best domain and "subclass" for spellcaster druid?

[jayel83]

Thank you to all the ones that answered in my other threads. I'm enjoying how active and helpful this community is.

yes, I have the game on gog btw for the one who asked.

I decided I'll probably remake my blight druid.

What would be the best or a good spellcaster druid build?

Last CRPG i played was PIllars of Eternity 2 and Druids are OP in there.
I was thinking of something similar to the druid there, but is probably not possible, a caster of elemntal/natural/area spells: storms, lightning, boulder attacks, earthquakes, etc. and fireballs, freezing enemies, poisoning them, wood armors and skin, etc.


Is it possible and a good idea? what domain is better for this? And maybe I need a special sublcass?

I'm not very interested in the animal companion, but it could be cool to have it too.

I hear a summoning specialist is better for the druid but I summoned some frogs and they dissapeared instantly lol. do summonings become useful later?

[jsaving]

Originally posted by Jay-El:

Last CRPG i played was PIllars of Eternity 2 and Druids are OP in there.
I was thinking of something similar to the druid there, but is probably not possible, a caster of elemntal/natural/area spells: storms, lightning, boulder attacks, earthquakes, etc. and fireballs, freezing enemies, poisoning them, wood armors and skin, etc.

Caster druids in Deadfire are OP due to the combination of strong elemental damage, strong buffs and strong summons. Unfortunately, caster druids aren't particularly good at any of those things in Kingmaker. So if you are wanting a similar experience to Deadfire's druid, you are ironically better off playing a different class in Kingmaker.

Your best bet flavor-wise would probably be Kingmaker's sylvan sorcerer archetype, which is strong in all the areas Deadfire's druid was strong.

[Frostfeather]

Caster Druids can eventually become pretty good at what you want to do halfway through the game, but it's probably going to feel like a terrible slog getting to that point. Especially so for a newer player.

So yeah, Sylvan Sorcerer is a good choice. Otherwise maybe an Ecclesitheurge Cleric with the Weather Domain or something like that.

[Immortal Reaver]

Are you set on Blight Druid? If not then other druids have animal companion bond which is better than domains. Otherwise Fire domain is ok.

[Radiac]

All of the summon spells, Summon Nature's Ally, Summon Elemental, etc have a cast time of a full round and a duration of 1 round/level. For clarity, one round is only SIX SECONDS in real time. So your summoner, if he's level 5, get's to keep his summoned creatures for a grand total of 30 seconds each, or five rounds of combat, if you're doing turn-based mode. In real time combat mode, they're gone before you can buff them and get them to actually land a hit on anything, because of how comparatively weak they are unbuffed and because of how short their effective lifetime is. At higher levels, like level 10+, you get to keep them for like a full minute, which is still not enough time to summon more than two groups and still buff them before moving into combat and actually fighting something before they're gone. At level, 15+ you can get some decent use out of them, but they still get in each other's way, they get in the way of your melee characters, some of them will cast AoE damage spells that will do collateral damage to your companions (like the Azata casts Lightning Bolt a lot, IIRC, so you need to have somebody cast Communal Resist Lightning before then, etc). In turn based mode, they make you move every individual monster around separately which causes combat turns to take forever and clogs the battlefield area quite a bit. Also, if you get killed or knocked unconscious, all of your summoned creatures disappear instantly, and you won't exactly be super tanky.

So at low levels, summoners are terribly weak, and at higher levels, they're merely okay, whereas other types of characters are way better at low levels and also better than merely okay at higher levels. That's just they way the game is, mechanically.

Lastly, Animal Companions are very strong in this game, based on mechanics and their stats. For openers, they aren't summoned, they stick around permanently. This means they give you one additional party member for all intents and purposes. They increase your party's load carrying capacity as such, and being relative high in Strength, this alone means you can haul like EVERYTHING out of most maps, bring it back home and sell it, with no need of a bag of holding. They also give you one more set of eyes and ears for making Perception checks to spot traps, secret doors, and hidden treasure chests. The way Perception checks work in this game, your best way to maximize the amount of stuff you find is to have more sets of eyes and ears, and every animal companion you have adds one more "hidden stuff detector" to the team, which is very nice. Animal companions can more than hold their own in melee as well, they can move faster than most characters, they get some useful combat abilities, like the Wolf which gets a free Trip attempt when it bites something, or the Smilidon, which gets a whopping FIVE melee attacks as a full round action, and at higher levels, can take a full attack at the end of a charge, so basically, double move distance combined with four paws and a bite, which makes for RIDICULOUS amounts of damage in round one of combat. And that's all without magical buffs applied. Animal companions are the ideal buff spell targets. When you think about it, all of your human companions are eventually going to be wearing belts, amulets, rings etc that give stat buffs which do not stack with spells like Bull's Strength, Barkskin, Shield of Faith, etc, but your animal companions don't get to wear gear, so you can hit them with spells like that and they'll benefit from them. You'll most definitely have at least one, maybe three spell casters that can cast spells that buff pets like this, and the Druid himself is one of them.

In my most recent run, I had two characters that had animal companions, the ranger that you find in the Troll Trouble chapter, who is awesome, and my main character, who was a Cleric of Erastil with Animal and Community domains. With two animal companions on the team, our carry capacity was like 3000+ lbs, and I would haul around like a dozen different weapons just in case I needed something that does Negative Energy damage, or is Cold Iron, etc. We also had a ton of potions, scrolls and wands. Before combat, I'd cast Mage Armor, Shield of Faith, Barkskin, Bull's Strength, and Magic Fang on them and then either charge them in or shoot an arrow at a badguy to initiate combat, and they were a wrecking crew in melee. If an animal companion dies, you get a new one that's an exact copy of it when you do a rest. They're just all upside.

[Radiac]

If you want to be a ranged damage spell caster character, and you want to avoid the animal companion, my advice would be to make a character that's similar to Octavia. Start with Elf or any race that gives +2 Dex and +2 Int, (Elf also gives a racial +2 to spell penetration, which is nice later on). Take your first level in plain old regular Rogue, then three levels of Wizard, and I'd recommend being Lawful Good and being a Universalist Wizard (not a Chaotic Good Transmutation Specialist like Octavia) and then take the Accomplished Sneak Attacker Feat at level 3, put skill ranks in Mobility, Trickery, and Knowledge Arcana such that you have 4 ranks in each of those at level 4, then at level 5, you can qualify for and start leveling in Arcane Trickster, do ten levels of that, then back to Wizard for the rest. You want your starting Int, including the racial bonus, to be exactly 19 and your Dex to be like 15 or 17, but make it an odd number. At level 4, you increase Dex to an even number, and at levels 8,12, and 16 you increase Int to 20, 21 and 22 respectively. Since it's your main character, I'd drop Strength to 8 and raise Con to 10, then maybe drop Wisdom to 8 in order to raise Charisma to 12. I'd also put skill points into Persuasion and Perception in an effort to keep them maxxed at all times, if possible.

The Arcane Trickster gets some useful class perks, not the least of which is the fact that it gives you the ability to do Sneak Attack damage with Rays and then later with spells like Fireball, although in that case it only works against flat-footed targets, which is to say, everything that hasn't acted yet in round 1 of combat when you cast it, so you need high Initiative so as to bushwhack bad guys who are slow to react. Fireball and other AoE elemental damage spells are honestly not that great, as-is, but when you're getting an extra ~4d6 sneak attack damage per target against flat-footed targets, it can actually be pretty impressive. You still need to cast some party buff spells that protect the party from some nasty enemy magic effects though, which is why I'd stay with Universalist, because giving up on two schools of magic sucks. I think you're better off keeping your options open. I'd also go with Bonded Object for the extra spell, instead of Familiar.

Arcane Trickster also gives you an ability called Ranged Legerdemain which allows you to disarm traps and pick locks from a safe distance. More importantly, it also gives you infinite retries on locks you fail to pick, which is normally not allowed when you pick locks the regular way. I'm not sure if this is as intended or if it's an exploit, but that's what it does. If you do decide to keep Octavia around on the starting travel team, you can make her an Arcane Trickster (it's her ideal build) and give her some Feats and that improve her Trickery Skill and have her be your trap disarm / pick lock person so your main character doesn't have to. You can also put skill points into Knowledge (Arcane) and Knowledge (The World) with her so you don't need them on your main either. This frees you up to take full ranks in Persuasion, Perception, etc with your main.

I don't recommend taking any of the Metamagic Feats. There are plenty of Rods that do the same effects for you, and are better in that they don't require you to increase the level of spell slot the spell uses, and also, with rods, you can choose when to use them on the fly instead of having to prepare spells with metamagic effects in the first place. The one exception to this is Heighten Spell, which allows you to prepare a lower level spell in a higher level slot, thus increasing it's spell DC. This is not terribly important for rays, since they need to roll to hit the target and as such don't use a DC for anything, but it does give you the ability to prep more Scorching Rays per day by putting some in higher spell slots.

In my most recent run, I had Octavia on the team, kitted up as an Arcane Trickster, and with the various Metamagic Rods you find and can buy, she ends up being able to cast Scorching Ray twice in one round (Lesser Quicken Rod for the first one) for three rays each, total of six rays, each one of which is doing 4d6 base plus 6d6 sneak attack damage. She also one-shotted a Jabberwock Shadow in the late game with Polar Ray. They're vulnerable to Cold, as it happens, and I think she critted with the ray. Did over 200 damage in one shot, using the Greater Empower Rod. That could be you.

Best of all, this type of character can STILL summon monsters, if you want, and you can wait until that approach actually gets good in order to do it. And you can summon elementals, monsters, and undead, but not nature's ally. You might even be able to work the three summoning Feats into the build in the late game (those being Spell Focus (Conjuration), Augment Summoning and Superior Summoning). There was a time when Spell Focus (Conjuration) was useless because all it did was give +1 to the DC of Conjuration spells, none of which actually ever got used or saved against anyway. But in this game, there are actually a lot of spells that benefit from Spell Focus (Conjuration), including Grease, Glitterdust, Stinking Cloud, Cloudkill, Icy Prison, Chains of Light, and Tsunami. So taking Spell Focus (Conjuration) relatively early in the build isn't the worst idea ever.

[99Random]

Instead of recommending you play something else, here are my thoughts on what you want to play, a caster Druid.

- as noted above summons are weak. Think of them as simple distractions to enemy targeting to save your party from initial combat damage that will quickly die and not as adding any really damage to the fight.

- Multiclassing with any caster is questionable unless aiming to do a prestige class such as Arcane Archer or Eldritch Knight since you are losing valuable spell levels and caster levels that improve your spells. Since none of the prestige really synergize with a Druid this is not a factor.

- Subclass Hint: Fey are a main enemy in the game.

- Pathfinder damage spells require associated feats to be really useful so make sure you look a the spells types you want to focus on and choose appropriate feats.

Your chosen build will not be an OP juggernaut, but will be perfectly fine, even for a new player, on lower difficulty levels if you have you heart set on it.

[Dragon Master]

I'm playing a copper dragon sorcerer, and since acid is his element conjuration is the path for him to go down naturally, which makes turning him into a summoner very efficient.

The summons won't save the party, but with both summoning feats it is an effective way to create meatshields before the battle starts to reduce damage to your front liners, and with the extra summon and each creature getting +4 to strength and constitution it makes them slightly more sturdy, but it's generally better to summone multiple creatures at once rather than the big one.

Summoning is more crowd control in this game to keep enemies off of your party than they are meant to take down enemies.

[jayel83]

Hellom

Ty for your elaborate replies to all of you.

I took the advice into account. I still ended up rerolling many times which is what I wanted to avoid lol.

Initially i chose the blight druid cause he seemed to be the casting oriented druid but seems to offer little advantage. Also does the miasma hurt allies too? Seems like a bad idea and a mess.

So i changed my perspective and I decided to play the druid as the game intended and keep the animal companion, and focus somewhat more on fighting up close too.

I tried to go full spellcaster but it was too much of a pain. Is it like that for all spellcasters in this game in the beginning?

I have 2 very similar druids now...

1
Aasimar the kind that gives bonus to Wis and con.

Defender of the true world

Wolf companion (i like wolves)

Str 13
Dex 16
Con 15
Wis 18
Int 8
Cha 12

Martial weapons proficiency because those druid weapons are useless and wtf a scimitar and no bow?

Skill points to persuasion and perception.

I wanted to drop Cha more but i kept it to roleplay the hero protagonist and not just a fighting machine.

2. Very similar but Wis 17 and str 14

[Immortal Reaver]

For full spellcaster.
At begining 1-4 level you have few casts. So you need to rely on weapons or orisons/cantrips more.
When you are cca lvl 5-7 you can cast a lot since you will have a enough spell slots to cast in each fight in dungeon.
Later at cca 8-11 you can cast few spell each fight.
At cca 12-20 you will have a lot of cast, so much that unless you try to do story dungeon with no rest, you will have spells left over.

For Miasma of Blight Druid. Do not remember if it affects allies, but you have Delay Posion Communal spell that makes you immune to it anyway.

[Radiac]

Being a spellcaster, I think you can get away with a Con of like 10, at the lowest, if you're not planning on running into melee at all, so in that case I'd probably take a version of aasimar that gets a bonus to something else. I think Cha of 12 is correct. If you could raise your Int to 10, you get a third skill point per level, so I would do that just to get ranks in Use Magic Device so you can use wands and scrolls of wizard and cleric spells you don't know, but that's not mission critical. Being a Druid and having to rely on someone else for Lore Nature is embarrassing, but you probably just have to live with that.

Most people I've read would advise you to set your spellcasting stat to a 19 at creation, then rank it up three times as you get XP and levels. You get one attribute point at levels 4, 8, 12, 16, and 20, but you probably won't reach level 20 before the game is over, so that last one basically doesn't count. Generally I like to leave two Ability Scores at odd numbers upon character creation, then raise one of them when I hit level 4, then raise the 19 I had in my spellcasting stat at levels 8, 12, and 16. In this case you don't really have a second stat that's terribly important, so you could set Wisdom at an 18 and raise it 4 times, then leave all the other stats at their starting numbers for the rest of the game. I think I'd spread out your points more or less evenly among the physical stats of Strength, Dex and Con, without really pushing any one of them.

[jayel83]

As i said, i decided to play the druid the way this game intends it. So i see there's lots of emphasis on morphing, so that's why i took high con. but probably was bad idea because i keep getting hit and dying faster than my other chars with less Con. wth.

i wish i would have taken 18 wisdom.

also, i thought dex gave a bonus to attack rolls and evasion. but i don't see it on the roll? there's a strength bonus, but I don't see a dex bonus. wth.

the game said that there was a bonux from dex to ac in the form of evasion.

do you know about that?

thank you for your input. i'll definitely do things differently next time.

[Immortal Reaver]

STR gives bonus to attack and to all weapon damage (even with composite bows and thrown weapons, note non-composite bows and crossbows do not get bonus damage from any stat).

DEX gives bonus attack to ranged weapons. It can give attack bonus to melee, but only if you have Weapon Finesse feat, it works for light weapons, natural weapons and some more specified in feat description. It also can give you damage if you have Finesse Training Rogue ability, Slashing/Piercing Grace or Amulet of Agile Fist +1 to +5 for natural attacks (claw, fist, gore, bite, etc.).
DEX gives you points in Armor Class, which makes attacks againts you miss more. If you wear armor it has upper limit (basicaly heavier armor= less AC DEX can give). Druids cannot wear metal armors, and there is only 1 non-metal heavy armor at the end of game.
DEX also gives you points in Reflex save, making you evade effect and/or take only 1/2 half of damage of spells that target Reflex save (Fireball, Grease, etc.)

There is no evasion stat. It is called Armor Class (=AC). In lore perspective it is making you dodge attack and/or making armor/shield/hide/scales eat attack without damaging you. In game it just says enemy missed you.

Evasion is ability some classes get (like Rogues, Tower Shield Specialist and Rangers) that makes you avoid whole damage if you pass a Reflex save of spell instead of half. There is Improved Evasion that also makes you take 1/2 damage on failed save.

[Radiac]

I believe that when in wild shape form you maintain your original Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma, but take on the Strength, Dex and Con of the animal you turn into, regardless of what your human form stats are. So as you get better animals to shapechange into, you should get better in combat. I think you can also cast various druid buff spells on yourself when in wild shape form, if I'm not mistaken, but you have to take a Feat that allows you to cast spells while wild shaped in order to do that. I admit I don't know how magic items worn on the body work in combat while wild shape is in effect. I'm assuming that if you have a bunch of stuff equipped, like a belt, hat, ring, amulet, etc, that you get those bonuses in animal form, but I'd have to check and see to confirm that. If you're NOT getting the armor and other bonuses , then you need to have the spell casters cast spells like Mage Armor, Shield of Faith, and Barkskin on you. If you do get item bonuses while Wild Shaped, you should probably wear an Amulet of Mighty Fists if you're going to do melee a lot, and cast Barkskin on yourself, or find a different item that give a bonus to Natural Armor.

If you do take the Weapon Finesse Feat, which allows you to use your Dex bonus instead of your Strength bonus to hit with unarmed attacks, I think that MIGHT apply to your claws etc while in wild shape form. I don't know for sure. Also, as I said before, I think your human Strength, Dex and Con are irrelevant in that form anyway, so you might be turning into animals that have higher Strength than Dex in the first place.

[Immortal Reaver]

Wildshape gives you size bonuses to physical stats (and other bonuses depending on form, like AC, more speed or resist energy) it DOES NOT replace stats. It works exactly like Beast Shape and Elemental Body series of spells.

By using Wildshape you keep mental stats, but you cannot cast spells unless you have Natural Spell feat.
In Wildshape armors, weapons, shields will not work, other equipment will work.

[jsaving]

Originally posted by Jay-El:

i decided to play the druid the way this game intends it.

Druids aren't a particularly strong class in Kingmaker but if you're wedded to the class and want the best available build then I'd suggest something like this[www.gog.com]. The game's most effective tanks are able to cast mirror image and only feyspeaker gives you that capability. Having charisma for your casting stat is also helpful because it enables you to more easily make the occasional main-character-only dialogue check, some of which provide prodigious amounts of XP if successful.