New-ish Druid Feats

[RedGiant]

Blood Lust 15 New feat option (including bonus feat): Blood Lust (Ranger 15, Con 15)
-Blade thirst grants additional vampiric regeneration equal to a ranger's HARD constitution modifier.

• Awaken grants their animal companion regeneration equal to a ranger's HARD constitution modifier.

Call of the Wild 23 New feat option (including bonus feat): Call of the Wild (Ranger 23, Con 15)

• Awaken grants a ranger's animal companion bonus AC equal to the ranger's constitution modifier. It also grants the animal companion spell resistance equal to 15 + (ranger level / 2).

I haven't really messed with Druid since the last round of updates, but I was shocked to find these feats now implemented for Druids as well as Rangers. It now requires two feats to make a Druid's companion do what they did prior to this update.

Mysteriously, the new mechanic is tied to hard constitution score, which seems to further reward the already favorable EDR builds.

Even more mysteriously, it is given free to Totem Druids who will have an across the board -4 to CON, making it nigh impossible for it to actually do anything.

My feedback: Chuck this mechanic!

[Hazard]

100% agree. These were my exact thoughts when I found out about it, and had played around with it.

[Svrtr]

Blood Lust 15 New feat option (including bonus feat): Blood Lust (Ranger 15, Con 15)
-Blade thirst grants additional vampiric regeneration equal to a ranger's HARD constitution modifier.

• Awaken grants their animal companion regeneration equal to a ranger's HARD constitution modifier.

Call of the Wild 23 New feat option (including bonus feat): Call of the Wild (Ranger 23, Con 15)

• Awaken grants a ranger's animal companion bonus AC equal to the ranger's constitution modifier. It also grants the animal companion spell resistance equal to 15 + (ranger level / 2).

I haven't really messed with Druid since the last round of updates, but I was shocked to find these feats now implemented for Druids as well as Rangers. It now requires two feats to make a Druid's companion do what they did prior to this update.

Mysteriously, the new mechanic is tied to hard constitution score, which seems to further reward the already favorable EDR builds.

Even more mysteriously, it is given free to Totem Druids who will have an across the board -4 to CON, making it nigh impossible for it to actually do anything.

My feedback: Chuck this mechanic!

As far as I know, they never did this before no. Totem druid gets these feats for free. The regen from Awaken with CotW is unique. The AC bonus from CON is unique, but greater magic fang still gives AC.

These are optional and I am 99% sure cookies, not nerfs reintroduced as required feats.

[RedGiant]

As far as I know, they never did this before no. Totem druid gets these feats for free. The regen from Awaken with CotW is unique. The AC bonus from CON is unique, but greater magic fang still gives AC.

These are optional and I am 99% sure cookies, not nerfs reintroduced as required feats.

So what I mean is: before the sequencer update, Druid could simply cast regen and SR on their companions, at a higher rate than the 4 regen optimal and 30 SR maximal they will get with this new system...now at the hefty cost of 2 feats.

Animal companions could be considered epic summons in a trashy sort of way. Arelith has reverted them to vanilla. They can post some impressive numbers in a few areas, but have always had glaring holes in certain areas, especially around AC, Saves, and Immunities.

For Totem Druid, these feats seem like a free gift, because you would have to start with a 16 Con for them to even do anything. Building for any stat you will suffer an immediate -4 to is not recommended, especially when there are better choices for Totems to invest in (e.g. INT). Trying to get to numbers that really matter are going to further hamstring the character.

Similarly, on a regular Druid I would still classify these as trap feats since to build back to half of what you had before the sequencer update requires a two feat investment, which you could instead use on an actual epic summons, instead of a psuedo-epic summons with the aforementioned glaring holes.

My gut feeling is that the current functionality is another mechanic provoked by the continued ramifications of the summons/sequencer update. The on again, off again SR sourcing tries to balance against the complete disabling of a major class feature.

I think a fix to this would simply be to make these bonuses scale by level with the awaken spell, especially now that rangers have it too. Don't make people take multiple feats to improve a trash-tier epic summons.