Weird druid build

[Kalgain]

Hi I am thinking of playing some unconventional druid builds. I dont want to play the classic dragon druid so I am looking for options. I am thinking of combining druid+cleric+hierophant(druid spell progression)

As a cleric of Silvanus you can pick animal+water domain for animal companion progression.

Animal companion levels of different classes stack, and you take the hierophant animal progression feat, see:
http://nwn2.wikia.com/wiki/Animal_companion

That leaves you with 7 cleric levels where you have full animal companion progression and can reach 30 CL.

You can get 4th level cleric spells at CL of 11, eg divine favor, assay resistance, recitation, aid.

You can get evasion and thus have access to expose weakness. Tough you have a pretty low ab, so this might never be applied.

It would be cool if someone could answer two questions:

1. Can you apply expose weakness with flame blade (the spell where you can summon a blade doing 1d8+10 fire damage on a touch attack).

2. Does such a build work in your oppinion?

Edit: You might even get divine spell power to enhance your spell dcs.

[Nachti]

How about being a planar druid? Focus on shapechange and multiclass to fighter/warpriest.

[Kalgain]

That is also a quite good idea. Warpriest also gives ab for your animal companion and -1 saves on anything in a 10' radius, which can be useful for a caster druid.

[Flasmix]

Your animal companion is going to be garbage though, so +1 AB isn't that good for it.

[Sun Wukong]

Druid 12/Warpriest 4/Hospitaler 10/Hierophant 4, BAB of 26, caster level of 30, and two Great Wisdoms if Hierophant is taken during epics. You basically turn into a Treant, buff up with Storm Avatar and Flame Weapon, and go around beating things.

[Kalgain]

For me it s still a gamble until the epics. Can you apply expose weakness with either flame blade or any wild shape. I dont think wild shape will work, flame blade might. At least the older expose weakness did not work in wildshapes according to the wiki.

so what most of you say is that the animal companion will never be viable, even if you fully buff him...

[electric mayhem]

Most of the druid shapes when fully buffed... you won't need expose weakness. They get awesome AB, DMG, AC... expose weakness is typically for those other builds just to give them a bit of a hand with high AC enemies.

[Sun Wukong]

so what most of you say is that the animal companion will never be viable, even if you fully buff him...

Animal companion requires pretty much '30' levels + 'Epic Animal Companion' feat to be useful, and a high caster level to keep it buffed up.

For example: https://wiki.bgtscc.net/index.php?title=Druid <= If you scroll down, you will get to see what the animal companions look like with '20' levels of progression, and with '30' levels + 'Epic Animal Companion' feat.

For example at 20 a brown bear will have: 169 HP, 29 AC, and base AB of 15.

And at level 30 this brown bear would have: 299 HP, 42 AC, and base AB of 26.

With just +10 levels and one epic feat, the companion becomes almost twice as good. Moreover, unfortunately the animal domain does not grant you the 'Nature's Avatar spell' - which grants haste, +10 AB and Damage to your animal companion. (Didn't work for dragon... last I checked.) It also lasts for 1 round per caster level.

If you want to get a good and strong animal companion, you pretty much need to be a single class Ranger or Druid.

[Kalgain]

This build has full animal companion progression + expose weakness + possible cleric buffs + 30 CL druid.

The main question is if you can apply expose weakness by a wildshape or flame blade.

And how much would wild shapes profit from divine power or divine favour.

[Sun Wukong]

The main question is if you can apply expose weakness by a wildshape or flame blade.

Not in the test module at least. Heck, Flame Blade did not even work in there. But yeah, I could not get Expose Weakness to trigger in a wild shape. You can activate it before shifting, but it doesn't seem to work.

[Kalgain]

Thank you for the answer with wildshape and the new expose weakness.