Augury - Divine Favor: The Druid (Pathfinder)

 

More Divine Favor goodness at this Tower. Let’s what ideas Stefen Styrsky has for the Druid class. I already mentioned briefly in my first Divine Favor augury about these PDF’s structure.

After the traditional introduction to the Druid’s basic traits, we’re presented to variant abilities for Wildshape. Nature’s Multitude let the druid wildshape not in one but in a pack of small beast, while Swarm Shape is self-explanatory (please note that they’re different variants). The next options are for Animal Companion, with traits that allows the druid to have a flock of beast allies, or animals that can speak, cast spells or even being possessed by the druid. Excellent stuff.

Divine Favor: The Druid has the following Archetypes: Moon Druid, Greenman and Element Shaman. This may seem little, but the Archetype are further divided in subcategories (Full Moon, New Moon and Phase Moon for the Moon Druid; Green Warden and Forest Child for the Greenman; and Air, Earth, Fire and Water for the Elemental Shaman). These  variant traits aren’t complex, but change considerably the druid’s role and world view. For example, the Forest Child can turn fey creatures and the Elementals Shamans have wild empathy with elemental creatures.

Next are new Domains (and their respective Subdomains): Bird (Feather and Wind), Hunting (Fur and Tactics), Insect (Inevitable and Toil), Transformation (Deception and Protean) and Tree (Growth and Season). Among these, the Primal Cancelation (of the Transformation Domain) is one of the stronger (perhaps too much) and most interesting, generation an aura of true neutrality that negates all other descriptors (even spells and DR base on alignment).

Divine Favor: The Druid also presents new animal companions (very weird animal companions I mean, like brain ooze and green slug) and new feats. These last ones are geared toward strengthening animal companions and spells with animal or beast themes. The most original is Healing Tongue which allows your animal companion (or you wildshaped) to use the Heal skill by licking the target.

Divine Favor: The Druid is a great selection of variant rules, archetypes and feats. It’s a good mix of classical themes (archetypes) and weird traits (animal companions and wildshape variants). If you like the Druid this PDF is a must.