Avenger or Shapeshifter?

[Kyrvias]

From my personal experience of soloing all three, I would have to sayu that they are prety much equal. The totemic druid may be good early on, but towards the end he/she starts lacking. The Shapeshifter can be a very good fighter, but you can' cast spells... I guess that isn't really different than a regular fighter. But, for a SoA *and* ToB game, Avenger Druids are the best.

You can easily use a bunch of the spells to create devasating sombos. such as casting web, then shapeshifting to a sword spider to kill your enemies while they are imobile.

The penalties don't really matter, especially the CON minus. Druids only need a 16 Constitution to get the max hp bonus, anything above that is useless. and a 16 Strength is pretty good for a druid anyway.

So, for full SoA, ToB soloing, Avenger. Just SoA, Totemic. Shapeshifter for some spice

[supercowman]

I have never made my protagtonist character be a druid, I just knew that I didn't like Jaheira even though she is dual classed. does polymorph or shape shifting really do any better than a fighter in plate mail with a two handed sword? I don't know and besides wouldn't a mage or a fighter just be plain better than having a little bit of both of their skills as a druid?

[D*Ranged]

Originally posted by Assassin: As for the Druid having plenty of good summons: Nymphs are too weak, IMO, for my party. I have the spellcasters. I don't need anymore. I need tanks, not something that will roll over against a kobold. And Fire Elementals aren't numerous early-game to really be a factor unless you constantly rest after every single battle. ADD] In a no-reloads game, I would consider good, solid summons to be even more important. Nymphs just aren't sturdy enough for me...

I have just ONE use for them nymphs: Hold Person.

That way I can let my priest (i.e. Aerie) cast some other nasty spell on the enemies...

Also, a held Faldorn is a dead Faldorn with NO chance of turning to a panther whatsoever.

[Armen]

i'm soloing a ranger/cleric at the moment and the nymph has been pretty powerful in some circumstances - she pretty much won the 'party in the sewer' fight for me by confusing everyone and that was just her operating on her own AI - pretty powerful although insect plague helped too of course . . .