Totem Druid

[fading]

I personally feel like the totem druid path doesn't really add anything to the game. It barely adds any depth to the RP, as it's mainly an aesthetic choice. One for which you sacrifice a substantial chunk of your stats, -4 on all physical stats to be precise.

Some vestigial form of the totem druid can remain, but it should be just that, an aesthetic choice, same as the ranger version. As it stands, it's kind of a trap, the polymorph barely does anything at late levels because it has no damage penetration.

I'd personally love to see more interesting paths for the druid, vaguely based on some of the 5e paths. Specifically:
-The circle of the land, a caster-focused druid.
-The circle of the moon, a polymorph-focused druid.

Of course, I'd love to see a reflection of the more unique circles, spores in particular is my favorite, but I know I'm reaching at that point.

Feel free to discuss.

[Emotionaloverload]

I think totem adds a lot to rp. It is a laser focused druid. There is a lot of room for rp and conflict in that.

I would love to see more distinction between the classes. Perhaps non-totem druids have access to some broader natural boons (secret places) and totem druids have totemic boons (also secret places). This would help cement that there IS a clear difference between these two paths and there will be less of a chance to escape it.


-S

[Gouge Away]

Definitely don’t want to see them go, though I agree mechanically they need to be looked at. I don’t think every animal needs to bring unique abilities though. Maybe just let everyone have stock druid abilities with whatever totem they like as a skin, basically like rangers have it now, and vastly increase the amount of animals to choose from. I would much rather see totems be purely a cosmetic choice and ideally opened up to almost every animal in the game.

I mean unique abilities would be nice but I’d rather have dozens and dozens of animal options instead of a handful that have special abilities and have to be monitored for balance. Different abilities aren't even necessary as the visual of a pack of animals alone is more than enough to foster imaginative RP.

[Nitro]

Delete totem druid, replace it with a path more focused around shapeshifting with more powerful and/or diverse animal shapes. Or just give it access to a totem druid shape which can reskin into any of the current totem animals at will.

[Nobs]

Would like a druid path that does not focus on summon and spells but just gets stronger animal shapes.

[Archnon]

I mean, this should really be rolled up along with a conversation about shifters, which sort of fill this role too.

[Drowboy]

Delete totem druid, replace it with a path more focused around shapeshifting with more powerful and/or diverse animal shapes. Or just give it access to a totem druid shape which can reskin into any of the current totem animals at will.

totem druid becomes an offshoot of a pathfinder style 'shifter' subclass with druid base is my personal dream but its not gonna happen

[fading]

I'm not against keeping totem druids as a visual choice, I was a bit reductive when I said they barely add any RP, I just feel like you can do the majority of totem concepts with a normal druid. Just replace the animal with the concept they represent, and there you have it.


Here's a different idea on how to go about it though, and let me know if it sounds good. Remove totem druid, and instead give all druids the ability to choose which animal they want to look like at any time via a command. In pnp druids are able to assume a variety of animal shapes after all.

Basically, X druids is in a swamp area, so to better navigate it they utilize the command -shape serpent or some other swamp creature, and now their wild shape (and summons) will take on that visual.

This allows one to focus on a specific animal if they wish, for aesthetics or because of some specific concept, while adding a lot of variety to druids in general and fixing the mechanical issues of the totem druid.

[NPC Logger Number 2]

Totem Druids do get some interesting perks already... You can use it to min/max Spot or Hide/MoveSilently with the Eagle or Panther Totems. Wolf gets a lesser bonus to all three of those skills. Raven and Bat both have huge Listen bonuses, Raven even comes with +10 lore while bat gets free Amplify to resemble echolocation. If you combine some of these perks with gifts taken at character creation like Gift of the Hunter you can end up with some of the highest skills possible in the game.

I agree -4 to all physical stats is a huge downside and think it should probably be reduced to -2. The totem shape itself also needs some form of DR piercing. Other than that though Totem Druid is still very strong, the totem shape is very tanky with lots of bulk and you have the ability to cast summon creature spells while shape shifted which can turn an encounter around or at least buy you time to flee or regroup. Having a small army of animals is very fun and thematic also for druid role play.

[Jagel]

It’s hard to use the skill and ability perks of most totem animals without multiclassing.

[The Kriv]

Reminder: There was a time when Totem Druids were so strong, you barely ever saw a non-totem druid build. Then the super-strong Animal Companions got beefed, and pure-druids with full 30 levels of Companions were near unbeatable with their companion.

A lot has changed over the years since then to boost the non-totem druidic ability that rely less on the companion such as strong elemental summons, etc...

I think the pendulum that swung towards Totem now swings back towards non-totem. But I don' t doubt one day someone will give Totem a re-vamp and the pendulum will swing back.

[Ork]

remove the shifter class. allow druids to take a path "shifter" that gains their shapes at the cost of animal companion or summons.

[Jagel]

Totems were strong because:
- raven gave hard wisdom which was the only way to multiclass and get dragon shape before gifts
- bat gave true seeing
- the elemental shape was still using vanilla stats
- dragon shape was using vanilla stats
- monk synergy
- totem shape via console was an instant action

And also: few of the base classes had been adjusted, eq was way weaker (mst damask was THE endgame weapon, no keen) and the 70-80 ac on druids was simply way, way higher than anything else.