyone on off hours, and
suddenly everyone is tossing around melee touch attacks, and at the very
least, making use of a nifty light source. There’s little reason not to cast
handfire all the time if you have access to it.
Moonblade (SpC, 143) (3rd): Moonblade is decent, as weapon based
strategies go, though a bit underwhelming, as weapon based strategies so
often are. The ability to force concentration checks on casters is pretty
interesting, at least.

Strength of the Beast (PGtF, 114) (4th): See initiate of malar for details.

Wall of Moonlight (PGtF, 118) (4th): This spell calls itself a wall, but it’s
really a blasting spell in a wall body, and a pretty mediocre one at that,
limiting your targets considerably, and not particularly making up for that
with damage. If you want a wall spell of this level, just use wall of salt, and if
you want a blast, run something like boreal wind. There’s little call for wall of
moonlight.

Moon Path (FRCS, 71) (5th): This is an odd little spell with a plethora of
pretty underwhelming options. Like, you can sort of use this as
transportation, building a bridge or set of stairs between two points, but
you’re at the point where even your mundane allies should be packing flight.
You can also sort of use it as a defensive spell, but it’s a rather weak one,
and locking down your team if they want protection isn’t exactly where you
want to be. Realistically, if this spell has any application, it’s transporting an
army across some wide chasm without a bridge. A narrow application,
granted, but a neat one nonetheless.

Moonweb (PGtF, 106) (5th): Now this spell is somewhat interesting. It’s
apparent that moonweb actually allows for some level of one-way attacks,
granting you the ability to fire anything you want out, without allowing your
foes to fire anything in. It’s a pretty cool effect, overall, but it suffers a lot
from limited area of effect, generally only allowing you to use this on one
character, or block off a doorway. That’s not exactly the all around protection
that you’d really want to make one-way attacks worth the time. Still, it’s an
effect good enough to probably be encounter winning a decent amount of the
 time.

Initiate of St. Cuthbert (Dragon Magazine #342, 52): You get to use the
protection domain’s ability once every four cleric levels. Unlike some other initiate
abilities, which are usually pointless but may grant some bonus on some builds, this
ability just does flat nothing. Unless you’re gestalting with cleric for some reason,
there’s not really a good reason to have four full cleric levels on a druid build, or
even one cleric level in most cases, and this is not the reason you’re looking for.

Mark of Justice, Lesser (Dragon Magazine #342, 54) (2nd): See

initiate of heironeous for details.

Retributive Strike (Dragon Magazine #342, 55) (3rd): This spell has
just so many problems. It lasts for very little time, making it strictly an in-
combat buff, it doesn’t let you make more than your standard one AoO per
turn, meaning that an approaching enemy won’t be impacted by the spell
unless you have a combat reflexes effect, and you need to let enemies hit
you in the face to trigger the spell, which isn’t exactly an ideal situation for
you. This spell just takes too much work and doesn’t do enough.

Spell Turning (7th): This spell is pretty decent at accomplishing its goal,
protecting you from spells while also applying some offense. You’d typically
be better off warding yourself with a ring of spell-battle, but there are holes
in that form of defense, and this can help fill them. The duration could be
better, as could the number of spells deflected, but protecting yourself from
spells is always a good goal.

Initiate of Vecna (Dragon Magazine #342, 52): You gain the ability to use spell
completion and spell trigger items as a wizard of your cleric level. This ability is,
obviously, kinda tricky, because it fundamentally assumes that you’re going to be a
cleric. By the rules, the ability is somewhat pointless, though a simple replacement
of cleric for the feat’s user gives it some good utility. In fact, this ability is good
enough that whether or not it works in your game makes or breaks the feat to
some extent, and if it does work then the feat likely deserves a black rating.

Vecna’s Courier (Dragon Magazine #342, 56) (4th): This spell is like all
of the spells you have that are have a sending effect, whispering sand being
perhaps the best, except it’s worse than just about all of those spells.
Vecna’s courier is slow, high in level, short in deliverable messages, limited in
scope by what the target can reach, and potentially interceptable. These
downsides aren’t particularly compensated by any upsides, aside from cool
value, so the spell is bad.

Arcane Eye (4th): This is a pretty good scouting spell, as scouting spells
go, capable of covering good ground and giving its information efficiently.
Still, while it can’t be said to be significantly worse than your other spell
based scouting options, it can’t be said to be much better either. Therefore, it
may see use if you take the feat, but arcane eye is not a strong incentive for
picking up initiate of vecna.

Eyebite (6th): See initiate of gruumsh for details.

Initiate of Wee Jas (Dragon Magazine #342, 52): You can release turn
attempts in a 20 ft. wave, dealing 1d6 damage/2 cleric levels to undead if you
channel positive energy, and healing that much if you channel negative energy.
This ability is useless for three separate reasons. First, it scales on cleric levels, so
even if you have turning, it won’t do anything without a house rule. Second, it
requires turning to operate, which can represent a pretty big cost. And, third, it
really just doesn’t do much, doling out crap damage to specific types. Just an awful
deal all around.

Disguise Undead (2nd): I don’t think there’s that much to be said that isn’t
said already by the title of the spell. You get to disguise an undead. Granted,
you get to do if for 24 hours, which is always an awesome duration, but
 that’s a ludicrously situational ability. I suppose there’s some fringe utility to
getting undead into places they wouldn’t ordinarily be welcome, but that’s
limited some by the druid’s minimal access to necromancy. This spell can’t be
disregarded completely, because it’s rather unique at the very least, but it’s
definitely not a strong incentive to pick this feat.

Magic Jar (5th): This is the best, and possibly only, reason to take this feat,
because it’s an amazing spell. You just get to take over the bodies of your
enemies, stealing their abilities for yourself and just causing general subtle
havoc. There’s so much crazy that can be pulled off through judicious magic
jar use, and picking up the spell is awesome on that basis.

Circle of Death (6th): While circle of death looks reasonable on the

surface, it has too many caveats and issues for it to be worth picking over
the pile of other options. The first of these issues is the limit to 9 HD on any
one monster killed, because the last thing you want when going all in on a
save or die is to be unable to take out a big target, especially when that limit
is below your own HD when you get the spell . The second issue is the limit
on total HD impacted, specifically in the form of a variable limit making it
unreliable. This means that, while not awful at taking out a group, circle isn’t
especially good at it either. Third is that it’s a [death] spell which can only hit
living targets, further limiting the breadth of its utility and making it one of
the less immunity piercing options for SoD’s. Fourth and finally, you have to
pay a 500 GP premium on every casting, meaning that you’re paying for the
loss of utility compared to something like call avalanche. This spell isn’t the
absolute worst thing, but all of these problems just make it impossible to
recommend.

Nightbringer Initiate (FoE, 147): This feat adds hide and move silently to your
skill list, and it is almost certainly the best way to do so. If you’re planning to take
a stealth route, which isn’t the worst route for a druid to take, then this is a feat
you’re really going to want.
Inflict Light Wounds (1st): This is just bad. Low damage, and at a terrible
range at that. Avoid this.

Darkness (2nd): This spell is surprisingly bad for stealth, turning everything
in the area into an easy to spot ball of darkness if it’s light out, or actually
increasing visibility if it’s dark. However, the duration is reasonable, you get
a fancy miss chance, which can help out some, and there might be some fun
in making random balls of darkness. This isn’t a particularly good spell, but
it’s at least alright.

Deeper Darkness (3rd): Now this is quite a bit better. You get a better
range, which is nice, and far more importantly, this spell lasts days/level. By
casting this on an object, and covering it in some manner, you can get an
even bigger ball of darkness on your command, and you don’t even have to
spend slots on it. Granted, the value of balls of darkness is a bit on the
marginal side, but free is free, and having this is better than not having it.

Enervation (4th): This is the premier spell provided by nightbringer initiate.

Enervation is a debuff that is highly potent, reasonably versatile, difficult to
resist, and it stacks with itself very well, which are four great qualities to
have in a debuff. You can even use this to make wights by draining enemies
(or just arbitrary commoners) completely. The real downside to enervation is
that, while it does hit most stats in existence, it’s a far cry from disabling an
enemy completely, so you’re best off using this against big enemies that you
think you’ll only be able to take down a bit at a time. Enervation becomes a
lot better with metamagic, but unfortunately, the main tool of metamagic
stacking, arcane thesis, is not available to druids.

Summon Monster V (shadow mastiff only) (5th): While summon

monster V is a fine spell, and while the shadow mastiff is a perfectly
respectable option for that spell’s use, this is just not worth preparing on a
druid. You could do approximately the same thing, except on a spontaneous
basis, and probably in a better way, by just casting SNA V for a janni. It
doesn’t help that you’re replacing the versatile power of summoning spells
for the ability to call up a single creature. You should very much avoid
preparing this.

Planar Ally (mabar only) (6th): While certainly not as broad or potent as
standard planar ally, this mabar restricted version of the spell does some
good stuff. Most notable among these is likely the greater barghest, which
has good off-list spell-likes like invisibility sphere, mass enlarge person,
dimension door, and charm monster. Also good are the yugoloths of the
monster manual III and manual of the planes, particularly the mezzaloth and
nycaloth. These have some useful spell-likes on offer, including cloud kill and
dispel magic on the mezzoloth and invisibility and mirror image on the
nycaloth. You’re not getting anything crazy out of this, but it’s competent
minionmancy for a druid.

Control Undead (7th): While taking command of undead is certainly

interesting, this just isn’t where you want to be with minionmancy. The
duration is way too short, the target usually far too situational, the level
much too high, and there’s even a will save to top it all off. Yes, this will
probably be a beating against encounters full of undead, but it is likely that
other 7th level spells would be too.

Create Greater Undead (shadows only) (8th): This effect would be

significantly more useful, as a halfway decent minionmancy effect, except it
suffers from a druid’s general lack of access to undead commanding abilities.
Without that, you’re just arbitrarily making somewhat dangerous creatures
for decent chunks of change. Even if you do have a method of controlling
your undead, they’re still not all that impressive at this level.

Gate (mabar only) (9th): This is quite a bit more underwhelming

 compared to traditional gate than this feat’s planar ally is compared to
traditional planar ally, because the pool of creatures is so small, and so much
of it is accessible through planar ally. There are some good creatures from
other types and further up in HD, however. Where you were once stuck with
lesser yugoloths, here you get the ultraloth, which grants a really broad
array of spell-likes including, geas, symbol of death, mass suggestion, and a
whole bunch of rays, among other things.

The nightshades are interesting also, with the nightwing’s confusion and
greater dispel magic granted at the base, and the nightwalker and
nightcrawler giving more power if you boost CL. Similarly, if you can get a
caster level of 25, then the MM III’s horrific vasuthant is made available,
granting awesomeness like time stop, temporal stasis, reverse gravity, and
the insane alter past ability, letting it replay turns. As with planar ally, this
has nothing on the potential insanity of normal gate, but there is some
decently unique utility, and if you work for it a bit, some really interesting
effects.

Warden Initiate (ECS, 62): You add a +2 deflection bonus to AC in forests, and
climb and jump are added to your skill list. Situational AC bonuses aren’t all that
interesting in general, and especially on a druid, and you should never invest points
into climb or jump, so these abilities aren’t particularly useful.

Protection from Evil (1st): See gatekeeper initiate for details.

Detect Thoughts (2nd): While this definitely isn’t a great divination spell,
requiring time, proximity, and continuous actions to work, it does fill a gap in
the druid list. That’s always a nice thing, especially when dealing with
divinations.

Displacement (3rd): See greensinger initiate for details.

Locate Creature (4th): Locate creature is decent, because you can cover a
wide area with a mobile long range radius within 10 minutes/level, but the
limit to finding local creatures is somewhat limiting. This is good in its
situation, but not particularly so outside of that.

Hold Monster (5th): See greensinger initiate for details.

Repulsion (6th): The defense on offer here isn’t the best out there, but it
does turn away melee folks from your whole team adequately. Really, the
biggest problem with repulsion is that it competes with antilife shell, which is
admittedly type and area limited in comparison, but which which doesn’t
allow for saves and lasts much longer. I’d strongly tend towards that one if
given the option.

Banishment (7th): See gatekeeper initiate for details, but note that this is
significantly worse due to the two spell level bump.

Screen (8th): This spell is a pretty interesting way of dealing with

divinations, and allows for some creative trickery if you’ve got it in you, but
it’s a bit situational, and probably not as good as just hitting the problem
directly. Of course, druids want for ways of hitting the problem directly, so
this could be just the thing.

Hold Person, Mass (9th): Gyeuh. All the weird limitations of hold person,
except now we’re competing with shapechange. Hell, even comparing with
more standard and/or lower level fare like frostfell, this can’t really compete.
Being able to pick out individual targets is nice and all, but it’s not worth a
9th level spell.

Miscellaneous
While they are few and far between, there do exist worthwhile feats that do not
directly augment one of the druid’s four main class features. Druid feats are so
incredible that you will often not even need to look at these more generic feats, but
when it comes to some things, there is no easy substitute for these options.

Blindsight (MotW, 21): This grants permanent blindsight out to 120 ft, with the
ability to wild shape into a dire bat as a prerequisite (so 8th, for those keeping
track). Blindsight, particularly out to this range, makes for one of the more
powerful vision modes out there, only really exceeded by some aberration wild
shape forms. Moreover, unlike most druid gained vision modes, which require that
you use a particular wild shape form and usually a casting of enhance wild shape,
this just stays up all the time, even in those powerful yet vision mode lacking
forms. This doesn’t really do as much as some of the best druid feats, but it’s a
great ability for any druid that wants to scout.

One big downside to this feat is that it transparently shouldn’t exist in its current
form. Blindsight essentially transitioned into blindsense in the shift from 3.0 to 3.5,
a thing evidenced by some monster updates, and more specifically, far worse feats
like the mediocre blindsense from complete adventurer were introduced,
presumably as a replacement, even if not specifically. Moreover, the dire bat
prerequisite once couldn’t be met until level 12, due to the separation between dire
and normal animals with reference to wild shape. Point is, there’s a lot of oddity to
this feat, and while it might be on a lower scale of cheese than a lot you could be
doing, it’s the sort of thing you may want to mention before bringing it to a game.

Craft Wondrous Item: In a game where characters can get any items they want,
craft wondrous is just as useful on a druid as it is on any other character. However,
in any circumstance with less access than that, druids can gain increased utility
from the feat than other characters. This is because druids have very specialized
item needs. For every item the druid gets, they’re going to want wilding clasps to
go with them. Even with piles of wilding clasps, there’s a pretty narrow range of
items that a druid would actually want, and you’re often going to want to put
multiple items in one slot for enhanced clasping abilities. Ultimately, most items a
druids finds are going to be utterly useless, and there are a few items that are
extremely useful, so that means that you’re going to sell most things you find for
fun and profit. Craft wondrous item can make that process go more smoothly, so
that makes it a feat worth considering.

Darkstalker (LoM, 179): You make it such that blindsense, blindsight, scent, and
tremorsense no longer bypass the need for a spot or listen check to find you. The
bane of any stealth character’s existence is the fact that alternate vision modes can
bypass all of your effort, and darkstalker turns off the bulk of alternate vision
modes. As such, darkstalker is an absolute must for any druid specializing in
stealth. Druids certainly do have some stealth adding resources, including spells,
and high dexterity/low size wild shape forms, but one thing they don’t have is the
actual skills hide and move silently. As such, you’re probably going to have to take
something like nightbringer initiate, or maybe some halfling druid substitution
levels, and those things can be pretty expensive on a build. So, if this feat fits into
the things you’re trying to do, then it’s great, but trying to do those things
definitely isn’t for everybody.

Swift Avenger (DrM #357, 87): Your druid and scout levels stack for the
purposes of skirmish and wild shape uses/day. You need at least +1d6 skirmish
damage, which means a level of scout. Even assuming that you weren’t dropping
an entire druid level here, the ability you’re getting here would quite possibly not be
worth the feat. Skirmish damage maxes out at +5d6 damage and +5 AC, and it’s
typically going to be more in the +3d6/+2 range. It also requires moving ten feet in
the round in question, and only works on living creatures with discernable anatomy
and no crit immunity. It’s not nothing, damage-wise, and access to pounce from
wild shape renders it easier to turn on than it could otherwise be, but you can do a
lot better with a feat than a reasonable damage bonus. And that’s only considering
the lesser cost of this feat. Losing a druid level is huge, and renders this feat
actively detrimental to your druidry.

Vow of Poverty (BoED, 48): See Being a Good Druid in a Bad World for details.
 Core Only
When it comes to feats, more than just about anywhere else in druid optimization,
the difference between core and non-core options is enormous. Aside from natural
spell, which sees universal play, a druid working with all available books has a good
chance of picking no core feats and being all the more optimized for it. Moreover,
while a druid with full book access can reap massive rewards from proper feat
selection, any given core druid will be rather similar in power level to any other core
druid on the basis of feats. As a result, this section of the handbook is dedicated to
exploring the feats that are reasonable in a core game, but which get considerably
worse in broader contexts. In a sense, this section could be alternately considered a
section on filler feats, options that you select when you’ve run out of options
otherwise, and it’s a thing that could even be useful when using a few non-core
books but not all of them. Also included will be some core feats that feature in the
normal part of the handbook, as their value is often changed by the switch to a
smaller reference pool.

Augment Summoning: Without other great summoning feats to compete with,

and with nearly the same pool of creatures at hand, augment summoning jumps up
in the rankings from decent to amazing. You’re boosting a major class feature to a
good degree in a world where feats rarely do that. After writing in natural spell at
6th, your next step in core building should usually be slotting this and spell focus
(conjuration) in your first two slots.

Craft Wondrous Item: The list of good craftables is much reduced compared to a
broader environment, but there’s almost always something worth crafting, even if
you’re doing it for an ally rather than yourself. Even on a purely personal basis,
items like the periapt of wisdom, pearls of power, ioun stones, the monk’s belt, and
the handy haversack serve to provide value to this feat. There are a few big items
left off, like metamagic rods of rings of counterspells, but that doesn’t much
diminish that value.

Extend Spell: While initial instincts would dictate that extend spell picks up a big
boost with less feats to compare it to, the reality is that the pool of relevant spells
to extend shrinks with the switch off, such that the benefits aren’t as great. In
particular, you lose out on a lot of the long duration staples, like the heart of X
spells and the primal X spells, as well as that old high damage favorite creeping
cold. The big spell you’re left with is greater magic fang, with other spells offering
value but not a massive amount. This feat also still need to deal with competition
from metamagic rods of extend spell, and in an environment with items as limited
as feats. The overall impact is that extend spell is quite worth taking, because
you’re still battling mediocrity here, but the margin isn’t as big as you’d think.

Flyby Attack: You can take your standard action in the middle of an aerial move
instead of before or after. While the implication of this feat’s name is that you’d use
it to attack with flying forms, and while that’s certainly one application of it,
significantly more interesting is using this to cast spells on the move. This feat
opens up options like casting touch range spells without needing to remain in a
dangerous area, or dodging between cover and using a spell in between. The boost
to maneuverability here is a meaningful one, and flyby attack makes for a solid feat
on any character that uses wild shape as a flying magic platform.

Hover: You gain the ability to hold a position in the air while flying. Hovering is a
very useful thing on any flying form, enabling you to cast full round spells, and also
make good use of tactical positioning with regular spells. Unfortunately for the feat
though, the ability to hover is freely available to any flight form with good
maneuverability, and dire bat form has that. Granted, that requires large wild
shape, gained at 8th level, but you can’t pick this feat up until after you have wild
shape anyway, and natural spell at 6th is inevitable, so you can only really get this
feat after you already have the ability. There are some reasonable flight forms
available that don’t have good maneuverability, but giving this to them isn’t
particularly feat worthy, even in core.
Improved Initiative: You gain a +4 to initiative. Winning the initiative war is
always important, especially on a caster. Locking down the battlefield in particular
is made significantly more efficient if your opponents haven’t closed with the party,
and all forms of action denial are just much better if they happen before every
action in an encounter. Even in core, druids are quite good at the initiative game,
due to high dexterity forms like dire bat, and pushing that further can help ensure a
first mover advantage in every combat.

Improve Natural Attack: A natural weapon of your choice is increased a size

category for the purposes of damage. The damage bonus here is pretty decent,
usually hovering a bit above weapon specialization albeit more likely to be applied
to only some attacks, but what’s offered here just isn’t big enough, even on a
combat build. If you want a feat for combat wild shape, just pick up multiattack and
leave this behind.

Multiattack: Your secondary natural weapons, if any, take only a -2 penalty rather
than a -5 penalty. Most good combat forms feature a broad assortment of natural
attacks, often after a pounce, so a +3 to those attacks is a rather large boost. Still,
even if this is a top of the line quantitative combat bonus, it’s still just a
quantitative combat bonus, and there’s a pretty hard limit on how good such a
thing can be. If you’re planning to personally beat face as a primary line of action in
combat, then this is quite good. Otherwise, you might be better off passing it up for
something that boosts your magical ability.

Multiattack, Improved: The penalty on your secondary weapons drops to zero.

Compared to the +3 offered by multiattack, improved multiattack offers only a +2,
which is a significantly more middling combat bonus. Improved multiattack also
represents yet more investment into combat ability, and if spending one feat on
that was questionable, then spending two is even more so.

Natural Spell: This feat is basically just as valuable in core as it is outside core,
which is to say that it practically ascends to class feature status. Except here, even
the occasional competitor left far in natural spell’s trail is practically nonexistent. If
you’re optimizing at all, then this is in your 6th level feat slot, and to some extent,
that’s the only part of core feat optimization that really makes a big difference.

Power Attack: When you use a melee weapon, you can trade points of to-hit for
points of damage on a 1:1 basis, or 1:2 with a two handed weapon, to a maximum
of your BAB. Power attack is an absolute classic of a feat for melee builds, offering
damage far out of scale with anything else out there, especially when you push for
it. Unfortunately for druids, however, much of the reason for power attack’s power
is that it can be used in concert with two handed weapons for double damage, and
druids generally fight with natural weapons, which don’t get that extra damage.
Thus, for a druid, power attack tends to deal very low amounts of extra damage per
attack, sometimes dipping below one on higher AC foes. It’s just not worth a feat,
and you should go for the superior improved natural attack instead if you want a
damage buff.

Scribe Scroll: This feat doesn’t have quite the same versatility on a druid as it has
on a wizard, as you simply have a lower variety of spells on your list, especially in
core, but that doesn’t mean that scribe scroll isn’t useful. The big goal here is that
you scribe the really situational spells that show up on your list, ones so little used
that they’re not even really worth preparing even when you have the ability to
spontaneously convert them. In core, this list is largely made up of spells with
particular targets or terrains, like speak with animals, wood shape, plant growth, or
rusting grasp, along with potent but rarely used healing spells like remove disease.
Low level spells are better here, as they’re far less expensive, and in the end this
allows for a solid conversion factor between time and power.

(Greater) Spell Focus: Add +1 to save DC’s of spells in a particular school of

magic. You’re likely to pick up spell focus (conjuration), regardless of its utility,
based solely on the power level of augment summoning, but there is still potential
power to be found in a second instance of this feat. Of particular interest is
transmutation, as it applies to spells like entangle, baleful polymorph, and wall of
thorns, though evocation can be useful as well, as it works with spells like control
winds and flamestrike. In any case, this feat is quite reasonable on a druid, as your
spells tend to concentrate more around a few schools, lacking as you do much in
the way of necromancy, illusion, or enchantment. It’s not going to be great, but
good save DC’s are always a useful thing to have.

(Greater) Spell Penetration: You get a +2 to CL checks for overcoming spell

resistance. The druid style of spell slinging, based primarily around BFC’s and
summons, leaves open a lot of room for bypassing spell resistance completely just
by using spells with SR:no. You’re going to always have something to hit a high SR
foe, whether in the form of a summoned bear claw, a wild shape’d bear claw, or an
animal companion bear claw. At the same time though, a good number of druid
spells do need to get through SR the old fashioned way, and in those cases a bonus
to the roll is a good thing to have. Spell penetration isn’t as good on a druid as it is
on some other casters, but it’s going to be at least decent.