Naturalist [3.5 Base Class]

[EjoThims]

Oh, that could work. How about this: at 5/10/15/20, in addition to learning one Natural Essence, one of the Primal Form abilities you've chosen is also permanently applied to your AC.

That sounds like a good pacing versus when you get the new levels, yea, giving the current level to the AC right before getting the next one for himself.

[FireInTheSky]

Oh, that could work. How about this: at 5/10/15/20, in addition to learning one Natural Essence, one of the Primal Form abilities you've chosen is also permanently applied to your AC.

That sounds like a good pacing versus when you get the new levels, yea, giving the current level to the AC right before getting the next one for himself.

Added this ability:

Share Form (Su): At 5th level, and every 5 levels after that, one of the primal form abilities the naturalist has chosen also affects his animal companion. These choices may not be changed once chosen, and are always active, regardless of how far the companion is from its naturalist. No ability may be chosen multiple times. If the companion dies, or otherwise replaced, different abilities may be chosen, but only choices that would have been valid at the levels gained.

Does that wording make sense? Especially the part about what happens with replacement companions?

[EjoThims]

Does that wording make sense? Especially the part about what happens with replacement companions?

you forgot an is between 'or' and 'otherwise,' but otherwise looks good.

[FireInTheSky]

Does that wording make sense? Especially the part about what happens with replacement companions?

you forgot an is between 'or' and 'otherwise,' but otherwise looks good.

Cool.


EDIT: Question - Is one primal form ability per level too much? On top of everything else the class is giving you? Maybe it should be one every other level?

[EjoThims]

Question - Is one primal form ability per level too much? On top of everything else the class is giving you? Maybe it should be one every other level?

Every other level would mirror the naturalize progression better.

[FireInTheSky]

Question - Is one primal form ability per level too much? On top of everything else the class is giving you? Maybe it should be one every other level?

Every other level would mirror the naturalize progression better.

That's kinda what I was thinking. So, shifting it around just a hair to make things a little smoother, this ACF would end up looking something like this:

Level	Benefit
1	Egg
2	-
3	Egg
4	AC Primal Form
5	Egg, Natural Essence
6	-
7	Larva
8	-
9	Larva
10	AC Primal Form, Natural Essence
11	Pupa
12	-
13	Pupa
14	AC Primal Form
15	Pupa, Natural Essence
16	-
17	Adult
18	Elemental
19	Adult
20	AC Primal Form, Natural Essence

[Chemus]

Perhaps fold Detect Animals or Plants into Speak with Animals and Speak with Plants respectively?

This one I'm not so sure on. The Detect doesn't look for generic animals or plants, but rather a specific type of animal or plant. And Speak with X is just generic. Also, I don't want to split Detect into two separate effects, in which case I'd have to give both the Speak with Animals and Speak with Plants invocations the ability to also act as Detect, which seems kinda messy. Opinions?

Detect animals was always odd man out on the detect spells IMO. Why not make Each Invocation akin to detect thoughts or detect magic; presence or absence of animals/plants on 1st rd, Number and types present on 2nd rd, and Locations and Speak With an individual on 3rd rd. Folds into Speak with X, to my eye. So it would Detect and Speak with Animals (Least/Seedling), Detect and Speak with Plants (Lesser/Annual). I'm not really hot about this, but some of the invocations seem too limited to actually take; with so few slots available, you need to make each one count.

Aquatic Transformation seems to trump Water Walk; am I missing something there? Or is the 'Snow, oil, quicksand' clause the part that I'm missing?

You got it. Although, I could still get rid of Water Walk in favor of Aquatic Transformation, figuring that the Woodland Stride tree (or whatever Geographic Variant you took) would take care of the extra bit...

Actually, I see the utility in that you can share the Water Walk with the rest of your party, but Woodland Stride is only for the Druid Naturalist, right?

[FireInTheSky]

Detect animals was always odd man out on the detect spells IMO. Why not make Each Invocation akin to detect thoughts or detect magic; presence or absence of animals/plants on 1st rd, Number and types present on 2nd rd, and Locations and Speak With an individual on 3rd rd. Folds into Speak with X, to my eye. So it would Detect and Speak with Animals (Least/Seedling), Detect and Speak with Plants (Lesser/Annual). I'm not really hot about this, but some of the invocations seem too limited to actually take; with so few slots available, you need to make each one count.

Another option is to just combine all three into one Seedling invocation. Is it gonna break the game if a 1st level character can do Speak with Plants at will? Probably not.

Aquatic Transformation seems to trump Water Walk; am I missing something there? Or is the 'Snow, oil, quicksand' clause the part that I'm missing?

You got it. Although, I could still get rid of Water Walk in favor of Aquatic Transformation, figuring that the Woodland Stride tree (or whatever Geographic Variant you took) would take care of the extra bit...

Actually, I see the utility in that you can share the Water Walk with the rest of your party, but Woodland Stride is only for the Druid Naturalist, right?

Correct. However, as we pointed out above, do you really wanna spend two of your invocation slots on both Aquatic Transformation and Water Walk? Maybe I should combine these two as well.

[Chemus]

Well, I'm not averse to Detect and Speak with Plants and Animals as one ability; it seems to go together, and plants and animals are not often powerful creatures, so there's little broken there.

As for combining AT and WW, again it's thematic (sorta; it's a little more powerful, and is at will.)

If you do combine them, I have a suggestion; one that I don't know if you'll like. Place a clause that states that Aquatic Transformation counts as woodland Stride for Prerequisites. Then remove Woodland Stride from the Gained abilities list. In fact, do the same for Wild Empathy (Calm/Charm Animals gaining the ability or counting as it.)

At that point, Primal Form and Plant Lord ACF's could become Invocations as well; Naturalize and Resist Nature's Lure becoming some sorts of Invocations as well (RNL could become like Dark One's Own Luck). Plant Lord looks like it's much more powerful than RNL; having more creatures on your team is often a really good thing.

Add more invocations known to cover some of the costs.

Now, this makes the class more generic; perhaps more generic than you'd like. I will say that it's 'got everything' already, much like the druid. It makes the Character into two characters (as the Druid does), has some good spells (but has to choose them more carefully and from a smaller list than the druid), Qualifies for many Druid 'specific' PrC's (that's a good thing), has an irresistible (Su) magical touch attack (for moderate damage; plus it can be traded for a permutation of Aspect of Nature, one that's almost Wild Shape in power), Gains the Aspect of Nature (Wild Shape ACF) and can share it with a lot of allies (consider toning that down a bit, say up to 5 allies)...

What I'm trying to say is that this class does a lot of things. Making a few of the abilities into invocations will serve to allow those abilities to those that want them, if they 'pay' for them, while focusing the class a little bit more.

Hope this is helpful

[FireInTheSky]

Well, I'm not averse to Detect and Speak with Plants and Animals as one ability; it seems to go together, and plants and animals are not often powerful creatures, so there's little broken there.

My thoughts exactly. And much cleaner.

As for combining AT and WW, again it's thematic (sorta; it's a little more powerful, and is at will.)

On second thought, they really fill two different niches, so I'm gonna leave them as is.

If you do combine them, I have a suggestion; one that I don't know if you'll like. Place a clause that states that Aquatic Transformation counts as woodland Stride for Prerequisites. Then remove Woodland Stride from the Gained abilities list. In fact, do the same for Wild Empathy (Calm/Charm Animals gaining the ability or counting as it.)

At that point, Primal Form and Plant Lord ACF's could become Invocations as well; Naturalize and Resist Nature's Lure becoming some sorts of Invocations as well (RNL could become like Dark One's Own Luck). Plant Lord looks like it's much more powerful than RNL; having more creatures on your team is often a really good thing.

Add more invocations known to cover some of the costs.

Now, this makes the class more generic; perhaps more generic than you'd like. I will say that it's 'got everything' already, much like the druid. It makes the Character into two characters (as the Druid does), has some good spells (but has to choose them more carefully and from a smaller list than the druid), Qualifies for many Druid 'specific' PrC's (that's a good thing), has an irresistible (Su) magical touch attack (for moderate damage; plus it can be traded for a permutation of Aspect of Nature, one that's almost Wild Shape in power), Gains the Aspect of Nature (Wild Shape ACF) and can share it with a lot of allies (consider toning that down a bit, say up to 5 allies)...

What I'm trying to say is that this class does a lot of things. Making a few of the abilities into invocations will serve to allow those abilities to those that want them, if they 'pay' for them, while focusing the class a little bit more.

Hope this is helpful

I can kinda see what you're saying, and I agree that generic and focused aren't necessarily antithetical in this case. I have tried to do that - I mean, to make the class usable for more types of characters. That's the reason for all the Geographic Variants, and the other 2 ACFs - more options is a good thing.

However, I don't think taking it as far as you're suggesting would be the right way to go. Plant Lord and Primal Form don't really make sense to me as invocations. And if you want those abilities, you do pay for them, in the form of giving up other abilities. Also, increasing the number of invocations known any more probably isn't a good idea, especially at lower levels. That would be a lot of different at-will abilities at 1st level. It might already be too many.

I'm not sure what doing what you're suggesting would really achieve that you couldn't already do with the class as is. What druid-specific PrCs are there that you would want to go into from this class that you couldn't currently? I put some wording into the "Naturalists and Prestige Classes" spoiler to address some of this.

tl;dr - I guess I just don't know how the changes you're proposing would really benefit the class, given the flexibility I've already put in.

[Chemus]

My intended direction is that the class has many things that it grants outright rather than offering as choices with resource costs. Folding some abilities into invocations means that to get those abilities you have to choose the invocation it was folded into.

As for PrC's I wasn't suggesting anything; I was just saying that the class qualifies for Druid PrC's about as well as a Warlock qualifies for Sorcerer/Wizard PrC's.

[FireInTheSky]

My intended direction is that the class has many things that it grants outright rather than offering as choices with resource costs. Folding some abilities into invocations means that to get those abilities you have to choose the invocation it was folded into.

I get that. But I feel like the fluff is in the class features, so turning them into invocations (and bumping up the invocations known) eliminates a lot of the fluff. I don't want this to turn into an invoking Wizard, where there aren't any class features and only a mild nature theme just because of how the invocations list is defined. Even the Superpowered Druid, which already has an AC, full spellcasting, AND wildshape has other fluffy class features. If you were going to make a Naturalist, would you pick the Woodland Stride invocation every time? What about the Elemental Arbiter invocation? If you didn't pick either of those, what makes you a naturalist? Why not just play a Warlock (or some other Invoking homebrew class, such as Holomancer, Nullblade, or Thaumurai, to name 3) and take Wild Cohort if you want an AC?

As for PrC's I wasn't suggesting anything; I was just saying that the class qualifies for Druid PrC's about as well as a Warlock qualifies for Sorcerer/Wizard PrC's.

What else do I need to put into the "Naturalists and PrCs" spoiler to make this easier?


EDIT: Moved edits to a ChangeLog in the 3rd post.

[FireInTheSky]

While we were away, Garryl and sirp posted these comments on the storm-shelter forum:

Feat, item, or something else which lets you apply your Naturalize damage as a bonus to natural attacks (in some iteration)? Maybe a feat, to make it kinda like Arcane Strike?

Also, what about a class variant which gives you stripped-down Green Man meldshaping in exchange for Aspects and/or Elemental Arbiter?

I don't think greater/perfect elemental arbiter should multiply the bonuses for suppressing/dispelling effects. You've already got scaling by applying it from higher-level spells. For example, with perfect elemental arbiter, you would gain a 105% miss chance for dispelling a 7th-level illusion.

Minor nitpick, but elemental arbiter (evocation) should give resistance to an energy type, not an element. The elements are air, earth, fire, and water. The energy types are acid, cold, electricity, fire, and sonic.

My responses:

Feat, item, or something else which lets you apply your Naturalize damage as a bonus to natural attacks (in some iteration)? Maybe a feat, to make it kinda like Arcane Strike?

Isn't this what Topiary do?

Also, what about a class variant which gives you stripped-down Green Man meldshaping in exchange for Aspects and/or Elemental Arbiter?

I never really got into how Meldshaping works. If you want to write something up, I'd be more than happy to include it.

I don't think greater/perfect elemental arbiter should multiply the bonuses for suppressing/dispelling effects. You've already got scaling by applying it from higher-level spells. For example, with perfect elemental arbiter, you would gain a 105% miss chance for dispelling a 7th-level illusion.

Yeah, but who doesn't want a 105% miss-chance??

...okay fine, I'll get rid of the multiplication.

Minor nitpick, but elemental arbiter (evocation) should give resistance to an energy type, not an element. The elements are air, earth, fire, and water. The energy types are acid, cold, electricity, fire, and sonic.

Good point. Fixed.

Response to my responses:

Feat, item, or something else which lets you apply your Naturalize damage as a bonus to natural attacks (in some iteration)? Maybe a feat, to make it kinda like Arcane Strike?

Isn't this what Topiary do?

The only Topiary that comes close is Bear, which makes you do it as a standard action. What about attacks of opportunity, or full attacks? Even if you don't want to do the full naturalize damage on a full attack, something that would let you get, like, +2 damage for each naturalize die or something would be fun.

Also, what about a class variant which gives you stripped-down Green Man meldshaping in exchange for Aspects and/or Elemental Arbiter?

I never really got into how Meldshaping works. If you want to write something up, I'd be more than happy to include it.

Sweet.