Totem druid damage increase

[miesny_jez]

I would like to ask for looking into the matter of a totem druid melee damage. It has been oftenly stated on the forums that a high level druid in its totem shape will be able to do a reasonable amount of melee damage thus does not need any buff/nor a natural weapon.

But by simple looking at the possible values:

let's say we have a pure lvl30 druid totem based, according to wiki we would have base ST: 38 which gives modifier of 14 so a pure totem druid would have:

1d3 + 14 (base St mod) + 6 (lucky St enchant +12) = 23 max (and no DR penetration)/21.5 avg

now a simple longsword on a strength build would give us:
1d8 + 7 (base St 24) + 6 (St enchants) + 6 (m.damask) + 4 (essence1) + 6 (essence2) = 37 max/33avg
On top of that a +3 Dr penetration or +5 Dr penetration for -5 damage if used a GMW scroll/spell. And this can go two weapons even so x2 possible!

Meaning that even a full pure druid dedicated to his totem shape will be subpar in terms of raw damage to any char using a melee weapon. Even a char with ST 12 and a +1 modifier on damage rolls will be able to beat the druid damage-wise easily!

And all of that without conisdering the effects of DR cutting out the damage. As currently the druid unarmed strike do not have any type of DR penetration.

I find this very detrimental in terms of character development that a totem druid has to rely on spells or dragonshape or some tricky multiclassing to be effectively on a same level of damage output for any character which would use a weapon.

I suggest :
Scalable damage dice (1d3@lvl 1-9, 1d6@10 - 19, 1d8@20-25, 1d10@26-30)
DR penetration (0@ lvls 1-9, 1@10 - 14, 2@15 - 19, 3@20-25, 4@26-29, 5@30)

This would allow the druid to be an effective melee combatant while in his totem shape, without relying on monk/dragonshape summons or companions. It would provide the incentive to go full druid and would allow the players to really use their totem shape instead of resorting to elemental/dragonshape.